Pointing Fingers

Election 2008: John McCain

Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez, the talented mind behind www.theunapologeticmexican.com recently wrote about The Barely Concealed and Uncongealed Rage of McCain.

"Smiling while talking about kicking Jon Stewart's dog? Joking about putting an IED under a comedian's desk? Why were those "jokes" so uncomfortable? Because they are shadows of murderous rage. Because they reflect the fury he boils with when someone smartly suggests everything isn't so—ahem—black and white as he paints it."

Mr. Xolagrafik-Jonez is certainly not alone in his assessment.

When McCain began pandering to the likes of Bob Jones University, Jerry Falwell and their ilk, my stomach turned.

His frequent appearances on and sucking up to Don Imus over the years, stirred my bile.

After he compromised on an unequivocal condemnation of torture and he birdie-flipped the Geneva Conventions, I projectile vomited at the very sight of him.

Was he dipping into his wife’s Vicodin jar? Could the damage done during his captivity have been more deep-rooted than we all realized?

Or could it be that for just a brief moment in time, I had bought into the notion of him being a maverick, seduced by his challenges to Emperor Bush?

When someone lies, obfuscates and flip-flops, suddenly everything else authentic becomes suspect.

Was he really tortured? Did he really refuse to furnish his captors with information? The problem with his ever-shifting positions is that nothing he says carries weight anymore. Simply utterances of expedience and convenience.

I wrote the following about John McCain back in his 2000 run for President, also focusing on his barely concealed rage. Not much has changed.

[McCain] up a good fight, but in the end, no one really cared about the Vietnam POW hero days he milked to death - and then some. In a culture so superficial most of us barely remember Monica Lewinsky, his long-winded gush on campaign finance reform proved to be such a bore that a Texas billionaire graciously and altruistically alleviated our collective boredom (although short-lived) by financing an attack ad on McCain's environmental record and making the Vietnam vet loose his temper. His public outburst all but ruined the vein-popping restraint he exercised during a debate where Alan Keyes attacked him on his abortion record. Addicted to the politics of fighting, like his wife Cindy, he just did not know when to say No.

Harsh and unfair as it sounds, John McCain is too old and too disfigured to be elected President. America elects politicians who look good on TV and who pretend to care about children. But even if we were a more mature, more sophisticated electorate, would we really elect a man who jokes about bombing a country, when indeed he would have just such power?

Unfortunately, probably, yes.

See the entire profile with media, quotes, etc.

Total Recall

Resignation Seems to Be the Hardest WordBy Alberto Gonzales(Sung to the tune of 'Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word')

What have I got to do to make you fire me?
What do I have to do if I don’t care?
What do I have to do if no one trusts me
And I can't remember when or why or where?

What do I have to do if no one believes me?
What if the truth just simply won't be heard?
What if faith in me is non existent
And resignation seems to be the hardest word?

It’s bad, so bad
It’s a bad, bad situation
And although my memory’s blurred
It’s sad, so sad
My tenure’s never over
Oh it’s clear to me
That resignation seems to be the hardest word

What can prosecutors do to keep on working?
What self-integrity cost will be incurred?
What is it I do? What did I say to who
When resignation seems to be the hardest word?

NBC: Bringing Decency Back

The famous ACT UP refrain that galvanized a movement was “Silence = Death”.

Despite a reputation for silence worthy of a monk, Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui, who peers and roommates say rarely uttered a word, let rip in a frightening, rambling, multimedia diatribe that he mailed off to NBC mid-massacre.

His perceived isolation and feelings of victimization (as a million talking heads have concluded, verified perhaps by his own contributions) fomented an intense rage that he silently withheld until Monday.

His criticism and blaming of “rich kids” with “trust funds” and “debauchery” combined with his identifying with the Columbine killers revealed a resentment that might have resulted from either having been bullied or ignored because he didn’t fit in.

Yet, aside from obliterating Don Imus from the news cycle, (suggesting that had he committed this violent massacre two weeks ago, Don Imus would still be filling the airwaves with his own brand of hate and invective), he might still provide some insight as to why certain hate speech (not of the politically correct variety, but genuine threatening and fighting words that provoke violence) can have an impact that is far more dangerous than offending Al Sharpton.

As if to illustrate what the killer might have been feeling, The Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported that the killer was a 24-year-old Chinese student who arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai. (Atlantic Unbound’s James Fallows has documented the subsequent “Orwellian” cleansing of The Chicago Sun-Times’ web site to remedy the gaffe that sent shockwaves through China.) Chinese, Asian, Oriental, Korean. What’s the difference? The same thinking that Don Imus and his gang would spout about all Muslims being “stinking ragheads.”

