Shepherd Express: The Lost Opportunity

It’s always uncomfortable to criticize local artists – that’s why virtually no one does it. You want your local singer-songwriter to succeed, so you forgive him the occasionally maudlin 12-string finger-picking whine about the last lost love. It’s the same with efforts to force an alternative or leftist perspective into the national or local conversation through various media; you let slide the single-issue tirade about free trade in Peru or whatever. After all they mean well, don’t they? There’s no use treating locals like some national target like Dave Matthews or Chris Matthews, nor should they necessarily be held to the same standards.

But, then there’s Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express.

The Shepherd Express – what passes for an alternative weekly in Milwaukee – is celebrating its 25th anniversary in this week’s issue. Its history is an interesting one, as are most of the spontaneous journalistic "happenings" that rose up across the country during the cultural revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s. After Milwaukee’s earlier attempts at weekly counter-cultural media capitalism and creativity – Kaleidoscope (1967-71) and the Bugle American (1970-78) – went the way of the love bead, it left Milwaukee without a place to advertise bong shops, record stores and youth-oriented bars.

According to the history of the paper in the anniversary issue, the then-Crazy Shepherd was started in 1982 as an arty "free-expression" eight-pager featuring UW-Milwaukee students with things on their open minds and soon evolved to (try to) fill the void. Through the years, there were mergers, staff coups, rides to the financial rescue and the usual sorts of alternative intrigue. A former state legislator, Louis Fortis, is credited in the history as the latest savior and has run the paper for the past ten years.

The history in the current issue, I’m sure, has many past staffers pulling their hair out, as the vanquished always do, when history is defined by the victors. For instance, many of Milwaukee’s best journalists have passed through (and, always, out of) the Shepherd editorial doors, including Milwaukee Magazine editor Bruce Murphy. I wonder how Murphy feels about his exit as editor being described as follows: "...his desire to cover softer news didn’t mesh with the paper’s long history of serious political reporting." Murphy always being one of the city’s best political reporters and the SE containing no "serious" political reporting that I can see, that must come as a shock to him.

I have no knowledge or interest in any of the people or soap-operas that evolved the Shepherd and that always follow ground-up, grow-on-the-fly alternative (or, too often, formerly alternative) weeklies. My interest is as a consumer. I want a damn decent rag to pick up with my lunch every Wednesday or Thursday so I can get some perspective I can’t get elsewhere in the dead-tree universe. Being the ever-forgiving sort, I always open each new Shepherd Express with hope for a new day, for redemption, for anything – anything – substantial and worthwhile between its pages. I am always disappointed. In fact, it’s always depressing.

Sorry, but the Shepherd’s few redeeming qualities – Joel McNally’s column and fellow former-John Byrons bartender Owen "Casey" Dunne’s clever growing-up cartoon, You Damn Kid – don't quite make up for the stuff that usually makes up the rest of the paper.

• The problems begin with each week's cover page, which often highlights the most ridiculous of stories – "Dude, Where’s My Vacation?"; "Are Gadgets an Addiction?", to name only a couple of the most recent -- with cheesy, amatuerish graphics.
• Inside, the paper seems frozen in a bad ‘80s layout, with content plastered on the page in read-it-or-leave-it indifference. The SE experimented for a couple of years with handing over several of the middle-back pages to younger demographic Gen-Y’ers with a flippant indifference to the regular Shepherd layout, but, alas, still, with little to say.
• The paper has always been hampered by personalities who were of historic significance or friends to the Shepherd staff, but had little to offer the rest of us. The most tedious of these was Dave Berkman, a UWM professor who wrote a ponderous media column for decades and was bounced a couple of years ago.
• But Rip Tenor in his alter-ego as columnist Art Kumbalek also tries our patience on a regular basis – how many years has it been since "what the fock?" was funny? The sad state of the SE is exemplified by the fact that Tenor-as-Kumbalek regularly acts as the Shepherd's cuddly mascot in area bars.
• Too often, the personal staff indulgences are just embarrassing. Take the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard annoyance of social butterflies Boris and Doris, who some misbegotten editor at the SE apparently thinks are interesting as they relate who went to what Eastside house party or benefit or whatever – complete with the revelers’ names bold-faced. I keep hoping it’s a parody, but it’s not.
• The paper recently added a regular travel column that hardly expands our knowledge of the world ("Jamaica and Arizona are perfect winter destinations"! "Wisconsin Dells Dazzles"!).
• The arts and entertainment pages suffer from inconsistency of what to cover and an apparent lack of writing talent to cover it. Sometimes, concerts will be reviewed after the fact, most times not. Reviews of CDs seem to be governed by the niche interests of whoever is writing the review (says the former Fine Arts writer who used to hog all the Costello and Springsteen reviews back at the Cardinal). There is a focus on local artists and under-covered areas like theater, dance and classical get their due, but the writers seldom are able to express anything but admiration for the effort.
• I can’t remember the last time I was able to get through a Dave Luhrssen movie review.
• I mean, most "alternative" papers are at least able to get the fine arts stuff right. The Shepherd arts coverage suffers badly in comparison to the Onion, which managed to produce top-flight movie and music reviews even before it went national. Even the Onion's local content is far better written and more interesting.
• The "news" pages, such as they are, consist of a bits-and-pieces review of the previous week and whatever cover-feature story dominates the issue. The paper seems reluctant to take a firm stand on anything and hasn't broken a major news story in Milwaukee since, well, never. It offers oh-so-serious endorsements during election season, with no indication the rest of the year why we should care what the Shepherd thinks.
• Every damn article in the non-A&E parts of the paper ends with a juvenile "what’s your take?" tag-line. It kind of takes the edge off of, say, a Joe Conason column (Conason’s OK, but he’s no Molly Ivins – R.I.P.). We all know we can write to the editor. Why mess with the flow of McNally's annual anti-deer-hunting column by having the editor barge in at the end asking for comment?
• The new back-page classifieds is titled Bizarre Bazaar. Really. How bizarre is it, man? Is this the best we can do with ironic dissonance after 25 years?
  

