I Hate Our Presidential Media Culture

Well, Obama had to come out and blast his former pastor today, and he did it. It's kind of sad that it's come to this, where guilt by association and media pressure is so enormous that pounds and pounds of flesh have to be extracted.

Meanwhile, a stupid and unnecessary war goes on, and millions of people will probably lose their homes, and tens of millions around the world will go to bed tonight hungry, and we have a President who directs the Army Corps of Engineers to use wet newspapers to plug holes in the New Orleans floodwall, which is about as fitting a metaphor as there can be to how this Administration and the conservative movement over the last 30 years has insufficiently plugged holes in the gaps and challenges we face.

I don't feel any need to defend or denounce a guy like Rev. Wright. He has his own beliefs, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. But he's a blip on the radar screen compared to what we need to do in America. Whether it's Rev. Wright or Ward Churchill or Some Guy With A Sign Somewhere, I'm not such a wilting flower that I think comments made by marginal people represents any grave threat to America or ought to merit any kind of response. I believe the First Amendment is strong enough to absorb any opinion, even dumb ones, even ones that (gasp!) criticize the country. It sickens me that the media is so pushed by conservative tropes that they insist these meaningless issues matter, and that they really believe comments - comments! - are more important than domestic or foreign policy.

Well, that's why we're in this ditch right now. And the media actually has to be held accountable for that.

Obama engaged in good politics today, but the system is what depresses me.

UPDATE: David Neiwert speaks for me.

They're Fighting For Your Right To Ban Them For Saying "Stop The Fighting."

Turning free speech and the notion of a military defending American Constitutional rights completely on its head, a Veteran's Day parade in Long Beach banned antiwar veteran's groups from appearing on Saturday.

A participation application filed by Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out was turned down because organizers want Saturday's parade free from politics.

"They do not fit the spirit of the parade, the spirit being one of gratitude for what the veterans have done," said Martha Thuente, coordinator for the nonprofit Veterans Day Parade Committee.

"We do not want groups of a political nature, advocating the troops' withdrawal from Iraq," she added.

Now, you don't have an inalienable right to march in a parade. But Veterans For Peace WAS allowed to march in the same parade last year. Not to mention the fact that plenty of the groups marching on Saturday have advocated an explicit political agenda in the past. The VFW and the American Legion have made plenty of public pro-war statements over the years, that would seemingly conflict with this expressed belief that only "nonpartisan" groups be allowed to show their pride in wearing the uniform.

Contact information for the Long Beach Veteran's Day Parade is here. It is impossible and even dangerous to sanitize democracy of any political thought because some arbitrary official deems it "inappropriate."

The Continuing Story of A.Lunatic

Another way in which we see the failure of our media is in their sustained characterization of Rudy Giuliani as a "moderate" Republican with "liberal views" on a variety of subjects, when the evidence is entirely clear that he is more like an extreme form of authoritarian neoconservative with meaningless views on social issues that he's desperately trying to abandon. David Greenberg in the Washington Post finally provides the context that voters need:

As any New Yorker can tell you, the last word anyone in the 1990s would have attached to the brash, furniture- breaking mayor was "liberal" -- and the second-to-last was "moderate." With his take-many-prisoners approach to crime and his unerring pro-police instincts, the prosecutor-turned-proconsul made his mark on the city not by embracing its social liberalism but by trying to crush it.

Most notable here of Greenberg's copious examples - including his efforts to censor art exhibits at the Brooklym Museum and fund parochial schools with government money - are those which concern extreme executive power.

In 1999, for example, he directed (without the City Council's permission) the police to permanently confiscate the cars of people charged with drunken driving -- even if the suspects were later acquitted [...]

The fanciful notion of Giuliani's liberalism also omits the piece de resistance of his mayorship: his flagrantly undemocratic bid to stay in office for an extra three months after Sept. 11, 2001. During earlier crises, even World War II, U.S. elections had always managed to proceed normally. But Giuliani maneuvered for weeks to remain mayor after his term-limited exit date. Only as normalcy returned to New York did his power grab fail.

Try as he might, Josh Marshall could not come up with one other instance in American history where a politician sought to overstay his legally sanctioned term of office. This shows more than anything the willingness for Giuliani to take advantage of any opportunity to expand his power.

There's also official secrecy, a hallmark of the Bush and Giuliani years, in the latter's case including the laundering of his mayoralty documents.

Shortly before Rudy Giuliani left the New York mayor's office in 2001, close associates worked out an unprecedented and controversial deal to transfer his mayoral papers from City Hall to a private, tax-exempt foundation, the Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs.

Billed as a leadership think tank, the center served as a conduit for Giuliani to copy and archive 2,100 boxes of documents from his time as mayor before returning the originals to the city.

