John Arthur Lowe

Nicolas Cage Wins UN Award For His Millions In Donations & His Work

2009-12-07T05:27:00.001-08:00

Can't some celebrities do any substantial, gainful charitable work without drawing attention to themselves?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Seamy? Steamy? Sexy?

2009-07-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

And now, a Hardee's commercial deemed too risque by North Carolina broadcasters:

As always, some people can't seem to get it.

What Next? Banned in Boston? Banned in South Africa

2009-07-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise when I read in today's Huffington Post about a Sprite commercial that was banned from airing in Germany because of the sexual connotations depicted:

Here, courtesy of YouTube, is the offending commercial in question.

And the Hays Code decreed that "translucent materials and silhouettes were more suggestive than mere exposure."

Peggy Noonan, Thou Art Loosed...

2009-07-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

For Peggy Noonan to describe Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate as "political bullshit" was an understatement.

Though she expressed her reservations about Palin's qualifications as a one a heartbeat away from the reins of the Presidency, now that she tendered her resignation as Governor of Alaska, Noonan unleashed a scathing editorial in the Wall Street Journal' pointing out how unfit and unqualified Palin really was:

"In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying."

Noonan goes on to add, "She is a complete elite confection...she might as well have been a bonbon," and "She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

Needless to say, it took Tina Fey's satirical evisceration of Palin on Saturday Night Live to show how unfit and how way over her head and out of her depth Palin really was. And given the relentless critiques offered by blogger Shannyn Moore -- who is now being threated with legal action by Palin, who likewise threatened the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, MSNBC, and other media outlets who dared to attack her.

Ironically, the harshest criticism of Palin herself came from conservatives themselves: Kathleen Parker, Richard Cohen, Andrew Sullivan, and even Peggy Noonan have consistently attacked Palin's qualifications and whether she had the capacity to function as the nation's chief executive.

And finally, Noonan offers a critique -- and some sage advice -- that makes perfect sense given the dominance of the GOP by its wingnut fringe:

"Here's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It's not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won't be that way.

We are going to need the best.

And what does the GOP have to offer? Sarah Palin? Michele Bachmann? Bobby Jindal? Mark Sanford?

Can you guess as to why some national nightmares never seem to end?

The Illogic and Illiteracy That is the Fox News Channel

2009-07-09T15:30:00.000-07:00

For those who think the Fox News Channel is T double E double R double R double I double F double I double C-C-C-C-C, you need to have your heads examined.

Just when you thought Sean Hannity's selective editing of President Obama's press conferences to make him look bad wasn't obscene enough, the alternative news web site BuzzFlash.com presented its Media Putz of the Week award to Fox News for another cardinal journalistic sin: mislabeling misbehaving Republicians as Democrats. In bestowing this dubious distinction on them, BuzzFlash.com's editors explained:

This week's Media Putz award is brought to you by the letter D, as in Democratic, the letter R, as in Republican, and the letter F for Fox "News" that can't seem to tell the difference between the letters D and R.

Those of us who have gone through the third grade remember that a D can be made with a straight line and a half-circle, and an R is a P with an extra right leg sticking out.

To be fair, perhaps the folks at Fox "News" suffer from a highly unusual form of dyslexia, where they go to write the letter R and it comes out like a D. For example, in a classic Monty Python sketch "Travel Agents," Eric Idle's character can't say the letter "c," instead he substitutes the letter "b." Michael Palin's character suggests he say the letter "k" instead of the letter "c."

The good news for Fox (and bad news for us) is that their illness comes and goes. Fox "News" only has this problem with Republicans go bad, the latest example was Gov. Mark Sanford from, that's right, R-SC. That is R for Republican.

Credit: Democratic Underground

There have been other moments of non-lucidity. When Rep. Mark Foley had his problems, Fox "News" declared him a D instead of a R. There is even a screen capture when Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) defeated Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI) in the Senate race in 2006. In this graphic, the parties are switched around, as if Fox couldn't believe someone named Whitehouse would belong to the Democratic Party.

Credit: Democratic Underground

Being in denial is not much of a way to go through life, and it's a really lousy way to run a news operation. But Fox is only pretending to be a news operation: "we have anchors, we have opinion shows, just like a real cable news operation."

When Republicans do poorly, FNC tries to hide the facts. When Democrats do poorly or okay or even great, Fox finds a way to spin it in a different direction. That's not news; that's propaganda.

But it's clear that Roger Ailes and his flunkies at Fox "News" are starting to swallow their own propaganda: "Republicans, good; Democrats, bad." So when a Republican governor goes up to confess that he has a mistress in Argentina, he should be identified as Mark Sanford (R-SC), not (D).

As Stephen Colbert put it, "When someone misbehaves, it's natural to assume he's a Democrat, even when he is the head of the Republican Governors Association." (emphasis mine)

This isn't to say CNN, Headline News, or MSNBC don't have screw-ups in their screen crawls. The sad truth is that people with too much work on their hands in all elements of the media don't have the time to make sure what is being presented has been spell-checked or examined for grammar issues. But the other cable news outlets don't have a pattern to their mistakes that is ideological; their screw-ups are just that: scre-wups.

You have to wonder what the punishment is at these places when there is a screw-up of this type:

Regular cable news outlet: "How could you make that mistake? You made us look stupid and foolish! Pay more attention next time!!"

Fox "News" Channel: "You know you put a D instead of a R in front of Mark Sanford's name. Just for that, I'm forcing you to take the last doughnut and take the rest of the afternoon off with pay. And I don't want to see your face around here until tomorrow morning!"

The MSM loves treating FNC as a legitimate news outlet, but we know better. At some point, passive/aggressive behavior, subconscious behavior, well, isn't. The Fox "News" continuing pattern of "deliberate" screw-ups in a specific fashion is part of the master plan, the masquerade of disguise as a news operation. For once again putting propaganda before news, we award Fox "News" the Media Putz of the Week award.

Needless to say, many (myself included) don't call it the Faux News Channel for nothing.

And while they're at it, they should save the labels for

That's Obitutainment? Enough is Enough!

2009-07-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

"America was not mourning the death of a human being: It was bowing down before celebrity itself. The whole thing was a gigantic lie, and faintly obscene -- a disservice to the idea of mourning, and ultimately to Jackson, whoever he was." - GARY KAMIYA, as quoted in Salon.com

I personally boycotted watching the Michael Jackson memorial service on television today. It had nothing to do with what Vanessa Richmond coined as "obitutainment fatigue." It had more to do with the sickening nausea factor of the shameless media exploitation and the extravagance that went with it, not to mention the pretense and hypocrisy of his celebrity "friends" on stage who were hogging the camera as they were eulogizing him.

Now where were they when Michael was experiencing legal and financial troubles? Did they show up at the Santa Barbara courthouse to provide moral support? Did they bother to sit him down and lecture him on how to conduct his affairs? Did they try to put a brake on his extravagances and other self-indulgences?

Hell, no!

But then, they weren't there when they crucified Our Lord, either.

Now is there anyone else besides myself who is so sick and tired of the wasted time and space that the media devoted to him and his death?

In the meantime, I'll just go to my bedroom and start taking up crocheting again.

A Scattered Snapshot of the Way They Were...

2009-07-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

The 1969 Northeast Braves, during one of roller derby's winter road tours.

Rest Peacefully...

2009-07-02T13:02:00.000-07:00

Iconic character actor Karl Malden (1912-2009) and 50's singer/sitcom star Gale Storm (1922-2009).

Rest peacefully. Both of you will be missed.

Another Icon Passes Over Before Us...

2009-06-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

Perhaps none of us saw this coming: the final end of a long, downward slide down a slippery slope from super-stardom to tabloid-splattered scandal straight to infinity.

This wasn't some shticky, cynical attempt for attention by a media whore. This was a cry for help that may have fallen on deaf ears. There were no big bangs, no megaton explosions, not even the ripple effect from radioactive fallout. Only a chorus of loud lamentations and whimpers after the fact.

Michael Jackson, the iconic King of Pop, died from apparent cardiac arrest at the age of 50, which may have been exacerbated due to possible abuse of prescription drugs, including antidepressants, prescription painkillers, and all other matter of pharmaceutals open to tabloid speculation.

He was born in 1958 into an extremely dysfunctional blue-collar family in Gary, Indiana. His father. who toiled in the steel mills to provide for his family, was abusive towards his children, and Michael often borne the brunt of his father's ire, particularly when he didn't meet his demanding standards.

However, as Earl Ofari Hutchinson notes in the Huffington Post, the rationale behind Papa Joe's abusive behavior was his drive to whip his sons into shape as a performing act and to get his sons into show business, which in turn would provide a ticket out of the ghetto once and for all.

Photo credit: Frank Barratt/Getty Images

The Jackson 5 were signed by Motown Records in the late 1960's -- discovered not by Diana Ross, but by Gladys Knight and Bobby Taylor, who kept recommending them to Berry Gordy, who in turn finally signed them once he saw their potential viability as a recording act.

Though they scored big on the pop charts in the early 1970's and spawned a raft of imitative acts: The Osmonds, the DeFranco Family, even 1990's boy bands like New Kids on the Block, N'SYNC and the Backstreet Boys.

Though his brothers Jermaine and Jackie would prove to be fine singers in their own right, Michael was much more than the group's intangible element; he was the focal point of the act, performing like a diminutive microcosm of James Brown. Michael would also enjoy a side career as a solo performer ("Got To Be There," "Ben," the underrated "I Wanna Be Where You Are"). But his appeal also was that he gave voice to adolescents experiencing very adult emotions. And when you hear him singing "Never Can Say Goodbye," "Maybe Tomorrow," or "I'll Be There," he was delivering a message his peers could relate to.

Michael was also enjoying success as a solo artist ("Got To Be There," "I Wanna Be Where You Are"). So when Berry Gordy wanted to break Michael off from the group and have him go solo, Papa Joe vetoed the idea, more out of family solidarity than commercial considerations.

Photo credit: Motown Records

By the mid-Seventies, Michael and the other Jacksons (sans Jermaine, who stayed with Motown in part because he wedded Berry's daughter Hazel Joy), they pulled their stakes and signed with Epic records. Papa Joe masterminded this because his sons were being stifled, both creatively and financially.

After a pair of abortive false starts, the Jacksons finally found their voices, and began to hit their commercial stride once again in 1979 with the single Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).

But that did not prepare the public for the phenomenal pop success Michael would enjoy in the 1980's with a string of powerhouse albums: Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad, andDangerous.

Credit: Associated Press

But with that success came controversy surrounding his eccentric public behavior and the tabloid-fueled stories that fed on frenzy, which led him to to be tagged with the moniker "Wacko Jacko." It was not just the incessant self-mutilation through cosmetic surgery and skin bleaching to alter his features. Nor was it his abortive marriage to Lisa Marie Presley and his subsequent fathering of three children via unorthodox (if that's the word) means. It was also his Neverland ranch, where he tried to create some childhood fantasia to fuel his fantasies. And with it came the stories of inappropriate behavior around children, bordering on outright pedophilia. This would culminate in one of the most sensational celebrity trials in recent memory.

I only saw Jackson perform in person just once: during a 2003 segment during the television taping of a American Bandstand anniversary reunion show at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Jackson's perfectionism was in force, as he performed his number a second time, feeling the performance could have been much better than it was. Still, reading into his performance, it seemed to be Michael feeling more comfortable in the company of his male dancers than the woman who came out to tempt him on stage.

I also took part working as a background extra during E! Entertainment's re-enactment of the Michael Jackson molestation trials. Since television cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom, they re-enacted the courtroom proceedings based on the transcripts that were sent via fax from the Santa Barbara county courthouse.

Moreover, I was hardly predisposed to cut Jackson any slack. Media-whoring celebrities like Jackson who get caught in flagante delicto and run afoul of the law inspired not only schadenfreude, but also a perverse form of sympathy.

But something strange happened during his molestation trial. Yes, he acted weird, but at the same time he was all too human. He knew he was headed for trouble, and he had no idea of how it was going to end up. It wasn't premeditated. It wasn't scripted. It simply unfolded organically, like any good story does. In the end, the prosecution fell on its own sword and Jackson was acquitted. As one juror succinctly noted in the aftermath, "What you had was Captain Ahab going after Moby Dick."

Men are not particularly known for their psychological introspection. It's painfully clear that Jackson was living in an autistic-like alternate reality. He clearly had no moral compass to show him right from wrong. No man in his right mind would allow young boys to share his bed with him during overnight sleepovers. Jackson's pattern of behavior was something that clearly cried out for some form of psychological explanation.

Credit: Reuters (l)

I'm neither defending nor condemning Jackson -- such judgments, from both outsiders and from within the entertainment industry, are meaningless. Whatever we presumably knew about Jackson came from the news media and the tabloids. His behavioral quirks and other eccentricities may have overshadowed his immense musical gifts. However Jackson's legacy is judged will happen, and it won't necessarily be pretty. He knew the rules of the game, he broke them repeatedly. And now, karma finally has caught up with him, and he has paid for that dearly with his own life.

Looking at pictures and videos of Michael during his final weeks, he resembled more and more like a white dwarf -- that shriveled-up remnant of a red giant that exploded into a supernova, unleashing all its energy and power throughout the universe before atrophying into that final state. Cosmetologists do have a way of making the dead look beautiful, but once you strip the corpse of its cosmetology, that banality of death still exists.

Still, the news of his sudden yet tragic death was about something much deeper than sex, or race, or even the celebrity culture. It was awful, but for his fans, it was painfully real and traumatic at its core. And painful as it is, in our repressed American racial, sexual and cultural landscapes, the real enemy in this case is not race, or gender, or the celebrity culture, or one's sexual proclivities, or even authenticity. The real enemies are artifice and plastic.

Just as the 1982 film Britannia Hospital used a public hospital as a metaphor for the societal decay in Great Britain, the Neverland ranch – its name derived from the land Peter Pan lived because he refused to grow up -- stands as a symbolic metaphor for the childhood that was denied him, as well as the fantastical, hermetically-sealed fugue state that would later become Michael Jackson’s life.

It is indeed a sad commentary in itself that Michael trumped Neda, Farrah Fawcett and Mike Sanford in our media consciousness. This speaks volumes about how celebrities are deified and worshiped in ways they shouldn't be. And it also speaks volumes about how we prioritize our own concerns, and where those real concerns should lie.

And while the world mourns Michael's untimely death, there are still Iranians experiencing brutal repression at the hands of a theocratic regime bent on striking terror into the hearts and minds of their citizens, as well as the impending threat of North Korea joining the nuclear club.

Now don't we have more pressing issues to contend with?

In the meantime, rest peacefully, Michael. The Lord God will understand and say, "Well done."

Another Descent Into Disgrace, Just in Case...

2009-06-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

If you found the tabloid feeding frenzy surrounding the public exposure of extramarital infidelity surrounding Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) was contributing to your nausea and indigestion, now comes the disappearing act surround Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), whose own recklessness gave the title "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" a whole new meaning.

To recap what went down, Sanford went incognito for five days, flying off to Buenos Aries, Argentina to do some soul-searching while his aides and family were freaking out over where the hell he went off to. One of his aides claimed he went off to the Applilatian trails to do some hiking alone.

But once confronted, he had no choice but to go into Augustinian mode and confess his transgressions to his constituants.

This outrageous escapade leaves you wondering as to who's really minding the store in South Carolina.
As Rebecca Freitag notes at BuzzFlash.com:

"The responsibility inherent in public governance is non-negotiable. To just pick up and leave the country without telling anyone, or contacting your office for what was at least four days, is a strong message of irresponsibility, even if it's not a recreational trip, and a family matter. That's not a quality most people would want in a candidate.

Not only from a government official standpoint, but from a family standpoint, as well, because he left his wife and four kids waiting for him to come home on Father's Day weekend at their beach house. I don't know many Republicans who would stand by that. Although he seems to do this frequently, say some reports, isn't it a little peculiar that his wife Jenny didn't seem to mind? He said at the press conference that Jenny's parents were with her then, and most, if not all of the week."

What started as an innocuous exchange of casual e-mails snowballed into a full-bloom back street affair. And even as he was trying to get his mistress to go back to her husband for the sake of her children, citing "God's law" requiring even bad marriages to stay intact?

And when you have an elected official running off to Buenos Aires, Argentina to spend his time there crying a Niagara of tears over doing his family wrong, this is not just gross negligence or even dereliction of elected duties. It is pathetic narcissism, plain and simple.

And it doesn't take a psychiatrist much to diagnose and treat even this bizarre case of one's acting out.

I have seen politicians from both parties act out in so many bizarre ways, Wilbur Mills's dipsomanical romp in the fountain with the "Tital Basin Bombshell" Fanne Foxe being a classic example. But for all the bizarre acts of political posturing and other strange things he's done, this obviously has to take the cake.

Once again, a politician's sexual indiscretions have come back to haunt him big-time.

And looking back at my previous post commenting on the felony child abuse charges that former WWE wrestler Brian Blair is now facing, this 1980's advertising slogan for Head & Shoulders shampoo immediately comes to mind:

You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Once your transgressions are posted on the Internet for the world to see, you better have lots of butter in the Frigidare, for your political career is toast. Professionally and personally, given what one's done, they will have a difficult time garnering support from anyone.

But then, this is the Republican Party, replete with its milquetoast of birthers, unhinged wing-nuts, closet racists, and self-loathing closet cases, where family values and marital fidelity are preached, but not practiced.

So the question remains this: will his wife finally give him the boot? Or do what Tammy Wynette suggests and stand by her man?

After all, Tammy says, he is a man.

6/26/2009 UPDATE: Given his penchant for scapegoating those whom hold honest opinions to the contrary, Rush Limbaugh is blaming President Obama for Gov. Mark Sanford's back-street affair with a married Argentine woman. As Tana Ganeva posts on AlterNet.org:

"Who’s to blame for Governor Mark Sanford having an affair, abandoning his post without telling anyone or leaving emergency instructions, and becoming the latest poster boy for the hypocrisies of family values conservatism? Is it Mark Sanford? Eros? Not according to Rush Limbaugh!

On his show (yesterday), the self-professed head of the GOP — you know, the party of personal responsibility — thinks the person responsible for Sanford’s affair isn’t Sanford, but President Obama.

According to Limbaugh, Obama — in direct contravention of his widely hailed intended purpose — has actually inaugurated an era of hopelessness. The latest victim of Obama’s pernicious plan, which also includes outlawing laughter, is Mark Sanford.

Here’s the sad tale of Sanford’s downfall, as told by Limbaugh: The South Carolina Governor had emerged a broken man from the battle over stimulus funds. (In reality, Sanford was fighting against crucial funding that would have kept South Carolina’s public schools functional and staffed with teachers. In Conservative reality, Sanford waged an epic war for Freedom.)

With the battle lost, and only a limited time before the Federal Government took over and set about abolishing Freedom, Sanford decided: “What the hell? the federal government is taking over, i want to enjoy life.”

At always, leave Rush to play the blame game and point the accusatory finger at other while refusing to take responsibility for what he says and does.

But then, this is conservative talk radio, where unhinged loose cannons need the jaws of life to pull their feet out of their mouths.

This weekend I'll be going to see a community theatre production of Neil LaBute's play Fat Pig. Unfortunately, it will not have Rush Limbaugh in the starring role.

Another Day, Another Free Fall From Grace...

2009-06-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

Domestic violence, whether it is wife beating, child abuse, workplace bullying, or whatever, manifests itself in so many ways. It is not just physical brutality, as in a punch in the chest or a blackened eye. It is emotional and psychological, as in bullying and denigrating behavior. And it is economic, as in interfering with one's ability to earn a living.

But when it comes to "sports entertainment" (read: professional wrestling),when does this cross the line from choreographed violence into something more dangerous and frightening real?

Earlier this morning, while surfing the Internet, I stumbled across the news via the St. Petersberg (FL) Times that former WWE wrestler Brian Blair was arrested on Father's Day on two felony counts of child abuse.

It was in clear, graphic terms that, according to press accounts, the following scenario played itself out:

At 4:00 a.m., during a violent domestic dispute in the Blair househod, Brian punched his elder son Brett in the chest. Though Brett tried to walk away, Brian grabbed him and and punched him in the face, then slapped a choke hold on him to where he began having breathing difficulties. Once he released the hold, he grabbed his younger son Bradley by the throat and punched him in the head.

Blair was also alleged to have had a history of domestic abuse. In 1984, a former girlfriend accused him of beating her during an alcohol-fueled domestic dispute. Though Blair was slated to be charged with battery and grand theft (he allegedly took $2,000 in gifts he gave her), the case was never really pursued and charges were not formally filed.

Blair was released without bail earlier today, but the presiding judge barred him from having any contact with his children, The case has been turned over to the Department of Children and Families.

In responding to his Father's Day arrest, Blair said, "It's a real, I guess, unfortunate situation, that it's a misunderstanding that could have been prevented," Blair added, "I have over 7,000 hours mentoring children, and the last thing that I'd ever do is hurt a kid. Sometimes the hardest kids to mentor are your own."

Blair told reporters that he loves his constituents and hopes to continue his life in politics. "If they were there, I think they'd understand the situation," he said. "The most important thing is that my wife is OK."

But then, this is a by-product of the netherworld of professional wrestling, where things have to be seen to be disbelieved.

The Blair incident is not an isolated one, but rather one in a disturbing pattern of violent behavior that has profoundly impacted those within the business. There were wrestlers who died way too young -- casualties of substance abuse, difficulties coping with life on the road, and in the extreme case of Chris Benoit, hitherto brain concussions that triggered homicidal behavior that tragically took the lives of his wife and son. There are also scattered accounts of lawbreaking: former wrestler Jeff Gaylord was recently arrested for bank robbery, and another former wrestler, Dick Slater, was facing down attempted murder charges in the 2003 stabbing of his ex-girlfriend.

It may not be a problem in the first instance. But when you multiply them manifold, then it does become a problem.

We all make choices, the choices we make do have consequences. There is a difference between an action taken and a action multiplied, as there a difference between microcosmic intention and macrocosmic effect. And the immediacy of disturbing news traveling on the Internet magnifies this even further.

This is not necessarily what a clinical psychologist would call a case of oppositional defiance disorder. Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion that could be drawn is there were contributing environmental stressors and other factors that came into play in the Blair debacle: a devastating re-election campaign loss, difficulties making a transition into another life, possible financial difficulties, all converging into a perfect storm that led to what happened.

I am not trying to pass judgment on Blair, nor am I trying to make a rush to judgment, either. I came out of an abusive family environment with the scar tissue to show for it, and it is through that prism I see things through. I also had more than my share on encounters with serial bullies both in the classroom and in the workplace where, every time I tried to speak up for myself, was targeted for retaliation and retribution.

But then, this is America. And if you're looking for an apt metaphor that describes our current psychopathological state of mind, try explaining separation anxiety disorder to a truant officer.

All in all, this is much more that extremely poor judgment and restraint on Blair's part. What it represents is a perverse attempt at an assertive power statement to reassert control over a family. And such an abusive act -- regardless of who makes it -- only serves to denigrate and diminish us all.

There is no doubt Blair will not be able to mentor children anytime in the future, given what had happened that fateful Father's Day. There are issues Blair needs to address -- not only in anger management classes, but in family therapy sessions. The Blair family needs time to heal, and time to reconcile and to move on.

Now that I got all this off my chest, I can now hold my peace.

My Thoughts on the Crisis in Iran

2009-06-21T13:16:00.000-07:00

"Well, you can't climb down
and you can't sit still.
That's a storm
that's gonna last until
the final wind blows,
and when the wind blows
the cradle will rock" - MARC BLITZSTEIN, The Cradle Will Rock

"The revolution will not be televised. It will be Twittered instead." - ERNESTINE WADE, commenting on the Huffington Post

As I write this, my roommate Joe, who is an Iranian and a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been following the still-unfolding events in Iran. Despite efforts by the ruling Islamic Republic to neutralize and blackout the news media from covering the crisis, videos and messages sent out via Twitter and YouTube, as well as bloggers' postings on both the Huffington Post and elsewhere, have provided graphic images and horrific, dramatic narrative about what's still unfolding and imploding within Iran.