I don’t mean to be so hard on the Shepherd Express. I always assume that – except for the inclusion of Boris and Doris – they are trying to do their best. But holding the mantle of the alternative weekly in a major city carries with it some responsibility. The internet now allows us to get some alternative perspective into play, but it’s nothing like the power of a well-distributed newspaper with a full-time staff.

If Madison can produce a quality product like Isthmus (its hard-news section led, not coincidentally, by Shepherd veteran Bill Lueders), Milwaukee should be able to pull together something that at least is not a laughing stock – or vulnerable to rear-guard attacks like the Journal Company’s frivolous but youth-demographic-targeted MKE. As it is, the Shepherd Express exists as a placeholder in the market, like an upscale Weekly Shopper. It could and should be so much more.

Ahem. What's your take?

Mukasey and the Rack

In Washington Wednesday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey took the helm of the criminally-damaged Justice Department. President Bush was there to put his stamp of approval on his latest hire, as were John Ashcroft and Dick Thornberg, but, strangely, no Alberto Gonzalez. Muskasey, the federal judge who rubber-stamped every abuse of the Constitution imagined by the Bushies, now is in charge of the lame-duck administration’s last-ditch assaults on the Constitution, and appears up to the job. The only question is how much more of a mess the Democrats will have to clean up in ‘09, when they take charge and clean the dirty floors and files of a Justice Department as off-the-rails as the rest of the administration, if not more so.

The big issue in Mukasey’s confirmation hearings was "waterboarding", that time-honored torture technique that has regained favor in Bush and Cheney’s anything-goes war on humanity. Mukasey was more than slippery on the issue, pretending that he didn’t know enough about the ungodly procedure to make a judgement call on its appropriate use. You could see Dick Cheney nodding with pride in his office as the pliant former judge morphed into the pliant AG. You see, if it’s good enough for the Spanish Inquisition and the Khmer Rouge, it should be good enough for us. I mean, if we act like respectable humans, the terrorists win, right?

I always wondered why all this focus on pussy-footed techniques used by our wayward 21st-century interrogators, like waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the cold cell. The answer appears to be that your government favors torture that does not leave visible scars. But, if it’s really a matter of national security and the safety of millions of Americans, as torture advocates claim, why not let it all hang out? Hell, someone has information about the nuking of New York City? Why not thumb screws? The Iron Maiden? The Rack? What are we fooling around for? Let ‘em have it!

These are the questions that should have been asked of our latest Bush AG. Mr. Mukasey, how do you feel about the Rack? Do you think we should be allowed to use it? After all, the fate of millions hangs in the balance. Come on, judge. What about the Rack?

Chances are, Mukasey wouldn’t have answered that question either. "The Rack? Gee, I don’t know whether that is torture or not." He might quote Saint Giuliani: "It depends on how it’s done and who’s doing it." Any answer other than equivocation is considered weak or, at least limiting. You could imagine Cheney storming into the green room if Mukasey vacillated, his face red with rage. "Why the hell did you say that about the Rack?!!" he would mutter in twisted rage.

Well, with Mukasey now ensconced in the Gonzalez Memorial chair at the Justice Department, he doesn’t have to answer all those damn questions any more. As with all the Bush appointees, his ability to get away with outrages is limited only by the occasionally annoying squealing of those underlings with a conscience, of which there are fewer in Washington everyday. In his limited time in office, Mukasey’s charge will be to help Bush further stack the federal judiciary with weak sycophants (like Mukasey himself) and to fill the Justice Department civil service with more recruits from nut-right universities and "think"-tanks.

In Mukasey, Bush and Cheney have obviously found a kindred spirit. In discussing the "difficulty" of prosecuting accused terrorists, Mukasey wrote in the Bush-friendly pages of the Wall Street Journal "...the rules that apply to routine criminals who pursue finite goals are skewed, and properly so, to assure that only the highest level of proof will result in a conviction. But those rules do not protect a society that must gather information about, and at least incapacitate, people who have cosmic goals that they are intent on achieving by cataclysmic means."

Translation: We should not have to prove guilt in the most serious of cases like it’s some damn retail theft. I’ve wondered about the logic of these over-heated meatheads who insist that regular Constitutional protections are just too much when it comes to terrorism suspects. Alright, you say the guy’s a terrorist. Why? What’s your proof? Just prove it and you can do whatever you want to him. What’s so wrong with making you prove it? Putting all these people in this we-can’t-even-tell-you-why-we-think-you’re-bad Kafkaesque limbo is a large part of why the rest of the world has become alienated from us during the glorious Bush years. We have gone from one of the most legally fair countries in the world to a international legal pariah overnight.

By contributing to this bastard "intellectual" aberration, Mukasey fits right in. But I still want to know if he supports the Rack.

Pervez and Neil -- No Brother Left Behind

In Pakistan, the oppressed have taken to the streets to fight the imposition of martial law by G.W. Bush’s self-described friend, Pervez Musharraf. They are being rounded up by the hundreds, and still more take their place. Their leader, placed under house arrest by the power-mad leader, has called for them to continue their struggle. Video has shown pitched battles in the streets of Islamabad, with the protesters being beaten by Musharraf’s goons. And what group is leading the charge against the suspension of the constitution and the clampdown in this supposed U.S. partner?

Lawyers.

Yes, lawyers. "The lawyers have been the only force in the country to mount protests since Saturday night," reported the New York Times. The well-dressed revolt was spurred on by the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, who was deposed by Musharraf hours before the court was about to rule that he could not run in the next election and must step down as Pakistan’s leader. "Go to every corner of Pakistan and give the message that this is the time to sacrifice," urged Chaudry. "The constitution has been ripped to shreds...Don't be afraid." The photos and videos of protesters in suits and ties were as strange as they were heartening. "How do you function as a lawyer when the law is what the general says it is?" said one Pakistani barrister.