Tart columnist Maureen Dowd is seldom at a loss for words, but her silence over the firing of Don Imus was in stark contrast to the embarrassing attempts to justify his tacit endorsement by another New York Times Imus enabler, Frank Rich – a frequent guest on the show.

Yes, Rich admitted to being a hypocrite, but defended Imus on the basis that Imus was an equal-opportunity offender, railing against Jews (like Frank). Comparing him to Comedy Central’s Southpark and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, Rich failed to see the difference. Southpark is able to get away with insulting everyone because the creators hold up a mirror that educates and entertains at the same time. Same with Borat. Imus and his gang spew hate for no reason other than to see what they can get away with. Their authentic ugliness is transparent. Yes, still protected, but Rich’s claim that he hadn’t heard or didn’t appreciate the extent of Imus’ invective (or his team including Charles McCord, Sid Rosenberg, Bo Dietl and the other losers who consider themselves comedians with the same self-delusion that Sanjaya Malakar deems himself a singer) suggests that Rich is either disingenuous or an idiot. And the latter, he isn’t.

The Silence of the Dowd, however was also deafening. Perhaps she didn’t have the stomach for having to justify why she would chat with Imus as Bernard McGuirk, his Executive Producer, wondered if Representative Cynthia McKinney had ever had “white man’s jizz on her face,” or specifically referring to Dowd herself, suggested that he would apologize to her for criticizing her with “the tip of my Timberland shoe” after she posited that the Church sex abuse scandal was a pedophilia, rather than a homosexual, problem.

But Maureen Dowd has a right to remain silent, despite how bloody her hands are. Far less excusable was NBC’s Tim Russert on Meet the Press Sunday, where he squirmed so uncomfortably that even I felt sorry for him. Washington Post’s Gwen Ifill, who Imus once gallantly referred to as a “cleaning lady” thankfully did not allow Russert or David Brooks (yet another New York Times Imus enabler) to get away with their lame attempts to try and compare Don Imus to Snoop Dogg or feign indignation over McGuirk’s portrayal of Cardinal Egan (perhaps the most authentic McGuirk ever was).

This isn’t about words, it’s about context. Hell, even Ann Coulter knows that.

So in the name of decency (also known as lost advertising revenue), Don Imus was fired by NBC, who claimed that they wanted to work toward a campaign of common decency that expanded beyond the walls of their news organization with its strained credibility.

That was before they received the “multimedia manifesto” from Cho Seung-Hui.

Now watch how decency looks, grieving families be damned, when advertisers aren’t bolting.

Free Speech, Not Consequences

And so it came to pass that MSNBC, caving to intense pressure, dropped Don Imus from their morning line up. A day later, followed by a meeting with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves, his radio show was killed, essentially ending the career of a man that for years had ruled the airwaves with an unimpeded barrage of bigotry and hate.

Two years ago, I warned MSNBC that Imus was tainting their brand. More than that, I questioned how they could continue to allow Imus to denigrate their journalists, as the media and political elite sustained his platform with appearances on his show.

I am a firm supporter of free speech. I have fought my own First Amendment battles all the way to the United States Supreme Court. I currently serve as President of the Board of First Amendment Project (FAP).

The Don Imus firing is not a First Amendment issue, and this is not a censorship story. Only governments censor.

Imus in the Morning was a ratings and revenue bonanza and despite a despicable slew of misogynist homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Islamic garbage, the executives at both NBC and Universal did nothing for ages.

When this story broke, MSNBC, attempting to shirk responsibility, once more, had the audacity to claim that it was not responsible for the content on the show – that it was merely a simulcast. This, despite the full blown resources of NBC journalists and technology at his disposal.

Amidst intense pressure, both MSNBC and CBS pretended that the internal cacophony of protest is what ultimately led to their decision.

Again, in 2006, in another attempt to draw attention to the damage caused by Imus, I wrote the following in an editorial titled Fox, Henhouses and Chickens:

“Despite his reputation as a provocative, albeit aging, 'shock jock,' MSNBC does a simulcast of Don Imus’ WFAN radio show, 'Imus in the Morning,' which is positioned by MSNBC as a news program, replete with the reporting muscle of NBC News at its disposal.

