Maureen Dowd on The Huffington Post

Maureen Dowd: Bill Clinton Lobbied Gov. Paterson To Keep Caroline Kennedy Out Of Senate

2009-11-25T00:19:19Z

Maureen Dowd's New York Times column this week details the fall of outgoing White House council Greg Craig, and drops an interesting tidbit concerning Caroline Kennedy's senate bid along the way. According to Dowd, a "vengeful" Bill Clinton was aggressively lobbying Paterson to keep Kennedy out of the Senate.

Dowd argues that Obama's handling of Craig's departure -- the "death by a thousand leaks" -- was reminiscent of Obama's "failure" to help Kennedy:

It recalled Obama's failure to lift a finger to help Caroline Kennedy -- after she had lifted him at a crucial moment -- when the loopy Gov. David Paterson was dragging her through mud and refusing to announce a decision on the appointment for the New York Senate seat. Paterson was being lobbied by a vengeful Bill Clinton. Bill was still upset at Caroline for bestowing the Camelot mantle, which he had tried to claim during his campaigns, on Obama. Yet no one from the Obama camp tried to counteract Bill and straighten out Paterson.

Maureen Dowd Rips Rush Limbaugh

2009-11-04T12:07:05Z

At our long-ago dinner, Limbaugh credited his success with being "one-dimensional." "I'm totally concerned with me," he said. And that was way before he got a contract for $400 million, so we can only imagine how one-dimensional he is now.

But on Sunday, he ripped the president for having "an out-of-this-world ego," for being "very narcissistic," "immature, inexperienced, in over his head." (Isn't immaturity scoring OxyContin from your maid?)

It gives new meaning to pot, kettle and black.

Steven G. Brant: Wall Street and the US Government: Where's Jimmy Stewart When We Need Him?

2009-10-18T10:34:26Z

How fitting that the scandalous relationship between Goldman Sachs and the Obama administration (thank you Glenn Greenwald) and Goldman Sachs' "no value added to the American people's way of life" methods of earning the bulk of its profits (thanks Dylan Ratigan) and a brilliant analysis of the overall control Wall Street has over Washington (thank you Frank Rich) have all come out on or about the 17th or October.

"What's so special about the 17th of October?" you ask?

Here's what's so special (thanks to Wikipedia)...

When it was first released -- the film premiered in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., on October 17, 1939, sponsored by the National Press Club, an event to which 4000 guests were invited, including 45 senators -- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was attacked by the Washington press, and politicians in the U.S. Congress, as anti-American and pro-Communist for its portrayal of corruption in the American government. While Capra claims in his autobiography that some senators walked out of the premiere, contemporary press accounts are unclear about whether this occurred or not, or whether senators yelled back at the screen during the film.

That's right. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington -- perhaps the most perfect portrayal of systemic corruption in politics ever put on film -- had its world premiere 70 years ago yesterday.

I've seen this film many times. If you haven't seen it lately, I urge you to do so quickly. Because there's something in that film that America desperately needs.

If you know the film and think I'm talking about American needing a straight-talking senator or congressperson, I'm not.

As much as I love the classic filibuster by "Jeff Smith" that leads to the downfall of the film's Taylor machine, I believe the world -- and the Congress -- of 2009 is significantly different from that portrayed in the film. I believe that "we, the people" can no longer expect one man or woman of conscience to change the system from within Washington, DC.

While I hope the work of Glen Greenwald, Dylan Ratigan, and Frank Rich has gotten you plenty steamed, I'm going to ask you to watch this interview with Ralph Nader (conducted by TruthOut.org), so that we can begin a dialogue about what to do, not just about how angry we are.

In this interview, Mr. Nader discusses his new book "Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us." This novel -- Mr. Nader's first -- falls into the category known in the literary world as a practical uptopia. "I call it a fictional vision that could become a new reality. Some known and not-well-known people
appear in fictional roles. I invite your imaginative engagement," he says.

Personally, I think this is a brilliant move by Mr. Nader, because as Proverbs 29:18 says "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

Mr. Nader is providing us with a vision. A vision of a particular kind of action -- by a group of progressive-thinking, very wealthy individuals -- that results in the creation of a well-thought-out effort that succeeds in giving power back to "we, the people." (Note: In this interview, Mr. Nader also does an interesting job of analyzing President Obama's psychology -- his need to compromise. Coincidentally, Maureen Down does the same thing in today's NY Times.

Whether you agree with Mr. Nader's scenario or not, at least he's presenting a roadmap we can discuss. He's not just complaining. He's suggesting what to do.

(And, if Mr. Nader and Ms. Dowd's takes on Pres. Obama's psychology turns out to be correct, the need for us to start a discussion about what to do has, in my opinion, just doubled. Because we may have elected a man who is willing to put the most critical issues of the day on the table -- (finally, thank God) -- but who doesn't have the leadership skills to resolve those issues in a way that produces the kind of progress the times demand. But that's okay. That's what we're here to do, I guess.)

So, Mr. Nader's scenario is a starting point for discussion. The very wealthiest of the progressive side of our society decide to help us regain control of our lives and our country from those who have that power right now.

Here's the first thing I'm going to add to the discussion Mr. Nader has started:

The Corporate Social Responsibility movement. Especially, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and The UN Global Compact (UNGC).

You see, there's a movement within the business community to stop this "Thanks for bailing us out, but we're in this just for ourselves" Wall Street attitude. It's a movement to build the values of environmental stewardship, human rights, fair labor relations, and fighting corruption into the DNA of businesses around the world.

Never heard of it? I'm not surprised.

BSR just held its annual conference. But you wouldn't know it from reading the news. According to Google, the only news coverage of this conference -- one in which approximately 1000 business leaders and managers met to discuss making the world work better rather than worse - was a pre-conference interview with BSR's president, Aron Cramer, conducted by GreenBiz.com and posted on the Reuters web site...

That's it. Pretty amazing... and sad.

You'd think that with all the interest in how much damage Wall Street has done that this activity that's completely the opposite would draw some media attention.

But apparently mainstream coverage of the corporate social responsibility movement is not yet an idea whose time has come in the minds of our media's editors and producers.

Of course, that's if the mainstream media even knows about this movement. And I have evidence they do. I personally talked to Katie Couric about all this at the Paley Center for Media a couple of years ago. (Sorry to call you out on this, Katie. And I know how busy you are with other world events. But you did seem interested in the subject at the time. And I've been hoping you'd follow up with me. Well, maybe "timing is everything," and now is the time!)

These editors and producers apparently don't know about -- or are choosing not to cover -- The UNGC's Principles of Responsible Investing either.

Well, perhaps the media will cover the UNGC's Leadership Summit, which is held every three years and next June will be held at UN HQ in NYC. The list of USA-based corporations that belong to The Global Compact include the Campbell Soup Co., Cicso Systems, Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, Ford, Intel, JCPenny, and Nike.

Come on CBS, NBC, and ABC ... Fox, CNN, and MSNBC ... there's a story worth reporting here!!!

So, the first point I've added to Mr. Nader's discussion is that the corporate world is not universally evil. It's just that the "non-evil" side of that world is practically invisible to the public at large. (And how can the public support something it doesn't know exists?)

And here's the second point: We don't need progressive billionaires to start getting organized.

We can do this ourselves. Back in 2000, the sociologist Paul Ray (in his 2000 book "The Cultural Creatives") estimated there were 65 million Americans who were thinking creatively about society's problems. And in the 2008 election, millions of us contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the Obama for President campaign.

People Power. It's an option. And with today's social networking tools, self-organizing would be a simple task. I'm not saying the help of people like Ted Turner wouldn't help. But what I am suggesting is that it's not essential that this start with people like Mr. Turner.

It can start with people like you and me.

My first experience in political activism as an adult came in 1979. It was after President Carter gave his famous "malaise speech".

Pres. Carter was criticized at the time for saying there was something wrong with America. (Boy, do we hate being told to look in the mirror as a country!) But I didn't see it that way at all.

I saw President Carter telling us we needed to take responsibility for our country. And in 1979 -- at 24 years of age -- I wrote an OpEd about how we could do just that by becoming much more involved as citizens, by becoming, essentially, the largest interest group that our elected representatives had to deal with. I ultimately presented my essay on WQXR radio -- "the radio station of the New York Times" -- here in NYC.

I didn't know what to do with this personal breakthrough at the time. But now -- 30 years later -- I find myself coming full circle and wanting, once again, to urge us all to rise up (as we did in last year's election) and not just "take back our country" (as if what's going on out there is "all bad all the time") but also support those existing, healthy trends that have the potential to contribute to the transformation that we so desperately need: in their case, contributing from inside the system.

There are good trends out there -- a healthy, "alternative DNA" to the social Darwinism of Wall Street -- even if we're not currently hearing about them in the mainstream media. The corporate social responsibility movement is one such trend.

President Obama is a very good man, when you look at his intentions. He may not have the leadership skills to do more than put the most important issues of the day on the table, but that's not an insignificant thing!

