Pointing Fingers

Speak Freely, Tracy Morgan

 
Because I'm known as a First Amendment purist and activist, I've received a number of messages and questions regarding Tracy Morgan and the First Amendment. I think it's worth expressing the following.

First and foremost, only a government can censor speech. Organizations such as NBC also enjoy a First Amendment right to express themselves, and as a private corporation can legally choose to deny someone a voice on their media properties if they so choose. And while we refer to it as corporate censorship, it is not really censorship at all in the context of the First Amendment.

Tracy Morgan is protected by the First Amendment. And while some may argue that his diatribe crossed the line into inciting violence, such a shouting fire in a crowded theater, it would not meet the strict standards that are applied that guarantee us our First Amendment protections.

That said, the First Amendment right to freely express oneself does not mean that speech is without consequence. Eminem can sing homophobic and misogynist lyrics, and the targets of his expression can just as loudly and freely berate him, mock him, pity him and boycott him.

Anti-gay organizations can spew their vile hatred under the guise of morality or religion, but it doesn't mean they won't be ripped a new one for it.

Tracy Morgan has the right to say whatever he wants about how he feels about gay people. That does not mean he has the right to be employed by NBC or Tina Fey if he crosses a line that either displeases them or reflects badly on them.

Rush Limbaugh can make as many racist, vile and ugly statements as he likes. It doesn't mean he is protected from it being attributed to a pathalogical, racist, vile, bloated Oycontin addict.

Ann Coulter can say that if she had a gay child she would tell the child he or she was adopted. And we can say that if Ann Coulter told a child she was a mother, the child could, and most likely would, say he or she was adopted.

As public figures shoot their mouths (and themselves in the foot), and laws that tackle hate speech are being crafted in congress, we need to be careful to make sure that context, mood and occasion are incorporated into how expression is assessed and managed as opposed to blanket condemnations of words.

Nigger, faggot and other epithets have an important historical relevance, and the outright ban of those words would be chilling and dangerous. We can't teach why these words hurt and sting without being able to use and reference them.

While it may be really tempting to silence people like Tracy Morgan, Mel Gibson, or Michael Richards, the best way to counter the lies and the hatred they spread is through countering misinformation. That means more, intelligent, constructive expression that neutralizes -- or better nullifies -- the original speech , not less expression.

Tracy Morgan may yet learn the hard way just why the kind of garbage he spews in unacceptable (not to mention unamusing and ignorant). In terms of fans, job opportunities, and goodwill, to name a few. But he still has a First Amendment right to express himself, as do all Americans.

Just because we have free speech does not mean it is without cost.

My weakness for flash mobs....

Pat Robertson: A Shake You Deserve

 
On Wednesday, January 13, 2009, the senile televangelist, Pat Robertson, reacted to the earthquake in Haiti on the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club" by relaying the following story:

“You know ... something happened a long time ago in Haiti. … They got together and swore a pact to the Devil…They said, 'We will serve you if you get us free from the French.' True story."

As if setting up a story blaming the people of Haiti for the tragedy that had just befallen them wasn’t enough, he added:

“And so, the Devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out…You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

Amazingly, this loose cannon exhibiting a toxic blend of delusional senility and deep-seated hatred spewed under the guise of religion is still afforded respect by some and offered a platform for this kind of rhetoric by the Christian Broadcasting Network by virtue of his founding of it in 1960. Although Robertson resigned as chief executive of CBN in 2007, he was succeeded by his son, Gordon.

This is by no means the first time he has embarrassed people of the Christian faith, and more broadly, Americans, who have seen his ignorance and stupidity broadcast around the globe as if representative of people of sound mind.

He, along with “Reverend” Jerry Falwell, blamed the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 on liberals, feminists and gays, and the wrath of Hurricane Katrina on abortionists. True stories.

Robertson, who dropped his real first name, Marion, because he felt it too effeminate, has long spewed anti-gay rhetoric, the reasons of which are obvious without requiring more than a rudimentary understanding of Freudian philosophy. His credibility took a pounding in a presidential bid in 1988, when his bragging about his service as a combat Marine in the Korean War was contradicted by other Marines in his battalion who claimed he didn’t serve a single day in combat and that his primary responsibility was providing alcoholic beverages to officers.