Despite the childish, sexist, homophobic and racist diatribes that define Imus and his crew, and have caused anchors like Contessa Brewer to cringe in embarrassment before bitter and public feuds separated them on-air forever more (or at least until MSNBC does a reality show about supposed journalists), it’s highly unlikely that a genuine NBC journalist reporting on developments in the Middle East will inspire any sympathy from groups like the 'Holy Jihad Brigades' if they happen to catch Imus referring to Arabs as stinking ragheads with dirty laundry on their heads, as he has done before. (As he sits, ironically, with a gay cowboy hat in New Jersey). Or in the case of the now-fired Imus sportscaster, Sid Rosenberg, who stated on-air that Serena and Venus Williams were best suited posing for National Geographic rather than Playboy and that Palestinians mourning the death of Yasser Arafat were 'stinking animals' upon whom the Israelis 'ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now...' Perhaps it was the crack cocaine talking, but it was neither his drug habits nor that comment that got Rosenberg fired."

I also suggested that as long as hard-working, courageous, idealistic and responsible journalists and reporters remain willfully ignorant of the corporatization of news, and allow and accept equal billing with loud-mouthed shills, spitting deliberate provocations in an increasingly divisive substitution of content for discontent, the remaining shreds of nobility in the profession of journalism will be irreparably damaged and news will forever be defined by shallow attempts to generate ratings and revenue, and to push agendas rather than explain them.

Imus should not have been fired for what he said per se, and certainly not because the new speech nannies, replacing Tipper Gore, Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman, namely Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, demanded it. Let’s get real.

In his own defense, Imus attempted to explain that his comment could not be considered without a broader context. And tried to pass his remark off as a joke. The only problem was that even taken in context, the “joke,” as New York Times’ Bob Herbert summed up on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, was missing a punchline.

Context is important, and so the banning of certain words, regardless of the frame of reference, is an ill-informed solution. And aptly demonstrated by how many times the phrase “nappy headed hos” has been repeated in the telling of this story.

If this was really about journalists and employees at MSNBC and CBS threatening mutiny if the response wasn’t swift and fatal, this would have happened a long time ago. The only reason Imus is off the air, and it’s not a censorship issue, or even relevant whether Imus is really a racist or just playing one for laughs that only he and his cohorts find amusing, is because of the marketplace.

Had American Express Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp. not decided to pull advertising to distance their brands from the show, would MSNBC and CBS really have listened to and acted on the concerns of their journalists and employees? Such concerns didn’t seem to warrant any action before.

Imus made a point of thanking Bigelow Tea for sticking with him. A fabulous tea, mind you. Especially served in the morning with crackers.

Bill Maher, the comedian who was fired by ABC for his controversial remarks about September 11th, said it was sad to see the “swaggering mustang” broken following the implosion of his career.

For me, it wasn’t. Seeing a bullying, arrogant, blowhard brought to his knobby knees by his own making could not happened to a more deserving guy.

Imus still has the right to free speech, and the right to call whoever he wants whatever he wants. With or without appropriate context. But never forget, that speech may well be free, but never free of consequences, and is not guaranteed under the banner of a news organization striving for integrity and journalistic excellence, no matter how far short they have measured.

Who’s Ho?

Oh My God! Who would have guessed?

Thatch-headed shock jock, Don Imus, was suspended by MSNBC and CBS for a whole whopping two weeks following a conversation with resident twerp and Executive Producer, Bernie McGuirk (and on the phone with none other than fired Sid Rosenberg), in which Imus referred women of Rutgers University basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”.

Where to begin with the absurdity? For Imus to be mocking anyone’s hair is as ludicrous as if it was Donald Trump doing it.

But more fascinating, is the sudden controversy, since Imus has been spewing hateful garbage for years and years.

My editorial, Imus and the Flies, detailed the bizarre relationship between Imus and the news properties that wholeheartedly endorse his brand of minority-bashing content, as well as the string of washed-out, yet high profile guests, ranging from John McCain to Tim Russert, who seem to think that turning a blind eye doesn’t taint them with the same filthy brush.

The supposed contrition, aside from reducing Imus to the same stature as Seinfeld comedian Michael Richards, who also apologized with a laughable sincerity and requisite faux pas, underscored the very sentiments he aimed to defuse, which is the real, tragic joke.

News coverage have focused on Imus’ tax-sheltered Imus Ranch, for “Kids with Cancer” or the money he raises for SIDS as a demonstration of how charitable he is, as if that even relates to Imus’ own claim that he’s not a racist. “What I did was make a stupid, idiotic mistake in a comedy context,” he claimed. Hilarious, isn’t it?