And from that starting point, we can carry the ball forward, working with him in spirit even if we don't get to see him personally at the White House. (I think he'll meet with us eventually, once he sees that we're here, all 65 million of us, if Paul Ray's calculations were correct.)

Am I calling for another variation on the Tea Party movement? Well, I'm not sure how this should be structured. But I am reminded of one very special public display of strength and intention that I participated in over 20 years ago. How many of you remember "Hands Across America"?

It took place on May 25, 1986. and it's aim was to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness in America.

I'm not sure how many billionaires were involved, but a great many celebrities were. It was organized by the USA for Africa group, which was founded when the song We Are The World was first recorded. There was corporate funding for this event, apparently principally from The Coca-Cola Company.

But it was the power of the people physically standing together holding hands all across our great country that demonstrated who owns this place. And in many ways, it was a more powerful statement than the one "Jeff Smith" makes from the floor of the Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. You could physically see it. And -- with its celebrity participation and theme song -- the news media couldn't help but cover it.

Perhaps a similar national "demonstration of whose country this is" could be organized in time for next year's mid-term elections. That sounds like the right timing to me!

What do you think?

I titled this essay, in part, "Where's Jimmy Stewart when we need him?" And I'd like to end by suggesting this answer: He's here, inside all of us, if we'll just take a look.

That's the power of the entertainment industry. It can show us our better angels and encourage us to do the right thing based on what we see portrayed on the screen in front of us.

Once again, I urge you all to watch "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" sometime soon. I hope President Obama does this as well.

And if you can, go visit The Jimmy Stewart Museum in his home town of Indiana, PA (about 60 miles East of Pittsburgh). I've been there, and it's a lot like the town in another classic Jimmy Stewart motion picture: It's a Wonderful Life.

And then let's figure out how we can take back our country and do so with the help of those who -- while they may not be in the news (yet!) -- want to do so too!
---------------------------------
UPDATE Tuesday 2:25am

To give those of you questioning how entertainment can be used for good today, I offer this example: the first 15 minutes of a special educational event held at the UN earlier this year in which the UN's work was presented in conjunction with film clips and actors and creators of the SyFy Channel's landmark series "Battlestar Galactica".

Eric Deggans: Rethinking David Letterman: Exactly How Are We Supposed to Feel About All This?

2009-10-08T13:30:19Z

I want to believe Maureen Dowd when she says the whole David Letterman affair is simply about "the erotic pull of proximity." But I'm not sure I'm there yet.

After a week of breathless reportage about the comic's admitted flings with female staffers -- and it's a sign of the media times that it feels like this story has been around so much longer -- one thing is obvious.

We have not yet, as a pop culture-breathing, tabloid-fueled nation, decided how we feel about powerful older guys seducing the young women who work for them.

I agree with MoDo on one thing; this is not a Polanski-level offense. Given what we know and how those involved are reacting, it doesn't seem likely anyone was forced to do anything they didn't want to happen.

But this is an example of a powerful entertainer having sexual relationships with young women who depend on him for their income and their careers. Much as I hate the idea of delving deeper into the details of these relationships, we don't know enough to say whether Letterman broke any laws or crossed any lines.

Brilliant as Dowd's column was -- dotted with dazzling pop culture references to Hannibal Lecter and Mad Men -- it seems to me she gives Letterman an awfully wide benefit of the doubt. This may be the first time I've seen a column gently defending an entertainer by noting two TV executives married subordinates. And Dowd, who has appeared on Letterman's show several times, doesn't spare a line to let us know how she feels about the guy personally, and whether those feelings have affected her conclusions.

And though Dowd downplays any connection to Bill Clinton, this reminds me exactly of the moment the Monica Lewinsky allegations were confirmed. Once again, an admired public figure admits a relationship with a woman many, many years his junior, who worked for him, after circumstances compelled the admission.

Most men, lacking the armor of celebrity, wealth, comedic genius and fan affection, would be less esteemed in the public sphere. Does Letterman get a pass, as Clinton did from many feminists, because we like him so?

I've written a brief analysis for a friend at TV Week collecting opinions from columnists around the country, and I don't think Letterman's show is in danger, unless there are substantially skeevy new revelations coming about his conduct. Any ratings bump probably won't be sustained enough to translate into advertising dollars and surely doesn't compensate for the public humiliation factor.

If anything, the constant media attention may help the accused suspect -- this morning, the Today show was still leading with the story -- whose strategy seems to consist of trying to scare everyone involved into avoiding a trial.

And to those whose knees are already jerking to pile on the "who cares?" comments, I would only say this: Such incidents help us all decide how we feel about this stuff if and when it happens in our own lives -- a teachable moment for some, a cautionary tale for others.

Right now, I'm feeling a little disappointed in a performer who always seemed to have a strong moral compass. And maybe a little disappointed in the people making excuses for him, too.

David Bromwich: William Safire: Wars Made Out of Words

2009-10-01T18:15:40Z

"There were no thrills while he reigned, but neither were there any headaches. He had no ideas, and he was not a nuisance." What Mencken said of Coolidge can be reversed in the case of Safire. There were plenty of thrills, and after the thrills, the field was littered with casualties. And he had tons of ideas. He was keen to share them as soon as he thought them up. The career that took him from public relations to propaganda to column-writing was a single seamless progression. He treated these different lines of work as the same work; and under his hand, they were. He was interested in words, yet he has left behind no sentence or sentiment that people will quote in the future merely because it is true.

He never met a war he did not like. He did all that he could to drum up several wars beyond the psychological means of his country and the world; and his disappointment could turn to spite when a war that he wanted failed to materialize. Jimmy Carter's refusal to bomb Iran in the years 1979-1980 was the greatest defeat of Safire's life. His record on Vietnam (both during and after), on El Salvador and Nicaragua, and on Iraq would be worth combing the archives of the New York Times to recover, simply as an exhibition of savage consistency. Safire was not the originator of the psychology of the self-righteous onslaught, "ten eyes for an eye" -- human nature found it long ago -- but he was the American of his generation who almost made it respectable. Did a terrorist set off a bomb in a café and five Americans die? Send in the Air Force and demolish a foreign capital somehow connected with that terrorist. The flash of the violent gesture, for Safire, was more important than the justice of the action.

He became the leading practitioner of the gestural politics of journalism. And in doing so, he revamped the accepted manner of the New York Times columnist. No more the formality and reserve and the magisterial airs of a James Reston; everything now had to be fast and sharp: keep the pot boiling and the gags popping. He was the first man of the right to leaven his moralism with jokes. With fun and "pace," with plenty of euphemisms, and with calculated self-deprecation he did more than anyone else to legitimate a reactionary president, Ronald Reagan, as a new kind of centrist. A considerable sleight-of-hand.

His columns fashioned from dialogues with Richard Nixon when living, and his channeled mock-dialogues with Nixon when dead, were a prodigy of bad taste. A related genre he pioneered, the imaginary monologue of the man of power that aimed to reveal the motives of the powerful, betrayed Safire's curious want of invention. He made no effort to convey the manner and savor of the person he ventriloquized. The monologues all came out sounding like Safire (just as the quoted persons in a Woodward political chronicle all sound like Woodward). But this insider genre fitted the new Times like a glove. Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd picked up the format and both now perform it with as little concern for tone and shading as Safire.

Perhaps the ruling passion of his life was a need for violent stimulants. He sought, and craved, excitement -- the thrill of the battle of everyday politics, the thrill of the slander and smear, the thrill of wars. He was equally drawn to wars of the past, wars simmering at present, and wars in prospect for the future. This love of gross sensations Safire aimed to impose as much as possible on his readers. More important, he aimed to impose it on the men of power whom he wished to influence. And often enough he succeeded. Kenneth Starr, on the brink of quitting the Whitewater investigation, was rebuked by Safire in such humiliating terms that, rather than defy the columnist, he launched the country on the long march toward impeachment.

Safire attended to Nixon's post-retirement fame by shining as decent a light as could be thrown on it, and he kept Nixon's posthumous fame in as good repair as the facts allowed. These exertions suggest a large investment of his own amour-propre. He would not let anyone forget that he was part of the Nixon White House, but he encouraged readers to suppose that time spent there had been happy and not shameful. Among living politicians, he cultivated a particular admiration for Ariel Sharon. Has the oddness of this relationship ever been adequately noticed? A general who became the head-of-state of a foreign power, implicated in a brutal massacre, was puffed as a wise man by a popular American journalist. Safire sought to persuade Americans that the adventurer of the Lebanon War was our old friend "Arik." His reports of phone conversations with Sharon, like the columns he devoted to the elevation of Sharon's achievements, have no precedent in American journalism, not even in the high days of Anglophilia when Winston Churchill evoked sentimental feelings beyond any warrant from his conduct.

