Loving America on the 4th of July

As usual on flag-waving holidays, the wing-nuts were out this morning showing us how much they care about the good old U.S. of A. and we don’t. Milwaukee’s king-of-all-media (by default), the sanctimonious Charlie Sykes, used his vanity-blog to link to an unaccomplished bunch of right-wing lawyers who hit us over the head with this nugget of wisdom:

"One of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives, perhaps the most important one politically, is what they think (or how they feel) about the United States. Conservatives think the U.S. is a great country. Liberals think it is a deeply flawed, but redeemable, country. Radicals think it is hopelessly bad and should be destroyed or remade."

What a load of hooey. Oh, if only the world were as black-and-white as the nut-rights pretend to think it is. Unable to succeed on the strengths or defend the weaknesses of their own ideas and failed politicians, they try to put their would-be ideological opponents in boxes and straight-jackets, holding themselves out as the only ones with Virtue, Truth and Beauty (not to mention god) on their side. Since everyone else is Bad, they must be Good. Only conservatives think the United States is "a great country", you see. And everyone else – well, why even discuss them on this famous anniversary of our glorious Declaration of Independence?

It should surprise no one – least of all Sykes and the PowerLine bloggers, who secretly know better – that liberals also think that this is a Great Country, not only in terms of its status in the world, but in terms of what it is and could be. In fact, I would say that liberals love and embrace a more honest, diverse version of the nation than the red, white (heavy on the white) and blue cartoon version favored by those who, like the false patriots of, say, Fox "News", use the primary colors of the flag and their daytime anchors’ lipstick to dare anyone to see nuance or shades of grey. Liberals love not only the brave leap of faith taken by the Founders when they broke from England but the development of the country into a dizzying tapestry of backgrounds, cultures and promise (read: freedom).

But, does the right-wing really think the country is really that "great"? Conservatives have no less complaint with the state of the nation than any liberal does; in fact, they are far more likely to get disheartened and bitter if they aren’t dictating the terms of the nation’s progress. It is they who often see the country going to hell-in-a-handbasket – in fact, they created the term. And their complaints are about things that are much more entrenched, unstoppable and woven into the nation’s fabric – like diversity, equal rights, stable and unashamed gay relationships, opportunity-through-immigration, etc.

Liberals, on the other hand, complain about process more than anything else. Persuaded by knowable facts (as opposed to the anti-science, fact-phobic Bushies), we have faith in systems and in the strength of the nation to change to face new realities. We even have faith in democracy, Florida 2000 notwithstanding. We don’t think the nation is "deeply flawed, but redeemable"; we love our country the way it is, but don’t always like what it is doing.

The conservatives’ purported love of country is often strictly situational and manipulative. If they are in charge, oh, they love the country so much. On the other hand, during the Clinton years, they almost burned down the Constitution with a ridiculous partisan impeachment just to accomplish a defeat of a popular politician that they could not beat at the ballot box. How much did they "love" their country then?

But it doesn’t do any good to play the same sorry game they pull out on flag-waving holidays (and, now that I think about it, every other day of the year). I’m as sure they love their country in their own way as I am that they will not admit that I do, too. Even if I took on the phony symbols of their paper patriotism – flag-label pins, magnet ribbons, (ugh) Lee Greenwood – they would still deny my love of country, insist I think the country is "deeply flawed", maybe even slide me over into the "radical" category, who want the nation "destroyed or remade" (again, sounds more like right-winger Timothy McVeigh and the Posse Comitatus than anyone I’ve heard of on the left). They just won’t take "yes" for an answer.

Late this holiday afternoon, I strolled up a couple of blocks to catch the Shorewood July 4th parade, a tradition that includes decorated kid’s bikes, Little Leaguers, bands, funny cars and fire trucks. Villagers lined up all the way up and down the newly-streetscaped Oakland Ave. (H/T: Village Board and Shorewood BID Director James K. Plaisted), four- or five-deep, drinking in the beautiful day; waving flags, cheering every parader, feeling the nation-love. Imagine that...a thousand or so liberal Shorewood residents – not a sour-puss in the bunch – out there with their kids and everything, celebrating the nation’s birthday. It looked like anything you might expect in Brookfield, West Bend, Mequon or those other bastions of self-proclaimed patriotism – maybe better. It was an idyllic setting, it felt good, and we are all going to meet again at Atwater Park tonight to dig some celebratory fireworks.

Here’s a suggestion for Sykes and the other only-we-are-the-nation-lovers: Next year, why don’t you get in a convertible (hey, we aren’t that far from TMJ studios) and ride down the street with a megaphone, telling us all how you love America more than us, how we think America is "deeply flawed". Oh, and don’t forget to dress up appropriately – after all, every parade needs a clown.

UPDATE:

...the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight...

Business and Politics Don't Mix

I worked for an AFT campaign in the mid-90s that successfully organized a diverse group of professional state employees (WPEC), located all over the state. During an organizing trip to Green Bay in 1996, I stopped by a Chili John’s restaurant to partake in some of my favorite traveling comfort food. I’ve always missed the Chili John’s that used to be on Milwaukee's East Side a long time ago and never miss a chance to have a three-way (chili, spaghetti and cheese – now, stop that).

Looking at the menu, I was surprised to see that it was filled with juvenile political cheap-shots against then-President Bill Clinton and anyone else who wasn’t a right wing lunatic. This particular shop in the small chain, you see, had declared itself a "Rush Room"; a place where all the sadly-delusional local ditto-heads could meet to share the Rush Limbaugh experience with others who appreciated the radical-right screeds of the failed DJ from Missouri. I wasn’t there in time to share the joys of Rush with the no-doubt charming pitchfork-and-torch crew that day ("Didya hear that, Maude? He called him ‘Slick Willy’! Hoo-hah!"), but, apparently, the same menu is used all day to entertain others of similar ilk who might stumble in for a little racism and hate with their chili dogs.

Silly me – I always thought maybe restaurants selling good-to-great food might not want to exclude half of their potential customer base with offensive political diatribes. I sat there and read the menu while I reveled in my favorite chili. I don’t remember the specifics, but the menu featured sandwiches named for supposedly unpleasant characteristics of sitting presidents, vice presidents, first ladies, etc. When I was done, I found the guy who looked like he was in charge. "Is there some reason you don’t want me to eat here?" I asked. I explained to him that I didn’t appreciate having Limbaugh’s stupid politics shoved down my throat (so to speak) while I was trying to eat his delicious food. I mean, businesses make choices all the time – draperies, logos, colors – but all of them are trying to get you to come in, not to make fun of your beliefs and keep you out. It’s like walking into a McDonalds and seeing a menu making fun of Catholics or Jews or something. What’s the point? Anyway, it was the first time I had been at the place, so I left and forgot about it.

A couple of month’s later, I found myself back up in Green Bay and back at the same place. I really had forgotten the whole Rush Room thing. Then the manager walked up to me. "See, we fixed it," he said. "Fixed what?" I asked. "Well, I thought it over and figured you were right and dumped the Rush thing," he said. "Really?" I was flabbergasted. The guy got one customer complaint (at least, that’s the impression he gave me) and figured he didn’t want to lose customers to divisive politics. "Good, uh, thanks," I mumbled. He didn’t look happy about it, but, there you go – another place safe for better digestion.

I was reminded of this reading IT’s fine exposition about Judith Faulkner of Epic Systems, who took a principled stand against those companies who support the extreme right-wing agenda of WMC. This (at least) encouraged a major construction firm, J.P. Cullen, to resign from the WMC board and quit the organization altogether. Earlier this year, while WMC was pouring millions of dollars from unknown sources into their unfortunately successful campaign to buy another seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Madison hero Paul Soglin took the lead on giving WMC board members a head-up about what the renegade staff of the organization was up to. As usual, the most dangerous thing to under-the-rock slugs like those running the WMC political agenda is the light of day.

Given the industry-heavy make-up of the WMC board, it is hard for simple consumers to have the same kind of impact as Faulkner or Cullen. Boycotts as such are tough to organize and tougher to make successful. It gets down to exposing those involved, hoping for better individual choices, ripples creating waves, etc. I do know that I am off of Johnsonville brats. There – I said it. I’ll stop by in a month or two and see if they are still on the WMC board.

Justice Scalia: Whatever Works

The last month of the Supreme Court term presented the Court’s right-wing prima donna, Antonin Scalia, with two primary opportunities to show us all how smart he is and how stupid you are. Condescension, rather than logic or historical accuracy, is his primary method of "persuasion" – if that’s what you call being hit over the head with his self-proclaimed superior intellect.

Scalia’s primary gift to the Republican political agenda came on the last day of the term with his 5-4 majority opinion in D.C. v. Heller, in which he not only twists and ignores but actually re-drafts the text of the Second Amendment to suit the purposes of the NRA. Unable to explain his conclusion that the right to "keep and bear arms" is an individual rather than a collective right, despite the actual state-militia-facilitating language of the amendment, the Great One (oh, yes he is -- just ask him) simply substitutes his own language for the actual text of the amendment. "The Amendment could be rephrased, ‘Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,’" he writes. Fine, except that’s not what it says and his job is to interpret the actual language, not a convenient paraphrase. Likewise, later on, Scalia suddenly blurts out that "the phrase ‘security of a free state’ meant ‘security of a free polity,’ not security of each of the several States". Well, if you say so, Mr. Justice.

This new judicial device of re-imagining the language you are interpreting certainly opens the door for more creative decisions in the future, does it not? Heck, let’s rephrase the whole damn Constitution, why don’t we, like some new translation of the Bible (Thou shalt not kill, except for the government, with due process protections...or not). Maybe this explains the decision in Bush v. Gore – Article 2, Sec. 1: "The Person having the greatest Number of [Electoral] Votes shall be the President" except when we stop the counting of votes in any given State in order to reach a desired result. See, isn’t that easier?