How, indeed? It almost makes one wonder why lawyers in the United States haven’t ditched their briefcases for protest signs, given the assault on the rule of law by the Bush Administration. Bush doesn’t have to fire the Supreme Court that put him in office in the first place and that has been so friendly to his program of indefinite detention, the practical elimination of habeas corpus and unprecedented executive secrecy, so there is less of a crisis atmosphere. It does sort of make you wonder what Cheney would have tried to pull with a less politicized and pliant judiciary. If Bush and Co. were really bold, it could be said that Musharraf’s recent antics are just a trial run for the American junta in 2008 – the bloodless coup by those who just won’t leave. Don’t think they haven’t thought about it.

Musharraf uses the excuse of his phony "war" on "extremists" and the resulting need for "security" to excuse his self-preserving crackdown. Sound "familiar"? That’s why Bush shrugs his shoulders and says to the clever slug who sucked $10 billion out of our gulible presdient and delivered nothing: "You ought to have elections soon, and you need to take off your uniform." That’s tellin’ him, tough guy. So much for Junior’s democracy agenda – a phony conceit to begin with, especially if it proves to be inconvenient.

***

Speaking of inconvenient, Neil Bush is back in the news. The president’s younger brother held the title of black sheep of the family before Junior got him off the hook by being the worst president in U.S. history. He embarrassed his father when he was president by getting caught up in the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, barely avoiding indictment (but didn’t they all?). The details of his divorce from his wife featured tales of Asian prostitutes and his soon-to-be ex stealing hair from his head for either drug tests or voodoo experiments, depending on which version you believe. A delightful review of Neil's history of bufoonery is here.

Now, Neil Bush appears to be benefitting from his brotherly connections by creating a sham product that magically gets money from the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) fiasco and, believe it or not, Hurricane Katrina disaster relief. Using a company that started up – no surprise here – with money from his ever-protective mom and dad, Neil’s job these days is to promote something called Curriculum on Wheels (COW). Various school districts across the country including, naturally, Texas and Florida have spent NCLB money on COW.

The problem is that the program has been determined to be educationally worthless by those stuffy educational types that demand that public money be spent on worthwhile things. Jay Spuck, a former curriculum director for the Houston school district that spent $300,000 on the overpriced junk, said "It’s not helping kids at all. It’s not helping teachers. The only way Neil has gotten in is by his name." Better yet, "the Katy Independent School District west of Houston used $250,000 in state and federal Hurricane Katrina relief money last year to buy the Curriculum on Wheels," according to the New York Times. And Babs Bush herself gave eight of the useless COW units to other schools with large numbers of Katrina evacuees.

Supposedly, the Department of Education is looking into all this and we breathlessly await their whitewashed report. In the meantime, it’s nice to know that another Bush is bungling up another business and getting bailed out by the usual suspects. The last time one of the Bush boys was looking for something to do, you know what happened. Let’s hope Neil is able to keep his job so we don’t have to go through that again.

Neil Bush’s antics, though, do raise an interesting point about the difference between what the right-wing is willing to do with information and what the left is unwilling and unable to do. If Neil Bush was even a second cousin Clinton or Rodham, I wouldn’t have to explain his history here – everyone would know because those expert in the politics of personal destruction would have made sure every detail got out into the MSM through daily repetition of the foibles of this damaged family member in the right-wing echo chamber.

But lefties can’t or won’t do that. I think it’s because we play fairer – we can’t bring ourselves to harp on the frailties of others, unless it effects public actions. That spoiled greedheads like Neil Bush would take advantage of government funds made available by his brother’s government privatization campaign comes as no surprise. We mention it here or there and move on. Even if we wanted to make him a national laughing stock – as deserving as his is – we don’t have the platforms to make it happen.

Besides, with Junior still in office, we’ve already laughed ourselves sick. It’s not funny anymore.

Blogger-Block Beaten Back

I know, I know...I haven’t blogged for a while. But I meant to. I really did.

For instance, I was going to write something about the high-pitched whining emanating from every corner of the cheddar rightersphere about the compromises necessary to achieve a state budget in Wisconsin.

It wasn’t enough that the wing-nuts used their large, obnoxious megaphones to save their pliant puppet Republican Assembly the petty and significant indignities of having to answer for their obstructionist program that delayed what was basically the same budget for an embarrassing – not to mention expensive – three months. Any other (i.e.: Democratic) legislature that pulled such a vacant stunt would have been impaled on the spear of public opinion at the first hint of higher property taxes because of last year’s numbers on anything.

Nope, helping their lackeys escape unscathed after showboating over the budget wasn’t enough – then they had to screech for weeks after the fact because the compromise did not meet their exacting standards. The self-appointed pure get to squawk on the sidelines while half of their confused followers do the impure thing by moving on with Wisconsin government. November 2008 can’t come soon enough, both locally and nationally. The only question is how many of the Republicans in the Assembly will quit before they are fired by the electorate.

Last week, I tried to cure my blogger-block by watching the Democratic presidential debate. As expected, John Edwards and Tim Russert did their best to take Hillary Clinton down a few notches, and might have managed to do so, with the still-lofty Barack Obama picking up the spare change.

For the most part, the debate featured more of the same tedious stagecraft that has dominated joint appearances like this since Reagan avoided sure defeat by "quipping" about not taking advantage of Mondale’s youth when Mondale had him on the ropes after their first debate in 1984. The whole circus makes one yearn for the days when they woke up Nixon just in time for his debate with JFK. Kennedy was also just getting out of bed, but that’s a different story.

Still, when watching the Dems debate, you might actually learn something – which is never a danger with the Republicans. Where Republicans dig deeper holes for themselves in the general election by naked base-pandering, the Democrats are more thinking beings with their own intact, personal and more legitimate world views, if they are not always best able or prepared to make it all evident to the general public. Clinton’s strength is that she is almost as much of a policy geek as her husband (I said almost). Hillary and Bill have spent their entire adult lives – together – trying to figure out how to make people’s lives better through government and it shows.

The command of the issues that has vaulted and kept her in the lead is complete, even if her expression of them is often over-consulted and reserved. Clinton walks the earth with the front-runner’s curse; damned if she is careful, measured and option-preserving and damned if she would cast aside those damn consultants and let it fly. She’ll be able to draw stark enough contracts with the GOP candidate in the general and with all of those clowns pretty much just promising to stay the disastrous Bush course in Iraq and elsewhere, that should be more than enough.