In person, it seems that Safire was not a brawler; no fighting stories about him have surfaced. But he had the fondness of the born propagandist for "bloody noses and cracked crowns." He served in the army as a correspondent, during a time of peace, yet he loved the idea of combat. The higher the stakes, the more zest it added to life. He smashed hard without a second thought, and could be wrong with impunity, as Wen Ho Lee, Mohamed ElBaradei, and a multitude of others can attest; and yet we are told that he was a pleasant fellow, and was known in after-years to dine with his victims.

As a writer, Safire is most often associated with the short bursts he wrote in speeches given by Vice President Spiro Agnew, before Agnew was forced to retire under a cloud of charges by the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore: extortion, bribery, tax fraud, and conspiracy. "Nattering nabobs of negativism" was a phrase in a speech of November 13, 1969. It suggested that critics of the Vietnam War were as rich as nabobs and as mindless as chattering apes. A trick from the lower drawer of Kipling, it served its reckless purpose in heating the resentments of the time. Safire's other best-known phrase, "an effete corps of impudent snobs," had been given to Agnew to speak just a month earlier at the time of the October 15 peace moratorium. Here the effect bordered on punning -- a favorite device of his for disarming criticism -- since effete brings elite into the ear without having to pay for the echo. He turned out other squibs in the same mood that helped to corrupt the public mind, and to break the public peace in America at a time of internal strife. His picture of the defense of civil liberties as "pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order" has the true Safire touch -- clever, punchy, alliterative, demagogic.

This pattern, by which zealous accusations are dealt out sharply, but mixed with a vein of buffoonery, is a staple of the far right in America that has never been properly described or accounted for. It has been with us at least since the time of Senator Joe McCarthy; and it would be surprising if William Safire in his early days did not nurse an admiration for McCarthy. More polished than McCarthy or Nixon, and by the time of his death a lion of the establishment, Safire is the link that across four decades connects the political style of Joe McCarthy with that of Rush Limbaugh.

Under the heading "William Safire's Finest Speech," it is now possible to locate, on line, a speech Safire wrote for Nixon which offers the most perverse imaginable illustration of political opportunism.

It was written to order for an occasion that never arose. It said what Nixon ought to say in case the astronauts of Apollo 11 were stranded on the moon. In this counter-factual elegy, drafted on June 18, 1969 and sent to Nixon's aide H.R. Haldeman, the author of Safire's Political Dictionary worked fast to bury the dead while they were living. "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace." Thus, in the time he could spare from enlarging a war half a world away, Safire contrived to speak for the people of the planet in the voice of a truce from outer space: the astronauts would "be mourned by a Mother Earth who dared to send two of her sons into the unknown." A final blessing was uttered on behalf of a species now at last united in our prayers to the sky: "Every human being who looks up to the moon in nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind." A superstition, a kind of piety maybe, would have restrained many speechwriters from undertaking a preposterous assignment like this, no matter how warmly it was urged, no matter by how powerful a boss. Yet the dying fall of the final clause epitomizes Safire's facility.

Rupert Brooke, a poet of the First World War, wrote in the opening lines of a poem that Safire must have learned in school, "If I should die, think only this of me;/ That there's some corner of a foreign field/ That is forever England." Compare "some corner of another world that is for ever mankind." He fished up the sob of the shining line from his stock quotations to send the astronauts to their eternal rest. But consider the deeper poetry of the moment. The man most gifted in his time at summoning a literate audience to twitch, heave, and submit to the voice in the megaphone without regard to the man behind the curtain, had been asked to bury the first explorers of space. And what came into his mind? A paean of self-sacrifice lifted from the high age of Europe's empires. The astronauts, as Safire saw them, were soldiers of the next empire. It is good that they lived to make this speech unnecessary. But it is good, too, in a way, that we have this speech -- a lasting testimony of the limitless ambition of mere words.

Originally posted at Anti-War.com.

Tabby Biddle: The Ambiguity in Women's Lives

2009-09-29T10:50:15Z

A good friend revealed to me recently that when she first got married, she found herself doing all sorts of "Little Miss Homemaker things." She was ironing her husband's shirts, making him lunch, and waiting for him to come home at the end of the day. "I have never ironed in my life!" she said. "I don't know what came over me." This was a woman who had been on her own for 15 years, was successful in her career, and was what most would call an "independent woman."

Something shifted though when she got married. She began to lose her sense of independence and started to crave being protected and cared for by her husband. She started losing focus on her career, would often second-guess her decisions, and felt her ambition dwindling.

On September 17, Arianna Huffington wrote a blog entitled, "The Sad Shocking Truth About How Women Are Feeling." She was responding to a series of studies conducted by The General Social Survey that showed women are becoming more and more unhappy.

Arianna says: "When you think about all that has happened over the last four decades -- with women securing greater opportunity, greater achievement, greater influence, and more money -- the decline in our collective state of mind seems to defy logic, and raises the vexing question: What in the world is going on?"

Although there is some controversy over the studies, the issues being raised are important ones. For example, last week Maureen Dowd in The New York Times wrote a piece titled, "Blue Is the New Black." In it she says: "When women stepped into male-dominated realms, they put more demands -- and stress -- on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties -- and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage."

I think it's hard to argue against the idea that the expansion of women's roles has brought on more stress for women due to the shear demand of responsibility. Add this to what Maureen Dowd talks about -- a wider audience of judgment (women, don't we all want to be perfect?). What's missing here is a mention of perhaps a deeper stress that comes from an ambiguity that certain psychologists and sociologists believe lies within women. Hint: Think of my friend above.

Ever hear of the Cinderella Complex?

Colette Dowling, New York psychotherapist and author of The Cinderella Complex, says that women have a deeply embedded wish to be taken care of and "saved." She says in her bestseller book: "We may not always recognize it ... but it exists within us all, emerging when we least expect it, permeating our dreams, dampening our ambitions." Ms. Dowling suggests that this wish goes back to the days of cave living, when man's greater physical strength was needed to protect mothers and children from the wild -- but, she says, such a wish is no longer appropriate or constructive.

Or is it?

Although Ms. Dowling published her book more than 25 years ago, these questions apply today. Is it possible for women today to be independent, ambitious, successful career women and at the same time still be taken care of and "protected" by a partner? Or is our secret need to be "saved and protected" sabotaging our ambitions and fulfillment as successful, career women?

What do you think?

Tabby Biddle is a writer and editor specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and emerging authors get their message out. Additionally she is the founder of Lotus Blossom Style, a yoga lifestyle company created to support women in their personal transformation. She lives in Santa Monica, CA.

Bill Mann: ABC-TV "Dances" Its Way to Public Disgrace With DeLay

2009-09-23T09:04:51Z

What's that sulfurous smell emanating from ABC-TV these days?

It's not that network's usual crappy new fall prime-time lineup, although it's pretty stinky.

No, it's Toxic Tom DeLay, aka The Exterminator, the unctuous little weasel now making a fool of himself (again) on ABC's dismal enterprise called "Dancing With The Stars." The very same well-tailored humanoid who was directly responsible for some of the most acrimonious and bitterly partisan sessions of Congress.

The same fancy dancer who was responsible for Bill Clinton's ridiculous, time-wasting impeachment, and whose reapportionment schemes gave us the likes of Goat Boy Gohmert, aka Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert, pointy-headed co-leader (along with Rep. Michelle Bachman, of course) of the Tin Foil Hat Brigade in the House. As one commentator put it this week:

"DeLay is responsible for some of the greatest miseries of our time, from the Patriot Act to the non-response to the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina."

OK, but will he dance for us?

Thanks to the ethically challenged ABC programming geniuses who decided to let this grinning eel put on his fancy dancin' clothes and soften his image for the good folks on the jury at his upcoming felony trial.

What, were Gov. Mark Sanford, jailed Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and Dennis "Jabba The Speaker" Hastert unavailable for this year's festive dance-a-thon?

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd may well have summed up the bio ABC scanned before selecting DeLay:

"The former exterminator drove the loony Clinton impeachment, pushed the nutty Terri Schiavo legislation, gutted the House ethics committee, engaged in gerrymandering schemes, enhanced the pay-to-play political culture and made the Republican Party so sulfurously partisan, ethically suspect and God-centric that voters recoiled."

OK, but can he shake his booty? After all, ABC execs may well be saying in private, Glenn Beck turned us down. Something about uncontrollable gyrations and spontaneous sobbing episodes. Maybe next year.

I remember an interview former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal gave to NPR's San Francisco affiliate KQED-FM, in which Blumenthal put a very fine point on DeLay's thuggish tactics, and how The Hammer threatened even fellow Republicans on such things as the notorious, sleazy 3 a.m. vote to ram through the laughable prescription-drug bill.

"I had Republicans call me who were scared of the guy. They'd never been threatened by anyone before," said Blumenthal about ABC's latest dancin' fool.

So, has network TV reached the bottom of the barrel? Or is the barrel just getting deeper?

As offensive as putting smarmy legislative thug DeLay in a dance costume and asking him to smile for potential jurors may be, consider this:

Prince Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network once gave Pauly Shore his own series.

I thought that was the bottom of the barrel.

Now I'm not so sure.