His plagiarized anti-Semitic rants about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and approval of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, lifted from the works of Nesta Webster and Eustace Mullins, did little to help his credibility, although mainstream media organizations continued, and still continue, to seek his perspective on anything relating to cultural mores.

However, the demented manifestation of his apocalyptic delusions notwithstanding, Robertson is as shrewd a businessman as he would have you believe the Jews he despises are, for the same reasons. An investigation by the State of Virginia in 1994 revealed his tight relationship with Liberian president Charles Taylor through his Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, an entity through which Robertson acquired rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia.

The investigation also included testimony revealing that Robertson lied to his The 700 Club viewers, claiming Operation Blessing planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda, when in fact they were being used to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia.

This is particularly relevant in light of Robertson’s most recent remarks concerning the earthquake in Haiti. Not only does he blame the earthquake on Haitians “making a pact with the devil,” but the premise of the pact he feels deserves God's wrath, was the move by Haitians in order to liberate themselves from the French slave owners.

Rather than apologize, a spokesman for CBN, Chris Roslan, released a statement that sought to justify Robertson’s remarks:

“His comments were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Boukman Dutty at Bois Caiman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French. This history, combined with the horrible state of the country, has led countless scholars and religious figures over the centuries to believe the country is cursed. Dr. Robertson never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath.”

Pat Robertson’s homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist verbiage could be taken as nothing more than the delusional ranting of an old man beset by fear and senility. Yet his lust for blood diamonds at the expense of Rwandan genocide victims, his deliberate lying to viewers of The 700 Club, and his callous accusation against millions suffering a tragedy of monumental proportions on the basis of their quest for freedom from slavery, suggests a more insidious and ugly agenda.

Anyone wishing to help the victims in Haiti had best think twice before funneling money or resources through anything affiliated with Pat Robertson, Operation Blessing Disaster Relief, The 700 Club or the Christian Broadcasting Network.

When you have Pat Robertson praying for you, the best an orphaned Haitian child can expect while lying injured and dying of thirst is not a lovingly administered sip of clean water, but rather a callous opportunity to buy one of his weight-loss shakes…if, of course, the child has the money.

That’s how Pat Robertson rolls.

Fuck You Holidays from The Gap

I happened to push pause whilst watching a recording of an episode of Glee (yes, I watched it), and voila!! the Holidays cover for December/January 2010 for Annoy.com was born. No manipulation needed. Thanks Gap. Fuck you too!

We Came, We Pissed, We Desecrated

Remember that looting of the Iraq National Museum back in 2003?

American servicemembers were so busy helping Iraqis chop down and destroy statues of Saddam Hussein, they ignored the looting of people’s private possessions and Iraq’s greatest riches, as treasures from the Iraq National Museum housing ancient priceless Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian collections and rare collections of Islamic texts were carted off in wheelbarrows.

As marines peed in golden toilets in Saddam’s palaces, posing for cameras lounging on expensive furniture, and while Secretary Rumsfeld scornfully derided as “exaggerated” the already-too-late media reporting of the looting (missed almost entirely by the networks giddily repeating footage of the toppling statues), the renowned museum was emptied leaving nothing but shattered glass and broken pottery bowls littering its floors.

The cradle of ancient civilization destroyed and plundered by modern barbarians under the banner of liberation.

Enter, six years later, Google…

Hate is Enough

The Campaign that Dare Not Speak its Name.

On November 4th, California voters will be given an opportunity to amend the constitution, reversing a decision by the state legislature that legalized gay marriage in California on the basis that depriving homosexuals of the right to marry a partner of their choosing is unconstitutional. And so was born Proposition 8. Authored and supported by the usual pseudo-religious suspects with shitloads of cash from out-of-town, out-of-state Mormons and bigots, whose fragile, sexless institutions are somehow gravely threatened by two people of the same gender, who they don’t know.

So naturally, to counter the proposition, the No on 8 campaign was born. Back in the days, not all that long ago, your gays were firmly in the closet. Remember? Yet, as preposterous as it is that in 2008 you would have people actually giving a damn about the private lives of others, more unbelievable is the closeted strategy executed by the No on 8 campaign.

Despite sizable and well publicized donations from the likes of Brad Pitt, I am certainly not the first to observe that every advertisement for No on 8 has been disturbingly free of gays. Author Armistead Maupin compared one of them to a parody of a tampon commercial. Activist Michael Petrelis lamented the absence of gay people in any of the ads on his blog Petrelis Files.