Characterizing Imus’ comments as “racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable and unconscionable.” Rutgers women’s basketball coach, C. Vivian Stringer’s response demonstrated the dignity and grace Don Imus will never come close to.

Perhaps as disturbing as Imus' remarks was watching MSNBC’s General Manager, Dan Abrams, attempt to spin that the punishment fits the crime, only after berating the equally minority-offending Fox News, for being hypocritical and playing politics over their reaction to Imus. The fact that genocide existed long before the Third Reich doesn’t make it any more palatable. The comparisons are a baseless deflection that viewers should treat with the same skepticism as they do Imus’ remorse.

Imus also revealed his sincerity, claiming “I may be a white man, but I know that these young women and young black women all through that society are demeaned and degraded by their own black men and that they are called that name.” The apology with the caveat.

Censorship is not the answer. It’s simply a matter of discernment. MSNBC’s initial response – that Imus in the Morning is simply a simulcast is about as disingenuous as it gets. Do they donate the money they generate from the show? Or are they just, well, hos?

In conversations with, ironically, Al Sharpton, and amidst demonstrations led, ironically, by Jesse Jackson, the two run-to male figures on the redemption circuit that appear to represent a whole diverse community of black people, Imus has suggested he might add a black person to his team. Females or better yet, lesbians shouldn’t hold their breath though.

In a race card society, the real whores, (namely the brass at MSNBC and CBS) are far more concerned with ratings and money than who is trampled on in the process. So women and gays can still expect as much deference as the attention the Jews lavished on Mel Gibson’s use of the word “sugartits” in his infamous anti-Semitic, drunk tirade. Ask singer Kylie Minogue just how exactly MSNBC and CBS responded when, following her breast cancer diagnosis, Sid Rosenberg joked: “She won't look so pretty when she's bald with one titty."

Rest assured, misogyny and homophobia are alive and well on Imus in the Morning.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Just Lie

Ann Coulter, the self-professed “patriot” always quick to criticize liberals calls them faggots. General Peter Pace, the fey Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, despite looking like one, (and despite his wife appearing as manly as Ann Coulter), believes he is morally superior.

This Tuesday in the Rose Garden, when asked if he concurs with General Pace’s assertion that gays are immoral, President Bush reiterated his support of the infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy concerning gays in the military stating: “I will not be rendering judgment about individual orientation...I do believe the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy is good policy.”

He also thought invading Iraq on cooked intelligence was a good idea. This is what “good policy” actually looks like.

The first of many disastrous moves by President Clinton, the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was an unworkable compromise passed to appease bigots and avoid the real issue. (And stroke the shattered ego of the uglier, less election-worthy Southern Democrat, Sam Nunn). The military had no other choice than to admit that there were just too many gays in its ranks to argue that gays couldn't serve admirably without admitting that the military was fundamentally unprepared and ineffective as a cohesive unit.

So a flawed policy, that continues to this day, and under which more than 10 000 servicemembers have been discharged, allows an absurd charade to exist, which communicates that although the military knows that gays are rife among their ranks, they don't want to know who.

The military's "Don't Tell" provision, in essence, is designed to prevent straight servicemembers - not from the anguish of knowing that some in their unit are gay, mind you - but rather from discovering who.

The military policy makes no distinction between speech and conduct. A celibate servicemember, even a virgin, professing to be gay will be discharged for homosexual conduct. There exists a rebuttable (no pun intended) presumption that the statement alone will invariably lead to prohibited conduct, and therefore is conduct already.

The military spares no expense in both the implementation and violation of its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Notorious for witch hunts and campaigns to weed out men and women they have spent millions of dollars preparing and training, a mere suggestion, or incorrectly interpreted glance, is enough to trigger an investigation which invariably leads to a discharge.

As President Bush’s Iraq adventure, and General Peter Pace’s stellar performance (under which Abu Ghraib occurred), continue to stretch the military so thin that the United States can no longer use the threat of force as a deterrent against countries like Iran or North Korea, scores of servicemembers are still weeded out and fired for being gay, even if they happen to be translators fluent in Arabic or Farsi, and able to actually interpret intercepted communications.

Even though the "Stop Loss"policy suspends many gay discharges during times of war -- presumably when unit cohesion and morale are the most critical, thus defeating the very purpose of the policy -- discharging servicemembers for their sexual orientation is tantamount to treason. Talk about aiding and abetting Al Qaeda's strategies.