Clarence B. Jones: Head in the Sand?

2009-09-18T10:08:07Z

I've written and posted here before about how race is clearly the 800-pound gorilla in America's communal living room. I'm tired of that analogy; it offers a cartoonish version of a problem that I see more in the horrifying vein of a Francis Bacon painting. So let's instead see it that way -- as a raw and open wound on every citizen's back. We look in the mirror and we don't see it. We could if we turned just so and tried, but we don't really want to. Few people in the public eye ever want to acknowledge or talk about this wound. To do so is to risk accusations of "playing the race card," among other criticisms. Well, the whole idea of playing cards is that, in order to have a successful game, everyone playing needs to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each card in the deck.

So maybe now, finally, it's time to reframe the discussion. Let's stop the game so we're not "playing" any cards, and simply examine this race card in the light and try to understand how it fits into the deck that constitutes America's political landscape.

Morally, now is always the opportune time to have a national dialogue about race. The problem is, moral leadership often bends to political expediency.

Still, every time some racially-charged event unfolds in real time (more and more these days than any time since the Rodney King riots in LA), whenever some egregious incident makes headlines, we're told this at long last is an opportunity for a national dialogue on race. Yet that dialogue never happens.

Most recently, it very publically didn't happen with the kabuki theatrics of the "White House Beer Summit" featuring Prof. Gates, Sgt. Crowley, the President and Vice-President. Much to my disappointment, that turned out to be a dressed up photo-op falsely addressing the issue that was its raison d'être. I wouldn't be surprised to find out the beer was non-alcoholic.

Finally, though, moral urgency and political expediency may have intersected, and now might actually be the time to have this national dialogue we're always believing is just around the corner. My thanks go out to South Carolina's Joe Wilson, whose frat-boy cockiness and inexcusably ill-mannered behavior at last week's Special Congressional Session managed to shock the complacent established media into tackling the subject of race head-on.

At least the mainstream media in the form of Maureen Dowd, who has come around to seeing the painfully obvious when she wrote in her New York Times column:

I've been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer -- the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids -- had much to do with race.

But Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president -- no Democrat ever shouted "liar" at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq -- convinced me: Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

"Dowd found the courage to state explicitly what so many of us have been thinking," writes Lindsay Beyerstein at her blog, Majikthise. Its one thing when liberal bloggers say that Joe Wilson has issues with a black man being president, it's quite another to see it spelled out on The New York Times Op-ed page.

As media and political pundits were reacting to Maureen Dowd's statements, the voice of former President Jimmy Carter has the audacity to cut through the noise and directly address that idea we're all so seemingly afraid to consider:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely-demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man. I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that share the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans.

And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.

Hello! Of course, race is a factor. That we may not be able to measure it statistically doesn't mean it is not significant. Andrew Sullivan wrote that:

The right is projecting its shadow onto Obama. The same qualities that make him a saint to the left make him the devil to the right -- he is easy to project onto.

That is why he is the out-of-control spender when they sat on their hands through all of Bush's malfeasance. That is why his talking to schoolchildren is dangerous when our government wiretapping its citizens wasn't. That is why saving the financial system from years of Republican regulation is taking away our future. The more evil revealed about the right's excesses on torture, or wars of choice, or nearly destroying the economy, the more evil Obama will look in their eyes, as they cannot tolerate owning responsibility, because in their own minds they are only good.

85-year-old Jimmy Carter knows the South and our country. Even though Obama was elected with 43% of the white vote, he received only 10-14% of that vote in the South. And that isn't because his platform runs against those states' interests. Something else is clearly at work here. But knowing that and acknowledging it are two vastly different things.

Through his press secretary Robert Gibbs -- himself a white southerner -- Obama was quick to respond to President Carter's comment.

The president does not believe that that criticism comes based on the color of his skin. We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we've made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by both this administration and previous administrations to stabilize our financial system, to ensure viability of our domestic auto industry. [Emphasis added].

That was a press statement that reflected neither the truth of the situation nor the honest appraisal of the man in whose name the statement is being attributed. Just because he's black and President does not mean he must "recuse" himself from commenting on obvious reality: the racist placards and signs of the right wing protesters are not only a call to action for white supremacists and Klansmen, they are a clarion call to those being attacked.

President Obama and his advisers act as if race is a political "third rail." Yes, it is. But third rails rarely electrocute cautious individuals. What they do far more successfully is power the trains.

Once upon a time, in another century, in another America -- an America where an African American president would seem more like a hallucination than a possibility -- Nelson Rockefeller shared with me that he found nothing more despicable than "men who had real power without the courage or conviction to use it."

This is a lesson President Obama should really take to heart. Openly discussing the problem of racism in America at the highest offices of government isn't stooping to the racists' level, it isn't taking the bait. In fact, protesters and certain senators do what they do precisely because they can reliably predict Obama will not call them out on it.

Maybe it's time for a new take on that strategy, one with some teeth.

Strategically, I agree that the immediate possibility of meaningful health care reform is more urgent than Obama focusing on the national importance of a serious dialogue on race in America. But leadership goes beyond tactics. Every parent knows you can mash up aspirin in a child's applesauce and avoid the Sturm und Drang, but at some point kids are better off understanding the medicine they're taking and realizing the benefits outweigh the taste. That's what true leadership is, treating the soft citizenry like they're adults. And boy, it's as rare today as it is necessary.

The political reality is that Obama and his advisers must know that racial tension and the absence of national leadership fostering a national discussion of race issues in our country is the Sword of Damocles dangling over this presidency. If the mere act of a reporter like Maureen Dowd reconsidering her ideas and coming forward with an indictment can cause a media frenzy, how much more so the first African American president? It will be worth it. Long after medical care has changed to the point that this era looks like bloodletting and leaches, long after the US economy has shifted and adapted, gone through reforms and reboots, this administration and this president will be remember for one thing above all else:

Obama will forever be either the man who healed this septic wound that runs across the back of this nation, or the man who turned away from the mirror to solve more "practical" issues.

Yes, I remember well that Dr. King often "turned the other cheek" rather than encourage a violent response in kind. But, I also remember that he would exercise his leadership to "kick ass and take no prisoners", non-violently, for what he believed was right. He did not remain silent, appease, or kowtow for the sake of keeping peace. The man led by speaking his mind. (Yeah, I know. He was not an elected political leader).

President Obama can have health care reform and heal our nation's racial ills. Now that's strong medicine. I can think of no greater calling and enduring monument to his Presidency in the twenty-first century.

John R. Bohrer: The GOP Is Too Crazy To Be Racist

2009-09-16T14:28:03Z

Not to go all Maureen Dowd on you, but today's Republican Party is a lot like the line from that old Brando movie, The Wild One. Somebody asks Brando, "What're you rebelling against, Johnny?" And he says, "Whaddya got?"

With all due respect to former President Carter, he is wrong when he says that "an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man... that he's African American."

Perhaps someone who grew up in the rural South as Carter did is more likely to see race as the basis for the Republicans' outrageous behavior over the last few months. It is undeniable -- undeniable -- that people like Matt Drudge and Glenn Beck are consciously stoking racial fears.

And yet, the color of the President's skin does not matter to the lunatics dictating the direction of the Republican Party. I mean, it matters in that it's icing on the cake -- but they were baking regardless of all that.

Scores of Republican activists would've accused President Hillary Clinton of setting up "death panels." Rallies would've been filled with Hitler mustaches painted on the portrait of President John Edwards. A grandstanding GOP congressman would've shouted "You lie!" at President Bill Richardson.

Why? Think back to the fall of 2007 (even earlier than that, maybe). Hillary Clinton was the Democratic front-runner, staking out a cautious path to the White House. And what did we see on what seemed like every Republican website? Big ads for black t-shirts showing Hillary with a red slash over her neck, sandwiched between the words, "RE-DEFEAT COMMUNISM; 2008."

The point is that there is no method to their madness. The hardcore whatever-they-are's at these rallies would be there no matter what. How did anyone ever get the idea that these protests are actually about something? And I don't just mean policies or race, I mean anything.

It just goes to show that if you say something loud enough and long enough, you will drown out the truth. Remember how these rallies started organizing during President Obama's first month in office? It was so very clear that they were about nothing -- that they were parties for sore losers and extremists. Yay! Bring some crazy signs! Wrap yourself in the flag and call everyone else a traitor! Woo-hoo! The media, politicians, people in general saw all that for what it was: a bunch of loonies who were bummed that the guy they hate won.

That's one thing. People like that have always been around. They will always be around. What's different is that a political party has never adopted them before.

Because as the rallies met again and again, the Republican Party and their echo chamber got even more into it each time. This was, they said, proof of grassroots opposition to the President's policies. Wrong. It got bigger because Republican bigwigs realized they couldn't compete with Democrats on ideas; that Americans will reject the Bush-Cheney portfolio they continue to use today. So, they figured out something not-so-secret: policy discussions make for boring TV; loud anti-everything rallies make for great TV!... Who needs ideas, anyway?