Scalia also leaps into comparison with the absurd. ‘The Second Amendment would be nonsensical if it read, ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be infringed.’" Well...duh. But doesn’t that example show that the Founders meant something when they attached the militia phrase to the arms phrase? Oh, boy, are you stupid for asking, says Scalia. The militia phrase, you see, is "a prefatory statement of purpose". Such a "prefatory" phrase can "resolve an ambiguity in the operative clause" but "does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause." Well, which is it? Does not "resolving an ambiguity" necessarily "limit or expand the scope" of the now-unambiguous language? To, Scalia, this is silly-talk. "It [the prefatory clause] fits perfectly [with his conclusion], once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above." Oh, if only you were as smart as he was.

Scalia also can’t be bothered with the drafting history of the amendment. After summarily casting the only other Second Amendment case (U.S. v. Miller, 1939) aside because it did not review enough history of the amendment, he criticizes the dissenters for doing just that. "It is dubious to rely on such history to interpret a text that was widely understood to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to fashion a new one," he writes. Again, says him. His claim that an individual right to keep arms was "pre-existing" comes after a selective review of history in England and, besides, who says such a review of history is "dubious" just for that reason?

But, this wasn’t the first time this month that Mr. Originalist was beat over the head with the fact that history was not on his side. In the most historically significant decision of the term – the habeas corpus case, Boumediene v. Bush – Scalia waxed hysterical that the majority would let something like the history of the Great Writ and the unambiguous language of the Constitution get in the way of the whims of the president he helped appoint. In a dissent bathed in the warm, soapy water of his own failed argument, he can’t believe that five of his brethren and sistren would dare to deny the Bush administration their royal prerogative to lock up whoever they want based on whatever they say. Stewing in his own juices and drowning in his beer, Justice "Get Over It" just can’t, complaining about "the disastrous consequences of what the Court has done today", while ignoring the far worse legal and international disaster that would have occurred if the razor-thin majority had gone the other way.

Hundreds of thousands more people have been killed and injured by handguns than anything done or imagined by the cab drivers and bystanders who make up the majority of those locked in our scandalous Guantanamo limbo for lo these many years. Yet Scalia was willing to overlook the clear language of the essential Constitutional protection that allows anyone held by the government to challenge their detention in court to protect against the imaginary hordes, finding the Great Writ just too damn 9/10. He refuses to make the same emotional accommodation for the once and future victims of handgun violence, finding the desperate efforts of big-city politicians to be "policy choices" that are to taken "off the table" by stern Constitutional dictates that only he can see.

If such a tortured history-defying, precedent-ignoring, amendment-redrafting opinion as Heller had been written by someone on the other side of the Court’s Great Divide about some issue near and dear to their black hearts, the hounds of the wing-nut echo-chamber would be howling about "legislating from the bench" and other such false concepts of judicial overreach. But, what both these cases show is not so much legislating (the paraphrasing of language notwithstanding) as it does strained contortions to make the square peg of a desired result fit the round hole of the law. Scalia and his three slightly less-egotistical brethren in the Court’s remarkably monolithic hard-right block are willing to stretch and twist to get where they think they need to go. If they need to say that "the right to keep and bear arms" is unrelated to the "well-regulated militia" identified as the right’s purpose in the same sentence, they’ll do it with a straight face. If they need to ignore the requirements of the Great Writ – a far clearer and historically-based right – they’ll do that, too.

All four of them are there for a reason. If you don’t know what it is, you haven’t been paying attention.

The McGee Verdict

The conviction of Michael McGee at his federal trial last night has led to tiresome clucking by the usual suspects. Some of them, overwhelmed by seeing a story about black people and then another story about black people in one week, predictably joined the two and suggested that McGee supporters now "can go back to rioting for non-existent food stamps". This is what happens when racist know-nothings try to use two sad situations to beat up on a community reeling from entrenched material poverty and the moral poverty of self-appointed opinion-shapers who need to stand on the grave of their dreams for their own selfish ends.

From everything I’ve read about it, the McGee trial ended as it should have. It was fairly clear that he was using his position to pad his pockets, and was stupid enough to push so hard on the business owners involved that they got pissed enough to call the authorities. Thus did his personal financial issues overcome his obvious interest and occasional good work in the community. There wasn’t much my talented friend, McGee’s defense attorney Calvin Malone, could do about this. It sounded like another talented friend, prosecutor Joe Wall, played it straight down the middle and let the tapes speak for themselves. With all that ammunition, it would have been fruitless to put McGee on the stand to try to explain all this. He had no explanation and Wall would have eaten him alive.

But McGee’s defenders never made predictions about how the case would end – their concerns, including mine, was how the case began. Unlike other white-collar cases involving government corruption, McGee was swept up off the streets on Memorial Day weekend and kept in stir for the entire year before his trial. The process was different than other aldermen and alderwomen who got in trouble, and the differences could only be explained by McGee’s race and his aggressive stance on issues facing the community. He became (and, to a lesser extent, remains) a martyr and a victim only because of this unwarranted treatment, giving him and his supporters a rallying point when he would otherwise have little as the facts became known. The government’s failure to recognize this – phone calls made from the jail notwithstanding – was their biggest mistake in the process, creating unnecessary controversy in an otherwise solid case against him.

Other than that, though, there is nothing to complain about in his conviction. Malone’s best shot was casting aspersions on star witness Jack Adel, but Adel didn’t put words in McGee’s foolish mouth. An alderman using power over liquor licenses to shake down business owners to the extent that McGee did (and he was apparently planning to take it city-wide after he got on the licensing committee late in his last term) is as bad as it’s ever gotten in this town.

But, in the end, McGee’s crimes are isolated and unique to him. The conviction says nothing about corruption in City Hall, conditions in the inner city or anything other than McGee himself. McGee ends up as a victim of nothing but his own greed and arrogance. The rest of us have already moved on; not that those who thrive on generating racial tension won't continue to try to stir the poisonous pot.

There's a Riot Going On -- NOT!

Nothing brings out the racist inclinations in right-wingers like a line of poor black people trying to get food assistance. From exaggerating minor line-impatient scuffling into a "riot" to ignorant comments about cell phones and weight issues, the line forming on 12th and Vliet for food assistance yesterday had it all for those looking to take pot-shots at the underclass.

First of all, it wasn’t a riot. After reading that it was, I looked at the news footage from the local stations (who had their eager cameras trained on the line all day) and found nothing even slightly violent or all that unusual for a line of thousands that show up where the authorities running the show are woefully unprepared for the predictable mass of people. I’ve seen ten times worse in lines for rock concerts. You want a riot, I’ll show you a riot. This was no riot.

But that didn’t stop local embarrassment James T. Harris from calling it a riot and using it as an excuse to heap more dirt on what he says is his own community. "In one day, thuggish ugliness raised its shiftless head as Americans of African descent in Milwaukee managed to reinforce every negative stereotype under the sun." Well, only if you are there to help the reinforcement, J.T. "The riot very well could have been a rally for Barack Obama. Maybe not. Too early in the morning, and there was nothing in it for the greedy, except false hope and misguided pride." Man, you just can’t make idiocy like that up. Best of the Blogs, indeed.

But for outright racist crap, you had to hand it to gun-porn purveyor and MSM right-blog golden boy Owen Robinson. Robinson finds a picture of the line on the internets and plays the tiresome game of Find the Leaching Negro. He is outraged to see a "woman talking on cell phone." Oh, Owen, tell me it isn’t true! Is it a nice one? What kind of service does she have? How much food could she have purchased with those pre-paid minutes? Oh, the shame of it. His trained spot-the-leach eye finds a "man with designer jeans". No, not that! What are designer jeans these days, anyway? Anything other than Wrangler? Alright, Owen, now sit down and write what people looking for food assistance should be wearing. Sackcloth and ashes? If they are wearing bed sheets, will you criticize them for excessive thread counts?

And that’s not all. Robinson also sees "fat people" in the line. This is a well-tested racist device in the kick-the-fat-people-off-welfare wars of the ‘90s. What do they need food for if they ate so much yesterday? seems to be the logic. And then there is my favorite: "stylish pink-streaked hair". Methinks Robinson is a bit too easily impressed by not-in-nature hair color. Yeah, that woman definitely has it all goin’ on, doesn’t she? Are you thinking L’Oreal, Owen? Looking at it, I’m thinking cherry Kool-Aid, myself.

The fact that a long line of poor people showed up for just a little food assistance is a sign of distress, not of greedy avarice by people don’t need it. And, unlike what Harris and some of Robinson’s sheep-like commenters say, the same line – or longer – will appear when good jobs are declared available. But, again, when the opportunity for racist stereotyping knocks, Harris and Robinson are there to open the door. The real question is why both race-bomb throwers are accepted as legitimate commentators on TV or anywhere else in the mainstream media.

Long Live Carlin

This morning comes the news that George Carlin died yesterday.

Carlin brought the smart-and-funny to the cultural revolution in the early ‘70s, evolving from a clever, square suit-and-tie comedian in the Ed Sullivan stable into a quietly revolutionary long-hair-and-jeans rapper (as in “hey, man, let’s rap”) - pretty ironic since one of his greatest bits as a square was "The Hippy-Dippy Weatherman". His ability to discuss the life-style changes going on in the country during and after Vietnam had a great impact on the national discussion generally and on my young life in particular.