What's clearly unfolding before our eyes is a culmination of thirty years of living with the consequences of trading one form of oppression for another -- replacing a monarchical dictatorship presided over by a not-too-benevolent despot to a theocratic dictatorship run by fundamentalist Islamic clerics with a penchant for psychological bullying. Matt Steinglass provides a valuable insight into the psychological bullying that is at the core of the crisis:

"When you make people accept a plausible fiction, you’re just winning that one issue. But when you make them accept a lie which everyone knows is a lie, you’re destroying their integrity, destroying their will to describe the world as they see it, rather than as you tell them it is. It’s the bully on the playground holding the weaker kid’s arm and slapping his cheek with it, saying “Why are you hitting yourself?” Like Vaclav Havel’s grocer hanging “Workers of the world, unite!” in his shop window, once a person has acquiesced to something they do not believe, and which everyone knows they do not believe, they become complicit in their own oppression."

And in commenting on the corruption that served to ferment the current crisis, Andrew Sullivan notes:

"I've written before that this reminds me of the American rather than the French revolution - because it is being waged not as a means to destroy the system, but to force it to live up to its democratic promises. And that's why it's so potent. That's also why Obama's emphasis on justice, rather than freedom, is so shrewd. What we have to focus on is simply the election, its fraudulence and the necessity of a new vote. That's all. If those promises are met, the coup-regime will fall. Of course no liberal democracy will instantly follow. Mousavi is not a radical; he's a moderate establishment type. This is Gorbachev not Yeltsin. But this is not something to fear; it is something to embrace, as Reagan did. Spencer Ackerman's great take:

The west has nothing to fear from Moussavi's restorative attempt to reconcile Islam and republicanism in and of itself. Obviously the Iranian government has its interests and desires and we have ours, and they can conflict. But Moussavi's rhetoric, in this important speech at least, is not filled with the anti-western demagoguery that marked Khomeini's and marks Ahmadinejad's. The opposition movement is not a movement of "liberals" in the way that some inwardly-focused American writers lazily imagine. But that doesn't mean that the reformist syncretism that Moussavi offers adds up to an effort that western liberals, intellectually, can't support. What it means is that Iranians are working to redefine their Islamic Revolution, not abandon it, and do so in a way that favors openness and justice and freedom.

To his credit, President Obama astutely and sensibly stayed out of the crisis, differentiating himself by offering moral support for the protesters while not antagonizing the ruling regime. In his speech yesterday in which he responded to the crisis in Iran, President Obama stated:

"The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness."

Unlike a ignoramus like our previous president, Obama came off as intelligent and restrained. Even so, Obama continues to take heat from from neocon talking heads and conservative politicians for what they perceive as his unwillingness to directly and forcefully intervene in the Iran crisis. However, as Washington Post columnist George Will points out on today's This Week:

The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.

And Peggy Noonan concurs in the Wall Street Journal:

"To refuse to see all this as progress, or potential progress, is perverse to the point of wicked. To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn't know whose side America is on. "In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral," said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it's neutral?"

But perhaps the best distillation of what is hoped for inside Iran is provided by Sullivan himself:

"Did you notice how many times he invoked the word "justice" in his message? That's the word that will resonate most deeply with the Iranian resistance. What a relief to have someone with this degree of restraint and prudence and empathy - refusing to be baited by Khamenei or the neocons, and yet taking an eloquent stand, as we all do, in defense of freedom and non-violence. The invocation of MLK was appropriate too. What on earth has this been but, in its essence, a protest for voting rights? Above all, the refusal to coopt their struggle for ours, because freedom is only ever won, and every democracy wil be different: this is an act of restraint that is also a statement of pure confidence in the power of a free people.

I share the confidence. I wrote a couple weeks back that something is happening in Iran. But it is not the only place where something is happening. The rejection of al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan; the ground-up election of (President) Obama in America; and now the rising up of Iranians for freedom and civility with their neighbors: these are the green shoots of recovery from 9/11 and its wake. Empowered by new information technology, chastened by the apocalyptic conflicts of the last few years, determined to shift course away from civilizational warfare, the people of many countries are grasping for a new order and a new peace. It will not be easy; and it will not be short. But it is the only path worth taking.

And these Iranians are now leading the rest of us."

In the late 1980's during the Tiananmen Square student protests in China, it was fax machines that helped get the message out to the world. Twenty years later, it was Twitter and social networks like Facebook that's getting the word out about what's imploding within Iran.

Now why do you think riot police were raiding the universities and smashing computers? The current regime is desperate to hold on to power at all costs. And what's coming down in Iran is akin to what H.R Halderman said about the toothpaste during the Watergate scandal: once it's out of the tube, there's no way you can put it back inside again. To paraphrase Fannie Lou Hamer, the Iranian people are now marching in the streets en masse because they are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The Islamic Republic ruling Iran is now cowering in fear, and that's because they fear what Chileans call "the cleansing power of the truth." To paraphrase Gloria Steimen, the truth is setting the Iranian people free and taking it to the streets in defiance. But the truth first pissed them off.

It took a national election rocked by allegations of massive fraud to unleash so much pent-up frustration amongst its citizens. They felt disenfranchised, and perhaps rightfully so, for their uncounted and unaccounted votes represented a referendum against the entire regime. Now they are seeking change by voting with their bodies and y taking it to the streets. The Islamic Republic ruling Iran can only be brought down or changed if they assert themselves by marching in the streets. If they fear the wrath of its own people, it's because they are stuck in a proverbial Hobson's choice: either have to shoot its own people in cold blood or to cede power.

The clergy threw down the gauntlet and served notice that they will crack down with violent force. The impending strikes by merchants and public servants, and the continued street protests, are sending a direct message to those in power: We shall not be moved, we shall not be bought and sold, and we will not be intimidated. This comes from a people who were imprisoned for speaking their minds and for writing what they think. After thirty years of oppression from a theocratic state, why do you think they've had it up to there?

The response by Iran's leadership was indeed an insult not only to the maturity and alertness of its citizens, as is its provocatively insulting portrayal of its own people acting independently by protesting peacefully, and accusing their healthy civil protest to be an act of undue outside foreign influences. Given the controversies surrounding fraud in the ballot box, the public's trust has been damaged and the Islamic Republic is choosing a dangerously provocative path where it would expose itself for the repressive state it truly is.

Even as I express my solidarity for those seeking change in Iran, I continue to fear for their safety. Clearly, as the grotesque video of Neda being gunned down by riot police and the barrage of the Twitter messages suggest, they have no illusions about the bullets and gun barrels they are up against.

On the (Sad) State of Playwriting

2009-06-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

Theater, and particularly playwriting, is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet. Or YouTube. Or Hulu. Or even the promising financial allure of a steady paycheck from the Hollywood production mill. The threat comes from within. It comes from playwrights being afraid to assert their authorial primacy and authorial autonomy and control.

Calling bullshit for what it is, of course, used to be central to playwriting. And we happen to be living in times in which the substance in question is running particularly deep. Speaking truth to power, and that includes calling bullshit as one sees it, has never been more vital to our democracy. It also resonates with audiences a lot more than passionless stenography I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue on the theatrical stage — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided.

There are lots of possible reasons.

There’s an increased stultification of the theatrical arts -- from our academic theatre arts programs on our college and university campuses, to our regional theaters and the Great White Way. It's gotten to the point where rocking the boat, or even thinking outside the box, is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to conform to familiar formats, even as those formats have become ridiculously stifling and formulaic. There also the irrational fear of offending the sensibilities of the audience, as well as the the fear of being labeled partisan if honest views to the contrary are expressed or uncomfortable truths are articulated.

If playwrights don't act on the courage of their convictions, and don't assert their authorial autonomy and control, then we do risk losing our authorial primacy. I still believe that a playwright can write whatever one damned pleases, and that includes calling bullshit for what it is. We just need to get the know-nothing dramaturgs, or the academic hacks, or the corporate shills, or the self-censorship — or whatever it is — out of the way.

If the Truth Hurts: White House Correspondents' Dinner

2009-05-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

Before taking on her current role as Julia Louis-Dreyfus's BFF in the CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine, Wanda Sykes was something of a late bloomer, cutting her teeth on the comedy club circuit before she began parlaying her act into more substantial endeavors (i.e. the short-lived sitcom Wanda at Large)

But Wanda was right in her element at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this past weekend, as she took no prisoners in targeting conservatives with her biting one-liners.

Watch these clips, if you want further proof:

To Wanda, I have three words: You go, girl!

Speaking Truth to Power: "Pensacola Jeff" Shows Them How It's Done

2009-04-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

Do you remember those tea parties on April 15, those AstroTurf protest rallies concocted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News?

Well down in Pensacola, Florida, a brave blogger named Pensacola Jeff did something rather ballsy: He went down and confronted them with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and proceeded to make those Dittoheads look like total idiots:

When confronted with the truth, the real truth, not the made up baloney being peddled by the right-wing radio and TV, the crowd turns to boo the one person brave enough to stand up for the truth.

But then, that in itself speaks volumes about the absence of honest, vigorous intellectual debate.

This incident got media exposure from certain quarters of the MSM, as exemplified by this excerpt from Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

While discussing this phenomenon with Keith Olbermann, actress Janeane Garofalo's initial reaction was this: "There is nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite certain what's he saying. It sounds right to them and then it doesn't make sense."

Olbermann put it well later in the segment: "Our friend in Pensacola there who played them like a 3-dollar fiddle, and led them right down the garden path with nothing but facts and then they went, 'wait a minute, that doesn't sound like Rush Limbaugh.' "

Which leads me to this question: Did these teabaggers flunk out of logic in college?

A Tinge of Sadness and Melancholy Within the Ring of Friendship...

2009-04-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Las Vegas, where I was in attendance at the 2009 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion held at the Gold Coast Hotel & Casino.

There's a tinge of sadness and melancholy amidst the festivities as its members shared concerns over the health problems of some of their colleagues, which proved to be sobering reminders of one's own mortality.

Princess Jasmine, who was slated to be a women's honoree at Wednesday night's gala banquet, is in a Chicago ICU unit, in the final fight against pancreatic cancer.

Names that also made the rounds included Billy Red Lyons, who is battling multiple cancers; Winnipeg great Gordon Nelson, who is now in a nursing home after suffering a stroke; Moose Morowski, whose health condition prevents him from sitting still for more than 30 minutes; and then there's Verne Gagne, whose tragic accident in a Minneapolis nursing home, killing a fellow patient, made national news. His son Greg Gagne is experiencing great difficulties finding another facility that will take his father, who suffers from Alzheimer's Disease, after all the negative publicity.

Yet amidst the somber, there were memories shared, old acquaintances renewed, and fans and legends reconnecting with one another.

Here's a sampling of those in attendance:

WWE Legends Ted DiBiase (l.) and Ken Patera (r.)

Wrestling legends Terry Funk (l.) and Superstar Billy Graham (r.)

SLAM Wrestling's Greg Oliver interviews legendary wrestler/promoter Bob Geigel

WWE legend Hacksaw Jim Duggan poses with a fan.

Legendary distaff wrestlers Sandy Parker (l.) and Betty Niccoli (r.)

TNA Wrestling superstar Awesome Kong (l.) and distaff legend Beverly Shade (r.)

WWE Legend The Iron Sheik poses with wrestling's Vachon family.

Wrestling legends Ric McCord (l.) and Red Bastien (r.)

Indy mainstays Chris Hero (l.) and "Old School" Oliver John (r.)

Reunited and it felt so good: The Iron Sheik and Sgt. Slaughter exchange hugs in an emotional reunion at Tuesday night's "Baloney Bash."

For information concerning next year's event, visit their web site.

Gun-Toting Liberal Killers and the Boob Tube Boobs Who Inflame and Incite Them...

2009-04-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

"I envy paranoids, they actually think attention is being paid to them." - SUSAN SONTAG

Last July, Jim Adkisson had his fifteen minutes of infamy when he took his sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., and, after whipping it out of a guitar case, opened fire on parishioners while a group of schoolchildren performed songs up by the altar.

When investigators searched Adkisson's home for evidence and his motives, they found copies of Michael Savage's Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Sean Hannity's Let Freedom Ring, and The O'Reilly Factor, by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. They also sumbled across what appeared to be Adkisson's suicide note: a handwritten, four-page manifesto explaining his murderous actions.

The one-word answer for his deed? Hate. The three-word answer? He hated liberals.

And months later, in Pittsburgh, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski shot three police officers dead in cold blood after they responded to a domestic-disturbance call his mother had placed.

In the bloody aftermath, it was revealed that Poplawski was a neo-Nazi wannabe and something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about American and who railed against blacks, Jews, "Zionists," and gun control. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, he was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns. Additionally, he hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he frequently visited the Web site of 9/11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, and posted alarming reports by Jones' writers on the white supremacist message board, Stormfront.

Now Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years, might be a "freak," even in the eyes of some conservative bloggers, but he has recently been embraced -- and mainstreamed -- by Fox News as part of the news channel's unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America's democratic demise under the new president.

Case in point is Fox News' latest boob tube boob, Glenn Beck. Every night, he rails against President Obama while denouncing his or his actions as Marxist, socialist, fascist...or any combination thereof.

Has anyone caught his latest insurrectionist fever dream, where he pondered whether the federal government, under the auspices of FEMA, was building concentration camps to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule?

Nauseating, isn't it?

But does anyone catch the correlation between these acts of bloody violence perpetrated by the likes of Adkisson and Poplawski and the embracing of the kind of paranoid insurrection rhetoric propragated by Fox News that the likes of Adkisson and Poplawski have now acted on? Not only has Fox News done public discourse a disservice by giving Beck a microphone and a time slot to vent their paranoias, but also to incite violence amongst impressionable viewers. Not only does this put people in jeopardy, they are endangering the lives of others as well.

But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of but rather had been manipulated by the kind of anti-liberal, paranoid insurrection rhetoric that may have others emulating their conduct?

David Neiwert, a veteran reporter on right-wing militia movements and author of the forthcoming book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, recently explained in AlterNet.org that by co-opting conspiratorial rhetoric from the farthest shores of the right, mainstream conservative talkers can inflame the passions of paranoiacs like Poplawski to a dangerous degree. "It's always been a problem when major league demagogues start promulgating false information for political gain," Neiwert told me. "What it does is unhinge fringe players from reality and dislodges them even further. When someone like Poplawski hears Glenn Beck touting One World Government and they're gonna take your gun theories, they believe then that it must be true. And that's when they really become crazy."

By stoking, exploiting and feeding into the dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, you can bet your bottom dollar there are those who will be infected by this inflammatory rhetoric and put it into violent action.

And do you think there are other Jim Adkinssons and Richard Poplawskis waiting in the wings for their fifteen minutes of bloody infamy?

You bet.

Welcome to the New Hoovervilles, the Blowback Consequences from the Economic Crisis

2009-03-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

It's a long slippery slope downwards from Leavittown...

To Hooverville...

From one little box made of ticky-tacky to another, they all seem to look the same.

Homelessness. It can happen to anyone. It does not take much to tip people into this abyss. Lose your job, get screwed on your mortgage, get sick, or be branded a felon or a stalker for life by our legal and penal systems, and guess what? Shit happens. Why do you think wealthy CEOs are now being reduced to taking on minimum-wage jobs like delivering pizzas? If you think downward mobility could happen to them -- or anyone else, then why do you think people wind up jeopardizing their health and well-being living in such squalor?

You think homeless people want to live that way? Try spending some time on the streets. Try to string together a cornucopia of services from these faith-based agencies just so you could survive.

This is an uncomfortable, inconvenient truth: We will continue to have homelessness as long as pontificating gasbags and others continue to demonize the homeless and think of them as the "other" whose needs are unimportant. Social Darwinism is an ugly, ugly thing, and has been a major problem in this country for far too long.

If we as a society are judged by how we treat our less fortunate, consider this: We "support our troops," but once they're discharged from the armed forces, those with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder are out there, living on the streets, struggling with demons they could not live with. This is just one of the many blowback consequences stemming from a war which neocon politicians, in the midst of their magical thinking, sought to force changes on a country that probably would never come, in spite of their efforts.

We are seeing families whose lives are disrupted, forced to stay in overcrowded hotel rooms, or worse, in tent encampments, trying to maintain some semblance of normalacy in the midst of this crisis.

Also, consider this: almost four in ten homeless children are gay or lesbian.

They're routinely thrown out of their homes by homophobic parents, thrown out like trash. Is child protective services doing anything? Hell, no! Are law enforcement agencies doing anything? Hell, no! Is society as a whole doing anything? Hell, no!

Let's face the cold, heart truth: karma has come back to us in a big way. How we respond to this is certainly open to question.

In the meantime, there for the grace of God go you, me and the rest of us...

Bill O'Reilly: A Sociopathic Stalker With No Conscience

2009-03-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise when BuzzFlash bestowed Bill O'Reilly with its Media Putz of the Week award.

O'Reilly's dubious achievement? Having his producers stalk blogger Amanda Terkel, who dared to call O'Reilly out on his hypocrisy for suggesting a murdered rape victim was asking for it.

Watch this distasteful ambush, if you want further proof:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

As BussFlash's editors explain:

"Amanda Terkel was one of many in the media -- and she admits Think Progress wasn't even the original source -- to point out the hypocrisy of O'Reilly speaking in front of a group, the Alexa Foundation, devoted to helping rape victims when O'Reilly chastised a young woman who was raped and murdered and basically saying she was asking for it.

So O'Reilly's producer went to stalk Terkel; what's the big deal? Well, the better question is whether O'Reilly and his minions deliberately picked her because she was a woman. And in a cruel fate, Terkel is similar in build to the woman that OReilly mocked that started all of this. O'Reilly could have gone after a number of people to accomplish the same tactic, yet he picked Terkel. And there is also the point of how Terkel was stalked.

Jon Stewart played the tape of someone being stalked on a city bus -- not great but out in public. But we've also seen stalkees accosted on their private property. Amazingly, the Terkel stalking has a new twist. According to Terkel, O'Reilly and his minions tracked down her home address, waited outside her apartment, and followed her car on a two-hour ride to a small town in Virginia. You are going on vacation with a friend, a brief getaway and you get accosted by a stalker who crossed a state line to commit his act.

So in a story that goes back to a woman who was attacked, raped, and murdered, and to retaliate for literally repeating what O'Reilly said on the air, their revenge was to accost a woman two hours from her home on vacation for a piece she wrote three weeks before, and scare the crap out of her.

Now, you're thinking: Doesn't Bill O'Reilly have a policy on this? Well, apparently he does, from this 2007 quote:
"Now, some object to displays like these. But we feel they're a vital tool in holding public servants accountable for their actions, and we do not go after people lightly. We always ask them on the program first, or to issue a clear statement explaining their actions."
Terkel isn't a public servant; in fact very few of his stalkees fit that definition. Terkel says she wasn't contacted or asked onto the program.

Stalking in itself sounds awful, but it get worse. Terkel was falsely accused of hurting rape victims and the foundation, even though Terkel never criticized either group. And of course, unlike conventional stalkers, there isn't a camera following them around hoping to catch some actual or edited excerpt that could make O'Reilly joyful sitting there in the dark watching the results."

Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann provides this easy instructional video on what to do when O'Reilly sends his producers out to stalk you:

Bill O'Reilly is a pathetic schoolyard bully impersonating a journalist. Now wouldn't it be nice if someone who is stalked by Bill O'Reilly for daring to express an honest view to the contrary files a police report against him for stalking and harrassment?

If "You Are What You Is," Then What the Hell is Bobby Jindal?

2009-03-25T13:24:00.002-07:00

If an Oreo is "black on the inside but white on the inside," a banana is "yellow on the outside but white on the inside," and an apple is "red on the outside but white on the inside," what term would describe the likes of Bobby Jindal?

To me, Bobby Jindal reminds me of a character in Frank Zappa's "You Are What You Is." To paraphrase a couplet in the song, where there's "a man who's of the Negro persuation...who wants right now to become a Caucasian." Now why is it there are are those living in denial about themselves who are trying to emulate the dominant culture for all the wrong reasons?

Bobby Jindal has no authenticity whatsoever. He's a cynical opportunist, plain and simple, carrying water for the intellectually bankrupt GOP.

It's a Sign of the Times...

2009-03-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

Your Tax Dollars at Work: TARP Funds Recycled as GOP Campaign Contributions by Bailed-Out Banks

2009-03-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

If you are pissed off and outraged over the mega-millions the bailed-out insurance bemouth AIG paid to its bonus babes, your blood pressure will spike manifold when you read this dilly from Newsweek's very own Michael Isikoff and Dina Fine Maron :

"There was plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill last week over the executive bonuses paid out by AIG after getting federal bailout money. But another money trail could make voters just as angry: the campaign dollars to members of Congress from banks and firms that have received billions via the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

While a few big firms, such as Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, have curtailed their campaign giving, others are quietly doling out cash to select members of Congress, particularly those who serve on committees that oversee TARP. In recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty."

"This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions," says Brett Kappell, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it's his "policy to accept legal contributions.")

The cash flow is already causing angst inside the Beltway. "The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning and see our PAC check being burned on C-Span," said one bank lobbyist, who asked not to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Financial Services chair Rep. Barney Frank both said recently they won't take donations from TARP recipients. But House Democratic fundraisers have quietly passed the word that the party's campaign committee will resume accepting them—but down the road, not right now. Said one fundraiser, who also requested anonymity, "These are treacherous waters."

Now isn't this more shocking and appalling than the very sight Janet Jackson's exposed breast resulting from her "wardrobe malfunction" during her halftime performance at the Super Bowl?

For temporary relief of pain due to economic injustic, hop on one of those guided tours where protestors viewed the homes of AIG's bonus babes in all its hubristic, wretchedly excessive splendor.

VIDEO: Jon Stewart Smacks Down "The Notorious AIG"

2009-03-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

The Notorious AIG

comedycentral.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor

What were you expecting, Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty?

And Now H-e-e-r-e-s...President Obama!

2009-03-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

For those who missed President Obama's appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," here's the interview in its entiriety:

Now who said that politicians can be celebrities, too?

Alan Livingston: An Appreciation

2009-03-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

"You may not know Alan Livingston by name," writes Tony Sachs in the Huffington Post. "But if you know anything about 20th century popular culture, you know his work. Livingston was doubly blessed, first by being a talented, creative guy with amazing instincts, and second by being in the right place at the right time to put those talents to work."

Starting in 1946, Livingston hit the ground running at Capitol Records by creating the character of Bozo the clown for childrens' books and records. The sales helped to turn Capitol into a major force in the music industry and, after making the transition to TV, Bozo became a pop culture icon.

But his extraordinary success in producing children's records did not prepare for what would happen next:

In 1953, Livingston made a very brave, very ballsy decision: he signed a washed-up crooner --Frank Sinatra -- over the strenuous objections of most of Capitol's corporate brass. Pairing him with arrangers Nelson Riddle, Don Costa and Billy May, Sinatra's recording career was revitalized, resulting in some of the greatest records in pop music history -- In The Wee Small Hours, Songs For Swingin' Lovers and Only The Lonely, to name a few. He would also prove pivotal in signing another important artist to the label, one that reaped similar rewards: Nat King Cole.

After leaving Capitol for a few years to work in television programming for NBC, he returned to Capitol in 1961 where he once again made two more ballsy decisions: He took a chance on a California surf band named the Beach Boys, and he made a similar gamble on a British pop group called...The Beatles.

He saw the direction in which pop music was headed during the 1960's, and responded accordingly by signing acts like the Band and the Steve Miller Band. By the time he finally left Capitol in 1968, his reputation within the music business as a genius was assured.

Unlike a Clive Davis or a Tommy Mottola, Livingston never sought the spotlight. The only times I ever caught glimpses of him was on the Biography channel, where he contributed to the biographical segments of such entertainers as Sinatra, cole, and Judy Garland, whom he signed to the label in the Fifties.

Even though he passed away last Friday in comfortable anonymity at the age of 91, it's difficult to even imagine how much impact and seminal influence one person could even have on popular cultrue. For classic tracks like "Good Vibrations," "Mona Lisa," "I've Got You Under My Skin," and "Hey Jude" would not have been made possible without his insight and vision.

You won't be forgotten, Alan. You will be dearly missed.