So they're putting everything they've got into feeding this beast of boisterousness. Are there some racists out among the crowd? Absolutely. Is race an overtone? You bet. But -- and it's a big 'but' -- is "the overwhelming portion" of it based on race as President Carter contends? No.

Judith Ellis: Teabaggers Should Be Taken Seriously

2009-09-16T14:05:00Z

For all of my friends and foes out there who believe that the essence of Tea Parties is legitimate please take a listen to this hypocritical leader, Mark Williams, who tried to mask his racist ideology by saying that the Tea Parties are all about Americans standing up for their rights after being "attacked" by their own government. (Pay particular attention to his incendiary word choices and tone when describing President Obama and the administration. By the way, where was he eight years ago?) His appearance on Anderson Cooper 360 was quite revealing.

Mark Williams likened the Washington Tea Party to a "picnic" celebrating America where parents and kids gathered. (Wasn't it odd that there were no Native American, African American, or Hispanic American families in attendance?) The picnic line was reminiscent of some other picnics where charred bodies hung from trees amid joviality and revelry with parents and kids in attendance eating bar-b-que.

Mark Williams tried to say that the Washington Tea Party was about the honesty of Americans who want to take back their government from big corporations who gave them the money to hire buses and print despicable signs such as "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy." There will always be nutcases, as there were during the "so-called peace demonstrations," he explained. In attendance were simply fringe elements that did not represent the whole. He painted the Washington Tea Party the with big bold red, white and blue strips that a non-white racist like, Maureen Dowd, could deride. The large majority of those in attendance were rational Americans who love their country and despise interference with the government but were all for such interference in cases like the Terry Shiavo case where they injected themselves and the government in between a husband and wife.

This was all sounding pretty good and could have deceived many listeners until Anderson Cooper called Williams out on his hypocrisy: "What you're saying makes sense to me here when I'm hearing what you say but then I read on your blog, you say, you call the President 'an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief.'"

Mark Williams did not back down from this statement. This is who President Obama is, he insisted. Now, how can such a movement led by the like of Williams be legitimate? It cannot be said that everybody in attendance in Washington over the weekend were racists. It cannot perhaps be said that everybody at picnics where black bodies burned were racists also; they simply went along. What is most certainly known for sure is that the majority of people have never changed policy for good or ill. History proves this repeatedly, again and again throughout the centuries, in country after country. So, will history repeat itself yet again for ill?

Beau Friedlander: What 'Bin Laden' Is Saying About Glenn Beck

2009-09-14T07:31:45Z

An unverified audio recording of Osama bin Laden has emerged on Islamist websites. The tape may provide proof that the shaggy figurehead is still alive. The audio message set to video, replete with 9-11 imagery, serves no other discernible purpose.

"To the American people, this is my message to you: a reminder of the reasons behind 9/11 and the wars and the repercussions that followed and the way to resolve it."

In broad strokes the familiar message here is that the US needs to get out of the Middle East. Bin Laden once again pointed to the US support of Israel as the main cause of it's problems in the Middle East, and more specifically at Secretary of Defense Robert Gates continuing on with President Obama, which indicated that Obama was really a puppet of Republican agenda, and specifically Bush policy in the Middle East. One supposes this might have been funny if bin Laden had better timing.

The other notable statement from the tape: President Barack Obama is "a vulnerable man who will not be able to stop the war, as he promised, but instead he will drag it to the maximum possible extent." Regardless who said it -- whether the voice on the tape is Osama bin Laden or an al Qaeda supporter -- the statement is true.

The full transcript was not available when this post was filed, so it's hard to discern the true import of the statement, but recent events here in the States have served to make the president look vulnerable for sure. Maureen Dowd was not the only person to hear in Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie" outburst, the subtler underpinnings of a race war. My colleagues and I heard it. In fact, Megan Carpentier was sufficiently bothered by a lynching comparison I made regarding Wilson's bragging rights post-address, that she sent a late-night email pointing out the same unspoken word Dowd cited: "boy." You lie, boy. That subtlety grew to larger proportions in my mind. The fear is that it will grow in the darker, angrier parts of the popular imagination as well.

Folks, we are a hop skip and a jump away from real trouble here. The specter of violence is clear enough. Osama bin Laden, if that was him (doesn't matter if it was just a garden-variety US-hater), pointed out that the president is vulnerable. What did he mean? Al Qaeda is a literal-minded group. The chances are reasonably good that the tea parties and the birthers and the Joe Wilson comment are somewhere at the root of the purported bin Laden comment.

Can Obama push meaningful change in this country without the radicalism of the Right threatening him with nonstop noise, cultural idiocy, and inciviility? One of the many great things about the United States is the ability of everyone and anyone to speak his or her mind. That includes the likes of Joe Wilson and Glenn Beck and David Duke and Orval Faubus, but with freedom comes great responsibility, and that seems to be sorely lacking right now in the public reaction to our first African American president.

And this is a problem that imperils not just President Obama, but the validity of a cultural truism: the right to free assembly, freedom of speech, and all the rest. If the dog-whistle racsim of Obama opposition in this country continues to escalate, these latest alleged words from the bin Laden camp may be oft quoted regarding our "vulnerable" president.

First published by Air America.

Dowd On Wilson: "Some People Just Can't Believe A Black Man Is President And Will Never Accept It"

2009-09-13T12:37:01Z

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids -- from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president -- no Democrat ever shouted "liar" at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq -- convinced me: Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

Gibbs: Obama Protesters Not Motivated By Race (VIDEO)

2009-09-13T10:14:20Z

On CNN Sunday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he didn't think the protests against the president are racially motivated.

Host John King asked Gibbs about signs that said "Bury Obamacare With Kennedy," describing the sign as "distasteful." In reference to a column by the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, King asked if the president thought his race had something to do with such vitriol.

"I don't think the president believes that people are upset because of the color of his skin." Rather, he said, they were upset by the financial collapse and the economic crisis.

"I do think... this rhetoric often just gets way too hot," Gibbs added. "I think if we have a debate that's based on fact, and not based on hot rhetoric, or what gets us on TV each and every day... we can actually solve a big problem for the American people."

King also asked the press secretary about some more famous opponents: Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

On Wilson, Gibbs said the president accepted his apology and that the incident was a good lesson in civility for his six-year-old. As for plans to censure Wilson, Gibbs he would "let the House figure out how to deal with that."

After playing a tape of Obama saying death panels are "a lie, plain and simple," King asked, "Does the president believe that Sarah Palin is a liar?"

"Despite many media outlets saying that what former Governor Palin was saying wasn't true, she continued to say it," Gibbs responded. "I'll let Webster define what one calls her. I think in the absence of fact... sometimes what happens is we fill the void with stuff that quite frankly isn't true." He said Obama helped fill that void in his speech Wednesday night.

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Paul Slansky: This Preposterous Week In Review

2009-08-28T16:04:40Z

Anderson, Pastor Steve

• belief of that "every homosexual in the world is a deviant, is evil and is a predator"

• prayers of for the death of President Obama

• sermon entitled "Why I Hate Barack Obama" is delivered by so rabidly that one can imagine the spittle flying from the lips of

Bachmann, Representative Michele
• supporters of are urged by to defeat health-care reform by praying and fasting

Barton, Mischa
• evident assumption by that people are total imbeciles who'll believe anything

Calley, William
• 40-years-late apology is offered by

Cheney, Dick
• claims by that the release of CIA documents would prove that the Bush Administration's enhanced interrogation techniques worked are, unsurprisingly, not borne out by release of said documents
• Obama is accused by of -- oh, this is sweet -- politicizing the Justice Department

CIA
• approved enhanced interrogation techniques of included "prolonged diapering"

Dowd, Maureen
• bloggers who post snarky things on the Internet without signing their names are scolded by

Dunne, Dominick
• death of at the age of 83

Ebert, Roger
• 30 years of sobriety are chronicled by

Greenwich, Ellie
• death of at the age of 68

For much more, including John McCain spilling water on himself and more quitting by Sarah Palin, click here.

Sean Carman: Breaking! Transcript of 2004 Bush Cabinet Threat-Level Discussion!

2009-08-21T19:01:40Z

One of the fun things about being a columnist for the Huffington Post is that anonymous sources send me hot inside information, totally out of the blue.
ﾠ
This information comes in "over the transom," as they used to say. For those unfamiliar with the ink-smudged, glory-filled days of the newspaper game, a "transom" is the piece of wood forming the top frame of a door, that also forms the bottom frame of the little rectangular window above that door. In the day, newspaper-people -- who all wore visors, greased their hair with Vitalis, and smoked cigars, even the women -- would leave the transom window open and lock the door at night when they went home to their families, who all wore beehives and polyester dresses, even the husbands and teenage boys (although they usually did so in the privacy of their rooms).

So, if someone had a story, they came by late at night and slipped it "over the transom," that is, through the little window above the door, where it would fall to the floor, to be discovered by the printer, who would set the story in type and run it on page one. For a byline, he would use the name of the reporter who last bought him lunch. This is why printers had it good. They never had to pay for lunch, ever.