Any of the other contending Democrats would be fine, but their limitations are magnified in these appearances. For all of his "baby boomers, get over yourselves" new-generation rhetoric, Obama is too Kumbaya to play with the big boys – at least this year. His heart and his head definitely and permanently in the right place, he has yet to find his true voice as a leader. John Edwards pulled out his best trial lawyer shtick in this debate, hitting Clinton’s easiest targets without adding much for himself. Edwards is so effective at this kind of stuff, he may end up helping the Republicans – a whole bunch of the lesser wing-nut bloggers have linked to his YouTube ad picking apart Clinton’s hemming-and-hawing. As much as I can appreciate a good lawyer kicking ass, that kind of skill only goes so far.

As for "the others" (as they used to call them on Gilligan’s Island), I have always liked Joe Biden, who has played the Angry Establishment Man as well as anybody over the last several years. His performances on Sunday talk shows and in these debates are always entertaining; his biting analysis of Bush’s legendary shortcomings – especially in foreign policy – are tinged with delightful sarcasm and a dark sense of humor.

At the Dem debate last Tuesday, Biden proved to be the most prescient of the candidates on one of the most vital issues. While Clinton walks in unfortunate stride on the outer fringes of the Iran War caucus, Biden got it more right than he could have imagined: "What is the greatest threat to the United States of America: 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Tehran or an out of control Pakistan? It's not close." With martial law coming to Islamabad this weekend, it puts much of the real Middle East in perspective – who our "friends" are, or should be.

Finally, speaking of lesser wing-nut bloggers, I also missed the opportunity to comment on the minor flare-up caused by an anonymous lefty blogger calling Jessica McBride a bad name. In doing so, that guy broke a couple of common sense rules: 1) it is decidedly sexist and un-feminist to call anyone gender-specific derogatory names, and 2) never, ever put McBride in the position of being a martyr – she wears it too well. However, conservatives shouldn’t get too huffy about using gender-specific derogatory terms – you won’t have to look too deep on FreeRepublic and other nut-right sites to find all kinds of nasty, sexist names thrown at a certain future president.

The Magic of Springsteen

Apparently, I have been living a lie for several years now, not only to others to myself. Up to the show Sunday night in Chicago, I could have sworn that I had seen at least 30 Bruce Springsteen concerts. Well, I just reviewed the history – the Springsteen concert record, complete with setlists, is well-documented by those with lots of time on their hands – and I can only count 19. It sure feels like more.

My first show was historic – the infamous Bomb Scare Show at the Uptown Theater in Milwaukee. It’s a long, beautiful story – general admission in a movie theater; third row center; dramatic songcraft building into something special; nervous solo "Thunder Road" at the piano after 45 minutes, followed by announcement that we all had to leave and could come back at midnight; band went to the Pfister and got drunk; now in front row, band played until 2:30 a.m. The night was, in a word, Magic.

I took my then-14 year-old brother to the next one in Milwaukee two years later (Jim caught his harmonica after "Thunder Road"); saw three Darkness Tour stops (met him backstage in Cincinnati – that’s me with the hair); sang "Hungary Heart" at his feet while he stood on the chairs at Alpine Valley in ‘84. I celebrated Clinton and Feingold with him on Election Night 1992, although the show pretty much stunk without the E-Street Band. He spent most of the ‘90s in a failed attempt to show he can make the same Magic solo or with others. His solo Tom Joad show at the Riverside in '96 was downright depressing, as he struggled to reach the back of even that small room and yelled at anyone who made any noise.

In 1999, he got back together with the E-Street Band – not a moment too soon – and all seemed right with his musical world again. That first reunion tour was dynamic and joyful, but paled in comparison to the Rising Tour that began in 2002, a roaring engine of soul and truth that took the pain of 9/11 and turned grief into hope and, possibly, redemption. On that tour, Bruce and the band found its collective voice for the first time since the great Darkness Tour in ‘78, but this time with maturity and purpose. The show at Miller Park in September 2003 was the last non-New York show of the Rising Tour, and no one would have blamed him if he quit right there, as the undisputed King of the World.

But now comes a new CD and a new tour, with both less obvious but more intense political statements. His Grand Statement about 9/11 behind him, Bruce is kicking ass and taking the names of those who have used the tragedy to twist his beloved American Land beyond recognition. For the most part, you don’t need to understand the political underpinnings of the songs to dig the new album as a milestone in the era of Mature Rock, where those precious few artists who can still crank it up in their 50s and 60s show their continued musical and lyrical vitality. But, in concert on Sunday night, he and the band are in your face, with no apologies. Republicans at Springsteen shows are just going to have to stop their whining and deal with the fact that, in order to get to "Dancing in the Dark", you first have to get a little education about the Darkness on the Edge of Town created by your boy George W. Bush.

For the second tour in a row, the show is dominated by new material – this time from the Magic CD. It starts with "Radio Nowhere", which I think might be the best opening song in rock concert history. An old-fashioned powerful rock song, it features churning guitars, booming drums and a Clarence sax solo, while Bruce’s beautifully weathered voice literally demands more. "I just want to feel some rhythm," he (and the crowd) shouts over and over, while his drummer, the Mighty Max Weinberg, is giving him everything he has. "Is there anybody alive out there?", indeed. Springsteen is speaking to a dearth of culture, to a world of niche marketing, where the music industry gives us only what it thinks we want and not what we need. "I want a thousand guitars/I want pounding drums." Is that too much to ask?

Only Springsteen and the E-Street Band can live up to the challenge of that song. From there, songs like "No Surrender" and "She’s the One" just deliver on the promise. The first half of this show is the strongest set of hard-driving big-band music you’ll ever hear. The centerpiece is an almost-forgotten song from Springsteen’s sparse, home-recorded Nebraska album, "Reason to Believe". The song starts slow and unrecognizable, with Bruce wailing mournfully on the harmonica (an instrument featured many times on this night). But then the piece literally explodes when the band finds a surreal, seminal beat and the guitars start blazing. With a knowing, joyful look on his face, Springsteen rides the wave. He sings the last verse through the harp mike, making it sound like he is singing through a telephone wire on a bad day. "At the end of every hard-earned day/People find some reason to believe." And so we do.