Worse, in order to meet dismal recruiting numbers in all branches of the service, the military has lowered the standards of potential recruiters to include those who have not completed high school as well as felons. Even straight servicemembers who might have supported the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy are proving to be allies of those in favor of lifting the ban, correctly asserting that they place a higher premium on someone who shoots straight than who is straight. Particularly if the choice is between someone who happens to be gay versus an idiot or a criminal.

But like the Abu Ghraib scandal, the rot seems to trickle down from the top. Peter Pace’s sentiments are reflected in an email message sent by Army Recruiter Sergeant Marcia Ramode to Corey Andrew, a black, openly gay, potential recruit, suggesting he “go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo limbo tango and wango dance and jump around and prance and run all over the place half naked there and practice your gay morals over there...”

In spite of the difficult and bitter war, poorly prosecuted, those that oppose openly gay servicemembers in the military (Turkey and the United States being the only NATO countries banning openly gay servicemembers) claim that the presence of openly gay soldiers constitutes a threat to unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. So rather than encouraging an environment based on trust – the essential ingredient for unit cohesion – the policy requires that a servicemember lie, even to a superior officer, if “asked” about their sexual orientation. “Don’t Tell,” means exactly what it says. Under any circumstances.

Never mind, "Don't Ask." The question we should be asking, is whether a policy designed to create liars is supposed to foster trust and bolster military readiness? Does denying truthful expression of one's core identity -- fomenting a climate of suspicion that requires lying to create a false impression that hidden truths will make any difference in a combat situation -- engender unit cohesion?

Lie, cheat, deceive or trick your comrades -- or be discharged.

Is it any wonder that this lying President thinks “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a “good policy”?

Bullshit 2.0

Writer’s block.

It sounds pathetic in this day and age. In a world where every Tom, Dick and Harry is frantically typing his every waking thought, the quaint notion of writer’s block seems like a poor excuse of sorts.

For the last month I have been back in South Africa, the land of my birth and where I was raised. After more than ten years of writing about every political, cultural or social phenomenon, I found -- and find -- myself wordless.

Although I specifically allowed myself to slip into a mode of observation only – to simply absorb what was going on around me, every now and again I would have an overwhelming urge to spit something out.

Dick Cheney’s remark about anti-war sentiments aiding an Al Qaeda strategy; Alberto Gonzales’ atrocious abuse of the position of Attorney General; Thabo Mbeki’s incomprehensible policy of “quiet diplomacy” with a sick and demented dictator named Robert Mugabe, who deserves his place at the table with Hitler and Idi Amin. Yet just one paragraph into the outage, the words would evaporate, leaving me with a hundred opening paragraphs but not one full-fledged anything.

And everything I wanted to say was already being said a million times over by a zillion different people in a gazillion different ways anyway. Global, multilingual interpretations of prepackaged press releases by desperate publicists about their desperate clients.

With an avalanche of verbiage spewing faster and more furiously than green house gas emissions on a Texan highway, I felt myself being drowned in a cacophony of self-absorbed trivia masquerading as the new information pipeline. User-generated crap. The empty promise of Web 2.0.

Communities of like-minded communities linked to like-minded communities of like-minded people for like-minded discussions about like-minded subjects concerning like-minded consumption of like-minded products in like-minded earnestness for like-minded drones to inform like-minded sheep with like-minded generosity about like-minded everything so that like-minded beneficiaries can wallow in like-minded individuality.

Bullshit 2.0.

For every deed, a million analyses; for every sentence, a million deconstructions. Blogs begetting blogs, begetting social networks, begetting conversations and commentaries. Comments about comments for comments, responses for responses about responses. Words tripping over words to embellish words about words. Sentences about sentences, broken down into keywords and efficiently retagged into categories and subjects to be repurposed and rehashed and replayed and redeployed. An over-bloated, over-tagged, over-stuffed, over-sub-categorized, over-rated, over-extended, over-hyped, overload of over-analyzed, over-distributed, over-offered, over-done overstatement -- over and over and over again.

I am part of the problem. I read it, feed on it, absorb it, process it, analyze it, regurgitate it and piss it back. As if somehow, my own bullshit filter transforms the same old, tired garbage into fresh, new, insightful, meaningful, and appropriate pearls of infinite wisdom, cast before grateful, appreciative, deserving, underserved swine.

Maybe this is the unblock. The verbal diuretic that opens the flow. The release of the clog so that the excrement can flow free again.

I am back. Aren’t you lucky?