That record, which includes the months after the Sept. 11 attacks when he was anointed as "America's mayor," serves as the foundation of Giuliani's presidential campaign today. Because he moved his papers through a private organization led by his political supporters, however, the integrity of that record has been called into question.

And if you look at the issues he's foregrounding in the Presidential race, they all have to do with a megalomaniacal view of foreign policy fueled by his batshit insane B-Team advisers.

There can be no doubt that the pundit-based media is completely misreading the Republican field, touting it as a battle between social conservatives and the "liberal" Giuliani, when nothing can be further from the truth.

Congress Moves To Condemn Betty Jackson Of Mobile, AL For What She Said Last Week To Her Neighbor

The whole condemning specific figures for using specific language is not the stuff of America, and as much as some Democratic partisans want to say we have to fight fire with fire, I just don't buy it. Especially when there's a perfectly logical punishment for Rush Limbaugh's slander against troops that don't think like him:

What is the Senate's business, however, is that Rush Limbaugh is on Armed Forces Radio Network. His show is broadcast daily to nearly a million troops in 177 countries. In a poll conducted earlier this year, only 35% of service members said they approved of George Bush's handling of the war while 42% disapprove, and 41% say the US is not very or not at all likely to succeed. A full 37% say the US should never have gone to war. It's their network, too.

These young men and women do not deserve to have to listen to their commitment being besmirched by Rush Limbaugh, who never served in the armed forces and whose idea of personal valor is sending his $380 a week housekeeper out to buy his drugs for him. He's got no business on the radio launching attacks on military personnel like that, and his right to free speech does not guarantee him placement there at government expense. I'm sure the GOP would fight like hell to keep him on -- look at all the effort they went to in order to keep Republicans on the reservation with Ari Fleisher's ads and the Petraeus three ring circus -- but that's because removing him would actually be meaningful.

Take Rush off the air. Really, Senators, protecting the troops from this kind of abuse actually is what you are elected to do.

Our members of Congress just don't seem to have a decent understanding of the Constitution when they engage in tit-for-tat resolutions condemning free speech. They should have never brought the MoveOn thing up for a vote and they should not be condemning Rush's speech. Stick to something that's actually in your purview.

(Incidentally, Rush is selectively editing audio to try and change around what he said. It won't work.)

UPDATE: Yes, the resolution made by GOoPer Jack Kingston commending, not condemning, Rush Limbaugh proves that the Republicans can maneuver around this outrage game much more nimbly. Probably because it's so insincere.

Ritual Rending Of Garments

I wish the Congress would stop being offended by words and start being offended by actions, like the egregious actions taken to sell and perpetuate a catastrophic war. I understand what Trapper John is saying here, but really, they call it free speech because it's free:

But from my perspective, the point of this resolution isn't to receive a majority vote, or even really to condemn Limbaugh. After all, a great number of us in the Democratic Party don't believe that the United States Congress should be in the business of "condemning" the speech of American citizens. As I see it, the point of this exercise is: 1) to highlight the hypocrisy of those Republicans who would vote to condemn the speech of MoveOn, but not that of America's Favorite Chickenhawk -- even as he smeared rank-and-file service members -- and 2) to make sure that those Democrats who saw fit to publicly condemn their ally on the floor of Congress are willing to do the same to a man who despises them and the Democratic Party.

All well and good. I believe in highlighting the hypocrisy and making that point. But doing so through yet another resolution of condemnation is not only a time-waster, it betrays (there's that word again the values of America.

This brings me to the flap over MoveOn.org's recent ad about "General Betray Us." The ad suggested that General Petraeus was "cooking the books for the White House" by presenting to the American public and to the Congress a misleading picture of the situation in Iraq. There is absolutely no question but that this statement was fully protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court has often and clearly explained, the First Amendment embodies "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." The MoveOn.org ad is well within the bounds of this fundamental constitutional protection and well within the long tradition in this nation of challenging our public officials -- military as well as civilian [...]

Just as it is not the business of Columbia University to declare some views "right" and other views "wrong," it is not the business of the United States Senate to enact resolutions condemning the constitutionally protected expression of private citizens. To be sure, many of us sometimes find the constitutionally protected expression of others offensive. Some of us may despise speech that espouses racial inferiority; some of us may find odious speech calling abortion murder; some of us may dislike the views of presidential candidates on the issue of gay marriage; and some of us may be offended by claims that torture is sometimes moral. In this nation, we are all free as individuals to "condemn" the views with which we disagree, and individual senators, acting in their individual capacities, are similarly free to declare their distaste for certain expression.

But it is not a legitimate role for the Senate of the United States to pass formal resolutions condemning the expression of constitutionally protected views. Do the supporters of this resolution honestly believe that it would be appropriate for the Senate officially to condemn those who question the integrity of Vice President Cheney, or the wisdom of Justice Scalia, or the candor of President Bush? Do they honestly believe that it would be appropriate for the Senate officially to condemn those who support campaign finance reform or greater gun regulation or an invasion of Iran?