Betsy Blair: An Appreciation

2009-03-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

"Few film-makers of the left emerged unscathed from the Hollywood witchhunt led by Senator Joe McCarthy, wrote Brian Baxter in The Guardian. "Some died, some were ruined, some headed for Europe. Others named names. Among its victims, the actor Betsy Blair, who has died last Friday (at the age of 85), considered herself fortunate.

Despite being blacklisted, she was made less vulnerable by her marriage to fellow socialist Gene Kelly who, by the early 1950s, was virtually untouchable thanks to such succesful movies as On the Town, An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain. Eventually she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film Marty".

Born Elizabeth Winifred Boger in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, she met Kelly while working the boards on Broadway, understudying the role of Laura in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and playing the lead role in Willliam Saroyan's The Beautiful People before migrating West to Hollywood.

Though her initial film roles included small roles in such films as The Guilt of Janet Ames, George Cukor's A Double Life and Another Part of the Forest, her initial distain for movies allowed her to focus on theatre work, motherhood, and keeping open house to Hollywood's elite. Her fundraising and outspoken support for liberal causes resulted in her being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. During that time, she came under the scrutiny of the FBI for her association with left-wing organizations such as the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, the Sleepy Lagoon Committee and the Civil Rights Congress.

However, in 1955, she took on the role of Clara in the film adaptation of Paddy Chayevsky's teleplay Marty, due in no small part to the interventions by Chayevsky, Kelly, and then-MGM studio head Dore Schary on her behalf.

The film, a tender portrait of a lonely butcher (Ernest Borgnine) and a plain girl who fall in love, became a critical and commercial sleeper hit. It netted Oscar nominations for both Ernest Borgnine and Blair, though it was Borgnine who went home with the Oscar.

Later, she divorced Kelly and moved to Europe, working in numerous foreign films. It was through her work abroad that she met and, in 1963, married film director Karel Reisz, whose debut film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning made him a force to be recokened with. They remained married until Reisz's death in 2002.

Afterwards, she worked sporadically in film and television, even earning a college degree in speech therapy and working as a speech therapist while pursuing her first love of acting. In 1988, she returned to the U.S. to portray the mother of a white supremacist being tracked by the FBI in Costa-Garvas' political thriller Betrayed.

In 2003, Blair published her autobiography, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris. She had no regrets about the blacklist, which obliged her to mature as a person and – consequently – as an actor. Modestly, she once said, "it certainly wasn't much of a career. For all my ambitions, I think my life was more important to me."

Her role in Marty was that one shining moment that defined her career and left one wondering what potential she might have had. Still, she's still not getting her due for what she accomplished in her lifetime, and for her humanity as well.

Rest peacefully. You will be missed.

Glenn Beck Goes Off the Deep End and Bill O'Reilly's Left to Talk Him Off the Ledge...

2009-03-13T17:54:00.001-07:00

Having seen some of Glenn Beck's shows on CNN Headline News and the Fox News Channel, I can attest to the fact that Beck is perhaps not the most mentally stable indvidual. But yesterday, on The O'Reilly Factor, Beck was obviously projecting his feelings of frustration onto Michael McLendon, the Alabama man who "went postal" and went on a shooting rampage that claimed the lives of five realtives and five others earlier this week before taking his own life:

In any case, Bill O'Reilly appeared to be rational and sane next to Beck yesterday, as Beck brought up supposed political motives for the killings where those actually involved in the case say there were none. In fact, at no point did law enforcement authorities with intimate knowledge of the case ever point to political beliefs or frustration with the goverment. Still, that didn't stop Beck from projecting his own mental instability on McLendon:

"Here's a guy who felt that he had been wronged... He was disgruntled, and then he went out and shot a bunch of people... Clearly he's a psycho. But as I'm listening to him, I'm thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody's hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you, on both sides. If you're a conservative, you're called a racist, you want to starve children. Yada, yada, yada. And every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

Trust me. When Bill O'Reilly looks like a reasonable man when compared to Glenn Beck, you know he's a head case in need of psychatric help.

Now what would you expect for a wing-nut-case who never earned a penny by the sweat of his brow -- be it digging ditches, cleaning toilets or even flipping burgers at McDonald's -- to disingenuously commiserate with Alabama gunman Michael McLendon?

Why does this mad man have a show? Anyone possessing at the least a brain stem can obviously see the man is obviously sick and in need of help.

It's going to be a matter of time before Beck would cause some impressionable soul to take his word at face value and go out and murder someone. This is not entertainment, it is irresponsibility, and it's inciting violence. Clearly, the folks at Fox News Channel are enabling his televised tirades, and they must be held accountable as well.

And do you remember when the likes of Ann Coulter insisted that being a liberal was a mental illness? Apparently, they either don't own a copy of the American Psychiatric Association's Manual of Mental Disorders or even bothered to read it lately.

All this insane inanity brings to mind a memorable line from Joe Orton's play "What the Butler Saw: "You can't be rational in an irrational world, it isn't rational."

Bernard Madoff Gets Hard Time for His Ponzi Scheming, But Will His Victims Ever Be Whole Again?

2009-03-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

What you're about to see is the new Manhattan home of convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff: a jail cell the size of a walk-in closet, with cinderblock walls, linoleum floors and a bunk bed. Breakfast will be served before sunrise, and he can stretch his legs outside, but only every other day — in a cage.

And according to Associated Press reporter Tom Hays, "When inmates first arrive at the jail, they are given physical and psychological exams and instructed on the rules. If cleared to enter the general population, they are issued a baggy brown uniform and assigned to cells measuring 7 1/2-by-8 feet, each fitted with a sink and toilet.

Many inmates must share their cells with another prisoner, but it was not immediately clear Thursday whether Madoff would have a cellmate.

There's a strict schedule: Lights on at 6 a.m., breakfast at 6:30 a.m., lunch at 11 a.m., dinner at 5 p.m., lights out at 11 p.m. During the day, inmates can watch television, play ping pong, work on their cases in a legal library or volunteer for janitorial duty.

On alternate days, they are allowed up on the caged roof, where from courthouse windows they can be seen playing basketball. For court dates, they are shackled and escorted by deputy marshals through an underground tunnel.

The facility allots three hours a week for visits by family or lawyers. Inmates can also spend up to 300 minutes per month making phone calls, which can be monitored.
Those who misbehave or present a risk of violence are thrown into a separate unit where they spend nearly all day locked in their cells and must endure strip searches and constant monitoring by cameras.

Current inmates include former Florida hedge fund manager Arthur Nadel, who is accused of bilking investors out of up to $350 million."

This comes in the aftermath of a "deeply sorry and ashamed" Bernard Madoff pleading guilty earlier today to what could be the biggest, most spectacular swindle Wall Street has even seen, and was sent off to jail in handcuffs to the applause of his furious victims.

The 70-year-old financier could get up to 150 years in prison at sentencing June 16 on 11 counts, including securities fraud and perjury. He could also be fined and ordered to pay restitution to his victims and forfeit any ill-gotten gains.

The scandal turned a well-respected investment professional — Madoff was once chairman of the Nasdaq exchange — into a symbol of Wall Street greed amid the economic meltdown. The public fury toward him was so great that he was known to wear a bulletproof vest to court.

There were thousands whom Madoff victimized: individuals, trusts, pension funds, hedge funds and nonprofit organizations. His Ponzi scheming wiped out people's life savings, ruined charities and foundations, and apparently pushed at least two investors to commit suicide. Investors big and small were swindled, from Florida retirees to celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon and Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. Many of Madoff's victims were Jews and Jewish charities, which trusted him because he is Jewish. Those he has swindled and cheated included Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

Madoff will now serve hard time, cleaning toilets as part of janitorial duty even as the fortunes of those whom entrusted him are fast circling the toilet. As for those whom he victimized, only time will tell as if they will fully recover and be made whole once again.

Don't Ever Compare Michelle Obama's Biceps to Say, Mr. Universe...

2009-03-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

"Anyone who criticizes Michelle Obama's right to bare arms is jealous of how gorgeous and elegant she looks when she does so." - GLENDA BAILEY, editor-in-chief, Harper's Bazzar

"Is Michelle Obama supposed to wear a burka?," quieres Bonnie Fuller in the Huffington Post. "Since when are a woman's arms considered an erogenous zone here in America? Why would it be inappropriate for the First Lady to attend her husband's address to Congress in a beautiful, purple Narcisco Rodriguez SLEEVELESS dress? Whoever those twitterers — or should I call them "twits" — are out there who have raised the question of propriety, they should not only get a life, but also a history book. Not only have many First Ladies been photographed at official state and White House events, America's most fashionable previous First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy practically made sleeveless looks her uniform, whether they were dresses or two piece shirt and skirt ensembles."

Fuller goes on to add, I actually think her look says even more than that. Michelle's sleevelessness conveys the fact that she is ready to get to work as First Lady, doing everything that she can to help the American public. It's her variation on the look that men use to visually telegraph the fact that they are hard at work on important business. When the President is rolling up his shirt sleeves, we know we're being told that his job is far more than ceremonial. Michelle's saying that exact same thing.

Michelle's also giving us another not-so-subtle message — she's strong and tough. Those arms with their well-defined biceps (and let's not fail to mention her beautifully sculpted shoulders) look powerful enough to wrap around a distressed nation and lift it up. She's no frail, half-starved Nancy Reagan type who doesn't rub shoulders with the masses. On the contrary, Michelle Obama is a big hugger and doesn't restrict her hugs to big ticket donors or Hollywooders. At her husband's address to Congress she warmly hugged her seatmate, 8th grader Ty'Sheoma Bethea from Dillon, South Carolina, who had written to the president for help fixing her failing school. Michelle's strong arms convey the message that if she can personally hug and lift us out of a lousy economy, and a lack of top healthcare or education for everyone, she will.

And in a previous posting, Fuller attacked those who dare attack Michelle's biceps:

"Have the Republicans reverted to a party with so little to say that they are reduced to making feeble jabs at Michelle Obama's biceps? Are they so afraid of the new Obama era that the First Lady's arms are a enough of a symbol of power that they cower before them?

That can be the only explanation for Republican lite David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, to tell his fellow Times columnist Maureen Dowd that Michelle Obama should put away her arms, "Thunder and Lightning."

Thunder and lightning? Has he actually named the biceps that offend him?"

And just when men started feeling emasculated by the sight of her biceps?

Apparently they're machismo-challenged themselves.

You Can Tell It Like It Is, But You Can't Draw It...

2009-03-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine for a moment political cartoons so "blasphemous," so "politically embarrassing," so sexually "over the line" that even newspapers like The New York Times gladly shelled out the dough just to protect your delicate eyes from being exposed to them?

Jerelle Kraus, a former Art Editor of the New York Times Opinon/Editorial pages (a position she held for thirteen years) compiled hundreds of such allegedly “not-fit-to-print” illustrations – along with the bizarre and often ludicrous reasons for suppressing them – in a sly, deliciously funny new book called All The Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t). Her book (published by Columbia University Press) rescues 320 eye-stopping illustrations by 142 of the world’s most provocative graphic artists, including David Levine, Jules Feiffer, Ronald Searle, Milton Glaser, Charles Addams, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Ralph Steadman, Larry Rivers, Saul Steinberg, Ben Shahn, Art Speigelman, Andy Warhol, Garry Trudeau, and many more.

Now imagine for a moment what spooked those worldly Times editors into panic?

As Kraus points out, Times editors were convinced that illustrators were always trying to put something over on them, forever conspiring to sneak in hidden sexual or political statements. So they frequently watered down editorial art to near vacuity – even though, ironically, the articles they illustrated were often fearless and hard-hitting.

And though its management believed that the pen was mightier than the sword, it had an uneasy suspicion that art might be more brutal than the pen. This resulted in weird, last-minute censorings – especially of caricatures of famous people, against which there was a puzzling, long-standing prohibition.

Case in point: Ohio humorist George Kocar's interpretation of Ronald Reagan's request for missile money alarmed editorial censors -- not because of the nuclear nose or blind eyes, but because it reduced a president of the United States to beggar status:

And this relatively tame portrait of Idi Amin by Peruvian artist Carlos Llerena Aguirre was deemed "too severe" an indictment of the Ugandan tyrant's mass murders of his own people -- even though the article it was to illustrate was far more ferocious in its condemnation.

Once more with feeling: you can say it, but you can't draw it.

We as media consumers owe a genuine debt of gratitude to Ms. Kraus for providing us a peeping-tom-eye's view into the parochial mind-set of the editorial Mafia calling the shots in American journalism, though the Times wished she hadn't.

Domestic Violence in Hollywood, and the Deafening Silence That Goes With It...

2009-03-06T15:05:00.000-08:00

Credit: People.com

In the ongoing media melodrama surrounding the abusive relationship between singers Chris Brown and Rihanna, Brown is now facing down two felony counts of charges of assault likely to cause great bodily injury and making criminal threats. If convicted on these charges, Brown is likely seeing possible prison time.

And as the TMZ.com web site notes:

"Even if Rihanna refuses to cooperate with prosecutors, the L.A. County District Attorney may have evidence even more powerful than the gruesome photos. Multiple law enforcement sources tell TMZ, the night of the attack Rihanna told cops she was the victim of escalating violence -- and the perp was Brown.

LAPD cops interviewed Rihanna after the attack and she told them Brown had been violent toward her in the past and that the attacks were getting "more violent" as time went on. The interview is potent evidence if the L.A. County D.A. charges Brown with felony domestic battery..."

In the still-unfolding story, there is something about this sordid affair that doesn't make any sense: Why would a wealthy, successful and a physically admired woman such as Rhianna even tolerate the constant physical abuse that appears to be coming from this relationship.

Even more disturbing is the silence among those in the music industry and the African-American community. All these celebrities will put themselves out there for political causes, for social issues, and so on. Now that there's an issue that touches them personally, members of their own community, and they have nothing to say? These are artists--they're supposed to be skilled at expressing themselves, and they remained silence over all this?

This isn't just silence. It's denial and outright cowardace, plain and simple.

More often than not, women stay in abusive relationships because they may not feel able to escape. They often lack the money and other resources to take care of themselves and their children, have no outside support system, and often have to resources to ensure their own safety. Rhianna has the means to break free of this abusive cycle, but instead, she chooses to stand by her man, abusive as he's alleged to be.

This is clearly a domestic violence issue, and it's now a legal issue because law enforcement agencies are involved.

Rihanna is clearly in an unhealthy, abusive relationship. Perhaps some intervention is needed, be it from her family or her record company. Clearly, she needs professional help. And unless she begins to address her personal issues, she will perhaps continue to experience and to perpetuate the cycle of abuse she's expereinced.

All this brings to mind a disturbing 1962 Phil Spector track he produced on the Crystals: "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)."

Someone should remind Rihanna what happened to Lana Clarkson lest history repeats itself.

Talk About Incesteous Amplication and Groupthink...

2009-03-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Jon Stewart, in one eight-and-a-half segment, eviscated the reporting of CNBC's news department, leaving its reporters flailing in the wind like dingy laundry drying on a clothesline in the dirty breeze.

And if you think Rush Limbaugh and his "dittoheads" are virtual dildoes utterly lacking in wisdom and humanity, wait until you meet the sychopanic choir at CNBC, whose penchant for giving CEOs a hickey in the derriere and its incessant attacks on the Obama recovery plan is nauseating indeed.

Not only do you have the "scream queen" Rick Santelli vying with Jim Cramer for nutcase status (and a possible stint in the loony bin) You got a recovering cocaine addict (Larry Kudlow) a CEO worshipper (Maria Bartiromo) and its sycophants (Joe Kernan and Mark Haines, Melissa Francis and Dennis Kneale, Michelle Caruso-Cabrera) shutting down any dissent that does not toe the line with its agenda.

Instead of reporting the news objectively allowing for contrarian points of view, they've taken a page from the Fox News book and turned their newscasts into shoutfests where every honest discussion of the economic crisis immediately devolves into a partisan political harangue.

Two Aleve, please.

Who the Hell is Nayda Suleman Kidding? And What the Hell Was She Even Thinking?

2009-02-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

And when you think all this hoopla is bizarre enough, Nadya Suleman is now soliciting online contributions on her new website.

But when you think about all this, consider this:

She has no monthly income, and has $50,000 in student loans outstanding.

She also receives $490 a month in food stamps and receives about $600 in disability payments a month for each of the three of her older six children with disabilities -- one has ADHD, another has a speech impediment and a third is diagnosed with autism.

And Medicaid is now footing the bill for bringing the party of eight into this world. As Tim Rutten noted in today's Los Angeles Times, "We don't know yet whether any of the octuplets will be disabled in ways requiring public assistance. It appears that, in the case of the Suleman family, raising 14 children takes not simply a village but the combined resources of the county, state and federal governments."

Rutten goes on to add:

"The Suleman case is a caricature of the issues raised by contemporary fertility medicine, but sometimes a cartoon brings discomforting truths into high relief. One of them is that the novel, perplexing and often unhappy demands that situations such as Suleman's make on our legal, ethical and social consciences aren't really a matter of necessity, but of choice. That choice is an outgrowth of the narcissism that has become our society's background noise.

When the Nadya Sulemans of the world say, as she has in interviews, that they undergo these extreme, invasive, unpleasant, uncertain and expensive medical procedures because they "want children," that isn't really the case. If what people want is children -- and the incomparable experience of parenthood -- there are tens of thousands of children in our country and perhaps millions more abroad waiting for adoption. Thousands of others in our country are waiting for foster care."

And get a load of this tasteless photo that surfaced on TMZ.com:

I've heard of assuming personal responsibility for your actions, but THIS?

Nadya Suleman's problem is exactly the same as it was with my own biological mother: she wants the fantasy of having a large brood of children but expects others to pick up the tab to enable and feed her fantasy.

My mother's idea of child-rearing is shipping off my brothers to a military school and other siblings into state mental hospitals, shirking her responsibilities while living high off the government dole. This is more than an abuse of government aid programs. It is a flat-out, insidious form of "outsourcing."

With our nation's economy going straight to hell, we should not be using our tax dollars to enable others into acting out this delusional form of narcissism. As a famous Shakesperean line once stated, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves."

Blago Gets the Boot and Haggard's Gone Augustinian...

2009-01-29T22:04:00.000-08:00

"Today ends a painful episode for Illinois...For months, the state had been crippled by a crisis of leadership. Now that cloud has lifted." - U.S. President BARACK OBAMA

In Springfield, Illinois, the media flea circus has finally come to an end: The Illinois Senate voted 59-0 to remove embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich

Needless to say, the disgraced former governor kept running off at the mouth, claiming his removal from office was "preordained" and that his removal was "based on incomplete and unsubstantiated evidence."

But then, with Blago, you don't know what is sheer chutzpah and how much is delusions of grandeur.

Blago, you've been busted big-time. You abused your position by shaking down people to fill your personal piggy bank -- even going as far as to sell an appointment to fill Obama's Senate term to the highest bidder. The wiretaps spoke volumes as to just how endemically corrupt you really are.

You have hurt and publicly humiliated the people of Illinois with your actions. The resulting crisis that was a direct consequence of your misbehavior has paralyzed state government and has the political establishment taking numbers and waiting in line just to hate your guts.

You may have corrupted the State, but you were unable to establish your own personal fiefdom. In spite of you, we are still a free, democratic society, maybe even somewhat wiser. And as for you, may you have many years of solitude to ponder what could have been if you had exhibited at least a scintilla of honor and selflessness.

Meanwhile, on CNN's Larry King Live, disgraced pastor Ted Haggard continues his media Traveling Salvation Show as he goes into Augustinian mode to "come clean" about his cornucopia of sexual transgressions.

Face it Bud. You're gay, you're in denial, and you're hurting yourself and your loved ones by continuing to live a lie. Just cut your losses and be honest and true to yourself for a change.

After all, didn't Jesus state in the New Testament that it's what within your heart that defiles you?

Two More Retail Casualties and Two More Possibile Deaths...

2009-01-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

This past week, Circuit City announced it's liquidating its entire chain of 567 stores...

And Goody's Family Clothing is shuttering all of its 380 stores...

Now the Fresno-based Gottschalk's depeartment store chain has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, vowing to remain open while it finds a suitable buyer for the belagered chain...

And the Bon-Ton chain, which includes the Carson-Pirie-Scott and Elder-Beerman chains, are on the verge of a possible Chapter 11 filing as well.

And meanwhile, chains like Macy's, Dillard's, and the like are amputating off their deadwood by closing down "underperforming" stores.

When you have a slew of vacant anchor store spaces in your malls, you know these dead malls are fast becoming the analogs of ghost towns, just like it did with the likes of Dixie Square, Woodmar, Cinderella City, Lakehurst, and other half-forgotten malls.

Welcome to the world of survival.

On As the World Turns, Luke and Noah Get Laid and James Dobson's Sycophanic Choir Runs Straight to the Vomitorium...

2009-01-13T12:28:00.000-08:00

"Passion withheld is three times more provocative that passion that's immediately consummated" - JEAN ROUVEROL BUTLER, former soap opera scribe and Blacklist survivor.

At long last, "Nuke" has finally done it!

As reported on The Daily Beast, As the World Turns' Luke Snyder and Noah Meyer -- daytime's first gay male supercouple -- finally threw caution to the wind and sweated up the sheets.

As always, any supercouple faced down countless obstacles, and "Nuke" was no exception. As Henry Seltzer notes in the Daily Beast:

"They dealt with a homophobic father, who (after murdering his wife) soon conned them into going on a fishing trip where Col. Meyer shot Luke, paralyzing him from the waist down. But Luke was finally able to walk again thanks to the devotion and optimism of Noah's steadfast support. Even more twisted: Noah briefly married an Iraqi refugee to keep her in the country after she claimed his father saved her family. Luke and Noah stole kisses but fear of being discovered by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency drove their otherwise openly gay rapport back into the 1950s.

As the months wore on, the sexual tension between Luke and Noah (affectionately dubbed Nuke and Loah) grew. They kissed increasingly frequently and with decreasingly little fanfare from blogs, but they never went all the way. They did talk about sex—and what their first time would be like—but it never came anywhere near their horizon. Like everything in their relationship, intimacy was shown through incredibly compelling dialogue.

The inseparable pair talked about everything. Their feelings were always expressed (thanks in large part to head writer Jean Passanante, who happens to be responsible for the only two other gay characters in soap history) if not physically acted on.
Luke and Noah's dynamic escalated on New Year's Eve, when the night finally seemed right.

Except for one elephant in the room: Luke's step-grandfather, who had kissed him during Thanksgiving. To make a convoluted story short, Luke got drunk (not a good thing when you've had a kidney transplant, too) after seeing Noah console his ex-girlfriend, and then he kissed his step-grandfather. Of course, Noah was a witness and threw a punch to protect "his love." When Luke confessed to initiating the kiss, Noah walked out, leaving Luke alone to read a note written from Noah, which was meant to be read the next morning, when they would have been together in bed.

For fans, it appeared, as usual, as if Luke and Noah had gone a few steps forward and many more steps back. Sure, they would recover over time. Like most soap "supercouples," they were meant to be. I was prepared for the long haul of relationship rebuilding."

There is something to be said about a couple that shows its true colors (yes, Cyndi Lauper had a guest-spot during Pride Week) by their commitment, tenderness, sincerity, and loyalty in the face of so many odds, not because they wanted to get it on.

The more I watched As the World Turns, the less I actually wanted them to have sex.

So it came as a quite a shock, when on Monday's episode they rekindled their broken union by...having sex.

Without any warning or hysterics, the show took that unexpected turn and went where no daytime drama—and few primetime shows—has dared: Luke and Noah were shown post-coital, sheets ruffled.

And you know the best part? The person responsible for getting them back together after the fallout from Luke kissing his step-grandfather was his grandmother, the show's matriarch (played by Elizabeth Hubbard for the past 25 years), who was also the most understanding when Luke first came out.

So not only is this not your grandmother's soap, leave it to the grandmother-who-unwittingly-played-a-beard to get the boys back together.

She even delights in sharing their post-sex ice cream sundae.

Once again, another small step forward for mankind.

Once Again, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the New Year...