I was somewhat aware of Carlin’s new shtick when I showed up at the old old Main Stage (before the giant yellow tits, even) at one of the first Summerfests in 1972. He was headlining (contest: name the other three acts also on the bill that night) and he was right at the height of his “hey, man, didya ever notice” stage. He was out there, just rapping to 50,000 of his friends. None of us thought anything of it when he started the glorious riff on the Seven Words, but there was a sense of nervousness on the stage when Carlin’s wife suddenly walked over to him on the giant stage, supposedly to give him some water. Legend has it that she was actually there to tell him the police were waiting in the wings to, er, discuss the little matter of him sending vulgar words echoing off the buildings of downtown Milwaukee. Carlin took it all in and it definitely messed with his rhythm late in the set. He then called her out again and had an important message for her – go in the dressing room and ditch the pot.

After his arrest that night, Carlin gained national attention and street cred and Milwaukee looked like a silly, puritanical backwater. Both deserved it. After that, I was a huge Carlin fan, wearing the vinyl off of the Class Clown album. Around that time, when he appeared at the Riverside Theater in downtown Milwaukee, a friend of mine and I hung around in the back stage alley, drinking Brass Monkey and listening to him (and opening guitarist Kenny Rankin) through a slightly open door (try doing something like that these days).

Carlin spent the rest of his career pushing boundaries on subjects like religion, drugs, language and politics, although I can’t recall him getting very specific on any particular politician. But he didn’t have to. His revolution was in recognizing the diversity of lifestyle and the silliness of efforts to put restraints on anyone’s personal liberty. We all knew who was on what side - he didn't have to hit you over the head with it, and he didn't.

I last saw him about five years ago. He had definitely lost a step and, on some subjects, he was downright cranky. In his later career, he would be very up-front with his audience and he was that night: he was prepping for his annual HBO show and was just trying some things out on us, as he read from notes. It was Carlin, alright, but not the full-Carlin.

It is just a coincidence, I suppose, that just a couple of nights ago, I was channel-flipping and found an early Carlin HBO special (George Carlin Again!) and watched it all the way through. It was Carlin at his peak, working in the round, joyful, mugging, almost dancing, expanding on the Seven Words (adding three). Wow, I thought, that guy was good!

Yes, he was.

The New White House Horrors

Back in the good ol’ days of Richard Nixon’s White House, soggy old John Mitchell – Nixon’s henchman and erstwhile Attorney General – looked down his drunken nose and told us all that he had a phrase for all the political crimes of his hapless and psychotic president. He called the manipulation of agencies of the government to "get" enemies and protect themselves, bag-jobs, burglaries, and assorted other high crimes and misdemeanors the "White House Horrors". Of course, it was only horrible when they got caught and only horrible to Mitchell because he ended up in the slammer for a time, a fate that escaped Nixon only by the negotiated stroke of Jerry Ford’s pardon pen.

The sins of Watergate, though still serious, seem so quaint now. All Nixon did was use his power over public agencies and private plumbers to extract petty vengeance on his imagined enemies (although their existence drove him mad, none of them, I’m sure, gave him any thought whatsoever); order the ludicrous investigation and surveillance of political threats that existed only in his fevered imagination; and then cover it all up with lies, altered and "deep-sixed" documents and tapes and stonewalling. Surely, the Constitution was threatened, especially when no one could predict whether or not the unbalanced president would obey the unanimous Supreme Court order that he, at last, give up the tapes.

But the crisis passed, with little permanent damage to the institutions Nixon considered his personal playthings. It was all about him, you see – all about those who crossed him and those who were he thought were after him. When he went away, his stain did too, for the most part (although Pat Buchanan, unfortunately, can still find work). His were the more-or-less solitary crimes of an arrogant paranoid, who saw spies behind the sofas and thought the eyes in White House paintings followed him around the room, and then pushed Henry Kissenger to pray to them to save him from his own tragic excess.

The White House Horrors of Junior Bush that are now being fleshed out by brave former lackeys and crowbar-wielding congressional committees are of a different nature. For one thing, they are not driven by the empty-suited president. Bush signed up to act as a figurehead for the radical cabal headed by Dick Cheney and will not be sulking off in disgrace to scheme about his historical rehabilitation. If it is possible to care less when he finally vacates the mansion, he certainly will. His name will forever be attached to a historically bad presidency, the Stupidest War in American history, and a legacy of Constitution in tatters, and a shattered government that President Obama can only begin to repair. To this, you can expect to call him in Crawford two years down the line and hear the laughter of the uninterested.

Although the self-involved Nixon Horrors led to articles of impeachment and certain conviction (if only he would have stuck around and taken it like a man), the Bush Horrors are, ultimately, much more damaging to the nation in the long and short term. The Bushies have group arrogance without the singular paranoia of Nixon – a dangerous combination that does not have the built-in protection of potentially outraged bystanders. As a group, the neo-conservative regime came in with a radical plan for the accumulation of imperial power and the rewarding of their wealthy contributors. Disliked and distrusted from the beginning (especially after they seized power in a bloodless coup in Florida), they seized the ultimate opportunity after 9/11 to drive a wedge into America’s wounded heart. We are at war, they declared the afternoon of the attack, after flying the flummoxed Bush around the country while they got their talking points together. Which side are you on?

They used the carte blanche of tragedy to claim unprecedented power, cut taxes for their wealthy friends (and themselves) and otherwise drive their radical agenda. Previously uncontroversial requests for information such as Secret Service visitors logs and details of meeting held in the White House were covered up tight under a the false blanket of executive privilege (imagine, if you will, Clinton trying to pull the same thing). They used the federal rule-making process to loosen the yoke of regulation from the poor necks of America’s top polluters and money-changers, leaving it to the rest of us to sort out the increasing treacherous world of the Bush economy.

All of this would have been expected from tools of the rich such as the Bushies, although they went at it with a zeal and sense of entitlement unseen in modern times. But no one could have foreseen the lurch into torture and indefinite detention of those allegedly loitering on the undefined battlefields of the "war on terror". It is for them the Bushies reserved their ugliest behavior and damaged the U.S. the most in the important eyes of the rest of the world.

"If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong." These words, spoken by some CIA torture "lawyer" at a Gitmo meeting in October 2002 and finally disclosed during a congressional hearing this week, should join the pantheon of outrageous political speech – up there with nostalgic Nixon-era classics like "I am not a crook" and "cancer on the presidency". There, in a nutshell, is everything wrong with everything in BushWorld, a bizarro place where the law, the facts and the truth must bend to meet their grand designs.

It is not surprising that military lawyers in all four branches of the service advised against the reckless, lawless and, most importantly, ineffective methods of interrogation-by-torture proposed by the overheated Bushies. As they have in every other aspect of their pathetic rule (foreign policy, the environment, stem cell research, etc.), the small cadre of too-smart-by-half imperialists overrode the concerns of those who they no doubt termed the bureaucrats who tried to warn them off of the wayward path of their own flagrant arrogance. Throughout, the Bushies claimed they were dealing with things No One Had Seen Before and that naive notions of international law, the Constitution and common sense were soooo 9/10.

When I was in law school, I took a seminar on Watergate taught by Frank Tuerkheimer, one of the special prosecutors in the office of Archibald Cox. I researched some middle school history texts to see how Watergate was being played. Even back then, in 1985, the history in the school books had already deteriorated into portraying Watergate as some kind of political battle that Nixon lost. Because Nixon was not impeached and was pardoned, the historical record will never be as clear as it should be about his blatant criminality.

Perhaps Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment do not come too late after all. It wouldn’t hurt to proceed with the hearings and continue the process even after the reigns of power are pried from Dick Cheney’s cold, dead hands. A completed impeachment and conviction in the Senate, even if it doesn’t happen until next year, will at least set the record straight. That, and a special prosecutor with Ken Starr’s budget, a bad attitude and lots of steely handcuffs for the Perp Walk Of History. The Bush enablers deserve no less.

Obama's Role Model

There is no one who has been treated worse in presidential politics than Hillary Clinton.

The coverage of her historic campaign started and ended snarky, unforgiving and suspicious. Nothing was accepted at face value. That's fine if you are going to treat everyone that way. Imagine if the prior careers of Junior Bush were held up to the same scrutiny back in 2000. What would it have been like if his every move were interpreted as clever subterfuge and his every proclamation scoffed at as so much manipulative claptrap? But, no. Junior got a pass just like Reagan got a pass and Bush Senior got a pass, and so on. We are used to Democrats being held to a higher standard, but the Clintons are presumed to be trouble just by showing up.

Assumptions about Hillary's expectations in the race made by people who had no idea or interest in what she really thought hounded her at every turn. She viewed her nomination as "inevitable"; she felt it was "owed" to her because of her husband’s Lewinsky embarrassment; the "16 years of Clinton" was planned back when Bill was back in Arkansas. All complete nonsense, none of it sourced with anyone close to the Clintons, and all accepted as conventional wisdom throughout the campaign, with a knowing wink from those who, you know, just know.

After Obama won Iowa and just before New Hampshire, the long knives of the punditocracy were dripping with the blood of the victorious. They celebrated the fall they failed to predict, dancing and spitting on the freshly-dug grave, waiting on the edge for her to walk by so they could push her in and heap dirt on her candy-yellow suit. Alas, she showed emotion for her good causes the day before the NH primary and spit in the face of their dire, celebratory predictions. They appeared on cable shows near and far, beating their breasts and insincerely apologizing for their sexist and anti-Hillary attitudes. Then, they spent the next four moths wishing she would go away again, asking each other, night after tiresome night, why she stayed so annoyingly in and What the Hell Does Hillary Want.