Such expression, like MoveOn.org's attack on General Petraeus, is not only protected by the First Amendment, but is essential to the functioning of a self-governing society. For the very same reasons that Columbia University should not declare particular ideas, perspectives, or positions "out of bounds," so too, the United States Senate should foster "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" public debate and not attempt to intimidate citizens by irresponsible public declarations of official condemnation. Such a tactic smacks of the excesses of the McCarthy Era.

Absolutely, and McCarthyism is McCarthyism no matter who's holding the gavel.

UPDATE: It should be noted that Mark Udall is introducing this resolution. He's also running for Senate next year in Colorado and could use rank-and-file support. You see where I'm going with this.

Phony Soldier

Rush doesn't consider anyone who disagrees with him a real person, that's been obvious for a while. But I guess the fact that this comes so SOON after the whole MoveOn/BetrayUs thing strikes me as odd. You'd think that whole deification of the military thing would kick in and prevent him from smearing men and women in uniform so soon.

LIMBAUGH: What's in it for the United States to pull out? They can't -- I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "Well, we just gotta bring the troops home."

CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what --

LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --

CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.

LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.

CALLER 2: Exactly, sir.

Jon Soltz of VoteVets has a righteous post. And Jerry McNerney really has his back up (this is from an email):

Where does Rush Limbaugh get the moral standing to pass judgment on our heroes who wore this nation's uniform and returned to exercise their First Amendment rights? Even for Rush, that's too far!

Will you join me in calling the following radio stations to demand they take Rush's show off the air?

KWSX in Stockton - (209) 551-1280
KSFO in San Francisco - (415) 954-7449
KFBK in Sacramento - (916) 929-5325

Hey, he's consistent, right? He voted to condemn the MoveOn ad.

I don't want Rush's show off the air. I think free speech means accepting the speech you don't like. And this idea that anyone who's ever served in the military is immune from the slightest criticism kind of makes me squirm. None of this is to defend Rush, who obviously thinks that anyone who doesn't serve the country in EXACTLY the way he sees fit is simply not genuine, and worthy of derision. There's a difference between MoveOn's substantive, fact-based argument, and Limbaugh's hatred of anyone who doesn't think like him. But you don't ban it, and you don't ignore it. You HIGHLIGHT it. And you make sure everyone knows about the vast emptiness within his soul.

Seriously, punch me in the throat right now

I don't know how the Democratic Congress found time in between condemning political ads and blocking meaningful Iraq legislation to do this, but apparently they all pitched in and found the time to hold a hearing on hip-hop lyrics.

Two rappers, sitting side-by-side in a House hearing room, went in different directions Tuesday on the need for hip-hop artists to expunge their work of sexist and violent language.

One, Master P, apologized to women for past songs that demeaned them, while another was defiant.

Former gangsta rapper Master P, whose real name is Percy Miller, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that he is now committed to producing clean lyrics. The angry music of his past, he said, came from seeing relatives and friends shot and killed.

But he said now that he doesn't want his own children to listen to his music, "so if I can do anything to change this, I'm going to take a stand and do that."

"I want to apologize to all the women out there," he said. "I was honestly wrong."

But rapper and record producer Levell Crump, known as David Banner, was defiant as lawmakers pressed him on his use of offensive language. "I'm like Stephen King: horror music is what I do," he said in testimony laced with swear words. "Change the situation in my neighborhood and maybe I'll get better," he told one member of Congress.

The two rappers were joined by music industry executives and scholars. They disagreed over who was to blame for sexist and degrading language in hip-hop music but were united in opposing government censorship as a solution.

"If by some stroke of the pen hip-hop was silenced, the issues would still be present in our communities," Crump said. "Drugs, violence, sexism and the criminal element were around long before hip-hop existed."

I know the former Black Panther Bobby Rush chaired this hearing, but let's get real. The average age of Congressmen is 56, and in the Senate it's 62. There are 42 black House members and 1 black Senator; so 43 people of color out of 535. There's a disconnect here that's too wide to breach.

Jack and Jill Politics makes the interesting point that imagery does matter, and that using images and sound to sell a point of view is the basis for advertising. But what's the remedy Congress seeks? Banning speech? More labeling of content? The problems of urban communities don't begin and end with hip-hop; indeed it's almost irrelevant to those problems. And there's a war on, and kids are about to lose their health insurance. This is beyond absurd.

UPDATE: Stoller has more. Key quote: "Hip-hop is sick because America is sick." The whole holding up a mirror to society thing.