2009-01-11T00:19:00.000-08:00

Every year for the past several years or so, I sojourn out to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show, where the newest gadgets for the home and business are displayed for the world to see.

At the Netgear booth, members from the Las Vegas cast of the Second City improvisation troupe did demos of Netgear's new product line...

While at the Sony booth, the television game show "Jeopardy" had a series of episodes taped at the CES show in honor of its 25th anniversary on the air.

But sometimes, an attendee had to lose one's dignity for the opportunity of winning a prize in the exhibit hall, as I did when I won a TiVo DVR at the Real Networks booth.

Still, the allure of the celebrities being sighted is sometimes worth the expense of traveling out there.

Recording star Akon posing with fans.

NBA legends Bill Walton (l.) and Robert Parrish (r.)

"Price is Right" host Drew Carey poses with a fan (l.), while Kathy Kinney (ex-Mimi, The Drew Carey Show) appears as her newest alter ego, storyteller Mrs. P.

A quintet of rising MMA athletes from the UFC promotion.

David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox autographs a baseball for a fan.

"Saturday Night Live" alumnae Jimmy Fallon (l.) and former "That 70's Show" cast member Wilmer Valderrama (r.)

Rising Indy Car driver Sarah Fisher (l.) and UFC legend Randy Couture (r.)

NFL legends John Lynch (l.) and Ronnie Lott (r.).

The attendance was down by about 8%, and for many, finding affordable hotel accomodations even during this economic downturn has proved to be an absolute nightmare.

And still, what I always dreaded happened: On the final day of the show, I was experiencing sadness and melancholia to where I was on the verge of tears. It wasn't just the letdown from four days of excitement and euphoria. It was knowing that everything's coming to an end and we have to return to the day-to-day routine of making a living and a life for ourselves.

But as always, I walk into the exhibit hall with no expectations. There were some vendors who were notably absent from the show this year (Western Digital, Logitech) and others whose continued absence from this event is notable (Apple, Palm). But given the reduced opportunities for prize raffles and other giveaways (reflective of the economic uncertainies of this time), I managed to make out reasonably well, and that includes the two free tickets to a performance by the Blue Man Group at the Venetian that would otherwise have cost me $279. Perhaps this was because I did a better job of picking my spots than usual, and I took advantage of the opportunity to take pictures of celebrities who were at the event.

I also did the little things that left a big impression -- like taking pictures of the Second City troupe in performance and printing them up for them at the Kodak booth; gladly providing pictures I've taken of Akon for a casino employee who works at the bingo room at Terrible's Hotel & Casino, which I frequent when I'm in Vegas.
As always, I freely lend a hand and not expect anything in return.

Until next year around this time...

If Ann Coulter Had Any Brains, They'd Be Made of Shit

2008-12-29T21:15:00.000-08:00

Ann Coulter, the demented love child of Joseph McCarthy and Eva Braun, has really gone off her rocker this time.

This time, in her poison-pen column at HumanEvents.com, she named Sarah Palin "Conservative of the Year” for "her genius at annoying all the right people. The last woman to get liberals this hot under the collar would have been … let's see now … oh, yeah: Me!"

As Andrew Sullivan succinctly points out, It's "full of sound and beauty, signifying nothing." Sullivan goes on to add, " In Palin and Coulter, you have the two sides of contemporary conservatism: identity politics and malice. That's why they lost. They had nothing substantive to say."

Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter: The Dolly Sisters of Neocon Politics

Cheaper by the Dozen and a Half?

2008-12-26T09:18:00.000-08:00

Imagine my shock and righteous indignation when I read Chez Pazienza's posting on the Huffington Post this past week pertaining to Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who just welcomed their eighteenth child -- their seventh daughter -- into this world.

Their eighteenth child? And they want more?

Here's what they say on their web site:

"God has opened many doors for them to share that children are a blessing from the Lord! To date they have been featured on five Discovery Health & TLC documentaries entitled, “14 Children and Pregnant Again!”, “16 Children and Moving In!”, “Raising 16 Children!”,“On The Road With 16 Children!” & "Duggar's Big Family Album". They have appeared on numerous National and International TV shows including The Early Show, The Today Show, The View, Fox & Friends, Italian Public Television, KBS (Korean Broadcasting System), Discovery Home & Health (UK & Australia), Jimmy Kimmel Live, Fox News Network, CNN, MSNBC and others. They have done countless interviews with radio talk show hosts around the world including NPR, AP Radio, CBS Radio, FOX Radio and others.

They have appeared in various magazine and newspapers including Parents, New York Times, Dallas Morning News, Chicago Tribune, Ladies Home Journal, People and many others. From the United States, Canada, Korea, Japan, China, India, New Zealand, Australia, France and Germany. They have recently completed work on their first book, The Duggars: 20 and Counting! The Duggar’s desire is to make Christ known and for others to see that the Bible is the owner’s manual for life."

They make ends meet by selling real estate and hosting financial seminars. They home-school their children and boast of having built a 7,000 square-foot home and being debt-free doing so. They even went as far as to become a reality show in itself on the Discovery networks.

Granted, what they do they perceive as God's will. But what about those who grew up in large dysfunctional families in which the parents wanted the fantasy of a large family but did not want the responsibilities that went with it?

Pathetic, isn't it?

But perhaps my take on this is best said by Chez Pazienza himself:

You know something, though? That's okay. They're entitled to live their lives however the hell they want, as long as none of their kids -- born an average of one a year since 1988 -- ends up on welfare and we the taxpayers have to foot the bill for little Jolene or Jonah. I honestly couldn't care less that there's an insane family living in Arkansas cranking out children because God says so. The problem is that you, the media -- NBC, ABC, TLC, etc. -- keep giving these people face time, thereby convincing them that everyone in this country not crazier than they are actually loves hearing the latest news about Michelle Duggar's overworked reproductive system.

I'm not suggesting that you're encouraging them -- since you couldn't, as they take their cues from a supposedly higher authority -- but you are giving them the chance to hawk their books, TV show and the assorted other crap that allows them to afford to continue spitting out kids like chocolates coming down a conveyor belt. These people shouldn't be cast in a positive light. They shouldn't be cast in any light at all. If they want to keep trying to single-handedly overpopulate the Earth for Jesus, they should have to pay for it without the help of your unwarranted free publicity, media.

Let's see how long they'd last once the gravy train you guys happily play conductor of dries up.

Like Paris Hilton, whose career you're also guilty of perpetuating and foisting on an exhausted public, the Duggars are famous only for their unusual sexual habits.

And like Paris Hilton, they've never deserved the wealth of attention you've lavished on them. They're religious zealots who won't stop having babies. That's it. Nothing more.

So once again, knock it the hell off. Stop shoving this family down our collective throat.

Cheaper by the Dozen-and-a-Half? All this gives the Clinton Webb film "Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes a whole new meaning.

May I have some smelling salts, please.

Eartha Kitt: An Appreciation

2008-12-25T18:01:00.000-08:00

"I'm an orphan. But the public has adopted me and that has been my only family. The biggest family in the world is my fans." - EARTHA KITT

The music world lost yet another of its distinctive voices. Eartha Kitt, who rose from the poverty of the cotton fields of rural South Carolina to become a sultry singer, dancer and actress of elegance and sensuality, has died earlier today in Connecticut of colon cancer at the age of 81.

Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of America's most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and nabbing a third nomination. She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys.
A versatile performer who won a pair of Emmys and was also nominee for the Tonys and Grammys, Kitt's career spanned six decades, from her beginnings as a dancer with the famed Katherine Dunham dance company, to a successful acting, singing and recording career where she had more than her share of classics and would become a fixture on the cabaret circuit.

After becoming a Broadway sensation singing "Monotonous" in the Broadway revue "New Faces of 1952," Kitt parlayed it into a lucrative career on the Broadway stage, appearing in such stage hits as "Mrs. Patterson," "Shinbone Alley" and "The Owl and the Pussycat."

But she was perhaps best known for her recordings. Her debut album, "RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt," came out in 1954, featuring such songs as "I Want to Be Evil," "C'est Si Bon" and the saucy gold digger's theme song "Santa Baby," which is revived on radio each Christmas. The following year, RCA followed it up with "That Bad Eartha," which featured such songs as "Let's Do It," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," further solidifying her persona as the bad-girl chanteuse.

Her television appearances included a memorable stint as the sexy Catwoman on the popular "Batman" series in 1967-68, replacing Julie Newmar who originated the role.

But what generated controversy for her later in life was an incident in 1968, where she angrily denounced the Vietnam War during a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson. "You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed," she told the group of about 50 women. "They rebel in the street. They don't want to go to school because they're going to be snatched off from their mothers to be shot in Vietnam."

For four years afterward, Kitt performed almost exclusively overseas. She was investigated by the FBI and CIA, which allegedly found her to be foul-mouthed and promiscuous.

"The thing that hurts, that became anger, was when I realized that if you tell the truth — in a country that says you're entitled to tell the truth — you get your face slapped and you get put out of work," Kitt told Essence magazine two decades later.
In 1978, Kitt triumphantly returned to Broadway in the musical "Timbuktu!" — which brought her a Tony nomination — and was invited back to the White House by President Jimmy Carter.

Once dubbed the "most exciting woman in the world" by Orson Welles, Kitt remained a picture of vitality who attracted fans less than half her age -- even as she reached 80. When her book "Rejuvenate," a guide to staying physically fit, was published in 2001, Kitt was featured on the cover in a long, curve-hugging black dress with a figure that some 20-year-old women would envy.
Eartha Kitt was a survivor -- persevering through an unhappy child as a mixed-race daughter in the South, career reprisals for daring to speak truth to power, and through the years, remaining a picture of youthfulness and vitality, attracting fans less than half her age even as she neared the age of 80.

There are two memories of Eartha that struck a chord in me: A guest appearance on the TV series "Mission: Impossible," as a guest agent what showed off what her dance training did for her movement, and film clips from an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in the 1950's, where she performed "C'est Si Bon" playing to the camera, playfully taunting the viewing audience with her antics. It was from watching that clip that I wrote a french scene in my play "The MacGuffin," where the judge lip-synched the song as a fucia-tinged spotlight focused on her.

Eartha, you're a true diva, and a down-to-earth soul as well. You will be deeply missed.

Harold Pinter: An Appreciation

2008-12-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

"Pinter remains to his credit, a permanent public nuisance, a questioner of accepted truths, both in life and art. In fact the two persistently inter-act." - From The Life and Work of Harold Pinter, by MICHAEL BILLINGTON (1996)

The theatrical stage has lost one of its most senimal voices as Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.

Pinter's distinctive contributions to the playwriting and the theatrical stage was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005. "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the Nobel Academy said when it announced Pinter's award. "With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution."

The Nobel Prize gave Pinter a global platform which he seized enthusiastically to denounce U.S. President George W. Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Pinter fulminated against what he saw as the overweening arrogance of American power, and belittled Blair as seeming like a "deluded idiot" in support of Bush's war in Iraq.

"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to Stockholm. "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.

He went on to propose a speech he wrote that the U.S. president could deliver. It sounded like a rant from one of his gangster thug characters. It ends abruptly: "You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it."

An ardent pacifist who supported liberal causes, Pinter was an prominent, outspoken critic of both the Vietnam war and the first Persian Gulf war, and in the 1970s, he criticized the United States for its role in the overthrow of Chile's Socialist President Salvador Allende and denounced governments around the world that stifled freedom of speech and artistic expression.

In his Nobel lecture, Pinter accused the United States of supporting "every right-wing military dictatorship in the world" after World War II. "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," he said. The United States, he added, "also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false," Pinter wrote in 1958. "I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?"

Pinter wrote 32 plays,including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Quiller Memorandum, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant's Woman, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles and David Mamet's Oleanna He admitted, and said he deeply regretted, voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Tony Blair in 1997.

His most prolific period was between 1957 and 1965, as Pinter relished the juxtaposition of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an emotional minefield. His best-known works revolve around recurring themes: an isolated character, an unexpected "intruder," a power struggle that threatens to turn violent. Words are a negotiating tool, a weapon or a coverup. At times the audience is not certain what to think or whom to believe.

His characters' internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives are set against the neat lives they have constructed in order to try to survive. Usually enclosed in one room, they organize their lives as a sort of grim game and their actions often contradict their words. Gradually, the layers are peeled back to reveal the characters' nakedness. The protection promised by the room usually disappears and the language begins to disintegrate.

Pinter once said of language, "The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness."

Credit: www.sergeicartoons.com

Pinter's influence was felt in the United States in the plays of Sam Shepard and David Mamet (whom he mentored) and throughout British literature.

"With his earliest work, he stood alone in British theater up against the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics, the audience and writers too," said British playwright Tom Stoppard when the Nobel Prize was announced. "Not only has Harold Pinter written some of the outstanding plays of his time, he has also blown fresh air into the musty attic of conventional English literature, by insisting that everything he does has a public and political dimension," added British playwright David Hare, who also writes politically charged dramas.

The working-class milieu of plays like "The Birthday Party" and "The Homecoming" reflected Pinter's early life as the son of a Jewish tailor from London's East End. He began his career in the provinces as an actor.

In his first major play, "The Birthday Party" (1958), intruders enter the retreat of Stanley, a young man who is hiding from childhood guilt. He becomes violent, telling them, "You stink of sin, you contaminate womankind."

In "Silence and Landscape," Pinter moved from exploring the dark underbelly of human life to showing the simultaneous levels of fantasy and reality that equally occupy the individual.

And in "The Caretaker," a manipulative old man threatens the fragile relationship of two brothers while "The Homecoming" explores the hidden rage and confused sexuality of an all-male household by inserting a woman.

During the late 1980s, his work became more overtly political; he said he had a responsibility to pursue his role as "a citizen of the world in which I live, (and) insist upon taking responsibility."

When I think of Pinter, I think of those long Pinterian pauses of silence, which implicitly suggested something subterranian is going on his characters' interior lives. He instinctively knew that silence can be a very powerful dramatic device, and that it could generate visceral emotional power on the stage.

Rest in peace, Harold. You've left a powerful legacy in your works. You will be deeply missed.

(Possibly) Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You...

2008-12-24T19:24:00.001-08:00

Two independent films that I've worked background on and made the rounds of the film festivals since are soon making their way to a theatre near you (I hope).

First, "Remarkable Power" with Kevin Nealon and Tom Arnold...

And finally, "The Great Buck Howard with John Malkovich and Colin Hanks...

The Great Buck Howard - Teaser Trailer
Uploaded by hawkbcn

If bad goes to worse, there's always the direct-to-DVD route...

Nina Foch: An Appreciation

2008-12-24T18:59:00.000-08:00

The entertainment world lost one of its most influential and seminal talents when Nina Foch -- respected, Oscar-and-Emmy-nominated actress, acting teacher, university professor -- passed away on December 5 at the age of 84 from complications stemming long-term myelodysplasia, a blood disorder.

In addition to working extensively as an actress in a career spanning six decades, Nina also for forty years taught a popular course at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, "Directing the Actor," which she also taught for many years at the American Film Institute.

Noted writer/director Marshall Herskovitz (Thirtysomething.) noted in her obituary in the Los Angeles Times, "She had a point of view that was so profound and so provocative that it forced you to really reassess not just your thoughts about filmmaking but your whole approach to life and relationships."

Herskovitz, who met his once and future professional partner Edward Zwick in Foch's class at AFI in the 1970s, notes that her philosophy was difficult to boil down because it stemmed from her insights into how people behave and think and what they believe.

"She had a wonderful phrase that used to torment us -- "idiosyncratic contrapuntal juxtaposition...What it meant was what happens in life is often the opposite of what you think would happen, so the way you play a scene is often the opposite of the way you would think. . . . I'm not exaggerating when I say that what she taught us comes up literally weekly in our careers. She so influenced us in our way of looking at material, directing, even writing."

In her "Directing the Actor" class, One of the first things Nina had us do in her directing class was an improv with a object. Mine was with a copy of the New International Version of the Bible. When I finished my improv for the class to see, Nina told them, "Notice the colors." The colors were something she sensed in my improv performance.

She had a prolific career as an actress, having studied initially with Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler. She was nominated for an Academy Award in 1954 for her supporting role in "Executive Suite," and later, for an Emmy in 1980 for a guest role on the television series "Lou Grant." She continued to work steadily in films and television, most recently as David McCallum's mother on an episode of "NCIS" as well as an episode of the TNT series "The Closer".

I remember one time mentioning to her I saw as a panelist in reruns of "I've Got a Secret" on the Game Show Network, to which she tartly noted she recently received a residual check for twenty dollars for the reruns they recently showed.

But though I had to drop her class due to other considerations, she kept the door open for me, even as others vowed to slam it shut in my face. That said a lot about the regard she held for me, and the potential she sensed in me.

My deepest regret is not learning more from you, Nina. You will be greatfully missed.

Nothing Like a Televised Temper Tantrum to Draw Attention to a Media Whore

2008-12-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

First MSNBC's Jim Cramer got on his televised soapbox and lobbied to become the next Securities and Exchange Commission chair. Now he's raising hell because there's no disclosure as to how the bailout monies received by the banking titans like Citigroup is being spent:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The media whoring is so blatant, you'd swear he's contracted a social disease.

The basis for his latest media tantrum was a report from the Associated Press, where reporters contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four specific, discrete questions:

How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers. Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.

The evasiveness in itself highlights the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion -- about the size of the Netherlands' economy -- to help rescue the financial industry. There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Worse, there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.

And nearly every bank AP questioned -- including Citibank and Bank of America, two of the largest recipients of bailout money -- responded with generic public relations statements explaining that the money was being used to strengthen balance sheets and continue making loans to ease the credit crisis.

And still, you got blowhards like Jim Cramer and Lou Dobbs exploiting the situation on their soapboxes just to score brownie points with the viewing audience and stoking emotions in them to make them mad as hell, just like they did in the 1976 movie Network.

It all boils down to this: Pandering is pandering, be it a street-walker, a Congressman, or an agiprop wannabe.

As for Jim Cramer, I see him for who he really is: A loudmouthed exhibitionist a strip-search away from being full-blown monty.

Who the Hell is Arnold Schwarzenegger Kidding?

2008-12-22T00:26:00.000-08:00

On last night's 60 Minutes, California "Governator" Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Vera Hruba Ralston of American politics, makes no bones about the fact that he wants to become U.S. President, it they would only amend our Federal Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to run for the Presidency.

Arnold Schwarzenegger for President? Given his job performance as California Governor, that's about as asinine, absurd and ridiculous as a native-born American becoming a naturalized citizen all because he or she was born Caesarian.

Now why do you think the founders of our country made it clear our President should be a "native-born American," the crackpot right-wing-nuts' hysterical claims to Obama's illegitimacy notwithstanding?

Not What Chalmers Johnson Would Describe as "Blowback"

2008-12-16T10:19:00.000-08:00

While President Bush nimbly ducked both shoes hurled at him at a press conference in Iraq by an Iraqi protester expressing his displeasure over his treatment, not everyone escaped the incident unscathed.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Press Secretary Dana Perino was hit with a microphone in the ensuing scuffle and sustained a black eye in the process:

Though the shoe-thrower did President Bush no physical harm, he did provide a great visual that allowed people to ventilate their frustration and contempt for a disastrous presidency.

Duyba thought he could sneak into Iraq to run a last phony victory lap, and here you have a journalist demonstrating what people really thought of Duyba, not just within the Middle East, but throughout the world.

Now why do you think he's been doing all those warm and fuzzy photo ops with his dog Barney: he's trying to divert attention away from the incredible damage he's inflicted with incompetent, arrogant leadership.

And all this MSM apoplexy over this event reminds me of the time a patriotic citizen had the guts to throw a pie straight intp the face of Ann Coulter, who called it "an act of t.e.r.r.o.r.i.s.m".

Given the cosmetic damage Perino sustained, it's hard to tell if it's blowback or collateral damage.

And now a word from Max Factor. Makeup maximized.

Self-Exploitation So Shameless, It's Beyond Shameful

2008-12-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

Nancy Grace: Take away ther twins, the juris doctorate and her stint as federal prosecutor, and what you have left is Mary Sunshine, the "sob sister" yellow journalist from the musical "Chicago" who cries a Niagara of tears over every injustice imaginable.

From every media-sensationalized murder -- from Lacy Peterson to the anniliation of Jennifer Hudson's family -- straight up to the fatal disappearance of little Caylee Anthony, Nancy Grace is a bottom-feeding tabloid sensationalist who whips up hysteria and conducts a televised trial not by a court of law, but by a court of public opinion, replete with lawyers and other legal advocates giving talking head even as they try to demonstrate their various biases. This is indeed a televised perversion of the legal process, one where one is deemed as guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around

Even worse, she relentlessly puts her twins on display, as if they were Ivy League college degrees or something. I know she's a proud mother, and that she risked her life to bring them into this not-so-perfect world replete with traps and pratfalls, but that doesn't justify any of this narcissism.

May I have two Valium, please.

A House of Ill. Repute

2008-12-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

If the Land of Lincoln "isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor" - ROBERT D. GRAN, FBI Special Agent

Now that Illinois Governor Rod "B-Rod" Blagojevich was busted and hauled off in cuffs, Neely Tucker of the Washington Post was kind enough to refresh our memories of Blago's rougish predecessors, who have likewise walked the perp walk and talked the perp talk:

Gov. Otto Kerner Jr. (1961-1968)

One-time member of LBJ's "Kerner Commission" that probed the 1967 race riots, his cardinal sin was accepting 300K in cut-rate stocks while in office to give a business boost to a racetrack director. Was convicted on 17 counts of bribery, perjury and a cornucopia of other bad things. After spending time in prison from 1974 to 1975, he died a year later after obtaining a early release due to terminal cancer.

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Seth Perlman

Gov. Dan Walker (1973-1977)

Parlayed his outrage over police misconduct during the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention into a stint in the governorship. After he seved his term, he ran a chain of auto oil-change shops, then greased the skids with $1 million in funky loans from an S&L he ran and operated from his yacht, the Governor's Lady. Fessed up to three felonies and was freed after serving 17 months in prison from 1988-1989.

Photo credit: CNN

Gov. George Ryan (1999-2003)

While he was idol-worshiped for suspending executions and commuting death sentences to life imprisonment, he was a dirty rotten scoundrel in the eyes of the feds, who proceeded to bust him for a fedora of crimes: licensing unqualified truck drivers, lying to federal investigators, trading state contracts for personal favors. Now serving a 6 1/2 year prison sentence that began in 2007.

Given this pattern of crime and corruption in Illinois' governorship, Arianna Huffington had ths to day about the Blago scandal:

One thing is certain: Rod Blagojevich is not a student of history. Since the 1970s, three governors of Illinois have been convicted of corruption charges, including the man who preceded Blagojevich in office, George Ryan, who is currently better known as Federal Inmate Number 16627-424. He is serving time in a medium security facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. Probably not the location Blago had in mind when he said: "I can parachute me there."

Now why does all this keep going on and on? Trust me, the state of Illinois deserves better than this melodrama.

In the meantime, I'll pop in a DVD and watch "As the Stomach Turns," the sudsy soap opera parody from the old Carol Burnett show.

Keith Olbermann Hits the Trifeca With His Worst Persons of the Week

2008-12-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

George Will, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly. Three of a Kind.

If You Were Thrilled by the Edemically Corrupt Bush Administration, You'll Love the Dirty Dealings of "Governor Blago"

2008-12-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

When I was a teenager, I had a foster mother, Mildred Mickey, who would sense political corruption in state government just by how its roadways are maintained. If the roads are well taken care of, then the government's honest. If the roads are crap, then the government's endemically corrupt.

Which leads to this stone-cold stunner coming out of the Windy City.

In a move that sent shock waves across Illinois and its ripple effect reaching Washington and the president-elect, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested at his home earlier this morning, as was his Chief of Staff John Harris.

What triggered his arrest was an allegedly brazen scheme to auction off the now-vacated U.S. Senate seat once held by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder.

Blagojevich, 51, also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field, according to a federal criminal complaint. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper's editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

But even seasoned federal investigators, who bugged the governor's campaign offices and tapped his home phone, were stunned -- not just by the profanity-laced conversations and tough-guy talk from the governor, but by the sense that Blagojevich had known, or should have known, that for the past three years he was under investigation for alleged hiring fraud and clearly must have realized agents that FBI agents might be listening in.