One ad shows a heterosexual couple married for 48 years, expressing the unfairness that their lesbian daughter would be deprived of the right to marry her partner. Another slaps quotes from various newspaper editorials and organizations concluding: “No on 8. Unfair. Unnecessary. And wrong.” And in another, a woman helps another distraught woman “overcome” her fear about two women marrying, urging her to to vote no in spite of her discomfort.

In short, aside from being gay-free, these ads are quite possibly the most boring, unimaginative 30 second spots I have ever had to suffer though.

"I think folks got a little lazy as a result of polls that were very old and taken before the other side went on air," Patrick Guerriero, (who recently joined the No on 8 campaign), told a local rag, the Bay Area Reporter, regarding the No on 8 campaign's difficulty attracting donors, and in response to the opponents far more effective ads that use fear, smear and misinformation (including one with poster boy, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, telling Californians gay marriage will happen “whether you like it or not,” and another warning that young children will be taught that it’s okay for people of the same sex to marry one another, as a young girl carrying a book,"King and King” informs her frantic mother she plans to marry a princess ).

Guerriero claimed the No on 8 campaign "felt it was time to hit back and hit back hard. Enough is enough, really."

His response to the lack of gays and lesbians in the No on 8 ads? “The campaign just sent out a direct mail piece across the state with a picture of a lesbian woman who tells her story, letting voters know that "she's on the ballot, she's your neighbor."

Oh the power. God forbid anyone was exposed to a gay couple in an ad supporting gay marriage. You know, intimating that lesbians couples actually exist, and, Jesus save us, have sex. Nope, the sexless, partnerless lesbian neighbor. Did they include a cat? All that’s missing is the refrain: “I am Suze Orman, and I approve this message.”

Unless I’m missing something, to borrow a momentary lucid metaphor from John McCain, the No on 8 campaign’s “hitting back and hitting hard” is about “as strong as nailing jello to a wall.” Whatever happened to the good old stereotype that gays are supposedly artistic and creative? Never mind tampon commercial parodies, these ads are the equivalent of depicting a flaccid penis for a Viagra commercial. That never quite rises to the occasion.

If Prop 8 is defeated, it will be because of people like my dear friend Doug Okun, sending emails to vote No on 8 to his friends and family with a photo of himself with his husband Eric and twin daughters, Sophia and Elizabeth, that communicate more than any of the millions spent on these crappy, closeted advertisements being generated by the No on 8 campaign.

Doug’s message, urging people to vote, encourage others to vote and donate to the No on 8 campaign is personal and effective:

“In California this election year we are battling against a ballot initiative that would take away the right for same sex couples to marry. The proponents of Proposition 8 are outspending us substantially, largely fueled by out of state money raised at the urging of the Mormon church.

This is a huge issue for us, and a very personal one for Sophia, Elizabeth, Eric and myself. We won't get into the particulars and arguments here, but if you'd like to do so, we'd be happy to discuss it with you. This is an historic moment, and every one of us has the opportunity to influence its outcome. Please help make sure they don’t take this away from us!”

And their picture paints a thousand words. The No on 8 campaign could learn a thing or two. Or is it too late?

There's Something About Sarah

It’s not the freakish, shrill non-answers she gives in the few not-quite interviews by not even close to journalists. It’s not the hard core fundamentalism, sugar-coated to create an illusion that she supported her unmarried teenage daughter’s “choice” to carry her fetus to term, when she would have insisted on it regardless -- even if the father was her husband, who had raped her. After making her pay for the sex assault kit. And firing anyone who sought funding to cover the costs for said rape kits.

It’s not her inability to avoid sounding like a malfunctioning former beauty pageant contestant robot when responding to questions about serious topics around foreign policy experience -- by regurgitating talking points about mavericks. Like Senator McCain is a maverick, Charlie, and like world peace, like, such as.

It’s not her strong affinity to pastor Thomas Muthee and the Assembly of God Church, parading their tragically comical “former gays’” for whom all powerful God, apparently in between warding off evil, car accident-causing witches, is able to cure of homosexual urges, although seemingly incapable of curing their limp wrists. A sad testament to the inefficacy of lisping in tongues.

