Apr
30
Vanity thy name is Fox
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This afternoon on Fox Neil Cavuto was talking to Democratic Presidential candidate Mike Gravel and he (Cavuoto) claimed that Democratic candidates are afraid of Fox and won’t go on the network’s shows. Gravel said he wasn’t afraid to come on and then tried to move on to something more substantive. Cavuto wouldn’t let him, though, and tried to reel him back to what he referred to as “your point” (it was really Cavuto’s.) Gravel didn’t think much of that and demonstrated exactly why he has “gravitas” and the Fox anchor does not.
I don’t know why Cavuto cares if Democratic candidates show up on his network or not—the network has shown a Democratic doesn’t actually have to say the words that Fox attributes to them. And the real truth, of course, is that the guests Fox invites are predominantly conservative.
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Apr
27
In advance of the fourth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished,” Robert Greenwald and the folks at Brave New Films are out with a new short. I hope you’re not expecting “Evolution of Dance” because this is a serious film. As serious as death.
Greenwald’s organization is also running a contest to come up with a slogan to replace “mission accomplished,” with the winning line ending up on a bumper sticker, because, after all, that’s where much our political debate takes place these days.
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24
Inside the Bush, Blub-Blub Bubble
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Michael Winship
Indicative of just how ignorant we are of how things work in the Middle East in general and in Iraq specifically, I’m struck by the fact that every Iraqi national with whom I speak on the phone or via e-mail is opposed to the idea of dividing that country into three parts: Sunni, Shia and Kurd.
Interesting, because it’s a solution touted by many American politicians and diplomats as the best answer to an essentially intractable problem. That the Iraqi people themselves don’t seem to want it — any more than they want those cement-slab walls the United States military started throwing up around parts of Baghdad last week — would seem one mighty big drawback.
It’s just that Americans currently in positions of power don’t seem to listen much to anyone else. I SAID, IT’S JUST THAT THE AMERICANS CURRENTLY IN POSITIONS OF… never mind. From the president on down they live in the proverbial, impermeable bubble that apparently renders them impervious to all sound other than their own voices and those of various acolytes saying, “You betcha, boss.”
Apr
23
If It Were Up to Me
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I rolled out of bed this morning in a Jamestown, Rhode Island hotel room and snapped on CNN. More wall-to-wall coverage of the Virginia Tech killings greeted me. TV snapped off. With a cup of coffee I stumbled out onto my little deck and sat down to watch the sun come up over Narragansett Bay (yes, it is a pretty swell hotel. Thank you Hotwire.) I didn’t want to hear anymore about the shootings. From the first moment the news broke all I thought about was my nearly-college-age daughter, and how I would feel if….
Feeling like it was a bit of a cop out to run from the news, I read the profile of the shooter in yesterday’s NYT. The kid was shy and quiet and sometimes had make believe friends. At one point in my life that was me. Why did he turn into a mass murderer and I turn into…whatever it is I’ve turned into?
I also reread Michael Winship’s column (below) published the day after the shootings. He ran down some of the excuses:
The Virginia Tech killings will be blamed on a variety of things, just as Columbine was. Regardless of the true motive, some will suggest that the shootings were an aberrant incident timed to mark the anniversary of Columbine, Waco, Oklahoma City — even the 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord and Hitler’s birthday — all of which took place at this time of the month. … Americans…tend to blame such senseless massacres more on a poor family upbringing and the dark influence of popular culture than a lack of sensible gun laws.
Michael went on to describe how serious enforcement of sensible gun laws can really take a bite out of gun related crime. Makes a lot of sense unless you’re the NRA, who see the UN hiding behind every bush ready to jump out and pry their guns out of their cold, clammy hands. (Was that what Charelton Heston said?)
Maybe the best take on this comes from Cheryl Wheeler in her song “If It Were Up to Me:”
Maybe it’s the movies, maybe it’s the books
Maybe it’s the bullets, maybe it’s the real crooks
Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the parents
Maybe it’s the colors everybody’s wearin
Maybe it’s the President, maybe it’s the last one
Maybe it’s the one before that, what he done
Maybe it’s the high schools, maybe it’s the teachers
Maybe it’s the tattooed children in the bleachers
Maybe it’s the Bible, maybe it’s the lack
Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the crack
Maybe it’s the hairdos, maybe it’s the TV
Maybe it’s the cigarettes, maybe it’s the family
Maybe it’s the fast food, maybe it’s the news
Maybe it’s divorce, maybe it’s abuse
Maybe it’s the lawyers, maybe it’s the prisons
Maybe it’s the Senators, maybe it’s the system
Maybe it’s the fathers, maybe it’s the sons
Maybe it’s the sisters, maybe it’s the moms
Maybe it’s the radio, maybe it’s road rage
Maybe El Nino, or UV rays
Maybe it’s the army, maybe it’s the liquor
Maybe it’s the papers, maybe the militia
Maybe it’s the athletes, maybe it’s the ads
Maybe it’s the sports fans, maybe it’s a fad
Maybe it’s the magazines, maybe it’s the internet
Maybe it’s the lottery, maybe it’s the immigrants
Maybe it’s taxes, big business
Maybe it’s the KKK and the skinheads
Maybe it’s the communists, maybe it’s the Catholics
Maybe it’s the hippies, maybe it’s the addicts
Maybe it’s the art, maybe it’s the sex
Maybe it’s the homeless, maybe it’s the banks
Maybe it’s the clearcut, maybe it’s the ozone
Maybe it’s the chemicals, maybe it’s the car phones
Maybe it’s the fertilizer, maybe it’s the nose rings
Maybe it’s the end, but I know one thing.