The FBI stated in court papers that the governor was overheard conspiring to sell the Senate seat for campaign cash or lucrative jobs for himself or his wife, Patti, a real estate agent. He spoke of using the Senate appointment to land a job with a nonprofit foundation or a union-affiliated group, and even held out hope of getting appointed as Obama's secretary of health and human services or an ambassador. Moreover, Blagojevich tried to make it known through emissaries, including union officials and fundraisers, that the Senate seat could be had for the right price.

In other words, a pay-for-play scheme, plain and simple.

Many in Illinois political circles, including senior Senator Dick Durbin (D) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D), have called for Blagojevich's resignation. Absent that, the Illinois state government should launch impeachment proceedings. And they were quick to point out that anyone appointed to the seat by Blagojevich would not enjoy political legitimacy and that the taint by association would be damning.

Even as the GOP tried to use the old guilt-by-association tricj to tie Obama to the belaguered Blagojevich, the U.S. Attorney's Office was quick to point out that Obama refused to play ball with Blagojevich. In fact, Blagojevich's disdain for Obama was made clear in court documents, as he is quoted as using the F-word to descrive the president-elect in one phone conversation recorded by the FBI.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who successfully prosecuted former Bush administration hackey "Scooter" Libby and headed the current investigation, described --in his own words -- Blagojevich's alleged actions would "make (Abraham) Lincoln roll over in his grave."

Fitzgerald is a straight-shooter with a great bullshit detector -- he can tell if someone's urinating on his leg and telling him it's raining. And it's independent-minded prosecutors like him that gave the partisans in the Bush administration fits.

Even as I write this while burining the midnight oil, Blagojevich's poltiical epitaph, if not his political obituary, is being finalized/ As Beau Freidlander sadly noted in the Huffington Post:

"While Governor Rod Blagojevich was whining about a $300K per annum job with the SEIU and trying to get his wife a gig for about half that, these workers have become an international symbol of grit amid global hard times. As we head into Christmas, the two million Americans who have already lost their jobs since the recession began a year ago now have something to root for in Chicago.

Rod Blagojevich had eyes on a bright horizon that had everything to do with his needs and nothing to do with the needs of the people he was elected to represent. He could have been a hero in his home town. Now he's a disgrace. It seems to be a common narrative these days.

And as for "Governor Blago," if he had any sense of decency -- which is now questionable at best, he would spare the people of Illinois further melodrama and resign immediately. But then, he probably lost all sense of decency a long time ago.

In the meantime, it's time to throw a blanket over the Governor's mansion over in Springfield and start fumigating.

What next? Congressional seats auctioned off to the highest bidder on eBay?

12/11/2008 UPDATE: There is now a consesus amongst the body politic that Blago should do the right thing for once and resign immediately.

In the meantime, Rosa Brooks offers a cautionary treatsie in today's Los Angeles Times:

Blagojevich's downfall should be a cautionary tale for Democrats still basking in the reflected glory of Obama's win. It's a reminder that even at this magic moment of victory and party unity -- even as the Clinton lions are lying down with the Obama lambs, and as Democratic dreams of vast infrastructure investments and a renewed commitment to international diplomacy are coming true -- powerful Democrats aren't immune to human weaknesses.

Idiocy and greed aren't just for Republicans. For every Larry Craig, there's an Eliot Spitzer; for every Ted Stevens, there's a Rod Blagojevich.

In our heads, we Democrats know that. It's just that in our hearts, we don't want to believe it. Because we're the good guys, right? The ones who honed our progressive values during years in the political wilderness and who finally saw those values vindicated in November's electoral victories.

But it's precisely when a party achieves power that its members need to start worrying the most about idiocy and greed. When you're in the opposition, you're already down and out, so what difference does it make if your side's idiocy leaves you -- temporarily -- a little bit more down and out? And being in the opposition offers fewer patronage opportunities.

But power really does corrupt.

I'm not predicting a rash of new Blagojevich-type scandals plaguing the new administration. The Obama transition team has already issued unusually stringent ethics rules, and Obama's track record of supporting tough ethics legislation (including an Illinois state ethics law) suggests that he'll continue such efforts as president.

But illegal corruption isn't the only thing Democrats should be on guard against. Gaining political power also corrupts in far more subtle ways.

Members of political majorities succumb easily to smugness and complacency, to the conviction that explaining and justifying ideas is no longer necessary, to the temptation to dismiss critics as so many irrelevant cranks. "Groupthink" is mainly a disease of the powerful and complacent, not the fractious opposition.

Never mind Blagojevich. Majorities can get very dumb indeed -- and what the new Democratic majority most needs to resist are those more subtle forms of intellectual and moral laziness and corruption. For in the end, arrogance and groupthink can prove far more lethal than even the most scandalous financial shenanigans.

Just ask the thousands dead in Iraq.

And blogger Leutisha Stills (aka The Christian Progressive Liberal) takes note of Blago channeling Jennifer Holiday belting "And I'm Tellling You I'm Not Going" in the jackandjillpolitics.comblog:

I don’t get it.

If you’re arrested by the Fibbies, and you’re caught dead to rights on tape trying to shakedown the incoming President of the United States for fun and profit; annnnd, you’re an elected official who’s arrested by the Fibbies and caught on tape engaging in an attempted shakedown of the incoming President of the United States for fun and profit, you’re supposed to step down before you get forced out of office.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich doesn’t seem to get it:

CHICAGO – His career in shreds, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich clung defiantly to power Wednesday, ignoring a call to step down from President-elect Barack Obama and a warning that Senate Democrats will not let him appoint a new senator from the state.

According to his handlers, if Blago resigns, it makes him look guilty:

His attorney said Tuesday that he is innocent, and a resignation might make him appear guilty. The office also gives him a certain amount of clout, which can help him raise money for his defense. And he may need the salary — federal prosecutors say their wiretaps also caught Blagojevich complaining about his financial problems.

What? You can’t make it on $300K a year? Boo freaking Hoo on that one. The fact that the Fibbies arrested you and hauled you off to jail DOESN’T make you look guilty, but resigning your office DOES?

I’m getting a headache from all this.

Meanwhile, numerous political commentators and bloggers have compared Governor Blago's obscenity-filled wiretapped conversations to the profane poetry of a David Manet play. When approached to comment on this phenomenon, Manet had this to say in the Huffington Post:

"I am from Chicago, and, so, having been disillusioned with politics at an early age I do not become involved. The only reason I vote is because they pay me."

It doesn't take much to make one a cynic.

Dennis Yost: An Appreciation

2008-12-09T21:26:00.000-08:00

"For Dennis Yost, there may be no Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, right or wrong, but there ought to be some measure of appreciation for a lovely voice that probably touched you whether you know it or not." - DAVID WILD, staff writer, Rolling Stone, as quoted in the Huffington Post.

"Paradoxically, I came to know Dennis (Yost) better in the later years, in which he was involved in a massive struggle to retain his own musical identity, which was one of the saddest and most difficult cases of someone losing the name of their own group, when he had pretty much been the group." - JON "BOWZER" BAUMAN, chair, Truth in Music

Popular music has lost one of its most underappreciated talents this past week as Dennis Yost, former lead singer of the 1960's pop group the Classics IV, died in a Ohio hospital of respiratory failure at the age of 65. He had been living in nursing homes in recent years, particularly after suffering a brain injury sustained in a 2005 fall.

Growing up during the Wonder Years in Indiana, my first exposure to Yost was via Chicagoland's AM top 40 pop radio, as in WLS and WCFL.

In some respects, they were the precusors of such 70's soft rock bands as Wet Willie and the Atlanta Rhythm Section. In fact, Yost was the Classics IV, as his vocal prowess was the artistic and commercial focus of the group. The end result was a string of late-Sixties pop hits -- "Spooky," "Stormy" (sampled by John Legend in his song "Save Room"), "Traces," and the lesser-known but sweeter "Everyday With You Girl." These songs would become staples on many oldies radio stations.

I was fortunate enough to catch Yost in the early 1990's performing live as part of an oldies package at the Orange County Fairthat included former Dovells' frontman Len Barry, former Spiral Staircase leader Pat Upton, Cub Koda from Brownsville Station, and journeyman Sonny Geraci of the Outsiders and Climax fame (i.e. Precious and Few). Time was sometimes, mostly cruel to them, but that night, they manage to create magic on stage that took me back in time, at least for a while.

It would be revealed later in the decade that, according to a 20/20 interview done on imposter groups in the 1990's, Yost admitted to have been battling severe mental depression, which was exacerbated by a costly legal battle over the trademark rights to the name "Classics IV," that was being used by an impostor group.

In fact, Jon "Bowzer" Bowman, former front man for the rock revival group Sha Na Na who now heads the advocacy group Truth in Music, has joined forces with others in the music industry in spearheading a state-by-state drive to pass "truth in music" laws, which forbids the use of a group name unless one of the surviving original members are actively performing in the group.

As I write this, at least 26 states have passed such legislation, and similar bills are being introduced in the other 24. Ohio now has such a bill that is slated to arrive at the governor's desk next week.

It because of the persistent of Bowman and others, including the Supremes' Mary Wilson, that resulted in the Marvelettes finally being able to reclaim the group's name. It was through them that founding group members Gladys Horton and Katherine Schaffner were able to prove that federal trademark registration for the name "Marvelettes" and subsequent ownership of the group's name was obtained via fraudulent means by sleazy music promoter Larry Marshak.

Years ago, in an interview, Gladys Horton coined the term "cultural banditry" to describe how these fake groups are virtually committing identity theft by cashing in on the artistic legacy of others and taking advantage of the gullibility of the public in perpetuating the practice.

Needless to say, venues like the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas are enablers in this despicable practice, and their shows should be boycotted for what they represent: the shameless exploitation of one's artistic legacy for cheap personal and professional gain.

As for Yost, he should be proud of what he has accomplished in his career, and that his battles to protect his musical legacy from opportunistic leeches in the entertainment industry would result in hard-fought victories by others so that they serve as deterrents to others who may try to emulate such practices.

Rest in peace, Dennis. You will be sorely missed.

NBC: Smart as a Peacock

2008-12-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

POPE AND WEINBERG ARE GONE.
BUT THE JEFF & BEN SHOW GOES ON?
FOR THIS WRECK OF A TRAIN,
I SHOUT THIS REFRAIN:
“PUT A FORK IN THE PEACOCK, IT’S DONE!” - "Poetknowit," as posted on DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com.

There was a corporate bloodletting at NBC Universal this past Friday. As Nikki Finke broke the news on her blog, the bulk of the NBC Uni TV executives programming the network were forced to bid adieu. Among those getting pink-slipped were Teri Weinberg (EVP of NBC Entertainment), Katherine Pope (Universal Studio Media President) and NBC Reality czar Craig Plestis.

This corporate bloodletting followed the recent plug-pulling on several of NBC's new and holdover primetime series: Knight Rider, Lipstick Jungle, and My Own Worst Enemy, which have tanked in the Nielson ratings despite being relentlessly promoted ad nauseam and ad infitium during NBC's Olympics coverage.

Singled out in particular was Weinberg, whom industry insiders say was too inexperienced to be running a broadcast network. She proved to be a controversial hire from the get-go, not just because of her inexperience or even her incompetence on the job, but from ethical issues where she backed a project developed by her live-in boyfriend.

And now that he fired almost all of NBC Universal's top network programmers, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker has told a UBS investor conference that NBC's terrible fall season is forcing him to consider cutting the number of hours and even the number of nights that the network airs programming. But, get this -- Zucker did not blame the NBC's poor ratings on NBC Entertainment co-chairmen Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff.

Clearly, the buck has to stop with someone, and given all this corporate mismanagement, you are obviously thinking, "Why the hell does Ben Silverman still has his job?" While the pink-slipped had collectively sang their communial auld lang sayes, Silverman hit the ski slopes, further self-evidence of his obliviousness and insensitivity.

Let's face it, Silverman and his enablers can shift blame all they want, but like karma, it will eventually come back to them. If its parent company had any common sense, they would do more than a top-to-bottom housecleaning.

And where are the visionaries like Sylvester Weaver now when you need them?

O.J.'s on the 'Ol Cell Block/Dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock

2008-12-05T18:17:00.000-08:00

“Allowing wealth, power and control to consume himself, he made a horrific choice on June 12, 1994, which has spiraled into where he is today.” - DENISE BROWN, sister of the murdered Nicole Brown Simpson, after O.J. Simpson's sentencing on December 5, 2008

Disgraced football legend O.J. Simpson was sentenced sentenced Friday to as many as 33 years in prison for a botched attempt to recover sports memorabilia and other mementos from two dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room in September 2007. Despite Simpson's protestations that the items in dispute belonged to him, jurors nonetheless convicted him of kidnapping, conspiracy, assault and other charges. The 61-year-old NFL Hall of Famer could be eligible for parole after nine years.

And could you imagine the reaction from Fred Goldman once the sentence was handed down?:

Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles -- the city where O.J. Simpson walked free in one of the most celebrated murder trials of the last century, there was a shared feeling amongst many that justice — subverted and denied more than an decade ago — was finally served.

Simpson's acquittal in October 1995 in the double murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, remains fresh in the minds of those who remember the "Trial of the Century."

Let's face it, folks. When you do terrible things, you got to expect karma to come around and come back at you. Now the sentence judge Jackie Glass -- a jurist known for handing down tough sentences -- handed down may not have been perceived as for Simpson's murder acquittal, but the jury verdict that was handed down might have been. Glass herself was quoted as saying, “I’m not here to try and cause any retribution or any payback for anything else,”

In the meantime, O.J.'s in the process of being sequestrated away in a state prison cell because of his "celebrity." Could Phil Spector be next in line? Only time will tell.

Believe Ir Or Don't: "Prop 8: The Musical"

2008-12-04T06:31:00.001-08:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Now who said agiprop couldn't be funny?

John Michael Hayes: An Appreciation

2008-11-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

It was today in the Los Angeles Times that I learned of the passing of John Michael Hayes, a two-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter best known for his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock on four films, including "Rear Window" and "To Catch a Thief." Hayes was 89.

A former writer for such radio series as "Inner Sanctum Mysteries," "My Favorite Husband" and "The Adventures of Sam Spade," Hayes had four screenwriting credits under his belt when he began the first of four collaborations with famed film director Alfred Hitchcock: 1954's "Rear Window."

The 1954 suspense drama starred James Stewart as a photographer who is confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg and, while idly spying on his neighbors across the courtyard of his Greenwich Village apartment building, comes to believe that one of his neighbors has committed a murder.

The critical and commercial success of "Rear Window" would lead to further corroborations with Hitchcock, resulting in "To Catch a Thief" (1955), "The Trouble With Harry" (1955) and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956). Unfortunately, what caused the relationship to go asunder was not only the media attention Hayes was getting for his writing, but money issues as well.

Later, Hayes developed a reputation for being one of the best adapters of novels for Hollywood film, one who could take tawdry material deemed too taboo for censors' tastes and transform it into tasteful mainstream fare. Case in point was his 1957 adaptation of Grace Metalious' bestselling novel, "Peyton Place," which dealt with such topics as illicit love, incest, abortion, and social hypocrisy in a New England village town.

His work on the four Hitchcock films and on "Peyton Place" has earned him a place in Hollywood history, and his contributions to cinema will secure it. He will be sorely missed.

Hathos: The Gift That Keeps On Giving...

2008-11-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

As Andrew Sullivan once sardonically said about the evangelical Right, "And we know they are Christianists by their hate."

Saxby Chambliss: A Man With No Consicence, No Decency and Utterly No Shame

2008-11-24T18:59:00.000-08:00

Once again, the devil has come down to Georgia and the specter of McCarthyism has reared its ugly little head. As Steve Beren reports on AlterNet.org:

"Over the last few days, both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a far-right group called Freedom's Watch have both launched ads attacking Democrat Jim Martin for being "soft on crime." More specifically, the conservatives insist that Martin has opposed measures that would crack down on criminals who prey on children.

Beren goes on to add, "Of all the issues Republicans could have picked, this has to be the most offensive -- Martin's daughter was kidnapped when she was just eight years old. She was, fortunately, returned to the family safely, but Martin has a more personal background when it comes to crimes against children than most of us would even care to imagine.

If you want further proof of his shameless audacity, here's Chambliss's distateful attack ad on Max Cleland from six years ago:

And what further serves to further solidify my personal opinion on this scumbag is that he has no regrets or shame for the Swift-Boating he did on Cleland. Watch this excerpt from a Fox News report, and then you decide:

The irony both here and elsewhere is unbelievable; Max Cleland -- a disabled war veteran -- was smeared by Chambliss as "unpatriotic." In the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole called her Democratic opponent -- a Sunday School teacher -- "godless," and was voted out of office as a consequence. President-elect Barack Obama was criticized by these same people for the church he attended, his associations with radical leftists, and was falsely accused of being a Muslim. And and now Jim Martin -- a man whose family has known crime against children firsthand -- is being accused of being soft on perpetrators who prey on children.

Given the ruthlessness Saxby Chambliss has exhibited both past and present, one would think that the far-right's habitual liars, wolf-criers, criminal coddlers and shameless hypocrites would finally lose credibility, if they haven't by now.

But then, their collective conscience and decency has circled the drain a long time ago.

Ah, They Lost Their Rubber Duckies and They've Gone Crying to Mama...

2008-11-20T06:33:00.000-08:00

Remember back in the 1980's, when Ronald Reagan talked about that mythic baby-making welfare queen who drives a Cadillac and lives high off the government dole?

Credit: General Motors

Well, yesterday on MSNBC I saw one of those three of these so-called Cadillac-driving welfare queens -- Rick Wagoner of GM -- sitting alongside his counterparts Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler, crying a river of poverty before Congressional committees, tin cups in hand and sob stories to tug at their heartstrings.

This wasn't a Congressional hearing. It was more like a rendition of the old game show "Queen for a Day."

What next? Auto executives standing on highway off-ramps with beggars' signs stating "Will work for food?" Can't they just live a life of genteel poverty like the rest of us struggling folks?

If GM, Ford and Chrysler do fail and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it's because they became commodities that could sell its bowel movements. That's what happens when you build crappy cars and no one wants to buy them, not even at a fire sale.

In any case, it's a long and winding road of devolution from "G.M." to "B.M."...

First in a Series of Ongoing Sequels?

2008-11-18T21:14:00.000-08:00

Credit: www.uglyrepublicans.com

CNN has just reported that a Willacy County, Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on separate charges related to alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers.

For those unfamiliar with the geography, Willacy County is located on the southern tip of Texas, in close proximity to the United States-Mexico border.

The Associated Press also reported that the indictment stems from Cheney's investment in the Vanguard Group — an investment management company that reportedly has interests in the prison companies in charge of the detention centers. It also charges Gonzales halted an investigation into abuse at the detention centers while he was attorney general.

Finally, somebody has the balls to bust those bastards.

If It's "New," It's News to You and Me...

2008-11-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

Watch CBS Videos Online

For the benefit of those who might have missed it, here's the interview Steve Kroft scored on last Sunday night's 60 Minutes with President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.

Now where's that Blackberry when he'll need it?

Your Tax Dollars at Work? $700 Billion Bailout Funds Subsidizing Corporate Junkets

2008-11-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

On September 16, the Bush administration granted ailing insurance giant AIG a bailout that has since swelled to $150 billion, and according to Kamelia Angelova at the Business Sheet, this is what we as taxpayers get in return:

AIG company execs dropped modest $440,000 to recuperate at this luxury resort - the St. Regis in Monarch Beach, Calif. - from 22-27 September.

Photo credits: www.businesssheet.alleyinsider.com

And how's this for your taxpayer dollars at work: AIG ran up a 23 grand-plus tab for spa treatments at that Monarch Beach resort:

And here's a copy of the invoice that John and Jane Taxpayer has been saddled with:

While wrapping up its first post-bailout retreat and canceling a second one at the exclusive $400-a-night Ritz-Carlton in California's Half Moon Bay to save face, 50 AIG staff members did manage to squeeze in a $500,000 getaway to the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas during Sept. 28-30.

And if the shennanigans at AIG weren't enough to make your chest hairs stand on end, top brokers of Wachovia Corp jumped on the bailout-retreat bandwagon...on an all-expenses-paid cruise liner to the Greek Isles on Oct. 10, while taxpayers were possibly picking up the tab for the billion-dollars bad loans made by the ailing bank.

And the whole damned thing is spreading worldwide like a viral epidemic. Case in point: Halifax/Bank of Scotland, after receiving nearly $18 billion in public assistance, threw a post-bailout gala at the posh, five-star Prestonfield Hotel, running up a $516,000 bill.

Just when you thought the follies concerning Tyco International and its disgraced CEO Dennis Kozlowski (including the $6,000 shower curtains and the extravagant birthday bash he threw for his then-wife Karen, replete with the ice sculpture of the Statue of David urinating Stolichnaya vodka) were behind us, this disclosure takes the cake.

Perhaps some people just don't have the capacity to feel any shame anymore.

To paraphrase Gloria Steimen, not only does the truth set you free, it also pisses you off.

If Everybody's Got the Right to Love, Why the Hell Can't They Get Married?

2008-11-16T00:30:00.000-08:00

"The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which ‘the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race’ are minor indeed. Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs." - HANNAH ARENDT, 1959.

Yesterday, protests against California's Proposition 8 and in favor of same-sex marriages were held in over three hundred cities throughout the world. And according to365Gay.com,this sychronized protest -- which attracted both gay and straight protesters opposed to Proposition 8, was a grassroots pheonoemon spearheaded by Seattle-based activist Amy Balliett, who developed a special social networking site, Join the Impact, that provided the impetus to help mobilize grassroots volunteers to corrodinate protests worldwide on November 15.

And when you consider the argument advanced by the supporters of Proposition 8, that they insist they do not oppose the right of gays and lesbians to have basic legal protections under the law, consider this scenario:

A gay couple have been together for forty years without the blessed assurance of the clergy. Then suddenly, one partner in this union dies. And though they planned and prepared for every contingency, what they did not anticipate was the disrespect and utter disregard for their forty-year commitment to each other. And then there's the family that didn't approve of their relationship from the get-go, going as far as to bar him from attending the funeral and kicking him out of their shared home.

Until you have been treated as sub-human, it's hard to understand and to appreciate how it feels for one to be treated in that manner.

Think about that when you next hear that contracts and papers are enough and marriage isn't sacred or right for these people. To look straight into the eyes of so many people, sensing and realizing their gnawing pain of experiencing a life that felt incomplete, and to be told by our own government and by many within our society that they are somehow second-class citizens and somehow less than human, can be a devastating experience.

What's even more devastating still is that we as a nation are losing our best and brightest to a nation north of our border. Performance artist Tim Miller was forced to move to Canada because his Australian (read: non-American) life partner was not allowed to stay in the U.S. with him. So they chose to move to Canada to share a life together as one, matrimony or no matrimony. If this trend continues, you can see quite a few more moving northward as time progresses.

It is not same-sex marriages that are a threat to the integrity of the institution. The threat itself comes from those who abuse that institution -- from Britney Spears, who married a guy for fifty-something hours before finally getting an annulment, to the Bill McGeeveys and the Larry Craigs of this world who live in denial about their true selves and superimpose a alternate reality on their lives via sham marriages. To celebrities like Lana Turner, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland who engaged in sequental monogany with 7-8 spouses, to the polygamists who think that having multiple wives kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen would be the road to eternal salvation. And particularly those self-loathing closet cases like David Dreier whose internalized self-hate manifests itself in such repressive legislation like the "Defense of Marriage Act."

As for myself, I am a 51-year-old confirmed bachelor. Never have married, never will. Childless, and child-free. At least I can sleep peacefully at night knowing I don't have to worry about prenuptual agreements, paying the child support and alimony on time, or even if my birth control failed.

Regrettably, for some, the nightmare seems never-ending.

Gene Autry and Gail Davis: The Singing Cowboy and Annie Oakley Doing the Horizontal Fox Trot?