It’s not her Greta Van Susteren moistening[1] husband, the “First Dude” of Alaska, Todd, wrecking the Tundra while the underage kids binge drink and snort Oxycontin, nor the precision with which she was able to strong-arm the supposed father of her child’s child, a self-described child-averse redneck, from a carefree hockey playing teenager into a brooding, neutered mute destined to loathe and resent and blame Bristol for the rest of his life for her mother’s commitment to someone else’s at the expense of his.

It’s not the over-amped, Aderall fueled, slightly manic data dump that all but immersed debate moderator Gwen Ifill, who McCain suggested had racist intentions based on her writing of a book about Obama, perhaps in an unsuccessful attempt to distract those of us who remember his buddy, Don Imus, referring to Ifill as a “cleaning lady.” McCain would make sure Sarah wasn’t intimidated by any nappy-headed hos[2]. Anymore than he would refer to his wife, Cindy, as a cunt.[3]

It’s this freak of nature. The anti-Christina of Feminism. This aw shucks  automaton that will earn Tina Fey an Emmy, and elevate the ratings of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, gives me the chills in ways I don’t quite understand. The notion that after nearly eight years of George w. Bush, America still believes that they’d rather have a President who they could knock back a beer with than one who might be able to string together a coherent sentence. The Tits on the Ticket personification of America’s racist undertone, allowing the narrowest of minds the perfect conduit to get away with voting for the bitch rather than the nigger and still look progressive.

Sarah Palin has managed to undo years of feminist progress, despite intelligent arguments to the contrary by the likes of Camille Paglia. Whether it’s the Black movement, the Women’s movement or the Gay Movement, the ultimate mark of progress is demonstrated by a new generation at liberty to simply accept and demand the rights and freedoms they deserve without any appreciation of the blood, sweat and tears sacrifices made by the activists that came before them. Sarah Palin could pursue her ambitions – from pipe playing beauty pageant contestant to Alaska governor – unapologetically without playing the victim card. Good for her. But make no mistake, Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton, Benazir Bhutto  or Winnie Mandela.

Her interviews with Katie Couric of CBS News set the bar for the one and only Vice Presidential debate so extraordinarily low that the fact that she didn’t sound like a lobotomized drunk was enough for Pat Buchannan to declare that conservatives across the country were heaving a collective sigh of relief, and the rest of America to declare her performance a success. But, as Maureen Dowd pointed out, “she dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and also — ‘also’ is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as nouns, as in, ‘If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them,’ or how she tried to ‘progress the agenda.’”

The problem is not how low Sarah Palin set the bar for the debates, however. It’s how low she has set the bar for the Vice Presidency, and given John McCain’s precarious health and age, the Presidency. Contestants for American Idol are given more scrutiny than Sarah Palin’s vetting process and subsequent media access combined.

As we head into the final stretch, Sarah Palin has transformed into an attack dog, zoning in on Obama’s supposed ties to 60s radical William Ayers. “Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colorado.  "This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

A strange strategy, given Palin’s own dubious ties with the likes of pastor Thomas Muthee, or her links to an Alaskan group that wanted Alaska to secede from the United States.

In response to her less than adequate performances, particularly with her Katie Couric interviews, Palin stated: “The Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed. It's like, man, no matter what you say, you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that too."

No, Ms. Palin. You aren’t being clobbered for answering a question. You’re being clobbered for the pivoting. The notion that you somehow know better what American’s want to hear about as opposed to the Americans asking you the actual questions. 

In the days leading up to the election, we are not going to learn anything more from Sarah Palin. She will continue to regurgitate talking points that contradict others she has made – less government, but more oversight, a fresh, energetic  start that excludes an old Washington insider like Joe Biden, but not John McCain, Obama’s inexperience compared to her ability to see Russia from Alaska – and it’s the best we can expect from her.

Say it ain’t so, Sarah! There you go spewing talking points again like a senile Arizonian senator... Now, doggone it, let’s answer just one fucking question and tell Americans who and what the hell you are. You mention this imaginary media filter, and I’m glad you did. They are a pathetic bunch. But with your genuine belief in evil witches and the Flintstones, a little clarity from you is not asking too much now, is it? God help us. Our reward for your ascendancy is in hell, right?”

My only fear, and this is why Sarah Palin gives me the chills, is that for America, this inadequacy masked as mediocrity may just be good enough.