The same thing happens today. Sort of. We newspaper people still have transoms. Now, however, we rent them, from a transom warehouse on 11th Street, just north of K. The facility I use has 200 transoms for rent, each one little window above a wooden door, with a little space behind. These days, many of these rented transoms are standing idle. I actually share a rental transom with a couple of guys at McClatchy. We have a sign by ours that says, "PLEASE CLEARLY INDICATE WHICH JOURNALIST YOUR STORY IS INTENDED FOR!!"

The point of this was just to introduce the latest hot news item I have received with some folksy history about recent changes in the newspapers business.

So here's the news: The other day, when I stopped by to check my transom, I came across an explosive item, the transcript of the Bush cabinet meeting at which Tom Ridge was "pressured" to raise the Department of Homeland Security threat-level in the weeks preceding the 2004 election.

I know! This is a real scoop. The transcript is shocking, too. It may even get me a Pulitzer. It also casts Mr. Ridge's role in something of a new light. Here it is.

Bush Cabinet Meeting Official Transcript: 9-21-04

POTUS: . . . and so the cowboy says, "No, bartender, I said two LONG NECKS."

[laughter]

POTUS: Hooo! Oh, boy. [wiping tear] Ah, OK, so where were we?

Mr. MINETA: OK, first item. Kerry has narrowed the gap to seven points. That's Gallup nationwide, released this morning.

POTUS: Hey, since when did the Secretary of Transportation get to run these meetings?

[more laughter]

Mr. CHENEY: OK, seriously, though, we have to do something. Seven points. He could close that.

POTUS: But what can we do? The CIA keeps saying there's no credible threat of a new attack. There isn't even any chatter out there.

[silence]

Mr. CHENEY: Fear is our strongest political currency. I think of the wires connected to my heart, and the cold metal case in my chest keeping me alive. How can we make people afraid?

POTUS: We could do one of those things where I go out to those microphones and pretend not to know the details of an issue of great national significance.

Mr. POWELL: You mean a press conference?

POTUS: That's it! Press conference. Yes.

Mr. GONZALEZ: I sometimes have those. Had one just the other day. Mine are pretty small.

Mr. RUMSFELD: We need to go bigger. Drive the fear of Jesus into people. This is the fourth quarter.

Mr. RIDGE: I could just raise the threat-level.

[awkward silence]

POTUS: What?

Mr. RIDGE: You know, raise the threat-level. I think we're at purple now, or beige, or something . . .

[laughter]

Mr. RIDGE: But seriously, we kick it up a notch, and issue a press release. Something about new information of a credible threat.

Mr. POWELL: I'm sorry, but we can't do that. The national terror alert system's color codes are precisely calibrated to reflect . . .

Mr. RUMSFELD: Oh, put a sock in it, Colin. My question is, what if this gets leaked? It goes from being an unknown known to a known known. What then?

Mr. RIDGE: I take the fall. It was my idea. The President never knew.

POTUS: I like it. I was never here.

Mr. RIDGE: It was actually Karl's idea. He called me with it this morning.

Mr. MINETA: Dick, why are you clutching at your heart?

Mr. CHENEY: Electrode skipped a pulse. Saw my life flash. I'll be fine.

POTUS: Can we go up to orange? I think orange would be good. Red might be too much.

Mr. RIDGE: Definitely agree. Orange is perfect. We need somewhere to go if, God willing, there's a genuine attack.

Mr. RUMSFELD: One hundred percent. Right in the bull's eye.

Mr. CHENEY: Tom, our story is, if this ever leaks, it was your idea. None of the rest of us ever knew.

Mr. RIDGE: I will never falter, Mr. President. I will never fail.

Mr. CHENEY: [indicating] Uh, Tom, remember he's the, uh . . .

Mr. RIDGE: Oh, right. Right.

POTUS: I think that's a wrap. That's a fine day's work, everyone. Let's call it good.

Mr. MINETA: Meeting is adjourned. Tom, you'll get a draft of the press release to Karl and we'll go from there?

[sounds of meeting breaking up.]

POTUS: Mr. Swift Boat. We'll show him how we do things.

Mr. RUMSFELD: Yes we will, sir. Yes we will.

Ellen Snortland: Boys Bite Beast

2009-08-21T11:38:58Z

Traitors to white male privilege, there are quite a few unsung men of feminist values in the world. So why are the unsung not more "sung"? The patriarchy is a system that is a "beast" and doesn't reward the boys that bite the hand that feeds them. In a glaring exception to the rule, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote a stunning anti-sexist piece. It's rare that a person with such valuable newspaper real estate will have the guts to out himself as a feminist -- or at least, feminist sympathizer. Essentially, Herbert trumpets a heartfelt clarion call for people to wake up to the mostly hidden, unarticulated misogyny in the U.S., using the incidents of mass slaughter of women and girls as proof of its pervasiveness. (Read Bob Herbert's op-ed piece here: http://tinyurl.com/l79ks8)

Herbert writes, "We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected. We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment."

Indeed. What makes Herbert's observations more credible than the hundreds, perhaps thousands of women -- journalists, self-defense teachers, scholars, professors, activists -- who have been saying the same thing for thirty years, in articles, books and sometimes even the media? He's a man!

Even Herbert's own paper, the New York Times, the so-called "Gray Lady" with its motto, "All the news that's fit to print," has a shockingly low number of regular opinion columnists who are female. Gail Collins became the first female Editorial Page Editor in 2001! Geez. She now has a regular column there. OOOOh, let's not get too modern, Gray Lady!

Don't you get it? Opinion pages are very, very powerful in shaping the national discourse. Although the NYT is criticized for being a liberal paper, for at least half of the population it can be predictably counted on to leave out women. As a news organization, you could say it preaches to the already male-dominant "choir." If you leave out half the choir -- sopranos, mezzos and altos -- you get a very odd bass and tenor tune that becomes the norm. If you have a dominant male world view, it's easy to be oblivious to the experience, concerns, fears, neglectful and often violent treatment of the rest of us. I say denying public voice to women is an act of neglect and creates an environment conducive to violence.

Besides Gail Collins, who is a tempered and thoughtful voice, there is only one other regular female columnist at the NYT: Maureen Dowd. Dowd is a very high soprano -- I can barely hide my contempt here, so I won't really try -- who is so strident, sharp and snarky, one wonders how she ever got a column anywhere, let alone the premiere paper of the U.S. If I had her tone as a feminist, I'd never be listened to anywhere, let alone in a national publication. But I believe, since she's rather predictably "anti-feminist," she gets to sing her song on a regular basis. (She's so anti-Clinton -- both of them -- that she comes off as a spurned lover in her hatred toward them. So odd.) It's shocking that the editors see Dowd's opinions "fit to print" sometimes: she often comes off more like a gossip columnist than an intellect.

So kudos to the NYT for running Gail Collins, Bob Herbert and Nicholas Kristof as regulars. Kristof especially is a voice for the largely voiceless women of the world. While I'd like to see him address domestic misogyny more, he's a true champion for women and girls of the developing world and really "gets" the tragic waste of treating females of the world as chattel and beasts of burden.

In some societies and in our own recent history, a woman's testimony in court counted for only half of what a man's did. Bob Herbert's "witnessing" of misogyny carries far more weight in modern journalism than any woman's. Just as the African slaves needed the voices of white privilege to help them win their freedom, women and girls need men and boys who are willing to articulate the injustice they see toward their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives. Please sing out, men. Louder. More often. Help the women singers get heard too.

Maureen Dowd Rips Palin: "Sarah's Ghoulish Carousel"

2009-08-16T13:41:33Z

I'm not sure the man who popped off and tweeted that Sonia Sotomayor was a "Latina woman racist" is the best Henry Higgins for the Eliza Doolittle of Alaska.

But Newt Gingrich was a professor. And he does know something about pulling yourself up by dragging down others and imploding when you take center stage -- both Palin specialties.

Gershon Hepner: My Husband Is Not the Secretary of State

2009-08-14T10:43:38Z

A rolling stone becomes quite mossy,
unless supported by its posse
when celebrating birthdays in
Las Vegas. Hillary can't win
when in the Congo in a tizzy
she has to prove that she is busy
running the affairs of State,
and not the ex-pres who's her mate.
Such competition does not put
the wife in a good light. The foot
she shoots is hers, while rolling south,
and makes her limp with motor mouth
she ought to put to better uses
and now employs to make excuses
for ways that she embarrasses
herself, and hurting, harasses
the people who cannot forget
it's easy to make her upset,
reminding her she climbs the Hill
with water for her Jack, called Bill.
Now she's cut both bended knees,
no vinegar will help her heal
as long as people don't feel she's
become a bigger-than-her-husband deal.
State Secretaries should never flash
with pique but being diplomatic
should hide all skeletons that flash
to mind in basements or the attic.