2008-11-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

According to his 2007 biography, Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, by Holly George-Warren, Autry was defined as much by his celluoid persona as a singing cowboy as he was by his entrepreuneal proclivities and canny business sense (he once owned KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, a successful record label, and the Los Angeles Angels baseball team). But can you possibly imagine this squeaky-clean straight-shooter and family man with the eroticism of a can of Pet evaporated milk being both dipsomanical (read: twelve-stepping alcoholic) and having a steamy hot, torrid long-term extra-marital affair with Gail Davis (TV's "Annie Oakley), who was both a sweetheart of the celluoid rodeo and something of an entrepreneur in her own right?

Obviously all this requires much of a willing suspension of one's disbelief. Apparently all this sounds more like "Torrid Zone" than "Rustlers' Rhapsody."

Seperated at Birth Redux:

2008-11-15T16:40:00.000-08:00

Former celluloid action figurine cum California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Olympic ice skater cum "Queen of Republic Pictures" Vera Hurba Ralston, whose embarrassingly bad acting in such cinematic stinkers as Lake Placid Serenade, The Fighting Kentuckian, Fair Wind to Java, Jubilee Trail and Timberjack rightfully gave her the moniker as "the Queen of the Clinkers."

Funny, didn't Harry and Michael Medved once say that Jayne Mansfield made Marilyn Mornoe look like Meryl Streep?

And Now, Two Memorable Blasts From My Childhood Past...

2008-11-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

First, "The Litterbug," featuring Donald Duck

Second, "How to Catch a Cold" (1950) sponsored by Kleenex tissues

Who Are These Bloggers (Like Me) And Why Are They Saying These Things About Us?

2008-11-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

Conservatives have a thing for blasting bloggers, In defending Sen. John McCain during this past presidental election, Joe Scarborough mocked us as "just sitting there, eating Cheetos in (our) underwear," while Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) complained that we added "vituperation toxicity" to the political debate.

But just recently, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow showed a clip of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) complaining about being criticized by "some blogger" sitting "in their parents' basement." Maddow -- who later said she saw herself as "a blogger on TV" -- did the show in her pajamas to show her solidarity with bloggers. Watch it:

Arianna Huffington, an Cambridge-educated debator with a M.A. in Economics, sitting in her parents' basement at her computer desk with a bowl of Cheerios, wearing nothing her scanties from Victoria's Secret, contributing to the blogsphere's 'vituperation toxicity'?

Give me a break!

Motown: From Bollywood to Hollywood, Non-Stop

2008-11-14T18:36:00.000-08:00

One of the things about YouTube is how they unleashed the creativity of a cornucopia of amateur video artists. Some of them took vintage Motown tracks and set them to dance sequences from old movies and even Bollywood flicks.

From Bollywood, here's one set to the Velvelettes' "Needle in a Haystack"

And one set to the Elgins' "Heaven Must Have Sent You"

And from Hollywood, here's one set to Tammi Terrell's "Two Can Have a Party":

And here's one set to the Contours' "Just a Little Misunderstanding"

And yet another one, set to the Contours' "First I Look At the Purse"

And here's another one, set to Eddie Holland's "Just Ain't Enough Love"

And in the interests of fair play, here's one set to the Dells' "Run for Cover"

Now if someone would please come up with something using one of those classic Marvelettes' tracks?

Before and After: Speaking Truth to Power

2008-11-08T07:50:00.000-08:00

And now a rebuttal from the Billboard Liberation Front:

Credit: Billboard Liberation Front

And here's another, just in case:

Credit: Billboard Liberation Front

The National Nightmare is Finally Over...

2008-11-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

Now that Barack Obama was finally elected president, at least I can now sleep nights knowing the nightmare of the Bush presidency is finally coming to an end.

And the frosting on the cake: watching the likes of Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) and Vito Fossella (R-NY) booted out of office and hoisted on their own petards.

Now if we can finally throw a big blanket over our nation's capitol and start fumigating...

Where's the Mute Button on the Remote Control When You Really Need It?

2008-10-31T13:13:00.000-07:00

Every time Sarah Palin opens her mouth, her profound ignorance of constitutional and statuatory law rings loud and clear.

According to the Huffington Post, Palin told right-wing radio talk show host Chris Plante that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution.

Palin goes on to add, "If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

As always, Sarah Palin still does not get it. As Glenn Greenwald points out in Salon.com:

"The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

Let's face it, folks. When it comes to journalism, it lost all its standards and all its taste. We need not go any further than watching a tabloid news show displaying a pretense of objective legal analysis or news. CNN's Nancy Grace and Fox News' Greta Van Susteren are particularly notorious for sensationalizing current events. Heads are hoisted on their pretards and people are prosecuted in the court of public opinion as if one's guilt was loudly proclaimed or insinuated. Worse, investigative journalists have been bullied and intimidated into submission by a punitive Bush administration that clearly has a lot of dirty laundry to hide.

Given all the dirty dealings of the past eight years or so, do you understand why the GOP is resorting to racist smears to attack Obama? It's all about preserving the status quo, plain and simple. And Sarah Palin is one symptom of the cancer that's spreading through the GOP's body politic.

"(Sarah) Palin is riding into fame much the same way that George W. Bush rode into the Presidency, as a bumbling Clampett-like character with a minor record of accomplishments, an entrenched set of dogmatic beliefs, and plenty of supporters in the neo-con hierarchy," observes Jane Devlin in a recent Huffington Post posting. "Like Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who went from Survivor contestant to talk show host, there are people waiting in the wings to market Palin as a right-wing Ellie Mae (Clampett) of political news or social commentary."

Take away her vice-presidental candidacy, and what you have left is Elizabeth Hasselbeck experiencing the onset of menopause.

Sarah Palin: A false neocon diety, a by-product of a vainglorious ideology that teetered on the brink of theocracy.

And the first commandment of the ten explicitly states, "You shall have no other Gods before me." Pathetic.

And Now, a Blast From the Past...

2008-10-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

What the hell did this teach Sarah Palin about womanhood?

When Winky-Dink Kits Are Revived, She'll Be Back in Style...

2008-10-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: www.capitolhillblue.com

Sarah Palin - A parodistic Winky-Dink kit masquerading as a politician.

A Choice, Not An Echo?

2008-10-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

"I think. Therefore, I am." - DESCARTES

Picture in your minds for a moment a geriatric Playboy bunny, her skin wrinkled like a dried prune and showing the ravages of the aging process, wearing her tattered Playboy bunny outfit being held together with safety pins and duct tape and a rip and a tear away from a full-scale wardrobe malfunction, subserviently behaving like a house slave serving at the pleasure of the masters.

That is the very essence of Phyllis Schlafly, an oxymoronic woman who made a career of telling women not to have careers and to say home barefoot and pregnant, serenely oblivious to the harsh day-to-day realities around them. And for every time women have made significant progress, there have been women like Mrs. Schlafly working overtime to oppose it.

Certainly, she does not represent all that is best about women-- and certainly she does not represent women's fulfilled potential. What she really represents is a form of objectified trophy wife, an appendage with a marriage license relegated to the kitchen, where she is to be seen and not heard.

Worse, like Dr. Laura and Sarah Palin after her, Schlafly preaches so-called family values, but their actions demonstrate anything but a commitment to family. They sit in judgment of others, preaching but not necessarily practicing what they preach as gospel.

And as Adele Stan astutely points out in the Huffington Post, "Phyllis Schlafly has long been the target of sexism in her own party. One of the conservative movement's foremost intellects, Schlafly is rarely celebrated as such, and instead finds herself relegated to the G.O.P.'s ladies' auxiliary."

Let's face the facts, folks. McCain may have had Sarah Palin forced down his throats by those within the GOP. It's a de facto shotgun wedding, a match made in hell based on political calculations, and now they are reaping what they sowed. And as Gloria Steimen recently pointed out, "Sarah Palin is like Phyllis Schlafly, only younger."

Remember that political button we feminists once wore that stated "Who is Phyllis Schlafly and why is she saying these things about us?"

Substitute "Sarah Palin" for "Phyllis Schlafly" and then you'll get the basic idea.

As a fellow feminist once said, "Phyllis...it rhymes with 'syphillis.'"

A choice, not an echo?

Sometimes, I wonder if female chauvinist sows do wear lipstick after all.

Welcome to Kid Nation, Home of Stockholm Syndrome by Proxy

2008-10-28T12:23:00.000-07:00

"And they will know we are Christianists by our hate." - ANDREW SULLIVAN

And now, another theocratic right-wing-nut theatrical fever dream, this time featuring children as proxies expressing their parents' political views.

Below is an advertisement produced by a Christian ministry in California (Clay Music Ministry) in support of Proposition 8, the California referendum to strip same-sex couples of the right to marry. It involves small school-aged children signing:

In fact, much of the mother's milk sustaining the "Yes on 8" campaign was coming from out of state sources, primarly evangelical groups, the Mormon church, and individuals like theo-con fat cat Elsa Prince and her son Erik Prince, the odious CEO Blackwater Worldwide, responsible for countless deaths and atrocities in Iraq.

Steve Anderson hits it on the nail when he notes in the Huffington Post, "The pro-8 forces are united, not by a common belief in goodness and salvation, but a base hatred for what they all do not accept. Sadly, this may prove to be not only Gays, but each other. This short-sightedness and intolerance is sad, pitiful, and must be defeated."

Aptly describes the current state of the GOP, doesn't it?

Requiems for a Trio of Retail Heavyweights

2008-10-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

These chains will be closed by the end of the year. There's speculation that Circuit City might be the next to bite the bust. And that's on top of Sharper Image, the Bombay Company, and Bennigan's closing their doors.

Given the vicious bipolar economic cycles of boom and bust, hasn't anyone overdosed on Dramamines by now?

Tragedy Strikes a Rising Star: My Thoughts on Jennifer Hudson During Her Darkest of Hours

2008-10-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

Credit: www.blackvoices.com

Home. Once, it was the cradle of Jennifer Hudson's greatest triumphs. Now, it's a bloody crime scene, one that's symbolic of her darkest hour.

Hudson, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Effie Melody White in the film adaptation of "Dreamgirls," and who has emerged as a respected actress and singer, often credited her rise to fame to her upbringing in the impoverished neighborhood on Chicago's South Side where she went to grade school and sang in church. In media interviews, she often cited how her family's influence kept her grounded and that her new-found fame hasn't changed her or alter her family's in any way.

Then, just when she's beginning to hit her stride career-wise, tragedy strikes.

Her mother, Darnell Donerson, 57, and her brother, Jason Hudson, 29, were found dead of of gunshot wounds, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

According to Chicago Police authorities, a family member entering Donerson's South Side home Friday found Donerson's body on the living room floor. Officers later found Hudson shot in the bedroom. At least one of the victims suffered defensive wounds, said authorities, who described the shooting as domestic violence.

Compliating matters is the disappearance of Hudson's 7-year-old nephew, Julian King, for which an Amber Alert was issued. Julia Hudson, Julian's mother has made an impassioned plea in the media for the safe return of her son.

As I write this, though no charges have been filed against specific individuals, authorites were holding a suspect with ties to the family, but no one had been charged Saturday. Law enforcement sources told the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times that William Balfour, estranged husband of Jennifer's sister, Julia Hudson, was in custody, and the man's mother said he is Julia Hudson's estranged husband.

Records from the Illinois Department of Corrections show Balfour, 27, is a convicted felon currently on parole, and has spent nearly seven years in prison for attempted murder, vehicular hijacking and possessing a stolen vehicle. Public records show one of Balfour's addresses as the home where Donerson and Jason Hudson were shot.
Balfour's mother, Michele Balfour, said that her son had been married to Julia Hudson for several years, but that they were separated. She also said Donerson had ordered him to move out of the home last winter.

Police authorities said a family member entering Donerson's South Side home Friday found a woman's body on the living room floor. Officers later found Hudson shot in the bedroom. At least one of the victims suffered defensive wounds, said authorities, who described the shooting as domestic violence.

There's been an outpouring of public sympathy and support for Hudson and her family in this time of crisis. Let's keep them in our prayers.

10/27/2007 UPDATE: Tragically, Julian King was found dead of a gunshot wound inside the now-abandoned white SUV. To paraphrase Tom Brokaw, the emotions I'm now feeling and the outrage that's engendered within me cannot be adequately expressed in socially acceptable terms.

At least they are now in a better place. Let the justice system take its course, and allow justice to be properly served. The Hudson family did not deserve this.

Whatever Happened to Lena Horne and Sheriff Jim Clark Dancing Cheek-to-Cheek During National Brotherhood Week?

2008-10-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

Credit: Rich Mann/Deadline Hollywood Daily

Was this something Tom Lehrer might have had in mind?

Maybe not, but it's as plausible as Freddy Phelps and Barney Frank doing the horizontal fox trot.

Just in case, here's a video clip of Tom Lehrer performing the song, courtesy of a soul on YouTube...

Todd the Fraud: A Hoax is a Hoax, Of Course, of Course...

2008-10-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

There has been much rhetorical hyperventilation over the hoax perpetuated by a McCain volunteer in Pittsburgh, PA named Ashely Todd. Todd alleged the perpetrator was a six-foot-four black man/Obama supporter who supposedly attacked her leaving a black eye and a "B" carved on her face to make "his" point:

Needless to say, once the hoax was hyped to death in the news media, the hoax was finally exposed, leaving those who hyped it with embarrassed-red looks on their faces.

As Sam Stein reported on the Huffington Post, "Several media outlets (the vast majority conservative) were left with egg on their faces after they trumpeted up the tale of a McCain volunteer who claimed to have been assaulted by a large black man because of a McCain bumper sticker on her car. On her face was carved a backwards 'B' (meant to represent Obama's name). The Drudge Report called it "mutilation."

Meanwhile, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez called out those in the news media for falling for the hoax and taking the bait, naming the outlets that not only reported but actively pushed the story of Ashley Todd. In addition to explaining why his station didn't report the story, Sanchez dug the knife in a bit deeper when it came to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio talk show host who appeared on CNN Thursday and blamed "that side" (i.e. the Democrats) for engaging in "extraordinarily" disturbing acts.

As Sanchez explains, "Part of the story is the fact that it was reported by the media," said Sanchez. "We would not be telling the story now had it not been carried by so many outlets. As I mentioned before, it was mentioned on, as a matter of fact I have a list and not to mention names, but the initials of the news organizations are Fox News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Newsday. And also radio talk show hosts went on their radio stations and talked ad infinitum about the story yesterday, one of them even seemingly being a braggadocio about it when he was on the air with our own Wolf Blitzer yesterday."

It is bad enough that we have enough low-lifes and thugs out there running loose, creating campaign chaos and fomenting hatred without having to manufacture them in the first place. Hate crimes hoaxes perpetrated by anyone, regardless of any political persuasion, and of any gender, skin color or sexual orientation, serves to denigrate and to diminish us all.

Which leads into Joan Walsh's take on the affair at Salon.com:

"Why were so many people on the right so ready to believe such a disturbing tale based on so little evidence? Was the story of a violent 6-foot-4-inch black man -- how tall is Obama? --punishing a white female McCain voter too good not to be true? It's hard not to see the troubled Ashley Todd's story, and its reception on the right, as a result of the climate of fear and demonization that McCain and Palin clearly believe is their only hope to win Nov. 4. Todd needs help, but McCain and Palin need to be criticized for helping to advance this story before the facts were in. It's really one of the most despicable things this awful team has done in a pretty lowlife campaign. There's no doubt in my mind that the anti-Obama slurs ("pallin' around with terrorists") that have come from Sarah Palin's lovely and expensively lacquered mouth helped create a climate that leads a disturbed person like Todd to her drama of victimization."

Jonathan Chain brings some more insight into this sordid mess: "I don't think the actions of one sick volunteer say anything at all about John McCain or his campaign. They do, however, tell us a lot about right-wing yellow journalists, from (Matt) Drudge on down, who manipulated primitive racial-sexual fears for partisan gain."

John McCain and Sarah Palin share some responsibility for this sordid affair. They set up the entire incident with their race-baiting stunts on the campaign trail. A McCain staffer fed what was obviously an embellished lie to the media even before the facts were known, intimately aware of what public action would be. GOP partisans and their sycophants in the blogsphere took the fabrication and ran with it. And once again, McCain has shown extremely poor judgment by inserting himself directly into this incident. He jumped into this hoax by making personal contact with this faux victim without a scintilla of forethought or even bothering to learn the facts first. This further proves a pattern and practice of behavior revolving around John McCain and Sarah Palin: they both shoot from the hip when a crisis arises and does not worry about the ramifications and potential consequences until later.

Now doesn't it make you wonder why those who were shrieking about it like mindless banshees just happen to be the same intellectually-challenged souls who mindlessly perpetuate those stupid urban legend e-mail hoaxes?

Whatever happened to logic and critical thinking? Are these people on drugs?

People who enjoy good mental and emotional health do not generally engage in these sorts of self-destructive, delusional, and irrational behaviors. And unfortunately, this is not a new a phenomenon or even a new a newsworthy story as many of know may know by now.

The likes of Susan Smith and Charles Stuart relied on America's fears of the "Big Black Boogeyman" to veer the focus off of them and onto something more salivating, only to have their ruses exposed at the end. Still, the collateral damage has already been done. Those that choose to continue to believe will do anyway. The whole reason this hoax had legs is because people "want" to believe it to be true. It is a whole different way of seeing reality and the roots of seeing through the filter of ideology.

Talk about the willing suspension of disbelief!

And now, my personal take on the whole sordid affair:

Pathetic beyond words, isn't it?

In closing, the moral of this story comes from
Michelle Malkin: "Final lesson: Trust your instincts. Use your brains. Stop jumping every time (Matt) Drudge hypes something in Armageddon-sized font."

Now why do you think "Drudge" rhymes with "Sludge?"

Get my drift?

Remembering Van McCoy

2008-10-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe that, nearly thirty years ago, we lost one of the most prolific writer/producers in the pop and soul music worlds: Van McCoy

Born in 1940 in Washington, D.C., McCoy began performing in doo-wop groups while in high school, then attended Howard University as a psychology mahor, only to drop out after two years to form his own record label, Rockin' Records. His first single, "Hey, Mr. D.J." (1959) caught the ear of Specter Records owner Florence Greenberg, who subsequently hired him on as a staff songwriter and artists & repitoire representative. His first hit as a songwriter came with the Shirelles' "Stop the Music" (1962). Later, he became co-owner of Maxx Records, supervising such artists as a pre-Motown Gladys Knight & the Pips. But he didn't really hit his stride until he began working with top music producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and later signing as a writer with the April-Blackwood music publishing concern, which had a connection with Columbia Records.

McCoy would proceed to write a string of pop and soul hits as the Sixties progressed. The body of work that came out of that period included recordings by Gladys Knight & the Pips ("Giving Up"), Darlene Love and the Blossoms ("That's When the Tears Start"), the Fleetwoods ("Before and After (Losing You)"), Aretha Franklin ("Sweet Bitter Love"), the Marvelettes ("When You're Young and in Love"), Barbara Lewis ("Baby, I'm Yours"), Betty Everett ("Gettin' Mighty Crowded"), a post-Supremes Florence Ballard ("Love Ain't Love"), and Chris Bartley ("The Sweetest Thing This Side of Heaven")

As he entered into the Seventies, he wrote and produced hits for Brenda & the Tabulations ("Right On the Tip Of My Tongue"), Jackie Wilson ("I Get the Sweetest Feeling"), The Presidents ("5-10-15-20 [25-30 Years of Love]"), David Ruffin ("Walk Away From Love") and the group Faith, Hope & Charity ("To Each His Own").

But McCoy is best known for his 1975 hit "The Hustle," one of the first seismic tremors that triggered the disco explosion that dominated the latter part of the decade. Though he continued to write and produce for such artists as Melba Moore, David Ruffin and Gladys Knight & the Pips throughout the Seventies, he would tragically die of a heart attack in 1979, unexpectedly robbing us of a gifted individual who still had much important work ahead of him.

An anthology of his output from the Sixties and Seventies is long overdue.

Suppose They Held an Election and Nobody Voted?

2008-10-22T21:32:00.000-07:00

Remember to vote on Election Day. Your vote does count, and don't let anybody intimidate you into thinking otherwise.

Requiem for a Maverick Who Sold Out His Principles and Sold His Soul to Karl Rove

2008-10-22T21:15:00.001-07:00

To say that politics is dirty business is an understatement. And what has emerged from the McCain/Palin campaign is beyond filthy. It is bordering on political pornography.

Having the electorate subjected to robo-calls, manufactured controversies, faux bogeymen, snide innuendos, and drive-by character assasinations are as excruciating as watching a torture porn video on YouTube where Sarah Palin straps on a dildo and bangs John McCain in the ass, putting him through more torture than his 5 1/2 years as a P.O.W. incarcerated inside the Hanoi Hilton, Astroglide or no Astroglide.

Now you can see why so many conservatives washing their hands of the McCain/Palin ticket. Their ruthlessness and insensitivity shows no boundaries, no sense of decency or morality. Karl Rove may not be part of the campaign, but his fingerprints and those of his acolytes are all over this, so you know who's the responsible party here.

Trust me, there's nothing so pathetic as watching a politician leave his principles at the door and ruthlessly try to get elected at any cost. He's not a maverick, but a flim-flam man selling snake oil. Just imagine for a moment what John McCain could really have achieved had he remained a true maverick and not made bacon with the Bushites.

May I have a Prozac, please.

The $150,000 Question: What the Hell Was Sarah Palin:Thinking When She Shopped 'Till the RNC Dropped?

2008-10-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

Credit: Dana Ellyn/Huffington Post

The embarrassing revelation that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on Sarah Palin's wardrobe at such swanky venues as Barney's New York, Bloomingdale's, Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue while most of us average Joes and Janes are struggling to make ends meet during an economic crisis is enough to give anyone pause.

Did it ever cross her myopic mind (if she even had anything resembling a brain strem) that there are those who can dress better than she can at a fraction of what the RNC blew on her?

This is coming from someone who takes in background gigs in film and television to help pay the monthly bills. I buy my clothes off the rack and on clearance. I never pay more than $10 for a shirt and $15 for a pair of pants. I have them altered for five bucks at a nearby cleaners. I bought my sport coats off the clearance racks at suit outlets for $25 to $30 a pop and can put together a formal ensemble that looks classy, upscale and elegant.

You don't believe me? Look at these pictures and see for yourself:

Now in all fairness, there may be a double standard in play, as women are judged based on their appearance far, far more than men. This is not a value judgment, but rather a statement of fact. It is unfortunate that for women as a whole, appearance is part of the job. All women in the public eye have to deal with this issue.

However, given that Sarah Palin is trying to project an image to the voters, that she shopped for clothes on the RNC dole at such swanky venues does serve to raise questions as to whether or not she's a crass opportunist.

Perhaps for once, Sarah Palin should show some humility for once by shopping at a T.J. Maxx or a Wal-Mart alongside her imaginary friend Joe the Plumber. At least she's making an attempt at showing some semblance of empathy.

And believe me, somewhere up in heaven, Mr. Blackwell is rolling on the floor howling with laughter at all this.

Farewell to the Captain: The Four Tops' Levi Stubbs Passes Away at Age 72

2008-10-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

"When the world falls apart, some things stay in place
Levi Stubbs' tears roll down his face." - From Levi Stubbs' Tears," by BILLY BRAGG (1986)

Motown has lost another of its legendary voices as Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops for over four decades, died last week in Detroit at the age of 72.

Levi Stubbs had that huge, smoldering voice that, when you having him sing in a higher octave, projected a vulnerability that rang loud and clear. You sensed that in such songs as "Ask the Lonely," "Baby, I Need Your Loving," "Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over), and "Reach Out, I'll Be There, a song famed producer Phil Spector dubbed "black Dylan."

But then, everything about Motown evolved around what went on inside the recording studio. You had producer/writers like Holland/Doizer/Holland, Smokey Robinson, Norman Whitfield, Mickey Stevenson & Ivy Hunter, and Nick Ashford & Valerie Simpson who had the chemistry to work with particular artists and came up with a lot of timeless hits.