Hillary righted her message, found her voice and started reaching real voters with real issues just before the Pennsylvania primary. So, when it looked like Hillary might be succeeding, they turned on Bill. Any time he got off script at all, they ran out the story-line of the out-of-control ex-president who kept saying uncomfortable things at uncomfortable times. It didn't matter that what he said about the brutal media coverage of his wife and the relative pass given to Obama happened to be true. The last gasp of this tired tack was when he went off on the "writer" of a piece in Vanity Fair this month. Well, have you read the damn thing? The article is a miserable hack-job. Todd Purdum doesn’t even pretend to prove anything, but uses the anti-Clinton mystique to let his readers make broad leaps from innocuous trips in planes with rich guys to...oh, you know, don’t you? Clinton was right – anyone who would write such a piece of crap – to say nothing of the editors who published it – is a "scumbag". But, as always, the truth is not a defense for the Clintons.

I always wondered what would have happened if it was Hillary, rather than Obama, who got the 150-delegate lead in February and then ran out the clock for four months. You could imagine the clucking of the commentariat at the temerity of it all, especially if it was she who lost 7 of the last 11 contests. You would have commentators shouting all hours of the day and night, begging the super-delegates to save us from this failed democratic result. Instead, they celebrated when Obama reached the threshold and scolded Clinton for not taking it like a man soon enough.

I could never figure out why media personalities who are otherwise sympathetic to Democratic causes and principles bought so readily into the right-wing anti-Clinton caricatures and agenda. I think it’s because Bill Clinton came to Washington, much like Jimmy Carter, as an unapproved outsider governor, who was able to beat established Washington candidates on the ground. Bill didn’t toe any party line – he triangulated, getting what he could through a hostile Congress. The Washington Dems went running for cover when they got too much heat from their health industry lobbyist friends on universal health care. They held their nose and fought off the ridiculously partisan Clinton impeachment, but used the incident to joke around about Bill's supposed proclivities with their all-too-amused friends.

When Hillary made her move, which they knew she would, they were happy to see Obama rise up and squish her, regardless of his unknown qualities and his vulnerability to unwanted and unwarranted definition by the desperate right.

I supported Hillary until this past weekend and I’m more than happy to back Obama in the fall. I supported her because I did think she was more electable. But, with the pathetic McCain on the GOP ticket (Republicans – see Reagan and Junior Bush – always get a pass by the setting of extremely low expectations, but even that won't save McCain), even an Obama weakened by the 24/7 wing-nut echo-chamber that has already raised his negatives 30 points (so much for Hillary being the one who will do anything to win) is destined to win in a landslide .

He will come in with an even stronger Democratic Senate and House, and then it will truly be our turn. I've always thought -- for all of the name-calling of "radical" and "socialist" that will rain down on him from the right-wing between now and election day -- that Obama kept it a bit vague about what he is actually going to do as president. This is a good thing. It leaves him open to work for the evolving solutions that the Democrats will put together by consensus to fix the mess left by the radical Bushies and face the nation's many challenges. Obama would be wise to follow the example of the last great Democratic president; to work for change he can get, while standing on principles he believes.

Barack Obama, meet Bill Clinton. Now, let's get to work.

Agenda for Right-Wing Blogger Training

The right-wing front-group Americans for "Prosperity" is sponsoring a blogger training next week in Oshkosh and Madison. It’s free and open to anyone, I assume, so I look forward to learning much when I attend either or both.

Don’t ask me how, but I managed to acquire a copy of the agenda:

• Introduction: Bringing the 19th Century Mentality to a 21st Century Medium: A Primer
• Originality...What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothin’! – The Importance of Message Discipline
• PC Stands for Pelosi and Clinton – Finding Words That Rhyme With "Witch"
• Breaking News: How to Embed GOP Commercials and Memos From Scott Walker in Your Blog
• Gun Lust for Amateurs – Feeling the Heat (featured speaker: Owen Robinson)
• A Case Study: The Importance of Nancy Pelosi’s Scarf
• The Freedom of Diversity – Using Racist Language Against Your Own Race (featured speaker: James T. Harris)
• Hit and Run for Fun: Anonymous Posting on Liberal Comment Threads
• Repeating the Lie – Why We All Say The Same Things All The Time
• The Rove E-Mail – A Message A Day Keeps The Dems Away
• Bashing Obama – Who Needs Truth When Innuendo and Guilt-by Association Will Do?
• The McCain Conundrum – Holding Your Nose and Typing With One Hand
• After the Fall – What to Do After November 4th, When No One Cares What We Think
  

Reception to follow...

Recount Redux

My review of the HBO movie Recount sparked a just few comments. But they are so predictable and tedious, I thought I would answer them out front. Both long comments are from my frequent tormentor (he thinks), the ubiquitous Prosqtor.

• "Let's ignore for the moment that several independent recounts of the very rejected ballots Gore sought to have (improperly, in my opinion) counted revealed....Bush won Florida. Even if you deny that (which I'm sure you will, if for no other reason than I asserted it), Gore made a tremendous legal error by only moving the courts to count certain counties' ballots. This legal strategy paved the way for the Equal Protection Clause-based decision by the Supremes. See, when you peel back the bias, there is the law. Gore's team sought to do an end-run around counting rejected ballots in places it would hurt them, in favor of only counting in certain counties. This was far more abusive than the Supreme Court following the Fourteenth Amendment. And making James Baker of all people out to be Darth Vader-esque is a joke. Baker continually surprises Republicans by not coming out with a McClellan-like book "telling all" about the Bushes. I await your assertion that I give nothing but "Talk Radio Talking Points," while refusing to address my argument."


• "The only way Al Gore wins a statewide recount in Florida -- and remember, he wasn't asking for that -- is if you count the "overvotes," where some moron both punched a selection on the ballot AND WROTE A NAME IN. These are by any standard improper votes.It's time to move past 2000, Mike. Your guy lost the Electoral College, and your guy lost worse in 2004. We're in '08 now; maybe some of the bitterness should be purged?(If only you had guns and religion to cling to, to help with the bitterness) ;)"

My response:

Yes, although I yearn for the comfort of guns and religion, I am made of stronger stuff.

Prosqtor has the details of the specious equal protection argument wrong. It wasn't that the Gore legal team had cherry-picked hand recounts in friendly counties -- by the time it got to the U.S. Supreme Court, it was a state-wide hand recount of undervotes. It was the different interpretation of the ballots -- some counties counting dimpled chads, some not. He's also wrong about what scenario would have had Gore ahead. It was not only overvotes on optical ballots -- it was also if "a statewide recount of all disqualified ballots was undertaken using the standards that each county's election officials have said they would use in a recount." That's exactly the standard the Florida Supremes ordered and that the U.S. Supremes stopped in its tracks.

You know, I was as surprised as Prosqtor was (and you know he was) when the media consortium that (finally) counted the votes found that Bush won under some scenarios, Gore in only some others. Certainly, if not for pre-election blunders (the butterfly ballots) and deviousness (Harris' overly-broad-on-purpose felon purge list), Gore wins Florida in a walk. No one believes that more people didn't go to the polls there on election day intending to vote for Gore.

But whether Gore comes out on top or not is not really the point. At the time the Bushies were fighting to stop the recount, no one knew who won. The outrage of the Bushies being able to stop the recount and run out the clock is not, necessarily, that Gore would have surely won. It was that they would go to such outrageous lengths to stop and hijack the process of democracy. As Spacey/Klain screams in a bar at the height of Recount, "Who WON??!" No one would have denied even Junior Bush electoral legitimacy if his henchmen had let the process play out to answer that question.

Let's review just some of the Republican tactics, shall we? 1) Sending congressional aides from Washington to start a riot during the Miami-Dade counting. 2) Sending in a lobbyist to sit on Katherine Harris so she'll do what you want. 3) Getting their election monitors to object to every ballot not because they had a legitimate concerns, but to slow the process. 4) Getting the legislature to vote to give Bush the electoral votes no matter what happened. 5) Using the U.S. Supreme Court to take the counting process away from the State of Florida. 6) Treating what should be a delicate matter like a scorched-earth political battle instead of a sacred protection of the voters' intent.

Now, let's play one of my favorite games: What If a Democrat Did It? If Gore was ahead by 500 votes and in control of the Florida political apparatus and pulled any one of the stunts listed above, do you think Bush would have graciously conceded, as Gore did? Do you think the (then) GOP House of Representatives and Senate would have certified the election results? Do you think Gore would have been impeached for these shenanigans in his first year?

Come on. But my favorite comments -- from anonymous pipsqueaks like Prosqtor and especially from people like Justice Scalia -- are that we should "get over it". This - yes - talking point emerged immediately after Gore's concession. This from people who never "got over" a stain on a blue dress. The hijacking of democracy in Florida is not something your "get over". It is a historical outrage. It is something that you (and your children, forever in history books) study and understand how it happened. It is something that you work to prevent. It is something that you never let happen again.

Recounting History

It is eerie watching Recount, the new TV film about the Bush campaign’s hijacking of democracy in Florida in 2000. The nightmare I watched on cable with my mouth hanging open in amazement for five long weeks as the Bushies committed election theft in slow motion and in broad daylight flies by in two hours on HBO. It has its moments, but it is the kind of Hollywood recent-history epic that tries to play it right down the middle. The Republican thugs who gleefully got Junior installed don’t deserve to be treated so well.

Not that the Bushies don’t look bad – they do. As portrayed in the film, the Republicans immediately saw the battle as political and pulled out all the stops to use every one of their Bush-friendly Florida resources to put the fix in. By the time they brought in the Silver Hammer – Bush family fixer James Baker – they had already locked down every law firm in Florida and, combined with the brother-governor, the legislature and the extremely needy Katherine Harris, it was over before it started. The Democrats, for some reason playing with a bunch of second-stringers – what, did Jeb shut down the airports too? – took the high road, looking for the diplomatic concessions they would have easily allowed if the tables were turned. The Republicans who supported the film (James Baker even hosted a screening) probably think it makes them look brilliant because of their brutal manipulation of the law, the facts and the politics. That’s how they roll, I guess, but they are wrong. The crisis in Florida called for the GOP to call up their better natures and do what was best for the country. As I suspected and as we know now far too well, they don’t have them.