FOOTNOTES

[1]In perhaps the most embarrassing interviews ever aired, setting female journalists back a good few decades, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren interviewed Sarah Palin’s husband, Todd, gushing like a nun at a prison rodeo, with in-depth, probing questions like “Go back to this ‘First Dude.’ I mean, who came up with ‘First Dude’? It's a great name. I mean, who came up with ‘First Dude’?’ This, at a point where Palin had expressed his refusal to comply with a subpoena in the unfolding Troopergate scandal – the firing of the Public Safety Commissioner for the State of Alaska, Walt Monegon by Governor Palin.

[2] Following the suspension and then firing of radio personality, Don Imus, from ABC and MSNBC respectively, after he referred to the Rutgers basketball team as “nappy headed hos,” John McCain was one of the few politicians to stand behind him, and was the first to appear on his new, albeit, castrated radio show.

[3]Cliff Schecter's book, The Real McCain, recalls an incident in front of aides and consultant Wes Gullett in which McCain’s wife Cindy joked about his thinning hair. The ever even-tempered McCain is said to have responded, “At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. The generic excuse for Cindy’s tolerance is also known as hydrocodone.

The Second Coming, A Second Time

I’m not one who is apt to repeat myself, but on the first day of 2008, the year America will finally elect a new president and – despite the lack of ideal choices – one that may just show a little more respect for not only the Constitution he or she is worn to uphold, but for American citizens, aliens (fabulous term, no?) both legal and illegal, and to global citizens who have a right to live each day without fear of being bombed, shot or tortured by the United States.

I wrote originally wrote The Second Coming: The Age of Bin Laden on September 15, 2001, four days after September 11th. The World Trade Center was still in flames, and America had yet to start a war against Afghanistan, let alone Iraq. Every awful prediction I made came to pass, far worse in some cases, than I had imagined. Foolishly optimistic, in 2004, I thought America would get rid of George W. Bush come election time. I was horribly mistaken. Perhaps reiterating these words from September 2001 in the forums available to me through San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate, as well as Annoy.com, Pointing Fingers and Daily Kos might wake some people up this election. Somehow I'm less optimistic this time round. To paraphrase, correctively, the misphrasing of our current President: "fool me once, shame on you..."

The morning of Tuesday September 11, 2001, began typically enough. Yawningly irreverent New York radio host Don Imus, (whose show is simulcast on MSNBC), was angrily denouncing MSNBC for allowing nauseatingly saccharine hosts Chris Jansing and Gregg Jarrett to knock him off the air anytime there was breaking news, rather than let him break it. Seemingly unaware of the high premium MSNBC places on youth. Clearly oblivious to the fact that a vast majority of Americans don't want some bitter, wrinkled, dried-up, ex-cokehead, surrounded by spineless yes men, wheezing breaking news between hits on his oxygen mask.

And then terror struck. Big time. In the worst terrorist attack in history, suicidal fanatics attacked the United States by smashing hijacked commercial planes into the World Trade Center towers, Pentagon (and potentially other targets, were they not foiled by passengers). America and indeed most of the world were numbed to the core by the horror and magnitude of such destruction.

Throughout the day -- and ever since -- repeated images of the horror looped and looped on every TV channel in every language interspersed with hundreds of heartstring tugging stories that reduce the most hardened of men to tears.

As the dust settles, literally and figuratively, we may well emerge from this a changed nation. Although not with the overnight hyperbole reflected by trite headlines stating as much before we had even had a chance to absorb what we were hit with.

Some things remain horribly the same.

While most American's were reeling, stunned into a shocked and disbelieving silence, the impenetrable roaches of humanity's refuse at its worst and ugliest came crawling out fast and furious, vomiting their hate and their anger like festering pus on gaping wounds.

Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson shattered their own decaying credibility by fanatically blaming the attack on abortionists, liberals, online pornographers and civil liberties groups, declaring that Americans got what they deserved. This, of course, while their fellow Americans - and a host of other nationalities -- lay dead, suffering and smoldering under heaps of shattered concrete and melting mangled metal.

Intellectually barren columnist, Ann Coulter, in a tribute to talk show partisan Barbara Olson that was about as sensitively timed and welcome as an untreated yeast infection on Prom night, suggested that America bomb the fuck out of whatever country was responsible. Children and innocent civilians be damned! And convert them all to Christianity. No doubt her perverted brand of Christianity that deems bombing babies nobler than oral sex.

'War is Stupid and People are Stupid,' Boy George once sang frivolously.