Before the description of Hillary Clinton's flash of pique in the Congo by Jeffrey Gettleman, Maureen Dowd wrote "Toilet-Paper Barricades,":

You may recall the seventh rule of "Fight Club": Fights will go on as long as they have to. In this summer of our discontent, fights are spreading like mountain wildfires -- from a town hall in Lebanon, Pa., to one in Kinshasa, Congo. Never before have we had so many tools to learn and to communicate. Yet the art of talking, listening and ascertaining the truth seems more elusive than ever in this Internet and cable age, lost in a bitter stream of blather and misinformation. The postpartisan, postracial, post-Clinton-dysfunction world that Barack Obama was supposed to usher in when he hit town on his white charger, with turtle doves tweeting, has vanished.

Hillary's KO in the Congo on Monday made the covers of both New York tabloids. Using tough hand gestures not seen since "The Sopranos" went off HBO, Hillary snapped back at an African college student who asked about the growing influence of China on Africa and then, according to the translator, wanted to know: "What does Mr. Clinton think?" It turned out that the student was trying to ask how President Obama felt about it. But before he was able to clarify, the secretary of state flared: "Wait, you want me to tell you what my husband thinks? My husband is not the secretary of state. I am." This raw, competitive response showed that the experiment in using the Clintons as a tandem team on diplomacy may not be going as smoothly as we had hoped; once more, as with health care, the conjugal psychodrama drags down the positive contribution the couple can make on policy. At Tuesday's State Department briefing, Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley explained that Hillary was particularly irritated to feel overshadowed by men in Africa, where she is pushing her "abiding theme" of "empowering women."

Michael Roth: Cockeyed Optimism is Better Than Cynicism

2009-08-12T18:14:14Z

Reading about the town meetings currently taking place across America, it's difficult to know what the high turnouts and active participation say about the state of democracy in America. The right wing of the Republican Party has embraced community organizing, the activity mocked by their candidates in the last elections. And they are good at it. Good ole fashioned talk-radio, supplemented by up-to-date social networking tactics have put many in Congress on the defensive. Union members are trying to respond, but apparently they aren't getting to the meeting halls early enough. With her characteristically nasty ridicule, Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times chides the Obama networks for failing to turn out folks to support the president. "The young grass-roots army that swept Obama into office," she writes, "has yet to mobilize now that the fight is about something complicated rather than a charismatic hope-monger. No, they can't?" Reliable Maureen -- always ready with cynical mockery.

The fact that people are mobilizing on behalf of issues of significant public import is a very good thing. When politics becomes just a spectator sport, the citizenship of each of us is diminished. But the cynicism with which this mobilization is taking place -- stoking fears of euthanasia panels and losing one's opportunity for basic health care -- will have even more profound corrosive effects on our public life. Creating fear among senior citizens about "big government, when they are already on a huge Federal program, is particularly noxious. Anger and fear are dangerous fuel with which to build a political firestorm. They burn away trust. These passions feed on themselves and undermine future possibilities of working together to overcome differences.

But am I just labeling this mobilizing "cynical" because I don't share the political views of those who worry that because of big government we will soon be "standing on line to buy toilet paper" (NYT, 8/11)? What makes Limbaugh's or Palin's call to right-wing shock troops, for example, any more cynical than the messages I get almost every morning via email from team Obama? Is cynicism merely in the eye of the beholder?

There are two tests we might use to make the distinction between cynical manipulation and organizing based on shared belief. The first is simple: does the person asking you to join the fray have her facts straight? Are there really euthanasia panels planned? Since the answer is clearly "no," the person using the lie to promote action is being cynical. Sometimes it's hard to tell, and there is plenty of room for debate in something as complicated as health care reform. But often it's not hard to tell. We must expose how lies are used to generate fear.

This leads to the second test. Is the person promoting action trying to make you angry and afraid, as opposed to hopeful and pragmatic? If the organizer is basing his inspiration on fear and anger, you can bet that the possibilities for cynical manipulation have jumped sky high. I know these are far from airtight tests. Cynicism, of course, exists on the left as well as the right; hope or courage can also be manipulated. But fear and anger are far more combustible.

I started thinking about an escape from cynicism this week when I saw an exuberant summer stock presentation of that great Rogers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. There is a wonderful moment when Nurse Nellie realizes that she can't just "wash that man right out of her hair," and says that she is indeed "in love with a wonderful guy." Nellie isn't afraid of being in "a conventional dither" or of being "a cliché comin true" because she's over the moon about her guy. But South Pacific isn't just as corny as Kansas in August. The show reminds us that "you have to be carefully taught" to hate. But it rejects hate and prejudice as the music soars. Unafraid of being a "cockeyed optimist," South Pacific dreams that prejudice can be overcome.

I know we can't sing our way through raucous town meetings in which fears have been stoked that we are becoming "another Soviet Union." But we can use some of the cockeyed optimism that still inspired hope for change in the wake of WW II. In Hammerstein's words, you don't have to be "stuck like a dope/With a thing called hope." If we can expose the lies of manipulation without stooping to cynical mockery, we might have a chance to build something in common in which we can really believe.

Mike Bonifer: Leadership in the Age of Improvisation

2009-08-05T16:12:37Z

Who are the strongest players in the 'Bill Clinton-Kim Jong-Il North Korean Prisoner Pardon' scene?

The answer is given by Maureen Dowd in the closing paragraph of her column in the Aug. 5 NY Times:

"Hillary and President Obama look bigger when they share the stage with other talented players," writes Dowd.

That Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-Il are the stars of this scene is a result of strong supporting moves by players who were not onstage for the photo op.

Just as he did with the recent 'Beer Summit' scene, President Obama, has demonstrated that leadership in the Age of Improvisation can just as often be effective from the wings as it can from center stage. By inviting a couple of feuding folks over for a backyard brew, Obama elevated the status of a cop and a college professor, delighted the managers of three beer companies, and in 40 minutes turned a scene that his adversaries were pounding with a racism stick into an exercise in peacemaking. That's leadership.

And just as she showed when she chose to collaborate with Obama after a viciously competitive campaign, Mrs. Clinton demonstrates that the new mode of leadership is just as much about generosity, and gifting a fellow player with a moment in the spotlight, as it is about seizing it for oneself. It is as much about good casting as it is about playing the starring role.

Today, there are too many productive avenues for action, too many opportunities to move our scenes forward, for any one player to be front-and-center in all of them. A person with a chronic need to be the hero of every scene, the one planting the flag on the mountaintop, or landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier to proclaim that the mission has been accomplished, will find that a hundred other scenes have passed them by, and with those scenes, the opportunity to influence and lead has evaporated, too. True leadership never turns its back on opportunity.

Sir Edmund Hillary was celebrated around the world as the first man to climb Mount Everest. As Hillary himself acknowledged, his guide, Tenzing Norgay, was the person who led the way.

In the Age of Improvisation, we take turns on the mountaintop. Leadership comes from those who show us a path for getting there. As Dowd points out in her Times piece, performers are at their most powerful when they find ways to share the stage with other talented players. "Follow the follower," is the saying attributed to the legendary improv director, Del Close.

Skilled players will, as always, have their moments in the spotlight. The new leadership opportunities are for those who support, nurture, inspire and enable fellow players to discover their own avenues to stardom.

Maureen Dowd: "I Love Sarah Palin" (VIDEO)

2009-07-29T11:58:22Z

Maureen Dowd phoned into the third day of "Way Too Early With Willie Geist" at 5:45 am on Wednesday.

Dowd talked to Geist about her Palin column and expressed her love for the former Alaska governor.

"I love Sarah Palin. I mean, I love her more than anyone. As a journalist she is the best story ever," Dowd enthused. "You've got this former beauty queen and sportcaster who's in the role of Dick Cheney... She is the first person to ever fuse politics with reality tv."

WATCH:

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

John Wellington Ennis: Is Bruno Worse For Gays Than Perez Hilton?

2009-07-21T10:42:55Z

I am sorry to hear that GLAAD has condemned Sacha Baron Cohen's alter-ego Bruno as a setback for the depiction of homosexuals in popular culture. I do wish to be respectful of others' feelings on this complicated issue and acknowledge my own place as a hetero sympathizer and onlooker.

Throughout the film Bruno, we see Cohen stage increasingly elaborate public spectacles forcing unsuspecting people to bear witness to outrageously homosexual situations. One such scenario involves Cohen shackling himself naked in S&M bondage gear to his boyfriend, and wandering around looking for help to unlock them, including waddling through a gathering of anti-gay protesters carrying signs like "God hates fags." (They totally cut out the shot from the trailer where a furious shopping mall security guard confronts Bruno profanely. I hate when they do that.)

I recognize that the flamboyantly preening Bruno draws from well-worn stereotypes of flaming gay prima donnas. But Cohen brings much, much more to his Austrian fashionista, a character he has been doing for years. Yes, he's gay, but that is not what is funny about him; it's the voracity of his gayness, like Austin Powers in short shorts, an id unleashed to act out in the most grandiose stunts that he can pull out of his ass. (Sorry.) It is actually liberating to see a display of such flaunting of gay lust in a still-timid place: Hollywood. Bruno offers way more fearless gay action than, say, Brokeback Mountain.