As entertainment, the movie tries to have it three different ways and succeeds and fails in equal measure. 1) It wants to build suspense, but we all know the ending and most of the ugly details how it got there. Besides, the facts are so ridiculous, no one would believe it if it were fiction. 2) It wants to be respectable historically, but, although the main character is on the Democratic side, it fails to bring home the true Dark Side of the Republicans as they shut down the democratic process. And 3) it wants to show how smart it is by dropping little bomblets even recount connoisseurs may be unaware of, such as Bush shill Ben Ginsberg’s pathetic whining about Democrats "stealing elections". It is emblematic of the movie’s failings that his comments are not drenched in irony.

The actors involved are some of the best talents working, but the casting suffers from dominant personalities that often overwhelm their subjects and some mismatches. At this point in his career, Kevin Spacey is always Kevin Spacey; just like Jimmy Stewart was always Jimmy Stewart and Jack Lemmon was always Jack Lemmon. He could no more be believed as real-guy Ron Klain than Gary Cooper was Lou Gehrig. Same with Dennis Leary, who plays some other real guy with a weird Southern/Eastern accent, but is always his own smart-ass self. Tom Wilkinson, who was all over HBO a couple of months ago as a hilariously debauched Ben Franklin, plays James Baker as the center of the Republican universe, which gives the real-life line-reading thug a bit too much credit. (Karl Rove, who probably had more to do with the Bushies’ scorched-earth tactics in Florida as anyone else, gets only one mention in the film, when someone says he wants Al Gore’s house picketed. Wilkinson/Baker is more than happy to oblige.) John Hurt is even more of a waste than he plays Warren Christopher to be and the washed-up Ed Begley, Jr. can’t do justice to Gore lawyer David Boies, who kicked legal ass as best he could, with the deck stacked high against him.

And then there is Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, who has received universal and well-deserved praise for her dead-on, over-the-top portrayal. As a result, Harris comes out looking the worst in all this and she deserves almost all of it. But Dern is the only one in the whole picture that is allowed to tell the truth about her character. For a movie that is at least partially a product of Hollywood-style political compromise, it appears that even Republicans agreed that it was OK to hold Harris up to dramatic ridicule. Even Wilkinson/Baker, seeing her on TV, scoffs at her mere existence. I suppose it is not surprising that, in a self-serving story about greedy, power-mad men, it is the one woman in the room who bears the mark of the buffoon.

Sure, Harris was an easy target – the only thing that you can criticize about Dern’s performance is that she wasn’t weird enough – but why stop there? Recount would have been so much more of an artistic triumph if it didn’t play it so damn safe; if all of the characters were painted in broad caricatures. Get someone to play Baker like the smarmy back-room Bush-enabler he is – maybe James Cromwell. Let’s see those punk kids who shut down the counting in Miami-Dade the day before, as they left their congressional staffing offices in Washington and got on the Enron plane headed for Florida. How about digging into the dark world of the Bush legal team – I can see Nicholson as Scalia. Every close-up of someone in the Bush war room should be accompanied by bad-guy music. Every gathering of the naive Democrats should be preceded by something suitably naive and uplifting, like "I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke".

Well, maybe someday someone will make that movie. In the meantime, as a homogenized history lesson, Recount does just fine. This was the first grown-up adult talking-head movie my 13-year-old son has managed to sit through, and he seemed to get a lot out of it. After the first half-hour, he stopped asking me if this or that "really happened" and I had to dig up some YouTube videos to show him how good Dern had nailed the real Katherine Harris. After it was over, he announced that the bloodless Bush coup had landed on his top five outrageous things that happened in his lifetime, up there with the Iraq War, the Bush presidency generally, 9/11 and – I forget – maybe the Favre retirement (he reminds me in the comments below - it was Katrina).

When I was his age in 1968, I was living through the height of Vietnam/LBJ/Bobby-Martin/Nixon madness. It was an edgier time to be sure, but today is no less an essential moment in time. I can’t blame him for wanting hope, change and competence – something sorely missing from his national government during the politically-conscious part of his lifetime. Living through and understanding the worst prepares us to fight for better.

The circumstances in Recount were, as it turns out, the perfect start to the Bush presidency, which never stopped acting as if its rule were a result of providence and divine entitlement. With a wide swath of devastation in their wake, the Bushies will get what they deserve eventually – in the history books, at least. You can say we won’t get fooled again but, as Recount makes clear, not enough of us were fooled in the first place for this band of reckless bandits to assume power by one vote in the Supreme Court.

Exploiting Murder

There is no tragedy too severe, no outrage too deep, no crime too gruesome for the right-wing to exploit for their nefarious political purposes. Whether it is self-imposed carnage in Iraq, natural and man-made disaster in New Orleans or epidemics from AIDS to malaria, the bodies of the dead and wounded are merely convenient stepping-stones on the path to one aspect or other of the GOP agenda.

Locally, the right-radio-and-blog trafficking in human suffering usually features stories – real and imagined – from the inner city, a part of the world none of them care about, and understand even less. Every shooting, drug arrest and dropout is held out as evidence of systemic cultural deficiency that can only be cured by right-remedies such as profiteering "choice" "schools"; more arrests, (still) longer incarceration and, even, the death penalty; and, ultimately, the realization by the victims of the legacy of slavery, poverty and racism that they have victimized themselves.

This week, however, local nut-right radio lurched into previously uncharted territory when it latched on to a sad, violent incident in the white community and proceeded to play political games with it. No, I’m not talking about the guy who drove off the bluff in Shorewood, mere blocks from Plaisted Writes headquarters, although some did blab about that, to no real end. Rather, it was the murder of a 65 year-old choral singer from Whitefish Bay in a downtown parking ramp that mainstream radio wing-nuts Charlie Sykes and Jay Weber (at least) used to push – absurdly – legalizing the carrying of concealed weapons, a long-cherished NRA objective in Wisconsin.

The poor woman has not even been put to rest yet, but that didn't stop them from tramping over her memory and, no doubt, increasing the suffering and grief of her family by foolishly claiming that she could have saved herself if only she was allowed to pack heat. Imagine driving around making arrangements and gathering family for the services on Saturday and having to put up with this crap on your radio. African-Americans in town have had to tolerate this nonsense for years, but this could (and should) be considered out of bounds on the North Shore. Perhaps Sykes might catch a little blow-back on his next trip to Sendik’s. We could only hope.

The NRA talking-points read by both Sykes and Weber were identical: Elizabeth Witte might be alive today if she had a gun in her purse to protect herself. The whole premise is absurd. Murderous stalkers like her sick ex-husband don’t announce themselves, wave their knives up in the air and give her time to get the gun out, much less aim and shoot. The gruesome details in the complaint show that she never had a chance, armed or unarmed. To take these horrible facts and try to make political hay out of these circumstances is an outrage. In the pursuit of their right-wing agenda, Sykes and Weber went and pissed on her grave before she even got a chance to get buried in it.

Jay Weber is an annoying, interchangeable hack, but Charlie Sykes yearns for respectability. Although, as the golden boy of the Journal Company, he can get away with anything (such as calling Al Sharpton a pimp and Hillary Clinton a witch), he also savors his TV face-time, most recently offering campaign "analysis" on straight news programs (if you can still call the continuing deterioration of Channel 4 "straight news"). You wonder if it is really worth it for him to drive political points over the dead bodies of obviously beloved tragic victims like Elizabeth Witte.

The Unknown Soldier

For Memorial Day a re-post of something I wrote on my old blog. This was posted January 1, 2004 -- 4-and-a-half long years ago. Since then, thousands have died and tens of thousands have been maimed for the sake of vain politicians. I still hope this guy wasn't one of them, that he somehow made it home in one piece -- from that tour and the second and third. I hope he was not another Unnecessary Casualty in the Stupidest War and the greatest foreign policy fiasco in American history.

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

2 a.m. – Ho-Chunk Casino, Wisconsin Dells – 12/29/03

I must have sat at the blackjack table with the guy for an hour or more. Sometimes the tables get a little chatty – sometimes obnoxiously so, such as the next table over, where some idiot was thrown out for making racial slurs – but this table was quiet. We placed our bets, we got the cards, we studied the cards, the dealer took the chips away (more often than not). I was in the middle of the table, right next to a cranky chain-smoker on a losing streak and an Asian woman, muttering under her breath (cursing?).

I barely noticed him at the end of the table to my right ("first base"). He was playing quietly as was I, except he was spared the cigarette fumes from the guy next to me. I couldn’t even tell if he was winning or losing. He was in his late 20s or early 30s, head shaved down to a stubble, thin, healthy. He wasn’t smoking or drinking that I could tell. Just hanging out on a late night. He might have been talking to the person next to him quietly and I paid no attention. Then I heard him say:

"I’m going to Baghdad, Sunni triangle, next week."

Well, that got my attention, even through the haze of noise, smoke, gambling adrenalin and late-night exhaustion. Now I looked at him, really, for the first time. He had none of the false bravura you often see in military men. His affect was flat – not happy, not sad. He seemed accepting of his unknown fate. But concerned enough to share his upcoming adventure with anyone within earshot at a blackjack table.