The stuff from Magic are hit-and-miss, as all new material is in concert. The biggest surprise was "Gypsy Biker", which featured a raucous guitar duel between Bruce and Miami Steve that threatened to take over the night. "Magic" was mostly acoustic, but could have used a bit more help from the band. I was hoping that the trite-but-true protest song "Last to Die" might have come alive in concert, but it suffered from too much keyboard and too little guitar.

As Bruce setlist-watchers will tell you, the songs that are not in the set sometimes say more than the songs that are. No "Thunder Road", "Jungleland" or "Tenth Avenue Freezeout" here – the stories of raw desire and racial tension are replaced by the yearning for freedom on the "Backstreets", the self-realization of "The Promised Land" and spitting in the face of these "Badlands". This is a set about finding yourself and then going out to the world and making a difference. As he sings on another scorching highlight, "Adam Raised a Cain": "You inherit the sin/You inherit the blame."

These are the kind of moments that have always touched me in Springsteen shows, when I remember why I fought for tickets, stood in line, and waited for the lights to go down. There were many on this night; moments of hope, inspiration, renewal. This is the most personal show I think he’s ever done – both for him and for us.

Springsteen’s production crew has used technological advances and expertise over the years to make the sound seamless and enveloping – this kind of perfection wasn’t possible back when Bruce was falling through the floorboards of stages in 1975. Even the crowd is perfectly lit with light as they throw their hands of faith in the air on cue during the still-vital "Lonesome Day" and howl the "whoa!" during "Born to Run". They use the technology to create concert democracy as the singer reaches out and we reach back.

Throughout the whole show Springsteen -- once the vulnerable street poet still trying to understand his own words -- is finally, truly The Boss; self-actualized, in command and knowing exactly what is going to happen next, because he planned it that way. The sheer power of the best parts of this show is truly something to see, even for grizzled Springsteen concert veterans. He’s supposedly bringing this tour through Milwaukee in March (his shows get better later in the tour), and I’ll be there again, this time with my son, who is almost as old as my brother was when I took him to his first show. It’s like taking the kid to see Favre – get it while you can, because there will never be anything like it again.

Romney: No Jack Kennedy

I want to do all I can to encourage the Republicans to nominate Mitt Romney for president in 2008. I’m trying to figure out the best way to move them further in that direction.

Should I simply advocate his supposed virtues, hoping that some out there would mistake me for someone who seeks the best for the GOP? Should I issue pretend warnings to my lefty brethren and sistren about what a formidable candidate he would make, knowing that my fear will be perceived as his strength in the tea-leaves-reading right-wing chattering class? Or should I simply hold my breath and cross my fingers, passively watching the inevitable Republican train wreck, as the entire party drives off the cliff in slow motion?

I want to see Romney as the GOP nominee for several selfish but legitimate reasons. Most important, Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat will wipe the floor with him, resulting in not only a landslide in the electoral vote, but also bringing a possibly filibuster-proof Senate along with her/him. But I also appreciate the sheer entertainment value of this impossibly pliable construction of a candidate staying with us all the way through next year, his firm jaw jutting into the wind of a world that is poised to deliver his historical thumping. That Romney and those around him think they can get away with the sort of cynical manipulation of what he "believes" to fit the doomed expectations of his "base" is evidence of the desperation of a GOP grasping at disappearing straws.

Romney is the ultimate Candidate as Product, polished and consulted within an inch of his vapid life. In this month’s Harper’s – my favorite dead-tree magazine by far – writer Ken Silverstein (link, but subcription needed -- just go buy the damn thing) takes us inside the Romney construct, exposing the campaign for the deliberate lie that it is. Reports Silverstein: "...[T]he task of reformulating and repackaging the Romney brand—from the moderate Republican governor of the most liberal state in the Union to a red-meat social conservative and heir to Reagan—has been entrusted to an army of consultants far larger than that of any of his challengers...Romney’s campaign has employed more than a hundred different consultants, making combined payments to them of at least $11 million—roughly three times the amount spent by John McCain or Rudy Giuliani."

This sort of bottom-up candidate creation was once the stuff of scandal and outrage. Now, it’s expected that any candidate for either party has to be phonied-up to some extent – it’s the "smart" thing to do. But Romney appears to have taken it to a new level, filling his empty suit with the kind of enthusiasm and smarmy acting talent that Junior Bush could never muster. He lives in the rarified air where notions like the strength of your convictions are for suckers. The base wants me to stop stem cell research on to-be-discarded-anyway embryos? Fine. My wife has MS and might benefit from the research? What’s your point?

While Romney’s political positions are as flexible as last week’s poll, his personal religious convictions are sacrosanct and surround him with the eerie glow of the Just. He’s of the Mormon faith, which is an interesting version of Christianity to say the least. Since all religion necessarily strains the credulity of non-believers or different believers, it’s hard – not to mention politically suicidal – to venture an opinion on how whack the Mormon faith really is. I mean, I grew up Catholic, with the virgin birth and all that. But apparently other whack religious figures – the egotistical evangelicals who have succeeded in hijacking much of the Republican social agenda – who you think would appreciate Romney’s wild-eyed "faith" instead have some sort of discomfort with the fact that he is a Mormon-flavored Christian rather than some other variety that, as just one example, doesn't believe the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.

As entertaining as it is to see these various sects sniping at each other over dogmatic principles, it has been regularly suggested that Romney could get the "Mormon thing" behind him by making a speech like John Kennedy made during his campaign in 1960, when his Catholicism became an issue (no surprise, given that his opponent was the dirt-slinging non-practicing Quaker Richard Nixon).

There are a couple of reasons why that sort of event wouldn’t work for Romney. For one thing, some of the major tenets of the Mormon faith make it a little more difficult to separate the believer from the prospective president. Mormons believe in an expansive form of "American exceptionalism" – that we live in a special location reserved by god, making it a bit harder for Romney to separate that religious belief from his role as president of the special location.

But, if you look at what Kennedy actually said to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, it’s even clearer that Romney – or anyone else in the race in either party – could never make the same assurances:

• "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him. I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all."