Yet Cohen's escapades are consistently outdone by the reactions from the different spectators who suffer Cohen's sociopathic genius. Be it hunters in the woods at night, wrestling fans, or cops, the viewer is continually anticipating violent reprisals from any of these people who look really uncomfortable with homosexual anything. The film exposes the depths of homophobia in some quarters, transcending basic shock humor to capture the face of hatred. False pretenses for filming aside, this is documentary.

Further, Bruno's character is richly defined as so sublimely stupid, his persona presents a landmark in modern movies. Bruno is so dumb, he raises the bar, defying generalization. In the annals of comedy, there has not been a clown such as Bruno, whose idea of a good TV pilot includes a talking urethra. As prurient as he wants to be, the fashion activist Bruno is really a lavish wardrobe for juvenile humor involving butts, slapstick, dirty words, and anything else tried and true that could be classified as base.

Bruno's abject foolishness, farcical self-obsession, and quixotic quest for glamour in all the wrong places are all genuine comic ingredients, and not reflective of gay people. I would venture to say that I have never seen or heard of a gay person remotely close to Bruno, nor find grounds that would lead me to believe other homosexuals would be similar.

Bruno is a composite of our celeb-trash culture, but hilariously missing the point. He aspires to be "über-famous"--in a general sort of way, not for a talent, or body of work, or any work for that matter. That Bruno is just as likely to seduce Ron Paul as he is RuPaul to hook up with someone with a name is further satire of the fame game.

When you compare Bruno's impact on a heterosexual cultural paradigm with that of Perez Hilton, the blogger of celebrities who somewhere along the way became one himself, it presents a striking impression: Bruno is an act, Perez Hilton is real.

Perez Hilton routinely scrawls epithets and insults on photos released online by other photographers that he does not compensate or credit. His scribbling look like the rants of a patient who resides in an institution under protective care. He ridicules their shoes, hair, fashion, cleavage, makeup, aging, if they have been dumped, it they have been dating, if they are glamorous, if they have been widely successful, or not successful enough for him lately. He obsesses over the newest young stars that titillate 'tweens, canonizing his red carpet cartel regardless of ability. He often adds his own enthusiastic rhetorical flourish to ensure proper contextualization of his carnal sensibility, like obsessing over the dude from Twilight's treasure trail, or diagnosing Patrick Dempsey as sex on a stick.

I really don't even care about Perez Hilton or think any of his schtick really matters. It's funny and fine to bitch about Hollywood celebs, it is an American pastime and an industry unto itself. But for those concerned about the impact of gay stereotypes and and the cause of acceptance and tolerance, I would suggest that Perez Hilton's vapidly vicious agenda and his bottomless bitchiness ferments much more repellent opinions against gays than Sacha Baron Cohen's slapstick in shaved legs. Star-fucking is Perez Hilton's raison d'etre -- Bruno's raison d'etre is to shock people with inconceivable antics.

Compare the recent dust-ups with rappers that the two omnipresent personalities recently enjoyed. Perez Hilton went to his webcam in hysterics because the Black Eyed Peas' manager hit him after Perez called Will.i.am "a faggot," because it was the meanest thing he could think of. Considering that his last album was the pop-oriented Songs About Girls, I harbor doubts that Will.i.am is homosexual.

In his tete-a-tete with Eminem, Sacha Baron Cohen staged one of the most stunningly funny pieces of performance art ever recorded at the always-desperate-for-attention MTV Movie Awards. With the high-wire prowess of Cirque de Soleil, Bruno flew over the audience in an elaborate angel costume, somersaulted haphazardly to expose his loins, then took a nose dive into Eminem's lap, executed with excellent accuracy and astonishing grace. While Eminem's slack jawed security responded, Coen continued to unload funny lines as he spun around overhead like a homoerotic pinata.

While Eminem would claim days later that he was in on the gag, it may well have been the last bit of face he could save, after having that face rubbed in Bruno's package.

In this contrast, Bruno humbled the occasionally homophobic rapper by cozying up to him and proffering an obviously staged overture. Perez Hilton dug deep to insult Will.i.am and came up with calling him a faggot, prompting an overwhelming number of observations of the pot calling the kettle black, or the pot calling the Black Eyed Peas gay, or the gay guy calling the ladies' man gay, or whatever.

In Perez Hilton's famous exchange with Carrie Prejean--the one-time Miss California, topless model and future Republican vice presidential candidate--Perez asked the Miss USA contender about gay marriage, leading to the remarkable new delineation as "opposite marriage." In the ensuing national uproar, as conservatives fled to the dense diva, celebrating her as a victim of intolerance for her intolerant ways, how did Perez Hilton advance the debate he had unwittingly launched? He called her "a dumb bitch." This did not do much to diffuse allegations that Prejean was robbed of her crown by queenie conspirators, or rise above the snark with actual insight, or stress that these are other people's lives Prejean so glibly oppresses, and that the issue is not about her or her archaic beliefs. Perez Hilton made it about her, and continued to, as only a myopic hack could do. Perez Hilton hides behind his insults, only without the alliteration, cutsey puns, or highfalutin vocabulary of Maureen Dowd.

Sacha Baron Cohen's stand on gay marriage has received far less notice: Bruno actually tried to marry a guy in drag in the Norwalk courthouse, only to be rebuffed, illustrating the absurdity of enforcing prejudice in action.

For crying out loud, Perez Hilton's made-up name is even far more ridiculous than Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno. Mario Lavandeira's fake name literally aspires to be the low-rent Mexican version of meaningless fame for the shallow and talentless.

My hopes are to help focus the debate on issues that matter, as opposed to focusing on our contemporary clowns. But knowing that I have now risked myself as a target of Perez Hilton's rants, I have taken the initiative to post the below photo of myself for defacement, from the red carpet opening of my feature documentary FREE FOR ALL: One Dude's Quest to Save Democracy.

(The film has some humor with unsuspecting individuals, but it's about voter rights, not gay rights. And my producer Holly Mosher is lying on the ground as part of the 'crime scene,' an actual voting machine from Palm Beach County, Florida, used in the 2000 election.)

Cross-posted at www.johnennis.tv

Maureen Dowd: What A Wise Latina Knows About "A Gaggle Of White Republican Men"

2009-07-15T09:20:22Z

You can't judge a judge by her cover.

Despite the best efforts of Republicans to root out any sign that Sonia Sotomayor has emotions that color her views on the law, the Bronx Bomber kept a robotic mask in place.

Maureen Dowd's Advice To Jenny Sanford: "Change The Locks"

2009-07-01T11:03:58Z

Stay focused, ladies. Here is The Practical Guide to Help Spurned Political Wives Survive Old Problems in the Era of New Technology.

1. Skip the press conference, especially when your husband is copping to call girls, gay pickups in airport bathrooms or "tragic" and "forbidden" telenovela-style love stories. Stoicism at the skunk's side is overrated and, as Larry Craig's wife learned, sunglasses don't help.

2. When there's an Associated Press bulletin quoting your husband saying that he has found his soul mate but he's going to try to fall back in love with you, change the locks. (At your second home, too.)

Merrill Markoe: I Know How to Save the Republican Party!

2009-06-29T22:26:47Z

It was never a short or long range goal of mine to save the Republican party. But it came to me yesterday how they can do it. Now my altruistic side has got the better of me.

It hit me after reading Maureen Dowd's column in the Sunday New York Times. Here's her final sentence: "The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon- Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin , Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed- stop being two faced."

In just that short list of names, she covered illicit theatrical affairs, unwed teenage moms, cruel poorly timed dumping of first wives, drug addiction and stretching the truth. Add Larry Craig , Mark Foley, Ted Stevens and Jack Abramoff and you also add spicy alternative sex hookups, bribery, tax fraud, and fancy vacation houses.

Now put them all together and what do you get? The new Republican Party image: From Grand Old Party to Big Old Party!

The New BOP!

All they have to do, to win over millions, is keep doing the things that they're already doing only really embrace them. Voila! It's their "new brand!"

That's where Maureen Dowd's piece takes a wrong turn. She's stuck in the old GOP, where they used to look down on the stuff they were secretly doing. In the all new BOP, they're Two Faced and In Your Face!

Just like Sarah Palin said, when she shrugged off questions about her then pregnant unwed high school aged daughter; "Life happens!"

Damn straight!

"Because that's the way we do it in the new BOP. The party that lives to love and loves to party! We're the mid-life crisis dawgs and playas, dressed for business but looking for fun. And shit yes, sometimes our teenage daughters get pregnant! Life's for living! We do what we want, when we want and then find a way to explain it! We take no prisoners. Unless we can post their pictures with panties on their heads! We're The New In Your Face Two Faced Shit Faced BOP. "

Actually I'm scared this might be a little TOO effective.