I’m pretty shy and usually don’t interject myself in other people’s conversation or talk to strangers. But this was too much. As I looked over, whoever he was talking to and the Asian woman left the table and now there was no one between him and me. As the dealer shuffled, I asked him if he had been there before. "Nope, I was in Japan when this whole thing started," he said matter-of-factly. "It’s pretty rough over there, isn’t it?" I said, my brilliant conversational style in full effect. "Yeah," said the soldier, as the cards hit the table again.

I wanted to say more, of course. I wanted to tell him that the invasion was based on lies and he shouldn’t be put in harm’s way for the dreamy geopolitical designs of Wolfowitz and Cheney. I wanted to tell him that I would be working like hell in ‘04 for an end to the radical Bush regime and, hopefully, an end to the impossible occupation he was about to join. He seemed to have an attitude that was far from gung-ho and maybe he’d appreciate my concern for his safety and give a tacit (or even overt) endorsement of my (our) campaign to free the nation from this madness. But, out of respect for the predicament he apparently had come to terms with, I kept quiet as I played just a couple more hands. When he wasn’t looking, I snuck a few peeks at him – the human face of the Bush Tragedies.

As I got up to leave, I quietly said "take care" to him, but I don’t think he heard me, since he was talking to someone else. I took a few steps away from the table and then circled back. "Hey, good luck," I said as I tapped him on the elbow. I never meant it so much in my whole life. He looked at me, but didn’t say anything. I walked out in the cold and drove back to the hotel in silence.

My dad served in the Navy in WWII and I used to love rummaging around in his artifacts as a kid (my brother and I still have his dogtags). But I formed my first opinions about military people while in high school, while the Vietnam War raged. The stories of the My Lai massacre and other tragedies helped me to think the worst about the potential behavior of those in uniform.

Since then, I have been educated about the impossible situation the soldiers were put in by politicians who couldn’t care less about the human cost of their grand designs. History books, movies like Apocalypse Now and personal stories from my brave brother-in-law John and others have brought into full focus the irresponsibility of the Masters of War.

Sure, a few people still use their time in the service as an excuse to brag, bully and otherwise act like jerks. But the volunteer military is mostly made up of the sons and daughters of the poor and working class, who are willing to take the risk of hostile fire to get a leg up in education or job skills. We owe them more respect than they are shown by throwing them into Unnecessary Wars and Impossible Occupations. There are now almost 500 soldiers dead in Bush’s Folly in Iraq. Not one of those deaths and not one of the thousands of injuries were Necessary.

That handsome young man at the end of the table is about to be shipped off and serve as a Walking Target for Iraqi nationalists, fighting off – as nationalists always do and always will – the illegal occupation of their country. I’ll watch for his face in lists of the dead and injured while I fight this year for an end to the Bush regime and everything it stands for.

Peace Through Music - Lennon Tribute on Sunday

Join me and a few hundred friends for the annual Peace Through Music benefit at Linneman's this Sunday night, featuring the music of John Lennon. It is a benefit for WAVE and the Brady Campaign, both dedicated to curbing handgun violence. The performers are some of the best Milwaukee has to offer and a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

As I have the past several years, I will be acting as host for the entire evening -- always an adventure, especially after midnight. I will be performing early -- at 7:30 -- with a band and the best of musical intentions.

With wack-job right-wing bloggers celebrating the gun culture (my favorite from B&S: "Congratulations to Brandon at GOP3 on the purchase of his first handgun!" Go get 'em, killer!) and all reasonable gun control efforts being challenged in court by gun industry (not gun-owner) flacks in the NRA, it is more important than ever to support efforts to curb handgun violence.

Show your support and get great music in your ears on Sunday night!

Breaking Into the National Conversation

The employment interviews for the minor wing-nuts that continue to populate mainstream radio can’t be that complicated. Is the prospect committed to the increasingly tiresome and doomed right-wing agenda? Do they promise to promote Big Oil’s excuse-making for its obscene profits and its attack on solid global warming science? Can they recite scripts featuring constant phony attacks on biofuels and all other forms alternative energy? Will they adhere strictly to GOP talking-points designed to portray Barack Obama as a Wright-believing, brie-eating, America-hating elitist? Good, you’re hired. Check your conscience at the door and we’ll see you on Monday...

Besides that, there does not seem to be a whole lot expected from the minor league off-peak and fill-in blowhards. Although the whole point of this kind of heavily-scripted, unoriginal programming is supposed to be "entertainment" for selfish, angry white males – Obama is coming for your SUV! – there is little in the voices and presentation that makes any of the shows worthwhile for anything but sheer amazement of what these people are doing on the air. From nightmare-smoker-at-the-end-of-the-bar Vicki McKenna to soft-spoken Sykes-wannabe Jeff Wagner to morning chucklehead Jay Weber, all of the third-tier (there is no second-tier) squawkers that soak up the innings while Sykes and Belling do their show prep in corporate boardrooms are a collection of the most uninteresting voices you could imagine behind a radio microphone.

But, even among the tedious and mundane, there is one voice that stands out. That voice belongs to James T. Harris.

Harris was plucked out of his well-earned obscurity as a self-styled inspirational speaker after calling frequently into Charlie Sykes’ show as "James from Sherman Park", the kind of African-American seminar-caller Sykes and other radio hacks like to parade around as the "true" voice of the city. You know the drill: they always make sure to mention they are black, always make sure to mention they are conservative (for which they are patted on the head by the patronizing host), blah de blah blah.

Harris holds down the non-Brewer Saturday and Sunday afternoon no-one-is-listening shift at WTMJ, while other AM talkers are running innocuous real estate, financial and computer advice shows, and also fills in for Wagner when he is not around. His radio demeanor is extremely light, like he can’t even bring himself to talk directly into the microphone. He seems very amused with himself, chuckling with every lame observation or attempt to outrage. Again, you wonder about the station manager that hears crap like this and then says "Yeah, let’s get that guy on the air."

Substance-wise, Harris seldom strays from the mundane wing-nut orthodox talking-points left behind by others. When he adds his wacked-out personal touch, he often uses his (he thinks) protected status as a black man to spin racist tripe about Barack Obama. He calls Obama "the Chocolate Jesus", something no one else could get away with. Like other African-American conservatives anointed by his white benefactors, he has the right-wing blame-the-victim thing down-pat, blaming his less fortunate (i.e.: less accomodating, less corporate-sponsored) brothers and sisters in the city for the legacy of slavery, the long history of someone else’s racism, their systemic poverty and uncomfortable underclass behavior.

Some of this is too much for even his corporate enablers at TMJ. Harris has two versions of his blog – laughingly titled "The National Conversation". One is on the radio site (although, interestingly, it is not linked or allowed a button on Sykes’ vanity-blog page along with the other hosts); the other is titled "the National Conversation (Raw)", which has the more unfiltered content. It is on the (Raw) site that you will find more of James the Ridiculous, such as supporting the racist comparison of Obama to Curious George (banana and all). In his latest post, Harris complains about Sen. Herb Kohl accurately saying that the obscene profits of Big Oil were "unfair". "Sen. Kohl, I'll tell you what isn't fair. It isn't fair that you represent Wisconsin," says Harris, perhaps forgetting all those elections the senator fairly won. "The only reason why you are still a Senator is because you saved the Bucks, and because you are filthy rich. Well guess what? The Bucks suck."

Astute analysis, is it not? But, Harris plods on, using his TMJ platform to acquire TV face-time (on Sykes’ Sunday show, natch) and an unfortunate recent puff-piece on OnMilwaukee.com. He is the perfect example of the extent to which mainstream radio will go to maintain its poisonous right-wing message. They’ll accept any level of lameness in their hosts, as long as they toe the corporate line. And when it comes to jumping through hoops, carrying water and shilling for the right-wing agenda, the only question James T. Harris has is: How high, how far and how often?

They Paved Paradise

I didn’t know an important part of my professional playground was in such trouble.

The Journal Sentinel reported on Saturday that MacArthur Square – that two-block-long flat block of concrete-and-green space in the shadow of the Milwaukee County Courthouse and above a parking lot – was falling apart so much that the city couldn’t fill the reflecting pool and run the fountain at the east end, next to the Muni Court, this summer. Apparently, that’s part of the reason why the ceiling of the parking lot leaks on the hood of my car every other week in the spring and summer. Thus do our grandest traditions crumble under the weight of time and the crushing realities of civic plans gone awry.

There was a time when MacArthur Square served as a grand vista for the most cinematic of my lawyerly daydreams. Walking out of the Courthouse after a hard day of kicking ass on behalf of poor, disenfranchised alleged criminals (I said alleged!!), I would walk out of the Courthouse or the decrepit Safety Building (want to ride in the Safety Building elevators? You feeling lucky, punk?) out into the flat expanse looking east over the skyline, the Hyatt and City Hall and bounce around like Rocky. Top ‘o the world, Ma!

But MacArthur Square lost its pizzazz in direct proportion to its diminished access. Back when I was working at the Public Defender at the State Office Building in the early ‘90s, you could actually get from the Courthouse to the S.O.B. on 7th Street (alright: James Lovell) by walking across the plaza to the unnecessarily circular walkways. Alas, both curly-cues that brought you from the plaza to street level have crumbled and been removed. You can't get to James Lovell from the plaza anymore without walking to either side and walking down Wells or State.

More significantly, you can’t even get out of the Courthouse on the east side anymore due to the increased security in the building, caused by goddamn 9/11 and other uptight what-if-people-get-upset-in-family-court security measures. This all happened right around the time they sold the giant clock to the Brat Stop and a statue of Mahatma Gandhi was erected right outside the east doors, which you can no longer enter or exit, leaving Gandhi the loneliest excellent sculpture in town. Early in my career, I used to make a choice every morning whether to walk in to one of three doors on the east side of the Courthouse – for what it’s worth, I always chose the one labeled "justice" (as opposed to the more ominous concepts on doors labled "order" or "truth"). Now, you can’t get in or out of any of those doors. Justice denied, indeed.