The governments waging them may be damn stupid too, but they are not that stupid, and not as stupid as we are, it seems. War allows governments to get away with things that are not possible in peacetime, where cooler heads and reason prevail. Using the word 'war' to describe something that is not a war, diminishes the notion of what a real war is and trivializes and mocks genuine patriotism. It threatens the very tenets of freedom. It allows for States of Emergency with unparalleled government powers from eavesdropping, surveillance and ex-parte motions to detention without trial.

'This is War!" screamed the headlines, TV networks and cable channels, and while we -- vulnerable in our pain, grief, fear and shattered sense of security -- wept over round-the-clock heart-wrenching vignettes of the fallen and their families played to the tune of the national anthem everywhere we turned.

While we mourned and watched and read and listened and cried, an anti-terrorism bill was drafted that rivals South Africa's most draconian at the height of Apartheid. Within just one week of the attacks. Not to mention an almost unanimous vote by both chambers of Congress (save one brave voice of Congresswoman Barbara Lee) to give Bush full authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against terrorists linked to the attacks and against those that sponsor them as well as a unanimous $40 billion anti-terrorism package.

America's worst enemies -- hypocrisy and its unrelenting media machinery that cripples our intelligence and goads us into thinking and acting like dazed sheep before a slaughter -- has done and will continue to do more harm to this country than Osama bin Laden or any other terrorists anywhere could ever wish to.

We cannot, as a response, simply bomb other countries with vengeance or blame people with different beliefs or ideologies. Nor should we grit out teeth through our tears and sense of helplessness and resolutely commit to revenge. A dogged pursuit for vengeance, whether framed as self-defense by ancient Defense Secretaries or resulting from a deep-rooted, visceral and all too understandable desire to punish by continuing along the very same path is explosively dangerous. All we can hope to achieve with such an approach is to add new recruits to the cause of terrorism and alienate public opinion domestically and especially internationally.

Before we embark on a war of retribution, like a frantic chicken with its head cut off running around in search of a definable enemy, we need to reflect. Big time.

What message we are sending when we impose sanctions on a country for nuclear testing one day, and then lift them so that the same country can help us attack or bomb an enemy we once befriended, trained and created ourselves the next? And to what extent might this just engender a distrust and hatred of America?

Some, more detached, have pointed out; the targets were symbols of American military might and economic prowess. The Pentagon and World Trade Center respectively represent the very essence of capitalism. Borrowing an American justification for the bombing of innocent civilians, and just as callously, some have referred to the victims as simply collateral damage. Indeed a shockingly insensitive euphemism. Why we should ask ourselves, was it so easy for us to stomach it in Baghdad or in Yugoslavia? Why then not in Oklahoma? Why not in New York?

We must question whether strategic national interests -- that have us bombing other humans to deflect scrutiny and accountability at home -- are either strategic or in our interests.

We must ask ourselves whether the multinational corporatization of culture that makes for stronger First World economies is worth the sweat and blood of children in sweatshops in the Third World.

We must reexamine the appropriateness of remaining silent while females are butchered at birth in China as Rupert Murdoch, Steve Case and their merry band of savages lay down the satellites and pipes for broadband to poison new minds with freshly sanitized, brain-anesthetizing content, and sell the population-controlled, surviving males new laptops.

We need to stop for a second before bedtime channel surfing between NASCAR and Howard Stern while dripping genetically engineered McDonalds burger grease onto our GAP sweaters, only to wake up just early enough and strive just hard enough to earn just enough to replace it with one from Banana Republic instead.

We need to pause before we tap our Budweisers in tune to a lecherous Bob Dole sitting in a darkened room transparently pawning Viagra in Pepsi commercials while watching Britney Spears flaunt her underage crotch in his face. And then mindlessly tune in to a two-hour JonBenet Ramesy special and wonder who killed her. And why.

We need to find balance, where criticism of Rudy Giuliani for his horrific record on arts funding is not ignored or suddenly no longer relevant because of the incredible sense of comfort and security he has been able to inspire in the wake of the attack on New York.

We need to still be able to vigorously condemn the horrific ordeals faced by the likes of Abner Louima or Amadou Diallo at the hands of corrupt New York policemen without negating or trivializing the admirable and incredible heroism displayed by brave men and women from the same Department that continues to give credence to the phrase New York's Finest in the wake of the attack on New York.