How quaint, really. "the separation of church and state is absolute...no...minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds...no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials..." Wow, was there ever really such a time?

Instead of the clear-headed sense of the role of government articulated so gracefully by Kennedy, we now have candidates falling all over each other telling us how their faith informs their proposed public service. The only criticism of religion in public life is whether faith means you adhere to a rigid regime of personal behavior and public morality that you want enforced by government or whether faith means caring for those less fortunate.

Could Romney really make the same promise that JFK made in his speech? With a straight face, I mean?

Miller: Folsom Coors Blues

The wing-nuts fell into predictable hysteria a couple of weeks ago over Miller Brewing sponsoring the annual "leather" Folsom Street festival in San Francisco. The pretend-outrage was "shared" by "all". Those who did not take sufficient offense were shunned and scorned in the right-wing of the Marquette faculty lounge. My new favorite unintentional comedian, John McAdams, took the stunned Rick Esenberg to task for his "mellow" attitude towards Miller’s tacit encouragement of children in leather vests and an apparently very butch re-imagining of the Last Supper, originally fantasized in a painting by Da Vinci.

It’s hard to figure out exactly what the Accidental Professor was getting at, but it had something to do with acting like he was offended because (he says) lefties play the "offended card" and thereby gain great power. "...[T]hey need to face a right that will play by the same rules," the fevered McAdams proclaimed, saying is was like "the prisoner’s dilemma", an interesting philosophical challenge that he twisted beyond all recognition. But, wait, it gets better (with McAdams, it always does): "This logic is why I rather applaud attacks on academic freedom from the right. I don't want them to succeed, but I do want leftist academics to be afraid that their academic freedom might be taken." (my italics) Thus does the supposed academic encourage attacks so that other academics feel the Fear. Seriously. You just can’t make this kind of stuff up.

In any event, the fact that lesser bulbs like McAdams, Michelle Malkin and Jessica McBride (still trying to get traction with, well, whatever you got) feigned bundled undies over the whole thing was properly ignored at Miller HQ in Milwaukee. Little did we know then that they had bigger fish to fry. A mere week after the wing-nut flare-up, the company announced an alliance even more unholy than they could ever have with some harmless alternate-lifestyle fringees in San Francisco. Our own Miller Brewing – at least it always seemed that way – has jumped in bed with right-wing, anti-union Coors Brewing in Colorado.

Just as Miller has lost much of its local identity and character since it was sucked into a South African brewing conglomerate, Coors has tried to take a step back in recent years from the nut-right inclinations of its founding family. Adolph's grandson Joseph Coors was in the "kitchen cabinet" of Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan and was instrumental in founding one of the bastions of the permanent right-wing misinformation campaign, the Heritage Foundation. He also contributed to the illegal terrorist Contra campaign run by Oliver North against Nicaragua in the 1980s. Since then, his son Pete Coors – still the chairman of Coors – ran as a fairly predictable right-winger for the Senate in 2004, losing to Democrat Ken Salazar.

Coors has had a long-running battle with organized labor, and labor leaders at Miller are justifiably concerned about how that will affect their status at Miller Coors. After Coors permanently replaced union workers with scabs in 1977, the AFL-CIO conducted a fairly-successful nation-wide boycott of Coors products for the next ten years. The boycott was dropped when Coors agreed to stop anti-union activity and allow a representation election, although Teamsters lost the election and the two Coors plants remain non-union.

With the battle looming over where the new Miller Coors will be headquartered, Wisconsin’s right wing finds itself hoisted on its own imaginary petard. GOP front-groups like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) find themselves between their own harsh election-year rhetoric about Wisconsin’s "tax hell" and trying to convince Miller Coors that this is not such a bad place after all. This is especially delicate for them at a time that their lackeys in the State Assembly are playing politics with the state budget with the same sort of reckless language about Wisconsin’s supposedly lousy business climate, etc. Senior Wing-nut Charlie Sykes has already pretty much given up trying to take back all the nonsense he has said about Wisconsin in the past, implying that the company would be crazy to headquarter in Milwaukee because of Colorado’s superior ranking by the right-wing Tax Foundation. Thanks for the help, Charlie.

With Miller’s marriage of convenience, another part of the soul of the city slips away. Coors just has too much baggage that will prevent it from ever losing its unfortunate political past and present, even if it wanted to. Now Miller carries some of that baggage and, even if the company manages to stay anchored in Milwaukee, it will now be affected by that legacy. It may be that Great Lakes and mountain water don't mix

Black & White World Part 2 – Crimes as Misdemeanors

Metro Milwaukee got a surprise last year when the crumbling Courthouse Annex was finally torn down as part of the massive, inconvenient, but ultimately successful Marquette Interchange freeway project in downtown Milwaukee. Suddenly, clearly visible in the bright afternoon sun was the entire west side of the Courthouse itself. The clear view of the beautiful, historic and still very functional building is now one of the highlights of a trip through in Interchange. Before the Annex was reduced to rubble (and cleverly ground up and recycled at the site to make the new pavement below), most metro residents probably didn’t even know the Courthouse was there.

Poor and black residents of Milwaukee, though, have always known where the Courthouse was and are all too familiar with the inside of it. They have been to the 4th floor, in small claims court, to face evictions and utility collections. They have been to the 7th floor in family and paternity courts. And on the 5th and 6th floors – the criminal misdemeanor courts.

A little background: A violation of the law is a crime if you can go to jail as a consequence. In Wisconsin, a crime is a misdemeanor if the maximum penalty includes less than 1 year in a county jail or, in Milwaukee, the House of Correction; it is a felony if the maximum penalty is a year or more in the state prison system. This year to date, there have been at least 7,000 misdemeanors, 4,500 traffic misdemeanors and 4,000 felonies filed in Milwaukee County.

Common misdemeanors include shoplifting, criminal damage to property, disorderly conduct (DC), battery, drug possession, carrying a concealed weapon (CCW) and the like. A large portion of misdemeanors in Milwaukee are in domestic violence court – battery, DC, violation of restraining orders, etc. Criminal traffic misdemeanors are for such offenses as operating after revocation (OAR) and operating while intoxicated (2nd - 4th offense – the first is not criminal; the 5th and subsequent is a felony).