According to the article, there is now talk of eliminating the Square altogether and replacing it with an extension of Kilbourn Avenue somehow. I’d like to know how that is going to work. Are they going to drive asphalt right through the parking lot and under the Courthouse to get to – where? 10th Street? The freeway? Will they bring Kilbourn up over the parking lot, only to do one of those damn circles and point traffic back down toward the Arena? How about plowing right through the Courthouse (losing the 00 through 04 courtrooms on each floor) and right over the freeway?

I’m no architect or civil engineer (Whitney Gould, where are you now that we need you?), but this all seems gross to me. I am all in favor of leaving our anachronisms in place, if only to remind us of a simpler, dumber time. Although we don’t seem to be in any hurry to develop the Park East corridor, I understand that every inch of downtown must be filled with some kind of goddamn functional purpose. But I don’t see the problem with the roof of the Courthouse/MATC/Museum parking lot being filled with empty space, grass, concrete, and a statue of Douglas MacArthur looking out over parading troops that aren’t there anymore. It seems a fitting tribute for us – and for him.

Take Me Out To the Ball Game

In his always-amusing column in the Journal Sentinel on Tuesday, Jim Stingl relates the story of a couple of guys who got into a heated political argument at Miller Park on Saturday during the Brewer game. Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, I guess I can man-up and confess to being one of the apparently obnoxious drunken debaters. Things kind of snowballed in the course of the game and...well, let me start at the beginning.

It all started innocently enough in the parking lot, where my friends and I were having a friendly game of toss-the-beanbag over a case or two of Milwaukee’s finest. We were minding our own business when a football flew in from a couple of rows over and smacked into the back of my car, right on my "I’m already against the next war" bumper sticker. "Hey, man, take it easy," I said to the perps. "Shut up and give me the football, you hippie jerk," the young man responded. I flashed a peace sign and headed towards the stadium, not knowing that the dangerous mix of politics and sports was just beginning.

As we settled into our seats, it appeared Ben Sheets was going to be serviceable, but not great, on this day. He gave up a couple of runs early and the Brewers continued their lethargic early-season hitting. But it was baseball on a Saturday afternoon and all was right with the world.

The thing that I love about going to Brewer games is just hanging out with my friends and/or family. You can watch the game or you don’t have to. You can engage in conversations, interrupted only by the crack of the bat. You look up to see what happened – groan if it’s bad, cheer if it’s good – and go back to talking. Or not. Your choice.

On this day, one of my friends was blabbing on like he was Chris Matthews about why Hillary Clinton wouldn’t just quit already. "What’s her deal, man?" he complained while sipping his Leinie Red. "I mean, it’s over. Just go home already. Jeesh." Having heard this from him for the last three months, I know how to deal with it. "Relax, let it play out," I said. "We’ll be fine. McCain is just Bob Dole without the Grecian Formula."

Then someone sitting next to me decided to pipe up. I had seen him out of the corner of my eye. He looked kind of familiar, but seemed kind of stuffy. But apparently, he had had enough of our liberal jibber-jabber. "Aw, she’ll never quit," he said. "A house has to fall on her and her toes have to curl up before she’ll be done." Well, alright. This guy just called Hillary a witch – the Wicked Witch of the West, no less. I turned to him with a smile and an attitude. My friend, knowing what was coming, said "oh oh". It was ON.

"Oh, I see," I began, as another Brewer swung and missed. "And your candidate would be he of the 100 Year Stupid War in Iraq?" "That’s not what he meant..." he stammered. I continued. "Yes...I suppose he also didn’t mean to be against the Bush tax cuts for the rich before he was for them. And he didn’t mean to accept the endorsement of that religious nutjob. And his wife’s secret taxes, I suppose that’s something you can live with?" Down the row, I could see the people he was with trying to pull him to the side. But my new friend apparently thought he was up to the task.

"Say, who was that great president you guys had not so long ago...Carter? I seem to remember, peanut farmer, terrorist-lover, Jimmy somebody..." He was smirking now, egging me on. "Jimmy Carter is a great humanitarian," I proclaimed, without a shred of irony. "I can’t wait to see Bush as an ex-president. What’s he gonna do – go on a tour giving play-time lectures at Chuckie Cheese?" I could tell I was getting to him now. "Oh yeah?" he said. "Well, Bill Clinton got his DNA on a blue dress!" "Really?" I was just warming up. "Well, Bush got buckets blood and death all over tens of thousands of people and that stuff just will not come off!" Our necks swiveled at the crack of the bat – a two-run dinger for the Cardinals. Groan.

I took the opportunity to get in a double shot. "Oh yeah, and you guys have been just great for the economy. I had to take another loan to fill up my car again today. Nice to know it’s all going to Bush and Cheney’s oil buddies, idn’t it?" "Figures," he said. "Can’t trust the free market. Damn socialist." "Free market??" I retorted. "The oil market is about as free as a Gitmo prisoner." "There you go again," he went again. "Won’t be happy ‘til the terrorists win. Why don’t you take your damn law license and go represent a few of them?"

OK, so now it’s clear I’ve been made. But I had his number, too. "I’d love to, but then I’d miss your radio comedy show. It is a comedy show, right? All that stuff about the 50 Rules that you don’t even follow? All that reading GOP talking points with a straight face. Hilarious."

"Shut up!" "No, you shut up." ‘No, you." "You shut up." Etc.

By this time, our entire section was vacated, the aisles roped off with police tape. It was getting really ugly, and it was only the 6th inning – Gagne wouldn’t give up the winning runs for at least another hour. I decided it had to stop and looked for a graceful exit. "Look, Sykes, why don’t you save your half-baked, pseudo-intellectual, right-wing-funded nonsense for Monday morning. I’m trying to watch some baseball here." I reached out my hand to shake his but - honest! - forgot I had a beer in that hand. Before I knew it, he was wearing my beer.

In retrospect, it was the best $6.75 I ever spent.

Operation Chaos - Republican Version

Right-wingers like to gloat about how the continuing race for the Democratic nomination is tearing Democrats apart along racial, class, gender and other lines. This is all a bunch of hooey. There is a legitimate conversation going on about who is best to lead the party in November. Once that fight is over, the entire party will rally around whoever wins. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are much more interested in the party’s strength and the nation’s future than they are in their own personal ambitions – although they have those, too. Regardless of what happens, the party will be united in the fall, despite the best efforts of the right to inflame imaginary fissures and the MSM to exacerbate slight internal conflicts for entertainment purposes.

If you really want to see division, chaos and disaster in a political party, check out the Republicans.

When John McCain emerged from a pathetic field of candidates in March, the Republicans were stuck with the results of their own democratic arrangements. The winner-take-all scheme in place in most Republican primaries rewarded the hot hand when the most primaries are happening (winner-take-all in Dem primaries would have handed the nomination to Hillary a long time ago). The only other candidate that got anything close to momentum going at any time was Mike Huckabee, who had his fifteen minutes of fame and late-show appearances and quickly squandered it with wacky tax schemes and other religious nuttery. Everyone else either blew up (the delicious Rudy), melted under the lights (the robotic Romney) or lost track of the others wandering in the desert looking for Area 51 (Ron Paul, phone home). McCain became the nominee by default, not because any Republicans necessarily wanted him.

Because, if you believe what they say, they really don’t. Historically, McCain would be considered a fairly straight Republican follower. But, in the context of the strict discipline and orthodoxy required of party regulars (and talking-pointed mainstream radio "personalities") by the Rove-run Bush political regime, he was re-cast as a wild-eyed independent, thumbing his nose at Bush’s political judicial appointments, working on campaign finance reform and other such outrages. McCain also made the Bushies jealous because he actually had a genuine sense of humor, something they couldn’t buy in a store or from their consultants. McCain was too good for the Bush Republican party (not saying much), but not any use to anyone else. Once the focus gets on him – especially in comparison to the vibrant Obama and, yes, Clinton – McCain will melt like butter in his Arizona sun. He is the Bob Dole of 2008. This just might be the first Democratic landslide since 1964.

While the Dems battle the last mile, the right-wing radio and blog wing-nuts are getting in their last licks at McCain before the same cowardly chameleons swallow their ever-shifting "principles" and get behind him in the fall.

For instance, a bunch of head-in-the-sand reactionaries in his party on mainstream radio and the blogosphere feigned outrage this week when McCain had the temerity to recognize global climate change as the threat that it is in a speech this week. Although he tried pathetically to squeeze as much free-market clap-trap into his watered-down proposal as possible, this was not enough for the tireless blowhards that have chosen to carry Big Oil’s water. McCain obviously chose this course to avoid being completely laughed off the stage – he’ll get enough of that on his absurd position on Iraq. But, Republicans will pretend to stand on principle until they don’t. That’s how win-at-all-costs, for-sale people roll.

As entertaining as this beating up on McCain for being McCain is, there is apparently trouble on another front for the GOP nominee. The Prince of Darkness, Bob Novak, got on his knees (not a unique position for him when it comes to Republican sources) and put his ear to the dirty ground of some political evangelicals, discovering a let-Obama-win movement within the over-heated rapture crowd. For these wacked-out religi-nuts, the inevitable (to them) Obama presidency is "a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people". After four years of the supposed Obama disaster, the nation will turn its lonely eyes to preacher Huckabee, who will lead the righteous (and only the righteous, I assume) to the promised land of, er, the Fair Tax scheme or something.