Granted, there were a great deal of tracks that could have been hits, but were held back by Motown's notoriously neo-fascistic "Quality Control" division. In fact, two of the Marvelettes' latter-career hits ("Don't Mess With Bill," "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game") would have not seen the light of day on the pop charts had it not been for Smokey Robinson fighting for their releases. Many of the Motown singers may not have been the most gifted, the most versatile or even the most flexible, but they had writer/producers who knew how to showcase them properly, and that is why it was as prolific as it was.

Levi had one of the best voices ever: smoldering, powerful, yet capable of projecting a melancholic vulnerabilty to great effect. There were many transcendent moments too numerous to mention, and we have lost one of the great ones.

Rest in peace, Captain. You will be truly missed.

Adieu, Mr. Blackwell

2008-10-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

Credit: Associated Press

Mr. Blackwell, the fashion designer known for his annual "10 Worst-Dressed Women list," died last Monday from complications stemming from an intestinal infection. He was 86.

Among some of his more notorious commentaries:

Madonna: "The Bare-Bottomed Bore of Babylon."

Barbra Streisand: "She looks like a masculine Bride of Frankenstein.

"Christina Aguilera: "A dazzling singer who puts good taste through the wardrobe wringer.

"Meryl Streep: "Forget Lemony Snicket — Streep packs the fashion punch of Jiminy Cricket! In dowdy glasses and lumpy tents, Meryl is A Series of Unfortunate Events!"

Melanie Griffith: "A botox'd cockatoo in a painting by Dali!"

Donatella Versace: "Resembles a flash-fried Venus, stuck in a Miami strip mall."

Katherine Harris: "The pretty, brassy lassie from Tallahassee needs cosmetic direction - her paint-by-numbers make-up screams out for discretion! A recount please!"

Linda Tripp "Linda's bad fashion 'tripp' is beyond debate - a shaggy sheepdog in drag, the 'Starr' of her own Stylegate."

Sharon Stone: "An over-the-hill Cruella DeVille."

Ali MacGraw: "Pocohatas wearing remmants from Custer's Last Stand."

Diana Ross: "A martian meter maid performing in a can-can revue."

Patti Davis: "Packs all the glamour of an old, worn-out sneaker."

Ann Margret: "A Hells Angel escapee who invaded the Ziegfeld Follies on a rainy night."

Camilla Parker-Bowles: "In feathered hats that were once the rage, she resembles a parakeet from the Jurassic age. A royal wreck."

Paris Hilton: "The Burger Queen Sensation may be very rich – but she still looks like yesterday's cheesecake... with a side of kitsch."

Glenn Close: "Forget 'Sunset Boulevard'. Glenn's taken a detour down 'Nightmare Alley'"

Bjork: "She dances in the dark — and dresses there, too."

Jayne Mansfield: "She looked like a Pepto-Bismol ad, without the medicinal benefits. Ironically, Pepto-Bismol appears to be the perfect antidote."

Bette Midler: "Betsy Bloomer...didn't you know hoop skirts went out with pantalooms?"

Even as his health was declining, his wit was as caustic as ever, as evidenced by his last listings:

Amy Winehouse: "Exploding beehives above…tacky polka-dots below…she's part 50's car-hop horror."

Alison Arngrim: "Little Nellie of the prairie, looks like a 1940's fashion editor for the Farmers' Almanac."

With every critique a roll-on-the-floor howler that had me laughing, it was something that I looked forward to.

Rest in peace. At least fashionistas can sleep at night knowing they are spared the wrath of your acidic penmanship.

When Will They Be Arrested for Pandering on Talk Shows?

2008-10-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

Another day, another right-wing nut contributes to our national nausea by shooting off her mouth without even giving a second thought what people might think.

And just when you think those talking heads can't get any deeper in the down-low, wait until you hear these comments from Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

Trust me, once the likes of Bachmann opens their mouths and speak their minds, the noxious specter of McCarthyism has reared its ugly head once again. Like on the TV series "Mad Men," they're the same old political Cro-Magnons; they've only become better at expressing their true selves, ableit in code-word form. As in "Cadillac-driving welfare queen," "law and order," and "he's not one of us."

Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Laura Ingraham -- They are the Paris and Nikki Hiltons of American politics -- as every bit as vapid and brainless, as every bit as narcisstic and media-whoring as an overblown Angelyne billboard on Sunset Boulevard. Take away the inflammatory right-wing rhetoric and what you have left are celebutantes, plain and simple.

Catch my drift?

Meanwhile, the right-wing-nuts are acting more like vultures devouring their own. Case in point: Kathleen Parker, a conservative op-ed columnist, received a barrage of hate e-mails from angry right-wingers because she dared to speak the uncomfortable truth: Sarah Palin is unfit and unqualified for the vice-presidency. Now why do you think Peggy Noonan's tongue is bleeding profusely after biting it one too many times?

Talk about intellectual dishonesty! Now you know why Christopher Buckley washed his hands of the National Review.

And speaking of Bachmann calling liberals "anti-American," isn't that like calling Shirley Temple Black?

Seperated at Birth?

2008-09-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

GOP Vice-Presidental Candidate Sarah Palin and the Wicked Witch of the West.

How about throwing some Aquafina on them and hope they both start melting?

Who is Sarah Palin and Why the Hell Did John McCain Pick Her as His Running Mate?

2008-09-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

Was John McCain suffering from dementia? Was he high on crack, or what?

No sooner did he select political neophyte Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate did the skeletons finally came crashing out of her closet with a loud thud. First came the ethical issues concerning her abuse of her elected position as Governor of Alaska. Then came the bombshell announcement that her seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant with child -- in full light of her position supporting abstainence-only sex education.

Talking about karma coming back at you.

Palin's under-the-radar status was what McCain was looking for. And what he saw in her, I wish I knew. Not surprisingly, as Arianna Huffington is quick to observe:

Along with all the things she brings to the table -- fresh face, mother of five, hockey mom -- Palin is notable for what she doesn't bring: a track record.
If McCain had picked any of the far more experienced candidates on his short list, they would have come fully equipped with a long paper trail implicating them in the horror show that is the Republican Party of the last eight years.

Huffington goes on to point out:

McCain doesn't just need someone with a fresh face; he desperately needs someone with fresh ideas. That would have been the real maverick choice.

Instead, he's got someone who, in perfect agreement with the Republican platform, believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.

He's got someone who, in defiance of science, doesn't believe global warming is man-made, (and who) wants creationism taught in schools.

He's got someone who wants to further increase the health-care burden on the patient.

He's got someone who wants to ban all stem-cell research.

The Republican Party isn't in dire electoral straits because Middle America loves these ideas but just wants to see them implemented by a woman.

The Republican Party is in dire electoral straits because its ideas are outside the mainstream. And in choosing Sarah Palin, McCain has moved his ticket even further from the center of the country. Yes, she energizes the GOP base -- a fact that should scare the hell out of any Republican who cares about the future of the party.
The problem with today's GOP isn't the packaging; it's the product.

Meanwhile, a concurring Sidney Blumenthal hypothesized that McCain selected Palin on impulse in a declaration of independence from Karl Rove, who was pushing for Milt Rommey for the Vice-{residency. As Blumenthal points out:

My information is that Karl Rove wanted Romney and pushed him. McCain pushed back. He really wanted Lieberman. That was completely out of the question. Palin is the result. One element of the Palin nomination is McCain establishing himself apart from the Bush/Rove political operation, even as his campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, is one of their creatures. From the outside, it's often hard to figure out how vicious and divided the Republicans can be with each other.

But what really upset a lot of people -- myself included -- was Sarah Palin's willingness to use her pregnant teenage daughter as a exploitive political prop. As
As Bonnie Fuller astutely notes:

"Sarah Palin may be running for Vice President...but is she any different from the woman who sold the story of her daughter Jamie Lynn's pregnancy to a magazine for $1 million, or from the father that allowed 15-year-old Miley Cyrus to be photographed semi-nude for Vanity Fair supposedly to further her career?
Despite her supposed "Family Values" credentials, she and her husband Todd are being just as exploitative of her teenage daughter, Bristol, as any of these celebrity parents have been. Actually, even more so.

Like Elizabeth and John Edwards, they knew they had a ticking time bomb of a family secret, that they were hiding from the public, when they stepped into the limelight of the Presidential race. But the Edwards were adults and were aware or should have been, that the primary public fallout of their decision not to reveal John Edwards' affair would fall on themselves. They would bear the shame of their decision to deceive the American public about their family crisis. Their children would be off limits.

Not so in the case of the Palins. They took center stage with the full knowledge that their 17-year-old's five-months-along pregnancy was about to become front page news around the world. Bristol Palin hasn't been the star of a major kids TV show like Jamie Lynn or Miley Cyrus. She has not chosen a life of celebrity. But now, thanks to her mother's decision to accept the Republican Vice Presidential candidacy, her private life — her sex life — is as exposed as if she had long been a cover regular on Star or US Weekly.

She has unwittingly and literally become the poster child for her mother's anti-choice and abstinence-only education policies.

Fuller goes on to add, "Seventeen year-old girls are not yet adults, they are highly emotional human beings who are still trying to find their own identities and to establish self-confidence. They are easily embarrassed, they care tremendously what their friends think, and their relationships with guys are always on a dramatic rollercoaster. They are not ready to get married, raise babies or to deal with public embarrassment and humiliation.

But Bristol Palin isn't a policy poster child, or a celebrity, she's a real live 17-year-old trying to cover her growing bump with a baggy sweatshirt or by holding her 4 month-old baby brother as a shield. She's now planning, according to her mom's statement, to marry and spend her life with her 18-year-old boyfriend, Levi Johnston, a guy who uses the "f" word as his major descriptive adjective on his MySpace page. He also until yesterday described himself as someone who "likes to hang out with the boys...and just f---in chillin," and who doesn't want kids on that same page, until it was yanked off of public view.

What kind of parents today — this is 2008 — want to doom their daughter to a "shotgun" marriage with a guy who doesn't want kids? It's going to be tough enough for Bristol to finish high school, let alone go on to college and realize any ambitions of her own, without being trapped in a marriage that neither young person is probably ready for. And if self-described "redneck" Levi isn't happy about being pushed into parenthood and marriage, you can "f---in" expect he'll make sure that Bristol knows about it.

I bet that poor Bristol Palin probably doesn't feel like she has the right to object to anything her mother and father are doing or saying right now. Like most teenage girls she is probably insecure and is blaming herself for her own predicament.

Blaming herself for not being abstinent and instead being one of the 60% of American high school seniors who are sexually active. Blaming herself for getting pregnant like 3 out of 10 American teen girls do each year. And now blaming herself for possibly derailing her mother's vice-presidential ambitions because of that pregnancy. There's no way that she's not going to do what her parents want, in order to bolster her mother's image, even if that means supporting her mother's platform and getting married at 17.

And just imagine if John McCain and Sarah Palin are elected to two terms in office. Bristol's every move as a teen mom will be under scrutiny — Britney-style. Her marriage to Levi Johnston, will have to work or her parents' image will be tarnished. Talk about pressure, Bristol.

Sarah Palin also needs to ponder this: if she succeeds in "normalizing" her daughter's pregnancy, making it almost seem sort of glamorous, will other teen girls look at this and say what is the problem with having a baby? asks Sarah Brown, the CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies.
In that case, Palin's exploitation of her daughter hasn't just hurt Bristol's own young life, she'll hurt countless others."

But what's even creepier still is the notion that Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in drag. And we all know too painfully well what Dubya's presidency has wrought. As Alec Baldwin points out on his most recent posting on the Huffington Post:

We know nothing about Sarah Palin. Nothing. Which is not anywhere near enough information to elevate her to the position whereby she would succeed McCain if he died in office or suffered a catastrophic illness. At 72 years of age and in questionable health, McCain's fitness to coach a high school football team would be in doubt, let alone the grueling reality of the presidency of this country.

John McCain is, statistically, more likely to die or suffer some catastrophic illness during his first term than any other man that has sought the office. Who would succeed him? George Bush would succeed him. Someone with no record. No experience. Only question marks. Everywhere. Forget about the fact that Palin looks a lot like a really attractive TV star I know. Underneath all the Tina, she's George.

And they said Dorothy Gale had it easier in the Emerald City of Oz.

And Now, a Pictoral Message for Levi Johnson, Who's Shotgun Wedding to Knocked-Up Bristol Palin is Still Pending...

2008-09-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

You still don't get it, don't you. You messed up your life, and that of Bristol Palin. What the hell were you thinking?

And they say it takes two to tango.

And speaking of "holy matrimony" to legitimize your child and to give it a name, doesn't that sound all too retrograde? Like, how do you plan to support it?

Apparently you neither haven't seen the 1961 film "Susan Slade," nor watched it lately.

And they say history repeats itself because nobody bothers to even listen.

Speaking My Mind #31

2008-09-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

The timeless poster that says it all...

Credit: Lorraine Schneider, 1966, ®©Another Mother for Peace, Inc.

Where are the peacemakers when we need them, particularly now?

Hypocrisy Be Thy Name Redux

2008-09-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

After you watch this video, remember this quote from George Orwell:

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

Denial Ain't a River in Egypt: NBC's Deafening Silence on Gay Olympic Athletes in its Olympics Coverage

2008-08-25T09:31:00.000-07:00

How's this for an compelling up-close and personal story, courtesy of AfterElton.com

"Burnt out and struggling with depression and anxiety, an up-and-coming Olympic hopeful drops out of his sport two years before the Beijing Games. His coach talks him into resuming training the year before the Olympics and he makes his country’s team which isn’t expected to fare terribly well against China’s powerhouse squad.

Indeed, the athlete performs poorly in his first event, failing to even make the semifinals. In his final event, however, and on his final attempt, he wins in an upset that not only denies China the gold medal, but by winning prevents a gold medal sweep by China in all eight of that sports events.

Now add to that the fact that the athlete also happens to have come out as gay less than six months earlier and is the only out gay male athlete at the games. As If that isn’t significant enough, his victory is easily the highest profile win ever by a gay man in an Olympic event. Both his mother and partner are in the stands to witness his triumph, something they almost didn’t get to do until a grant from Johnson & Johnson financed their trip to Beijing."

What Matthew Mitcham did on that 10-meter diving platform is the single most notable achievement by an openly gay male athlete at the Olympics, and it was done in dramatic, compelling fashion. And he did it with a personal story that is unarguably at least as compelling as Michael Phelps’ record-setting eight Olympic gold medals, Usain Bolt’s three gold medals and two world records, and even Sanya Richards’ relationship with her fiancée (who plays football for the NFL's New York Giants.)

Of course, there are openly gay and lesbian athletes competing in the just-concluded Bejing Olympics. It is common knowledge amongst the athletes themselves. And even then, they are more often than not so inside the closet they're practically embedded inside them.

Which leads me to this question: Why is Peoria the last to know?

According to Jim Buzinski at OutSports.com,"(Of) the 10,708 athletes at the Olympics this year, just 10 have identified themselves publicly as being gay. Of the 10, Australian diver Matthew Mitcham is the only male gay athlete. And at no point did NBC address that issue in its telecasts. And as Maggie Hendricks observes on her Yahoo! Olympics blog which Amanda Terkel notes on AlterNet:

"NBC did not mention Mitcham’s orientation, nor did they show his family and partner who were in the stands. NBC has made athletes’ significant others a part of the coverage in the past, choosing to spotlight track athlete Sanya Richards’ fiancee, a love triangle between French and Italian swimmers and Kerri Walsh’s wedding ring debacle."

Likewise, there was no mention of the opening-ceremonies actions of out lesbian fencer Imke Duplitzer, who held her own alternative opening ceremony to protest China's human rights policies. (Note: Duplitzer made it to the quarterfinals of the women's epee competition.)

Even more deafeningly silent was the accomplishments of openly lesbian athletes, as if they were treated like mere sidebars in midst of what the Aussie pulleed off. As author and cultural critic Patricia Neil Warren ("The Front Runner") observed on OutSports.com, there was a major play-up on Mitcham while the gold medal achievements of openly lesbian athletes -- Natasha Kai on the U.S. women's soccer team, and team captain Gro Hammerseng and her partner Katja Nyberg on the Norwegian handball team -- were cavalierly overlooked. Warren goes on to add:

"I first saw this weird attitude about LGBT medals at the 2004 Summer Games, when I was helping Outsports.com cover the Games on their Olympic blog. This was the first Olympics where our media actually put together a pre-Games "list of out athletes" who had made themselves publicly visible. In Athens we had 11 -- count 'em.

By the end of the Games, our heroes had raked together six medals in both individual and team sports. German fencer Imke Duplitzer won a team silver in épée. Spanish tennis player Conchita Martinez took a silver in women's doubles. German cyclist Judith Arndt won silver in the women's road race. Dutch swimmer Johan Kenkhuis got silver in the men's 4x100 freestyle relay swim. Last but not least, U.S. equestrians Robert Dover and Guenther Siedel won team bronzes in dressage.

If we want Olympic athletes to risk their careers, maybe their lives, to come out, then more people in our "community" -- especially in our media -- need to grow up where sports are concerned. What cuts it at the circuit party or on the red carpet is not what cuts it on the diving platform, or the track, or the boxing ring, or the basketball court. It's time for our media to start rewarding our out athletes with the level of educated, sensitive and responsible recognition that all of them really deserve."

The reasons many Olympic athletes keep their sexualities to themselves are diverse. As equestrian athlete Robert Dover explained in a 2005 e-mail to OutSports.com:

"The reasons athletes stay in the closet are varied, but revolve mainly around fear of the consequences of being out -- from the effects on performance, interaction with teammates, fans and the media, and, in some cases, endorsements. In addition, the vast majority of Olympic athletes are under 30, a time when even people who are not elite jocks are wrestling with their sexuality. Being an Olympic athlete requires full-time dedication and a lot of things get put on hold. It is just easier to hide and deal with one’s sexuality later."

Later, Dover told the Associated Press prior to the Athens Games about why more gay athletes are not open:

"You spend a day with these athletes, and it becomes obvious that gay people are everywhere...The reason many of them aren't out is because they're focused on their job during this time when sports is the No. 1 thing in their lives."

Perceptions are everything in sports, and as former "out" collegiate gymanist Brandon Triche points out, he spoke knowingly of prominent former U.S. gymnasts who are gay but closeted, in some cases having sham marriages for appearances' sake, and are likely to never come out of the closet. Triche goes on to add:

"One reason for the secrecy in gymnastics...is that gay gymnasts do not want to feed the public perception that theirs is a “gay sport,” at a time when men’s programs are being cut at the collegiate level and the sport struggles for visibility."

"I think that those who keep their sexuality secret and act overly heterosexual hinder the sport...My experience shows there are no more gay men competing in gymnastics than in any other sport. I was on my high school football team and there were many more homosexuals on that team than I ever met who were ever openly gay in gymnastics. I was out on my team and had a gay teammate. But there still has not been an Olympic gymnast that has come out...I think that for closeted elite gymnasts, not only are they scared to be a role model for gay youth, they are afraid that coming out will confirm the perception that they compete in a ‘gay sport.’ The misconceptions are so far from the truth. Gymnastics is one of the toughest, hardest and most gruelingly difficult sports in the world.”

All this can be linked to cultural and gender stereotyping. It's like slapping a label on something without first analyzing its content. Let's throw away those Goddamned Dyno labelmakers and accept these athletes on their merits, regardless of who they might be.

And in the meantime, let's beautify our insides with Metamucil.

Gender Verification: Some Don't Know What "Masculine" and "Feminine" Are Anymore.

2008-08-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more demeaning and denigrating than subjecting a female athlete to "gender verification" via a saliva test, also known as a "femininity" test.

Routinely administered at every Olympiad to ensure a level playing field, gender verification has had engendered considerable controversy. According to Myron Genel the most notiorious case revolved around Spanish hurdler Maria Patino, who was publicly outed after failing her femininity test during an event in Tokyo, at the cost of public disgrace and loss of her athletic scholarship. It would take two years and the active intercession of a number of medical authorities on behalf of Ms. Patino's behalf, whose test failing was attributed to androgen resistance, to be reinstated.

So-called "intersex" athletes -- those who have genital abnormalities, also faced public ostrasization, though these abnormalities were no fault of ther own. There is indeed some insidious cultural biases at work here. As Dr. Eduardo Hay stated in a 1974 report, "In certain cases, women athletes have derived advantages from certain anatomical anomalies...Such anomalies, without depriving her in any way of her social or psycho-social status, give the woman athlete endowed with these masculine anatomical conditions, an unfair and unlawful advantage over the anatomically normal woman athlete."

This is where code words like hermaphrodism, pseudohermaphrodism and intersexuality are thrown into the mix, adding a lot of cultural baggage into the equation. And then there's the issue of transgendered athletes and whether or not they should be allowed to compete on the same parity level as everyone else. This brings to mind a tasteless sex joke from a vintage late 1970's episode of the Shields & Yarnell variety show: "And now we present 'A Man and a Woman,' as performed by Dr. Renee Richards.

This is not just about keeping things "not only free of sin, but free from the appearance of sin" (to quote former TV game show host Jim Perry) and keeping the playing field level. It's about all the socio-political and cultural baggage that comes with it.

The redefinition of gender roles and what constitutes "masculine" and "feminine" gets more complex when sexual orientation and the accompanying "butch/femme" dichotomy is thrown into the Osterizer. This is highly relevant given that more and more openly gay and lesbian athletes are competing in the Olympic games. As Jim Buzinski points out in OutSports.com, "Of the 10,708 athletes who will march into Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium on Friday, Outsports is aware of only 10 who are publicly gay, on par with the 2004 Games. There is also a bisexual American softball player...Of the 10 publicly gay Olympians this year, only one is a man: Matthew Mitcham (Australia, diving). The out lesbians are: Judith Arndt (Germany, cycling), Imke Duplitzer (Germany, fencing), Gro Hammerseng and Katja Nyberg (Norway, handball and a lesbian couple), Natasha Kai (U.S., soccer), Lauren Lappin (U.S., softball); Victoria "Vickan" Svensson (Sweden, soccer); Rennae Stubbs (Australia, tennis) and Linda Bresonik (Germany, soccer)." Buzinski goes on to note that "The number for Beijing comes with a huge caveat and must be seen in context. There is no doubt there are many more gays and lesbians competing in Beijing, but these 10 are the only ones we can determine to be “publicly out,” having discussed their sexuality openly in some manner. For all we know, there is a gay rower or badminton player somewhere known as gay within his or her sport, but not in a larger public context."

This phenonemon is noteworthy for a number of reasons. There is discomfort about gay athletes about their sport being perceived as "queer" or "gay." Not only has the discomfort resulting in many staying deep inside the closet, but also in sham marriages with beards. It comes as no surprise that the need to pass is intense, and the cultural labeling only serves to exacerbates things even further.

Perhaps the best solution to all this controversy is this: let's just accept thse athletes for who they are and what they have accomplished, or will accomplish in the future. And speaking of gender verification, why don't we subject every male athlete to a femininity test, so that they can understand and appreciate what women athletes have to go through?

In the interests of "fair play" and keeping a level playing field, it's only fair, isn't it?

The Breck Girl's Gone Augustinian and is Now Paying for His Back Street Affair

2008-08-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

John Edwards the former Democratic Presidential candidate whose $400 haircuts dubbed him a "Ken doll" and "the Breck Girl," has gone into Augusintinian mode and publilcly admitted to have had an extramarital affair.

In an interview broadcast on August 8 on the TV news-magazine show Nightline, Edwards told ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff that his wife, Elizabeth, and others in his family found out about the affair in 2006, and he reportedly "made a point of telling Woodruff that his wife's cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter." However, Edwards says he did not love Rielle Hunter, the woman whom was purported to have an affair with. And he still denies the Enquirer's report that he is the father of Hunter's daughter, who was born in February of this year. He says that could not be possible, claiming the affair ended too early.

In fact, Edwards' admission to having an extramarital affair may have jeopardized his political career. As Alex Koppelman points out in Salon.com"Obviously, some politicians have successfully bounced back from revelations like this, but the circumstances in this case will likely make such a comeback difficult for Edwards. His wife's health obviously poses a problem in that regard, and the fact that he lied about the affair, leading some of his supporters to jump to his defense, may make people less likely to stand with him in the future."

Meanwhile, the blog Hitsvillenotes that there are now at least five separate angles the mainstream news outlets are missing with the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal story.