We need to parse information being fed to us by an amateur, stammering Press Secretary Ari Fleisher, (who remember, was fainting in anxiety and threatening the media during the tense furor surrounding Jenna Bush's underage drinking escapades), with the appropriate grains of salt and respect for freedom of information.

We need to learn to not confuse extremist conduct with necessary and strong criticism of policy or appreciation of an alternative ideology. Nor refrain from critical self-analysis. We must stop oversimplifying wide ranging complexities by lumping everything into an Us v.Them paradigm that leaves too many people cornered, scapegoated or unfairly branded.

We need to realize that the declarations of war, the political rhetoric on all sides and the sweeping tide of emotion and patriotism right now are potentially the most dangerous and damaging to our civil liberties if left unchecked and unbalanced. And the threat posed by our willingness to blindly trade our freedom for a heightened perception of security cannot be underestimated.

We need to question with apprehension Attorney General John Ashcroft s draconian requests for unprecedented law enforcement powers for investigating 'suspected terrorists' (however vaguely defined) that are being fast tracked through Congress without nearly appropriate enough consideration. And how the curtailment of civil liberties during wartime translates into Rumsfeld's ominous characterization of the 'war' that reads more like his biography. "It is a much more subtle, nuanced, difficult, shadowy set of problems." With neither a beginning nor end.

Now, more than ever, we need to tune in to people around us and tune out the sappy, obsequious corporate-controlled media instilling over-produced, high-tech fear into us by simply regurgitating the government's outdated war strategies as advocated by dying blowhards who peaked in the exact same posts in President Ford's cabinet four administrations ago.

Let's smell the Starbucks and realize that the stock prices of companies like Viacom, Microsoft, AOL Time Warner, News Corporation, General Electric, Disney, Vivendi, Alcoa and Halliburton are really the only thing anyone from the White House to the Treasury to the media touting this war cares about, not humanitarian values or the value of the information or programming that is designed to keep us ignorant and petrified while we cling to our flags in tears.

Such a violent and horrific attack not only showcases our vulnerability militarily, economically, politically and ideologically, but also robs of us of our families, friends and loved ones and very joy of living.

In spite of blunderbuss rhetoric and toxic media fallout, this tragedy has resulted in people coming together and reaching out to one another in ways no one ever could have imagined. A new, more informed dialogue has begun.

The greatest honor we can bestow on the people who died so tragically on September 11, 2001, is to simply wake up and pay attention.

Me, Me, Media

It just keeps getting worse. Just when you think the gutter couldn’t get any deeper, along comes a development that exposes depravity depths you didn’t think possible.

The Paris Hilton media spectacle was an international embarrassment.

On Friday last week, CNN and MSNBC struggled to cover the not-so-insignificant resignation of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the homophobic, gay-looking-and-acting General Peter Pace in their roles as legitimate news sources, interrupting themselves to monitor every movement as an Aderall-deprived Hilton was escorted back to court, helicopters and paparazzi in hot pursuit, and then, crying for her Mom (to no avail), to a medical facility in Twin Towers prison.

With Lindsay Lohan planning her twenty-first birthday safely confined in rehab, Variety, the Hollywood rag, reports that recently fired Donald Trump (yes, usually when a contract is not renewed, it means the show’s over, his protestations and lame spinning attempts notwithstanding) is teaming with equally highbrow Fox to create a “new” show. Lady or a Tramp, (not to be confused with Lady or a Trump), as Entertainment Weekly pointed out, “sounds like a mean-spirited, unfunny version of VH1's Charm School.” Actually, it sounds more like Kathy Hilton’s thankfully short-lived series, I Want to Be a Hilton, where she got to live out the attention-at-any-cost lifestyle she manically constructed for her wanton daughter.

"We are all sick and tired of the glamorization of these out-of-control young women, so I have taken it upon myself to do something about it," Trump told Variety. Given the gracious second chance he gave Tara Conner, the coke snorting party girl, Miss USA (which in turn led to the over-hyped feud between Trump and Rosie O’Donnell), who could be better suited to bestow class than a nouveau riche, gaudy, attention-seeking media whore who, without his bank account and Viagra prescription, would be about as attractive to the whores he attracts as a self-possessed Rutgers women basketball player would be to Don Imus?