The only question in Novak’s mind is whether Huckabee himself is in on this lunacy. Whether he is or whether he isn’t (if you want a real laugh, listen to the nut-right screech about McCain’s Huckabee-as-VP trial balloon, also this week), the whole notion of an Obama presidency as some sort of guaranteed nightmare for anyone but Republican operatives is ludicrous. If Obama is the nominee and gets the mandate of a 55-45 margin, 20-30 more seats in the House and a near-filibuster-proof Senate – all very much in the realm of possibility, if not likelihood – it is much more probable that his first four years would be a resounding success, especially if the Democrats can end the Stupid War and get universal healthcare enacted. What happens to their supposed faith when Obama succeeds and Huckabee continues life in 2012 and beyond as just another 2008 has-been? You would hope this kind of failed prophesy would affect their sanctimony or, at least, cost them a few gullible followers. Alas, this is hoping for too much.

When it gets to be September and the right-wing sees the writing on the wall of the impending Democratic landslide, it’s not like they are going to give up. They are going to poison the political environment with lies and smears, trying to drag whoever the Dem candidate down to their sorry level. They'll kick and scratch and lose like a bunch of whiney babies. But lose they will. And they will have no one to blame but themselves...and Junior Bush.

Bill Maher and the American Way

It appears one of his students left a Shepard Express laying around in nut-right Marquette professor John McAdam’s classroom last week. No doubt this is not an uncommon occurrence on Thursdays; the Shepard and McAdam’s lectures being what they are or, rather, what they are not. The student needs something to glance at to stay awake during the class and immediately abandons the always-disappointing rag at the sound of the class period bell. One man’s lame effort to shape Milwaukee opinion becomes another man’s litter. And that man’s litter becomes McAdam’s rant-fodder.

McAdams breathlessly reported over the weekend that comedian Bill Maher is coming to town in a show sponsored by American TV. McAdams is outraged that Maher would be invited to our fair city because he read all this stuff from catholic crazy man Bill Donohue and others on the right-religious fringe that Maher said this or that and that he was an anti-Christian "bigot". This was too much for the professor, who promises not to darken the showrooms of American ever again. Charlie Sykes was so impressed with McAdams’ dark victimhood, he even decided to highlight and quote the screed on his vanity blog, although he failed to say whether he would sign on to McAdams brave but lonely boycott (radio advertisers being who they are and such).

Apparently, McAdams undies are in a bundle over a couple of things Maher has said on his excellent Real Time show on HBO, which, after all, has as its purpose discussing controversial topics. This has been Maher’s forte since his Politically Incorrect show on ABC. On that show, a couple of days after 9/11, he said: "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." The truth not being a defense in that place and at that time, he was fired and found a home at HBO, where he continues to play his role as agent provocateur, this time with naughtier language and no commercials. Along with Lewis Black and Chris Rock (sorry, George), he is one of the best political comedians working today.

When he's not telling jokes, Maher is a fairly mainstream progressive on most topics (or not – he actually supported the Iraq invasion for a short time), but religion, marijuana legalization and meat-eating are his pet peeves – the things that get him off even if his guests won’t follow him there. His religious views are nothing you haven’t heard and read from pop atheist best-sellers Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, both of whom make regular appearances on Real Time. Once you cast off the protective veneer of taboo that insecure religionists hope would prevent all honest discussion of religion, its illogic and the pain and misery it has visited on the world through the years, the whole Sky God thing is a fairly big and easy target.

Saying Christianity is "a dress-up cult that hates sex and worships magic" is not all that outrageous or even very original. And again, there is that fact check: A dress-up cult? Did you see the Pope?...Hates sex? Well, if you don’t, aren’t you supposed to?...Worships magic? Well, what else would you call the claims of a "miracle" that are necessary for sainthood? The Pope really did used to be a Nazi. There really was sexual abuse going on, which was hidden and protected by the paternalistic "religious cult" of the church.

The vast majority of Christians take these remarks for what they are worth and appreciate that, on Real Time, they are usually said in front of someone on the panel that will defend the religionist prerogative. Nobody ever "wins" and argument on Real Time, they just have one. But defensive religionists like McAdams don’t even want these matters discussed. If they could find out whether he floated on water, they would burn Maher at the stake as a witch. As it is, they have their perpetual campaign to get him fired from HBO and now, apparently, to make businesses afraid to sponsor his popular comedy tours. Taking this new approach is a bit of a surprise, but then, nooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition....

At the heart of McAdam’s diatribe, however, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Maher says and what real bigotry is. Maher has a "hatred of Christians", squawks McAdams, which is ridiculous. Taking issue with religion generally and the Christian or Catholic faith specifically is different from going after the followers, although, admittedly, the more devout are bigger targets and most easily offended because of the kind of enormous insecurity evident in McAdams’ shut-him-up demands. Maher's comments have much more to do with Christianity than with Christians; much more with the leadership than the flock.

I'm sure Maher assumes that the vast majority of people he meets and works with are involved in some of the religions or spiritual organizations he attacks and mocks. To say that he is "bigoted" towards them personally is ludicrous. But that's the impression McAdams, Sykes and their fellow travellers have to try to leave to protect the religious leadership, the zealots and themselves from rational skepicism and historic accountability. They don't have a problem with Bill Maher -- they have a problem with the truth.

I've seen Maher in concert before and he is brilliant in that format. All this pretend "controversy" makes me want to go see him again this time. Then maybe I'll go out to American and get me a new couch.

Fighting Fire With Fire

There is still something about this Jeremiah Wright thing that just isn’t, well, right. Despite his declaration of unilateral divorce from his former pastor for the sin of impolitic self-aggrandizing (grounds for separation in at least 35 states), Barack Obama is still being tied to the yoke of the inconveniently silly man in the right-wing media. "Too little, too late," they shout in unison, hoping to soak the last drop of sweat and blood from Obama’s brow.

The whole Wright episode is such a ridiculous distraction; one of those things that seem to happen every week in this campaign that no one would buy as realistic in a political novel. It started – as too many of these things do – with a nut-right talking point that blossomed into a full-blown "issue" when ABC News legitimized the "concerns" about Wright when it ran the now-infamous video of Wright yelling "god damn America" in god-knows-what context. This led to Obama’s exquisite speech about race on March 18th. Obama was in the process of (maybe) riding it out before Wright hit the redemption media circuit over the weekend (Barbara Walters must not have been interested -- Bill Moyers gets the "get"?), committing the sin of being himself and making it impossible for Obama to survive without a clean break. And so he did, but such a break would never be clean enough for the unclean right-wing, who are not about to let the still-likely Democratic nominee off the hook if they can help it.

All of this has been unfair to Obama. Everyone running for president has some clown they would rather not have hanging around in their past, their present or their future. If you can’t see them, it is because either the candidate is too boring (Chris Dodd comes to mind) or they keep their embarrassments well hidden inside corporate cocoons or loopy mega-churches where anyone trying to do oppo-research would be bored to tears, their original curiosity drowned in a sea of piety and self-pity. So, the right-wing echo machine – with the cowardly acquiescence of the MSM – has managed to make Wright and "issue" for Obama and Bill (who, despite the hysterical exaggerations about what he has said or meant, is just fine) an "issue" for Hillary Clinton. Who or what is (or should be) the albatross(es?) around the GOP’s neck?

First of all, forget about looking under the pews at whatever Baptist or Episcopal church John McCain attends every month or so when the cameras are rolling. The chance of finding anything of substance, much less interesting at a church in wherever Arizona McCain claims as his home turf is slim to none (but, believe it or not, somebody tried). McCain’s nut-bag religious baggage rests not in his personal church, but in the usual collection of pathetic, attention-seeking GOP hangers-on, like proud endorser John Hagee, who, among other things, calls the Catholic church "the great whore". Oh, what the hell. Who cares about these religious groups calling each other names? At least he didn’t call them a "bad whore". Now, that’s an insult in the religious world. No – although right-wing preachers say all the time that America is already "damned" for its hedonistic sins and Wright just suggested, perhaps, it should be "damned" for something or other, there is no point in trying to parse these differences and insist on equal treatment for the religious nuts on either side. That ship, unfortunately, has sailed.

But we all know there are people closely tied to the Republicans in general and John McCain in particular that say worse things than Jeremiah Wright ever thought. It is past time for a media frenzy to call on the Republicans denounce and disassociate themselves from their hotheaded good friends...on mainstream talk-radio.

Go through any list of the outrageous statements made through the years by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or any of the other ubiquitous national wing-nuts who have done the GOP’s dirty work since the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated by Reagan 20 years ago. John McCain has appeared on all of these shows many times and will benefit throughout the election period for their support, however grudging. When will he be called on to denounce and disassociate himself with their various outrageous statements through the years?

This also works locally. Pardon the disgusting imagery, but Scott Walker has crawled so far up Charlie Sykes’ ass he has actually gotten a paler shade of white over the past several years. Does he agree with Sykes that Al Sharpton is a pimp? Does he agree with his other radio whore, Mark Belling, that Latinos are "wetbacks"? Do all the local Republicans – pretty-boy Paul Ryan, the repulsive Jim Sensenbrenner, the grandstanding David Clarke – who have an open invitation to appear on all the major and minor local wing-nut shows any time they want to really subscribe to the extreme and laughable positions of the various hosts? If not, what are they doing granting legitimacy to the hosts and their nut-right views?

Somehow, I don’t think this is an idea that is likely to get any traction. But, if the pretended outrage over Wright’s comments will continue to haunt Obama’s campaign, it is only fair that the Republican nominee be held to the same standard – hoisted on the petard of the comments of his most ridiculous supporters. The only problem is that, when it comes to the many ridiculous supporters of Republicans, it’s hard to know where to start.