1) The National Enquirer’s creepy vendetta. How the tabloids work … the difference among the Enquirer, the Examiner and the Weekly World News … the Enquirer’s history of accuracy or inaccuracy … the logistics and costs of such a months-long effort … who owns it? … who calls the shots?

2) Why the mainstream press has dodged the story. The backstage timidity … the concern for Elizabeth Edwards … the Ick Factor … the inconsistency of whose adulterous affairs get written about and whose do not.

3) The silence of the lambs: Not anything you wouldn’t expect, but it’s worth noting that the the nation’s press critics and ombudsmen are quiet, too. Howie Kurtz, this is tailor made for you: Only you can investigate why you haven’t written this story! The one exception I know of is Jack Shafer in Slate, which has gone at the story several ways. But where is Tim Rutten? The Observer? Even Salon has offered only one tepid account of the Enquirer story.

4) The compromised intellectual honesty of the liberal blogosphere. Kausfiles is linking to a Daily Kos regular who got his posting privileges disappeared after he started writing about the issue:

I’ve been posting at Kos for a long time. As more news about Edwards has come out, I followed up with more posts which were also the subject of a large number of comments. All of them looked at the Edwards situation from my point of view; that is, a liberal who is concerned about the implications this story may have in November...Now I’m banned. I can’t write about ANYTHING at Kos. Can’t comment, can’t post a non-Edwards piece. Nothing.

5) Oh, yeah: Did John Edwards cheat on his wife and get another woman pregnant? Edwards hasn’t substantively addressed the Enquirer’s charges.* The most recent debacle, according to both the tabloid and a corroborating story by foxnews.com, found him blockaded in a basement bathroom of the Beverly Hill luxury hotel in the early morning hours after he was caught by the Enquirer reporters allegedly paying Rielle Hunter and the infant in question a visit.

Arguments about the Edwards’ privacy don’t hold water: Elizabeth already knows about it; Edwards was a presidential candidate; and the story is already out there. All the mainstream news outlets are doing by not writing about it is undermining their credibility.

Any guess as to why was America the last to know?

Now stuff and nonsense is just stuff and nonsense, but stuff and nonsense compounded with pretense and condescension is asinine. Now I understand that having a public figure with feet of clay has some scintilliating sexiness for sensationalism's sake, but there are far more pressing issues at hand that John Edwards' cosmotology or his pecadilloes. We are still stuck in a quagmire in Iraq for where's no light at the proverbial end of the tunnel in sight. We are experiencing economic hardships where people are losing their jobs and having their homes foreclosed. So why should John Edwards's sex life be of any concern for us? And for that matter, would it concern us if Dubya and Condi were doing the horizontal fox trot?

Bro-ther! As for shampoo, I use Infusium-23. End of subject.

8/9/2008 UPDATE: The verdict as delivered by the court of punditicracy does not look good for John Edwards. Case in point are these responses compiled by Salon.com, where various distaff contributors weighed in on the Nightline interview with their own opinions on the affair:

Sarah Hepola notes, "And yet, what strikes me about today's revelation is how conventional it seems to be: just another hotel bump-and-grind, another thirsty ego desperate to be slaked. The ugliest part for me is Edwards' defensive claim that it all happened while Elizabeth's cancer was in remission...Honestly, having watched the "Nightline" segment, I feel nothing but sadness -- for everyone, including me, for having watched it so salaciously."

Mary Elizabeth Williams quickly points out, "We are one screwed-up, sanctimonious society, with more tools to rip into every shred of an individual's privacy than we know what to do with. I wouldn't want to be the dude's wife, but hey, I'm not. When we start blurring the distinctions between a person's life and his work, we can rule out FDR or JFK or Clinton (who is looking better and better, isn't he?). You don't stop being human and flawed and vulnerable because you go into public life...The two wars we're currently waging are what's immoral. The way that Wall Street and the banking industry peddled an unsustainable mortgage system to the American people is unethical. The No Child Left Behind Act is unconscionable. Where John Edwards puts his penis is low, low low on my list of wrongs I can feel "disappointed" about.

Joan Walsh adds, "All of us make mistakes, but Edwards' decision to sit for this nationally televised interview was hugely poor judgment, narcissism colliding with a sad self-destructive streak and zero self-awareness. All those fake smiles and facial twitches were hard to watch...Pleading his case to Woodruff backfired; he must have expected empathy from the Iraq war survivor, but Woodruff's wounded countenance was a silent rebuke to Edwards throughout the interview...The The lowest point came when he said of Rielle Hunter's child: "I don't know who that baby is." It's possible the National Enquirer got other details of the affair right but the baby's paternity wrong, but Edwards' dismissal seemed cold and tin-eared. Like most other political problems, Edwards' crime -- sexually straying with a campaign operative -- wasn't his worst offense; he shamed himself with his coverups: first the lies, and then this attempt at rehabilitation."

And while Kate Harding summarizes, "When the National Enquirer is the media outlet with the real scoop on politicians' lies, we might just be in trouble," Elizabeth Gettleman concurs on the Mother Jones blog:

"Perhaps the most disturbing thing about (the) revelation that John Edwards — in the midst of launching a presidential campaign — indeed had an affair, is that the National Enquirer was spot on, eight months ago. In his ABC confessional, to air tonight on Primetime, Edwards points out that the Enquirer got it right when it reported that he met with his lady friend at the Beverly Hilton two weeks ago. Edwards still denies the baby-daddy accusation, saying he is not the father of Rielle Hunter's child, though DNA may be called for given his truth track record here.

Makes one wonder, did the DNC finally have its act together on this one? Think about it, if his "friends and supporters" knew enough to perhaps pay her living expenses (which Edwards suggests in tonight's interview) then perhaps some organized party machinery pushed him out of the limelight just in time. I mean, the man with the Plan to Build One America, set out some lofty plans for this country. But Americans want their politicians faithful and straight (or at least as far as they know).
I have been following this sad story, admittedly with some gossip shame. But also as a member of the non-tab media who's supposed to toss away gossip rags as sources of anything credible. But the Enquirer, and Jossip, one of my new favorite blogs, have been all over this story. ( One link I sent to a fellow editor at Mother Jones got returned with the note: "Jossip.com, huh?" To which I responded, "Gossip can pay the most unlikely dividends.")

There is more truthiness than we dare to admit in the supermarket aisles. Sure there is a ton of trash and nonsense, but it would behoove all of us journalistas to pick up on the trail they break sometimes. Though perhaps part of the reason we didn't in this case, we like to tell ourselves, is, what a worthy politician does in his personal life is his own business. But is it, ever? And when they pay their lady friend campaign money to make webisodes, what then of the divide?
Two Americas, media people, the gossip rags and the rest of us. This round goes to the rags.

And the blog site Jossip.com weighs in on the matter, observing:

"It was decided that writing on the rumors — without confirming them — simply validates the Enquirer, a tabloid that’s broken celebrity scandals wide open but still isn’t regarded by many as a credible news source. And while the Enquirer deserves credit for some great shoe-leather reporting, the magazine still plays by a different set of rules than Politico or other outlets. And that includes the willingness to pay sources for verifiable information, which Perel said today on “Reliable Sources” was a tactic employed in their Edwards investigation.

So what lessons have we learned? We could rattle off a few, but it’s not worth the copy. You see, there’s no evidence here that anything is going to change. ABC’s Ross, who arguably got the “get” here, himself insists that unless Edwards told him his story directly, it wasn’t worth reporting; that confidential sources with knowledge of the situation would not have have been enough. Ross, of course, didn’t always have that problem. Neither did anybody else in major media. But when it comes to a Democratic politician, those rules have suddenly disappeared. And now that the cat is out of the bag — now that Edwards has fessed up to the affair — nobody is saying they would’ve done anything differently, which makes them complicit not only in this attempted cover up, but the endless string of scandals to come. Embarrassing.

Whatever you think of John Edwards and this imbroglio, you could not accuse him of refusing to take responsibility for his action, nor for mincing words about this affair: "I was wrong," he said. "And I am responsible." But then, what would you expect from a narcisstic personality putting on appearances?

Another day, another salicious fall from grace.

8/13/08 UPDATE: Just when you think the lunacy surrounding this whole sordid mess can't get any loonier (Think Rush Limbaugh, who blames Elizabeth Edwards for the extra-marital hanky-panky because she's so much smarter than her husband), on Faux News' Hannity & Colmes, Sean Hannity was a diving board jump away from the deep end when he tried to justify John McCain's extra-marital affair with his now-wife Cindy, saying he spent five-and-a-half years as a Prisoner of War as a lame excuse for his pecadilloes:

As Quentin Crisp once quipped, "Men get laid, women get screwed."

Pathetic, isn't it?

Strange Fruit: How Would Toby Keith Feel If It Was HE Who Was Being Lynched?

2008-08-06T11:02:00.000-07:00

When Max Blumenthat broke the story on the pro-lynching music video promoting Toby Keith's "Beer for My Horses" on the Huffington Post last week, the right-wing blogsphere worked itself up into a hysterical state, whining that poor homeboy Toby himself was being persecuted for speaking his mind.

First, let's take a deep breath and approach all this from a historical perspective.

As Blumenthal painfully reminds us, "During the days when Toby Keith's "Grandpappy" stalked the Jim Crow South, lynching was an institutional method of terror employed against blacks to maintain white supremacy. According to the Tuskegee Institute, between the years 1882 and 1951, 3,437 African-Americans were lynched in the United States, mostly in the heart of Dixie. Felonious assault and rape (read: corrupting "the flower of white womanhood") were the two most frequent justifications for lynch mob actions."

He goes on to add, "Those who doubt the presence of racist undertones in Keith's "Beer For My Horses" should see the song's video.:

"Cue ahead to 3:00 and watch as Keith intones, "We got too many gangsters doin' dirty deeds." The singer's words are not-so-subtly accompanied by the image of a swaggering black man sporting short dreads and baggy clothes. Thus the profile of Keith's ideal lynching candidate is revealed."

Sadly, Toby Keith neither owns a copy of Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit" not has listened to it today.

Not surprisingly, and Blumenthal points out in his follow-up, "The response from right-wing blogs was swift and strident. Townhall.com whined that "The Liberal Lynching of Toby Keith" had taken place; Lonewacko claimed that Keith was actually "promoting lawful executions." And Keith found an avid defender in Robert Stacy McCain, the disgraced former Washington Times reporter and avowed neo-Confederate who once allegedly ranted in the middle of the Times newsroom that slavery was "good for the blacks and good for property owners."

Now what would you expect from right-wing shills twisting themselves like contontionists auditioning for "America's Got Talent" to defend the indefensible?

As Blumenthal goes on to observe, "The comments by the literally hundreds of trolls who leapt to Keith's defense are significant for only one reason: they reveal the extent to which the radical right has anointed Keith as a icon of its movement. Keith's schlock rock is the soundtrack of the culturally deprived australopithicenes who populate the cyber-caves of freeperland and comprise the movement's most fervent activists. As a bellicose chickenhawk who has risen from the ranks of the rural working class to become "White Trash With Money," Keith has carefully calibrated his image to fit the sensibility of his fans."

If that wasn't enough, Toby Keith has now targeted Barack Obama, attacking him in language that startled even the notoriously reactionary radio jock Glenn Beck. During Keith's appearance on the July 30 broadcast of Beck's show, he remarked, "I think the black people would say he [Obama] don't talk, act or carry himself as a black person."

"What does that even mean?" the audibly shocked Beck replied.

"Well, I don't know what that means," Keith drawled, "but I think that that's what they would say. Even though the black society would pull for him I still think that they think in the back of their mind that the only reason he is in [the general election] is because he talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian."

Read: an Oreo -- black on the outside, white on the outside.

Which leads me to this question: Does Toby Keith eat the creamy middle of an Oreo cookie first and save the chocolate cookie outside for last?

Assholes are meant to be buggered, and Toby Keith is no exception.

Vaseline, please.

John McCain: Butt-Cheesy Buttwipe

2008-08-02T03:53:00.000-07:00

John McCain has once again proved how much a butt-cheesy butt-wipe he really is with this tasteless campaign ad comparing Barack Obama with vapid celebutantes like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears:

Now for a good poison antidote, take a look at MAD TV's take on the McCain campaign:

What a butt-cheesey buttwipe! And he's shacked up with a vapid, MasterCard-plastic Stepford wife with the mentality of a Barbie doll who passes off Food Network recipes as her own.

Can the GOP do any better than this? Maverick my ass!

8/8/2008 UPDATE: Paris Hilton offers this rebuttal to the McCain ad:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

And Keith Olbermann weighs in on the brouhaha:

If John did to Cindy what he's doing to political discourse.

The Truth Hurts: An MTV Moment That Never Made It Past the Atlantic

2008-08-02T03:47:00.000-07:00

"The truth shall set you free, but it will first piss you off." - GLORIA STEIMEN

Remember when George Michael courted controversy across the Atlantic with his music video "Shoot the Dog," which depicted Dubya as an idiot and Tony Blair as his lapdog?

George Michael - Shoot the dog
Uploaded by johann1984

You watch the music video. You decide...once you finally figured the math.

From Zell Hell It Came...

2008-07-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

Credit: LA Observed/Deadline Hollywood Daily

And to Zell Hell the L.A. Times should go!

It's a matter of time before investigative reporters who bring the disinfective power of sunlight to remedy socio-political and industrial diseases become mere stenographers in the proverbial steno pool for corporate media shills, who put words in their mouths like ventriloquist dummies.

Where's the likes of Otis Chandler and Katherine Graham now when we need them?

Born With a Silver Foot in His Mouth: Michael Savage Viciously Savages Austitic Children

2008-07-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.'"

With that inflammatory statement, right-wing shock jock Michael Savage managed to shock and horrify concerned parents of autistic children, members of Congress, and decent citizens -- all in one fell swoop. The outrage generated by Savage's comments resulted in an avalanche of protests that led to Savage's radio show being dropped from the seven-station SuperTalk Mississippi radio network, and AFLAC insurance withdrawing its sponsorship of Savage's program.

And how did Savage respond to all this? By stating, "I stand by my words." Worse, he states he has no intention of apologizing to those advocates and parents who have called for his firing over the matter.

Savage didn't stop there: instead of apologizing to the millions of children and their families living with autism, he falsely recast his controversial comments to claim that they had been taken out of context and by lashing out at Media Matters for America, calling them a "fascist, homosexual mafia group (who) goes out of their way to misquote me, take me out of context, and try to get me in trouble with people who love me."

Anyone who has heard his diatribe on a July 9 rebroadcast should not be surprised at all, given the inflammatory comments he made on the air:

"Here, remember two weeks ago, I said to you that autism is a phony disease? Do you remember I said that to you? That how could so many children suddenly have it and there be an autism epidemic? In my day, if a kid was a troublemaker, he was a troublemaker. If he shot his mouth off in a classroom, he wasn't called autistic, he was called a pain in the neck. They sent him to a special school for pains in the neck. Now he needs medication. He's got autism.

[A] lot of it [autism] is a racket to collect disability payments from the government, from basically poorer families who've found a new -- a new way to -- to be parasites on the government, which is if -- if you want to collect a little money and get free medical care, you want to get the kid to take tests with help where the answers are given to him before he takes it, just say he's got an illness -- ADD, DDD, ASA. To me, there is one disease that they all have; it's called S-T-U-P-I-D. That's the main illness most of these kids have.

There's not that many children. What it is, it's a racket. It's the drug companies trying to sell a disease. And the American Academy of Pediatrics, I oughta tell you -- the sickest, just the sickest doctors in the country is the American Academy of Pediatrics. They want every child screened -- screened by the age of 2. "Put them on this. Put them on that."

How nauseating! Is that man on crack? What a complete asshole this jerk is!

As Rory O'Connor obsserves on AlterNet:
"Experts estimate that about 1 in 150 children have some form of autism. Telling them and their parents that it's all just a racket to make money -- as a means of enriching yourself, your distributors and your sponsors -- is beneath contempt."

She goes on to add, "One statement, taken out of context? Hardly! Like Don Imus and others of his ilk, Savage is a serial if cowardly transgressor who regularly uses hate speech to attack homosexuals, minorities, women and foreigners in the most vitriolic manner imaginable. He once told a gay caller to his (thankfully canceled) MSNBC cable program, "Get AIDS and die, you pig!" He said CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Larry King "together look like the type that would have pushed Jewish children into the oven to stay alive one more day to entertain the Nazis." He equates immigrants with "the junkie, the freak, the pervert." He's so extreme that Bill O'Reilly calls him a "smear merchant," Neal Boortz refers to him as "the Antichrist," and Talkers Magazine publisher Michael Harrison, who recently bestowed an annual Freedom of Speech award upon Savage, says he thinks the man is "an asshole."

No matter how hard Savage tries to obfuscate the issues, the fact remains his words are on the record, his words are clearly directed at children diagnosed with autism, and they were meant to viciously attack them, particularly when they have no means of defending themselves. Instead of publicly apoligizing to those he's insulted, he tries to shift blame and refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

Talk about a head case in need of an extended stay in the rubber room...

And since we're on the subject of autism, let me tell you what is like for a parent to raise an austitic child: It put emotional strains and stress fractures on family relationships, it forces parents to become more assertive and combative in getting proper help and intervention so these children could fully function, and sadly, marriages often break up because of the pressures involved. If you can understand and appreciate what these parents have to go through just so their children could become fully functional, ask Sylvester Stallone, or Doug Flutie, or Jenny McCarthy, or Holly Robinson Peete, or soap actress Sharon Rose Gabet (The Edge of Night), or anyone else whose understands this phenomenon.

As for myself, I have lived for many years with undiagnosed Asperger's, which is a mild variant of autism often referred to as "the geek syndrome" or "the little professor" -- where one is so intellectually gifted yet so socially retarded, as they can't pick up on social or behavorial cues the way normal people do. I spent much of my childhood incarcerated in state mental hospitals, where I was ghettoized in special education classes and medicated with pharmacotheraputics into a anesthetized state where I wasn't allowed to express my emotions or even my humanity. The staff knew I had a brain and even concurred that I didn't even belong there. It took the intervention of a staff psychologist and a social worker to have me placed in a supportive foster care environment and attend a Mennonite high school, where I graduated with pride in 1975. In time, I earned my bachelor's degree in theatre from a Jesuit university where you had to work to earn your degree and followed that up with a M.A. in Theatre. My life may not be as productive as I would like, but I am blessed with having a landlord/roomate who happens to be a registered nurse, and who functions as my advocate when I'm dealing with health care entitites. Trust me, I've been there, I've seen everything, and this is a kind of hell I would never wish on any parent who has to experience this.

This is much more than isolated incident where he despicably assaults autistic children as "frauds" and "brats." Rather, it is a part of a disturbing pattern of behavior where Savage repeatedly sought to demean and disenfranchise those lacking the means of defending themselves.

This is also about the "lean, green almighty dollar. As Rory O'Connor observes, "Everyone involved is getting rich: from top shock jocks like Savage, Rush Limbaugh (who recently signed a new $400 million contract) and Sean Hannity (who recently signed a new deal in excess of $100 million) to local radio stations like New York's WOR (which expressed "regret" over Savage's remarks but took no "responsibility" for them) to national syndicators like Premiere, ABC Radio Networks and the Talk Radio Network (which pushes Savage out to more than 350 radio stations -- and whose CEO, Mark Masters, trumpets the "fearless entrepreneurial environment at TRN" while he fearfully ducks reporters' calls) to advertisers and sponsors (like Home Depot and Anheuser-Busch, which, unlike the estimable AFLAC, continue to advertise on "The Savage Nation"). And let's not forget about the shock jocks' elite enablers, drawn from the upper echelons of the corrupt nexus of Big Media and Big Politics, who sell their political platforms, books and souls in exchange for audience access."

Is there a stronger prejorative that "pathetic?"

Thorazine, please.

Like Beauty, Satire is in the Eye of the Beholder

2008-07-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

Credit: Huffington Post

There was an volcanic eruption of controversy over a cover of the newest issue of The New Yorker, one in where the cover by Barry Blitt, titled "The Politics of Fear," shows Michelle and Barack Obama depicted as the worst of the prejudiced, smearing characterizations that have dogged them over the course of the campaign: Michelle Obama as a revolutionary in military fatigues, packing AK-47 and ammo; her husband dressed like the Muslim he is stubbornly accused of being. Both of them stand in the Oval Office, with a portrait of Osama bin Laden behind them over a fireplace, in which an American flag burns.

Many on both the right and the left attacked the cover as an obvious character smear and a attempt to prey upon and to pander on the worst fears of others. While Andy Ostroy called it "The New Yorker's Willie Horton Incident," Earl Ofari Hutchinson had a more nuanced take on the controversy. In pointing to the proliferation of viciously racist anti-Obama sites sprouting up on the Internet, Hutchinson is quick to point out, "(T)he right to propagate malicious slander and lies hardly qualifies as a free speech protection, let alone legitimate political criticism.

But even as the dust-up over the New Yorker's cover art dominated the televised political roundtables, another incident would have fallen beneath everyone's radar were it not for the expose provided by Media Matters, where this past weekend on The McLaughlin Group, the program's host, John McLaughlin, personality injected racially divisive stereotypes into a discussion of Sen. Obama, asserting that he "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside."

McLaughlin: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"

McLaughlin's statement was so obviously out of touch and inappropriate that two members of the McLaughlin panel refuted the basic premise. Panelist and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Peter Beinart said: "Who knows what Jesse Jackson is thinking? But that's a completely unfair depiction of Barack Obama."

Later in the discussion, Michelle Bernard, MSNBC commentator and President of the Independent Women's Forum, went on to say: "I want to go back to the point you made about whether or not Obama is an Oreo, because if Barack Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of African-Americans is an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people who fought for our rights."

Someone has to hold a mirror up to someone and make them see who they really are in the reflection. Talk about a flock of dodos.

You Are What You Roll in the Hay With?

2008-07-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

Christina Page posted an alarming note in the Huffington Post when she stated that the Department of Health and Human Services, "(I)n a spectacular act of complicity with the religious right...released a proposal that allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception." In doing so, HHS is seeking to define many forms of contraception -- In order to do this, the Department is attempting to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use -- the pill, the patch, the shot, the ring, the IUD, and emergency contraception -- as "abortion," and thus using the law to prohibit federal grant recipients from requiring employees to help provide or refer for "abortion" services, and that would include contraception.

Further, Page goes on to point out: "As the HHS proposal proves, the absence of fact or evidence does not slow anti-abortion movement attempts to classify hormonal contraception as abortion. With HHS' proposal they have struck gold. Anyone working for a federal clinic, or a health center that receives federal funding--even in the form of Medicaid--and would like to prevent a woman from accessing most prescription birth control methods has federal protection to do so...Because the statutes that would be enforced through this regulation seek, in part, to protect individuals and institutions from suffering discrimination on the basis of conscience, the conscience of the individual or institution should be paramount in determining what constitutes abortion, within the bounds of reason. As discussed above, both definitions of pregnancy are reasonable and used within the scientific and medical community. The Department proposes, then, to allow individuals and institutions to adhere to their own views and adopt a definition of abortion that encompasses both views of abortion...Most dangerously, perhaps, this new rule establishes a legal precedent that may eventually be used as a basis for banning the most popular forms of birth control along with what is, in fact, abortion."

Echoing Page's concerns, Track Clark-Flory points out in Salon.com:

"The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control...It is worth restating: The administration wants to ensure that recipients of federal health funding -- including women's clinics -- cannot deny employment based on a refusal to perform abortions or distribute birth control.

She goes on to add: "The proposal could potentially redefine birth control as abortion. The proposal classifies abortion as "any of the various procedures -- including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation." That last part is critical because some argue that hormonal birth control and emergency contraception can prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg."

And in responding to the proposal, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards comments,"As a result, women's ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology"

It's no secret that there are men who fear women taking control of their bodies, and that includes their reproductive systems. So why do you think they're resorting to whatever means necessary to achieve their goals of the moment.

Your tax dollars at work: transforming America into a theocracy. That's what happens when your politicians and their sycopahants hop into the fourposter and do the horizontal fox-trot with theocratic political sacraprostitutes.

Pathetic. Period.