Most of these cases appear or should be race-neutral. However, take a walk up on the 4th or 5th floor any weekday and you will find hallways and courtrooms full of African-American defendants and their attorneys (I'm there almost every morning -- stop and say hi!). Looking last year in the courtroom of Judge John Siefert, assigned at that time only to criminal traffic OARs, you would find almost a hundred African-Americans there every morning. The OAR law has since been changed, making less of those cases criminal. [Judge Siefert would not forgive me if I didn't also mention his efforts to get people licensed.] But the sheer volume of blacks in that courtroom for this common but relatively petty charge in the past several years was remarkable.

Let’s play a game of Rumsfeld and answer our own questions for a moment: Do blacks drive while revoked, shoplift, damage property, commit battery, possess drugs more than white people? Kinda doubt it. Are white people less likely to be caught doing those things? Certainly. If caught, are whites more likely to be handled differently, with perhaps municipal tickets or perhaps just sent on home? Kinda think so. Can there be reliable statistics that show how or why police make these on-the-street decisions? No. Are blacks more likely to be stopped as drivers or passengers in cars because of real or imaginary equipment violations and found revoked, with drugs, guns or warrants for unpaid fines? Well, there’s even a phrase for it – it’s called Driving While Black and it’s for real.

Misdemeanors are called that for a reason, but let take one hypothetic example drenched in reality (i.e.: I have seen everything in this scenario in various cases) and see how an African-American might (and most likely will) be treated in the course of a case.

Let’s say a black woman tries to steal baby clothes at a local Wal-Mart. First of all, will she be caught? Well, what sort of scrutiny do you think black people get in those kind of stores, especially in certain (white) parts of town? While the store rent-a-cops are following around every black woman with a baby in a stroller, what are the chances that a woman of another persuasion is getting away with the same thing one aisle over? Zero? I don’t think so.

Once stopped by store security, she is taken to a room to wait for the police. When the police get there, what do you think happens? If she’s white, does she get a warning or, at most, a ticket? If black, what is the likelihood that she will be released, ticket or no, without being arrested and taken to the police station? Probably not. Will the police charge her with the crime of retail theft? Will the store insist on it?

Assuming a criminal charge, she will be brought to the station, printed and booked. If white, will she be given a court date and released? If black? Let’s say the arrest happens on a Saturday. If she is not released, she will probably be quoted a bail of $300 or so to get out. Chances are, the poor woman will not or can not post (less likely to have cash or a credit card on her; contacting family members can be difficult, and they often don’t have the cash either) and will have to wait until intake court on Monday. Two nights in jail so far, while a similar white woman is probably at home caring for her children.

Appearing in intake court, she is not in the clothes she is arrested in. She sits before the court commissioner after two rough nights in jail in impersonal, humiliating jail clothes. If she has priors, those will be listed – god help her if she has a case pending at the time she is picked up for another theft. She might get a signature bond and be released or she might have to post what everyone in the courtroom will consider a "low" cash bail of $100. For many poor women, it might as well be a million.

To this point, a white woman in the same situation will have various chances to avoid being locked up that the black woman might not enjoy. This is especially the case if the white woman has moderate resources – even "low" bail will keep the poorest among us locked up while others walk free while their case is pending. Especially on misdemeanors, black or white, pre-trial incarceration is the exclusive predicament of the poor.

She meets with her lawyer and maybe she has a defense. Maybe she paid for some items and forgot the others were in the bottom of the stroller...whatever. If she’s locked up and can’t make bail, she could ask for a speedy trial within 60 days. 60 days! Most people in that case will just decide to get it over with – another of many who profess their innocence, but plead guilty out of practical necessity. And, if it goes to trial, will the jury believe her over the security guard. Will they admit the possibility of an honest mistake by the poor black woman?

If it gets to sentencing, if it’s a first or second offense, she’s already served more time than anyone would if released while the case was pending. If she has priors and has had jail imposed before, the judge may decide she has to get more jail this time because she didn't "get it" last time. 10 days turns to 30 turns to 60. If she has three or more misdemeanors, the state can charge her as a "habitual offender", which means she can get up to 2 year in prison for shoplifting baby clothes. Prison. For some baby clothes. Believe it or not, there are people in the state prisons right now for misdemeanors. Retail thefts. Baby clothes.

These are the "little" cases, but they set the tone for the rest of the system. There is no one in the inner city who doesn’t know someone who has been affected by the sometimes heavy-handed prosecution and court process of petty crime. The sense of injustice permeates the community while they wait for their mothers, father, sons or daughters to come home after "short" stints in the slammer for unpaid fines, small amounts of marijuana, a loud outburst on a street corner, or a revoked licence discovered while driving with a "broken taillight".

Everyone understands the need to treat serious felonies seriously. But the entire system suffers a credibility and legitimacy problem when the small cases provide a constant background noise for only one part of the city.

McAdams Shows His True Colors

There is a moderate Buzz on the Blogs this week about Marquette Prof. John McAdams' pre-emptive "study" about the disparity of black Americans who find themselves behind bars. Besides writing about it myself in my last post, the usual suspects have piped up about the "good" professor and he was just trying to get behind the numbers and blah de blah blah.

You'd think, to read the defenses, that McAdams is just some honest social scientist, reviewing the raw data with studious virtue, not seeking a desired result, but stumbling upon it anyway.

You would be wrong.

Sometimes, I join the comment thread on Rick Esenberg's "Shark and Shepard" blog just to get my two cents in and engage a little bit with Rick and some of his readers. We get some ideas out there for a couple of days and then let it go until we engage on another issues on another post on his blog or mine.

