Fox Hunting in America
Imagine if you will.
The Democratic Party creates a successful media outlet that promotes
only Democratic Party views using highly-biased news reporting and a lineup of non-news programs that supplement its self-titled "fair and balanced" news.
I can't believe for one second that representatives of the Republican Party would legitimize this network by appearing on this outlet's one-sided programs or by being interviewed by their less-than-objective reporters and anchors.
Yet for nine years I've watched Democrats, progressives, liberals and others continuously legitimize Fox News by appearing on that channel while Brit Hume, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Carl Cameron and an array of other ethically-challenged
journalists continue to promote the political views of founder, Republican strategist Roger Ailes, and funder, conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
I don't believe that we can ever insist on higher journalistic standards in the mainstream media without starting to campaign against Fox News, the American version of Pravda; the old USSR's state-controlled media.
I don't know what motivates Democratic politicians to appear on Fox, but their appearances are a bizarre and rather sad form of masochism. Perhaps it's just the overwhelming need for politicians to talk to the media...any media, but these acts of self-flagellation must stop!
Now, we hear that Fox News is about to begin producing the news for a number of Fox's local stations. This will mean a sea change in television news. Rather than being limited to the one smaller cable channel, Fox wingnut values and opinions will
soon be broadcast to much larger broadcast stations in the nation's biggest media markets.
It's time for all who value true, objective public discourse to start fighting against Fox's well-established political and cultural biases. I've written to Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean about this issue, but it's up to all of us to let our Senators and Representatives know that their appearances on Fox News programs does nothing but undermine and debase not only the Democratic Party, but democracy itself.
Maybe it's the water
Have you noticed how many certifiably insane statements are made these days by politicians, media types and even religious leaders?
Just this week we had Bill O'Reilly wishing for a terrorist attack on San Francisco. I guess that is the one city the Right feels comfortable about making such outrageous statements about. If he had said the same thing about New York...or Dallas...or Washington D.C., I wonder if he'd ever be able to visit that city again without a good horse-whipping.
But instead, gay, liberal and evil is the bottom line for the 3/4 million souls as far as the O'Reillys of the world are concerned. Therefore, who more than San Franciscans deserve to be target of terrorism more?
But let's be realistic here. Bill O'Reilly is a low-life slug and most reasonable people know it.
The same thing goes for the most despicable "representative" of Jesus Christ in the nation...and maybe the world: Marion "Pat" Robertson. Actually the title of "Most Despicable" has always been the special recognition given to the "God Hates Fags" pastor, Fred Phelps. But Marion is trying his utmost best to take over the title.
So this week, in his usual role as sole spokesman for the Almighty, he condemned the town of Dover, Pennsylvania to natural and eternal damnation because they "voted God out" of their town. Actually they voted out the 8 brain-dead morons who wanted to teach the other kind of science in their schools...you know: science fiction.
I'm wondering if all those Doverites who still believe in "Creationism" and it's stealthy brother, "Intelligent Design" will have advanced warning of the devasation to come...or will they just have to suffer for the mortal sins of their neighbors. Oh well, apparently that's the way Robertson's maliciously petty god plays it. Does anyone really want a bastard like that as their Supreme Deity? I sure as hell don't!
Okay, I know that Ann Coulter, Jerry Falwell, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and scores of other wingnuts have gotten media attention for similar crazy rantings in the past, but there seems to be an real sense of desperation in these recent ones.
Could it be that even with Fox News' domination of the cable news channels, and the 700 Club's constant prayers for money (oh, and for our nation), Bush's overwhelming failures are finally sinking into the national consciousness? Hmmmm....could be.
It certainly appears more and more that the great and shining path the neocons and Radical Right set America on is looking as dangerous and untravelable as is the infamous highway from Baghdad Airport to the city's Green Zone.
In my dreams I see all our favorite preachers, corporate businessmen, authors, media spokesmen and politicians traveling down that highway together...one loathesome and highly-vulnerable pile of human garbage.
Then I wake up and realize that it's kids barely out of their teens who are taking that journey. And they're doing it because they believe in something the hypocrites and chickenhawks who sent them there don't.
They believe that the thing we've all grown up to believe about our "good and just" society might not seem all that possible or imminent at times like these, but it still seems like a worthy cause to live...and to die for.
My Lai - Redux?
For those of us old enough to remember the shame of our military's use of napalm against Vietnamese civilians, the
Italian news report showing the results of our destruction of Fallujah late last year, returns us to a horror we thought we'd put out of our minds decades ago.
While the apparent use of incendiary white phosphorus, or "Whisky Pete" as it's known in the military, isn't chemically akin to the jellied gasoline known as napalm, its effects on the human body are just as horrific as images shown in the report disturbingly attest to.
The Pentagon immediately
denied any use of white phosphorus chemical weapons against Iraqi civilians, yet the highly-sanitized coverage of the war using only
embedded journalists has done little to keep the real picture of this war from emerging...albeit slowly and belatedly.
When the entire premise of war is fabricated upon lies and political intrigue, the need for stealth and secrecy at every level of operation is intensified.
Let anyone who calls himself or herself a moral person look at this news report and not ask this:
How can a nation call itself a
beacon of good when evil such as this rains down on innocent people from that nation's highest levels?