Babies As Far As The Eye Can See

We really have become a nation of children, so worried about the harming power of words - WORDS - that we'll put together a Senate resolution condemning them when they are used in a pun. The latest mau-mauing from the right concerns Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the UN and Columbia University. We are for some reason given the impression that "President" must mean some sort of ruler/despot, which shows both how strong the Imperial Presidency has grown in this country, and how globally illiterate Americans, and particularly the media that seeks to inform them, are (and the media deserves practically all the blame here). Ahmadinejad is like the Speaker of the House of Iran. He actually wields a little less power than that. He doesn't control foreign policy, he doesn't control the military, he doesn't control Iran's weapons arsenal. What's more, he's very unpopular in his own country, and is unlikely to win re-election. The only thing an outcry like this does is increase the power of someone who is essentially powerless. The mullahs are using him as a lightning rod so they can curtail civil liberties and dissent at home. While we focus on one guy, ordinary Iranians see the man attracting all this criticism and rally around him.

In demonizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies, according to Iranian politicians, officials and political experts.

Ahmadinejad would just wither on the vine if we'd only stop screaming about him. But the neocons won't, because they have a very specific plan that Matt Stoller outlines well.

1) Empowering Ahmadinejad: He's not particularly important within Iran, but this kind of mindless attention helps him domestically.

2) Leading Us into a New War: Wars require villains. Ahmadinejad, as an ineffective buffoon with a weak domestic power center, wasn't enough of a villain. He must be built up into an all-powerful character that can only be removed by American force. The divestment from Iran campaign, currently swirling around the states, is accomplishing this, and will almost certainly continue, at least PR-wise, into the next Democratic administration. This will make negotiations much harder and the path to a military strike much more likely.

3) Attacking Free Speech at Columbia: Dismantling or weakening institutions that stand up against the right or could conceivably do so is one of the long-term conservative movement strategic interests. The Freedom Watch ad calling Columbia University 'appeasers' is meant to intimate, and it often works in subtle ways.

Are we so fearful of losing our own democracy that we think one lone nut's words can take it down? That's ridiculous. We've weathered the storm of dissent before and we will again. Neoconservatives want to mirror the mullah-led state of Iran here in America because it would make it easier to take the country to war that way. And a pliant media, mindful that black-and-white worldviews and good-versus-evil constructions are easier to market, willingly goes along, setting up Ahmadinejad like he's Sinestro or something. Meanwhile this isn't mentioned.

While all eyes are on Manhattan, precious few are watching what's happening in Washington. On Thursday, Senators Jon Kyl and Joseph Lieberman filed an amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill that would make it official U.S. policy to "combat, contain and roll back" Iran and its surrogates in Iraq. Section 5 calls for the United States to formally designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. If passed, this amendment would open the door even wider for military action against Iran.

Why hasn't this bit of news sparked similar debate?

Because our traditional media are a pack of babies whose buttons are easily pushed by the babies on the right. Who are afraid of somebody saying something. Please.

Your President Hates You

This report about the lengths to which the Bush Admnistration will go to shield and crush dissent is astonishing.

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route." [...]

The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be " extremely supportive of the Administration," it says. While the Secret Service screens audiences only for possible threats, the manual says, volunteers should examine people before they reach security checkpoints and look out for signs. Make sure to look for "folded cloth signs," it advises.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create "rally squads" of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with "favorable messages." Squads should be placed in strategic locations and "at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems," the manual says.

We have the most fragile ego in the free world as the purported leader of it. He literally can't be allowed to SEE protest of his Administration and his policies.

He's the President of 28% of America.

They Hate Us For Our Freedom

The soldiers fighting to protect and defend our basic freedoms are blocked from using them.

The U.S. Army is tightening restrictions on soldiers’ blogs and other Web site postings to ensure sensitive information about military operations does not make it onto public forums.

Soldiers in war zones are already subject to restrictions on blogging and public posts. But the Army’s new regulation could affect service members who have returned from war zones and started blogs about their combat experiences.

Under a new directive issued in April, soldiers must consult with their immediate supervisor and an officer responsible for what’s known within the military as operational security, or OPSEC, for a review of planned publications.

Reviews will be needed for Web site postings, blog postings, discussions on Internet information forums and discussions on Internet message boards, according to the Army directive.

E-mail that will be published in a public forum is also subject to review under the regulation. But Army officers said personal e-mails will not be reviewed, calling that impractical.

Oh good, at least they're not breaking into their personal e-mail. That'll wait until they get back stateside, I guess.

Anyone who thinks this is about making sure soldiers don't give away troop movements are not being hoenst. This is about making sure no unfiltered information gets out from the battlefield. It is the nature of war to clamp down on information and control the message. That's true if the "Information Minister" is Donald Rumsfeld or Baghdad Bob.

Milibloggers provided a valuable service, and lots of them didn't share my opinion on the war. But I'd rather hear from them than a DoD press release. People need good information to understand what's happening in Iraq, to make good judgments on its conduct. This crackdown is positively un-American.