Thing is though, it’s not that so much that young girls or boys party out of control. I’ll be the first to admit that in my late teens to early twenties I did more alcohol and drugs than all of these kids combined, and drove on top of it. Not that it’s okay. I was just young, stupid and irresponsible, and was smart enough to do it behind my parents back, fortunate enough to not have cameras following me, and lucky enough to not have killed myself or anyone else.

What I didn’t have, was a bunch of enablers with names like Elliot Mintz or Leslie Sloane Zelnick making excuses for me and perpetuating my dangerous sense of invincibility. Unlike Dina and Michael Lohan or Kathy and Rick Hilton, my divorced parents and their respective spouses – all four, mind you – would have kicked my ass into place, literally, had they known. (In fact, after my brother and I “borrowed” my mother’s car at age fifteen, without her permission or a license, the police officer that arrested us after we were stopped, released us without any charges based solely on the look on my mother’s face when she arrived at the police station).

There weren’t nauseating, bottom-feeding parasites running companies like TMZ with names like Harvey Levin, ingratiating themselves on cable TV shows, smiling coyly like flirtatious schoolgirls, whilst enriching themselves on the boredom and misery of others. (How sad, shallow and pathetic Levin’s life must be).

Almost every anchor on every network repeatedly feigned shock and surprise at the media attention lavished on someone as unaccomplished as Paris Hilton, as if their own top stories didn’t count somehow.

Between the Trumps and the Hiltons and their obsessive desire to parade their money as a form of entertainment, the tasteless vulgarity of the nouveau riche will continue to provide revenue streams for desperate media companies who will air anything in the name of ratings. Reinforcing that no amount of money can buy breeding or taste, any more than it can produce quality content by catering to the lowest common denominator.

America is looking more and more like a gaudy, Liberace-inspired, palatial trailer where plush and lush and cash and trash are one and the same and where a culture war seems to be tirelessly waged in a cultureless society that cares more about Britney Spears’ hair extensions than it does about the number of people dying in Iraq.

Paris is Burning

Quicker than a Lindsay Lohan relapse, Paris was released from prison after serving a whopping five days, shorter than a typical shopping spree, behind bars in a “special needs” facility in Los Angeles County.

She’s not “free” though, and must be “confined” to her Hollywood Hills estate, which is squeezed onto a 6,380-square foot lot, and be forced to wear a non-designer, electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.

The Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department citied an “unspecified medical condition” as being the reason for her release, particularly since Court Judge Michael T. Sauer had ruled she would not be allowed any work release, furloughs or use of an alternative jail or electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, after twice violating her probation for a reckless driving under the influence of her mother and alcohol.

So what might her unspecified medical condition be?

A staph infection has been ruled out, despite an outbreak at Lynwood, the prison she made her home for so long, where she was even said to be given a pamphlet about staph infection prevention, although whether her publicist actually read it to her is unlikely.

Already, reports had surfaced, that like Ghandi before her, Paris was not eating. Is it possible that Ghandi too, had an eating disorder, and cleverly disguised it by calling it a hunger strike, much the same way sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder position it on their resumes, pointing to their Aderall prescriptions as a proven ability to multi-task.

Another report, this from the bottom-feeding AOL property known as TMZ, claimed Paris was cold and having difficulty sleeping with only two of three blankets, having to use the third as a pillow. But in a post Ambien patent day and age, where cheap, generic zolpidem is as easy to get as cocaine in Los Angeles, is insomnia really a legitimate enough medical condition to warrant release?

Maybe Paris was hearing voices. Although if schizophrenia -- defined as a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality -- was the cause, Paris would have been institutionalized long ago.

Maybe Sarah Silverman was right to worry, when hosting the MTV Movie Awards where Paris sat in the audience on the same evening she turned herself in, and she did indeed break her teeth on the prison bars, which Silverman claimed guards had painted pink to resemble penises.

Never one to miss out on an opportunity to race-bait, the Reverend Al Sharpton, immediately denounced Hilton’s release, stating it had "all of the appearances of economic and racial favoritism."

So what could it be? Is Bulimia the new get-out-of jail-free card? What about a good old fashioned tantrum?

Privacy laws in California preclude reporters from finding out the specifics of her medical condition, but it seems it seems like Google Ads had the answer all along.

When I checked Dictionary.com to confirm a specific definition of the word “tantrum,” (which includes among others, “a sudden burst of ill-temper” of the sort Paris’ mother, Kathy Hilton, displayed in the court upon the sentencing) I was offered the following three options:

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