Tom Terrific's Texas Twist
In the continuing saga, Strange Tales of Texas Justice, a semi-retired judge in Texas has now expanded on the concept "trial of your peers" to mean that judges who preside over the trials of politicians must apparently be members of that politician's own political party.
For Tom Delay, this is just what he wanted, since his own extreme political partisanship has him believing that no judge without Delay's christo-fascist-maniacal beliefs can possibly possess the integrity to judge him impartially.
Without question, the toxins Tom Terrific inhaled during his years as Sugarland's premier bug exterminator have caused a great deal of damage to his mental processes, but like so many psychotic celebrities and power mongers in history, those who fear Delay's insanity would rather give in to his ravings than risk the wrath of the madman.
Bush's run for the border
The war of words between George W. Bush and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
escalated over the weekend and was a study in contrast between the two personalities.
The odd hybrid swagger and sneer of the Ivy League-educated but West Texas-bred Bush played against the Latino passion and machismo of Chavez, a man brought up in a poor Venezuelan barrio.
And for a change, America's paper-trained press corps wasn't able to present Chavez as colored by the
Bush Administration's spin: that of a raving Marxist, drug-dealing, evil bosom buddy of the hated Fidel Castro.
To be a part of the volatile minefield that is South American politics, it takes more than swagger and tough talk to stay in power. And while five years of Bushism have taken our nation much closer to the kind of have vs.have-not economy so prevalent in Central and South America, it has yet to completely destroy the liberal foundation this country was founded upon.
So when a Hugo Chavez or Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva came to power with the overwhelming backing of the have-nots of their countries, the corporations that created the inequality get very nervous.
Our shame is that the United States has never stood behind those who want to bring real economic change to our American neighbors, but instead have always stood behind and -- in the case of our CIA -- often ahead of the forces trying to relieve the suffering of the poor and exploited masses.
This happened in Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973 in Panama in 1955 and again possibly in 1981, and in Venezuela in 2002, when Hugo Chavez' government was overthrown in a coup financed and backed by the United States' CIA and other agencies. In the last case, Chavez was returned to power in three days and has understandably railed against George Bush ever since.
This weekend, at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, Chavez got a little of his own back when George Bush failed to get the biggest nations in the region to back his latest plan Free Trade initiative to benefit the big corporations he represents in his position as CEO President.
In the kind of boisterous bravado well-known and widely-accepted in the region, Chavez called Bush "the big loser"; something most Americans are finally coming to terms with.
In a typical display of Bush doublethink, he declared today that
"the U.S. model of democracy is based on the power of individual freedoms and integration into the global community, whereas other countries in the region "divide into factions and dwell on old grievances, which risks sliding back into tyranny."
As the Bush Administration tries to extricate itself from a unilateral war in Iraq that divided the world and at the same time pushes for allowing the kind of torture Right Wing dictators have always used, he continues to try to convince the world that his "model of democracy" is a shining example for the family of nations. I think many people in Florida and Ohio would take issue with that statement.
One thing is for certain, however. The "fat, little dark-skinned nobody" from Venezuela has made a powerful enemy in George Bush. I'm sure that the sycophants and yes-men who cater to his every political whim will send out their missives to the appropriate agencies telling them that whatever plans they've had to depose Chavez are now full-go.
Venezuela's internal insurgents will find more money coming their way. US Naval Forces off Venzezuela's coast will be put on increased alert and the American mainstream news media will suddenly become privy to more and more "deep background information" that will show Chavez to be an increasing threat to the stability of the region.
Bush desperately wants to leave his presidency with some kind of success. And like our involvement in 1973 in the overthrow and assassination of Chilean President Salvador Allende -- a similar kind of populist working to solve the great inequities of wealth in his country -- I fully expect this war of words to increase until Bush's press minions and talking mouths have convinced a majority of Americans that Chavez indeed is a danger to not only his own people, but to US.
Hypocrisy, thy name is religion.
It's hard to fathom the kind of mind-bending hypocrisy it takes for a "follower of Christ" to be an advocate for a war as immoral as that being waged in Iraq, but the history of christianity is rife with examples of actions that I believe would make Christ weep.
Nevertheless, I find it fascinating that as soon as there is a story of IRS harassment of a church in which the pastor delivered an anti-war sermon, there is an immediate expression of outrage and support for the pastor by the National Association of Evangelicals.
I would think that this organization -- consisting primarily of bedrock Bush backers and Iraq war supporters -- would applaud the use of a governmental agency to silence anti-war traitors.
But their concern certainly isn't one of freedom of speech, but more likely freedom of commerce. The tax exemptions for religious churches and organizations are held more sacred by many religious than any words of Christ advocating love, peace and tolerance.
As for churches becoming involved in politics, ostensibly the reason for the IRS "investigations", it seems that during every election year we hear about the so called "voter guides" passed out in conservative churches by the millions.
While I'm sure that no overt candidate support is ever given to the faithful occupying the pews by their ministers, the mere hint that the IRS would question an institution's tax-exempt status must scare the bejeesus out of our godly servants of Christ.
Best to nip this development in the bud. After all, it doesn't look like Bush's promise to return this nation to God is really going anywhere. What if, God forbid, the soulless Democrats get back into power. Why they could use the IRS for their own evil purposes and challenge the tax-exempt status of a great many churches and faith-based organizations!
So while politics can certainly make strange bedfellows, it seems that the potential loss of revenue to evil taxation can bring
all God's chosen spokesmen together.