If it were up to me, I’d take away the guns.
Apr
21
Dead Man Walking
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The Alberto Gonzales testimony the other day produced some damn fine quotes, if nothing else. Many of them from Republicans.
“Dead man walking,” is the phrase many on the Hill have used to describe Gonzales. Cute, but too easy.
A little more substance comes from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham:
“At the end of the day, you said something that struck me: that sometimes it just came down to these were not the right people at the right time. If I applied that standard to you, what would you say?”
Snap.
Tom Coburn, Republican from Oklahoma continued the what’s-good-for-the-goose theme:
“I believe you ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered.”
That all happened at the hearing. Off the record the observations illustrate just how far the Administration has fallen into a spinning vortex of hopelessness.
“Everybody at the White House . . . all think he needs to go, but the president doesn’t,” said a Republican who consulted the Bush team yesterday. Another White House ally said Bush and Gonzales are ignoring reality: “They’re the only two people on the planet Earth who don’t see it.”
That last quote evokes an increasingly familiar image: a president who is sliding inexorably into a Nixon-like isolation. I doubt he’ll talk to the portraits, however–that seems a little too lofty for this president. He’s probably been complaining to Barney, mostly.
Apr
21
Go ahead, get me started….
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After a period of benign neglect, I think I’ll start putting a little something into this site again. For the last few months, the trenchant insights of Michael Winship have been the only sign of life here, and although I can’t compete with his columns, I do plan to flush out the blog a little bit—try to put some meat back on its bones.
My motivations are manifold (and, as John Hodgman of Mac/PC commercial fame once said, “they are also mysterious.”) But chief among the reasons I’ve decided to tuck back into this blog business are the issues that are percolating through the news these days. One broad issue (the slow-mo implosion of the Bush Administration) and one specific issue (the continuing genocide in Darfur) have been on my mind a good deal lately and instead of talking to my TV or radio when no one is watching, it seems to make more sense to let off the steam here.
I don’t know how much time I’ll have to devote to this. I’m honored to be working with great organizations like CommonDreams.org, SmartPower and others–and they get first dibs on my time. But the sun is rising earlier these days, so why don’t I?
Apr
18
People Kill People — With Guns
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Michael Winship
On Sunday, the National Rifle Association wrapped up its 136th annual convention in St. Louis. Sixty-thousand attended. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre fired up the crowd, telling them, “Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure.”
On Monday, one of those owners shot more than fifty students, staff and teachers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Thirty-two of them died, the worst such massacre in American history. So much for their freedom.
At that same St. Louis meeting — amidst sessions on African big game hunting, “methods of concealed carry,” and quick draw competitions — Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, chillingly warned of an event remarkably like Monday’s shootings. Warned, not because of the bloodshed or the anguish it would bring the bereaved families, but because such an incident would give gun control advocates “a green light to do it all,” by which he meant, he said, “gun bans, gun registration, gun owner licensing, gun rationing, taxes and fees.”
Cox callously declared that for those in favor of stricter gun laws such a tragedy would be “the Hail Mary of their playbook.” Hours after his remarks, innocent victims lay dying, shot down by a maniac with a pair of handguns.
Apr
10
Michael Winship
Throughout the whole Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame scandal and the ensuing trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby, one particular thing kept bugging me.
The phony story about the African nation Niger selling yellowcake uranium to Saddam Hussein was bad enough. Then came Libby’s outing of CIA operative Plame to discredit her husband Joe Wilson’s going to Niger and blowing the whistle on the yellowcake scam. Yeah, that was pretty heinous, too.
But what really charred my toast was the underlying, misogynistic assumption on the part of Cheney, Libby and the rest of the executive pump head gang that Joe Wilson must be some kind of girly-man because Plame got him the assignment. Or, as Cheney notoriously scrawled across a copy of Wilson’s New York Times op-ed expose, “Did his wife send him on a junket?”
First, if you consider travel to Niger, a landlocked desert of drought, famine and disease, “a junket,” remind me not to let you book my next Carnival Cruise.
Second, we know from the testimony of Plame and others, she didn’t hire Wilson for the mission but merely acted on the request of a supervisor. “I didn’t suggest him,” she told Congress. “There was no nepotism involved. I didn’t have the authority.” Besides, she said she wasn’t exactly thrilled with the notion of him traveling while she was left wrangling their two-year-old twins, a task I imagine roughly equivalent to defusing land mines wrapped in diapers while juggling flaming Indian clubs.
But would it have been such a big deal if she had recommended him for the job? To suggest so is to endorse dilapidated notions of gender and inequality. Wilson was knowledgeable and qualified. Just about every professional couple I know here in New York job references one another from time to time — if they’re in the same line of work. In the media business, it’s not unusual at all. And just look at all the power couples in DC, the dating and marital nexus of government, politics and the press. So why the sniggering?