I was so engaged earlier this week over the Bill O'Reilly dust-up, where the Fox News Bully said on his radio show that he "couldn't get over" the human behavior in a Harlem restaurant that not only had black patrons but was run by blacks! Esenberg provided the usual excuses for this now-we-know-what-he-thinks-about-blacks comment, for some reason coming to the defense of O'Reilly the Blowhard. We have to start to "presume good faith" on the part of all those who enter the discussion on race in this country, he said. I disagreed that everyone gets a presumption of good faith in a comment:

You know what, Rick, I don't accept that O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Sykes or Belling come to racial issues in "good faith". They have built their careers on stirring up the "angry white male" -- it is Nixon's Southern Strategy brought to the radio marketplace. When Sykes calls black leaders "pimps" (unfathomably alright with you) and when Belling talks about black women "popping out babies" (you say you don't listen to the show, but the podcasts are readily available), they are using not even thinly veiled code words for well-understood racist concepts.

As for O'Reilly, I don't know why anyone would assume "good faith" on the part of someone who stirs up racial anxiety on purpose and then complains when it's pointed out. He's a big dumb jerk and proud of it. He has as much legitimate to offer on race relations as I do with who gets the GOP nomination (oh, please nominate Romney, please!).

People who want to be accepted in "good faith" have to do something besides tear down. They have to accept that there is a race problem in America. They can't just sit on the sidelines, throw spitballs, and call people trying to make a difference "pimps".

And O'Reilly knows what he said is wrong. That's why he can only attack those who point it out. He has yet to address the substance of his "can't get over" comment. He thinks he can hide behind Juan Williams unfortunate skirts forever, which, given Williams' pro-Fox disposition, he probably can.

And then there are people like you, Rick, who think that O'Reilly is acting in good faith and Jesse Jackson is a "pimp". You've got that exactly backward.

Esenberg responded:

The problem, I think, is that you come close to assuming that people who don't agree with your take on the race problem and what to do with it are racist or are trying to stir up white people. But, you know, reasonable people can and do disagree with you.

I suppose that I could go and listen to Belling's podcasts but, since I didn't defend him (just didn't attack him), I see no need to do so and, as you know, life is short. I said that I disagree with you about Sykes and O'Reilly's comments about Sylvia's. I stand by that.

OK, fine and that was that, I figured. Then I checked the thread again today and found this gem from Prof. John McAdams himself:

To Mike Plaisted: Jackson and Sharpton are pimps.

Failure to recognize that poisons any discussion.

As for this:People who want to be accepted in "good faith" have to do something besides tear down. They have to accept that there is a race problem in America. They can't just sit on the sidelines, throw spitballs, and call people trying to make a difference "pimps".

You are begging the question.

You are assuming that the racial hustling of Jackson and Sharpton is "trying to make a difference."

In fact, those guys are self-aggrandizing clowns.

"Throwing spitballs?"

As long as you guys preach nonsense, knocking it down is an honorable enterprise.

You've played the race card too long. It's not 1963.

Wow. Stunning, isn't it? Forget the racist name-calling and code words (pimps, hustlers, clowns). As long as you guys preach nonsense, knocking it down is an honorable enterprise. Well, I guess we know how you'll be using your credentials, don't we, professor?

I can't wait for McAdams to show up and be interviewed by Mike Gousha in another of Marquette's "Listening to the Wing-nuts" lunchtime seminars to discuss his "learned" findings.

But here's the question for Esenberg (also on the Marquette faculty): how do you "presume good faith" with a fire-breathing lunatic like John McAdams, for whom "knocking down" civil rights heroes like Jesse Jackson is an "honorable enterprise"? Am I really "poisoning any discussion" of the issue by not recognizing legitimate civil rights leaders as "pimps"? Is it "playing the race card" to point out the continuing legacy of slavery and racism in America?

We know where McAdams, O'Reilly, Sykes and Belling stand. They approach the problem of race in America in the opposite of good faith; as a manufactured "race card" that needs to be "knocked down". As usual, we will have to work around them and in spite of them to find any solution to continuing America's racial divide.

Black and White World

Gov. Jim Doyle created a commission to study racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Apparently, the idea of studying racial disparities in anything is considered the sort of muddle-headed concern that sets tongues waging on the right, where any mention of race in society is met with feigned "how dare you?" indignity. Acting like they are threatened by what the commission might say, the wing-nuts conducted a pre-emptive strike, calling on a friendly law professor from Marquette’s increasingly right-wing faculty to say the disparity in Wisconsin is not that different from the national average and what’s so wrong with racial disparity, anyway.

Xoff and Soglin have pointed out the obvious bias in the McAdams approach to the study or article or whatever he is calling it these days. You do have to kind of admire the kind of balls it takes to end a piece that screams to be taken statistically seriously with a long, dubious anecdote from talk-radio’s Clarence Thomas wanna-be, James Harris. I guess the message is that we should go ahead a lock up more blacks in the hopes that Harris can walk his dog in peace.

Although McAdams need not be taken seriously, certainly the problem should be. The issue isn’t whether there is racial disparity in the criminal justice system (even McAdams admits that) – the question is how it manifests itself and what, if anything, we can do about it.

Since I began my career as a criminal defense attorney 21 years ago – the vast majority of my clients being appointments from the State Public Defender – I do have some perspective on the position my clients (I would guess 85% black) face in the criminal justice system and in society as a whole.

McAdams spends some time reviewing statistics for those released from prison after serving time. For both an identification of the issues and possible solutions, I would look at the time before someone is locked up; long before they commit a serious crime. It is that time that affects them more if they do end up getting accused a felony or even a misdemeanor; whether they get out on bail, and how they are sentenced, even whether they get charged in the first place. And, because of conditions on the street and the nature and result of interactions with police in their own neighborhoods, blacks in the city start at a significant disadvantage in the criminal justice system.

Seeing the difference in treatment is as easy as crossing the street.

I walk downtown everyday, to and from the courthouse and my office on 7th – I’m sorry – James Lovell and Wisconsin. Often, I’ll come up to a crosswalk with no traffic headed in either direction and the Don’t Walk sign glowing orange-red. Several African-Americans will be standing there, dutifully waiting for the Walk sign. I step out and start to cross. The others watch, then gingerly make their own way across the street, against the light, figuring if the white guy can get away with it, so can they. This time, anyway.

Black people in Milwaukee are far more likely than I am to get jaywalking tickets. They are far more likely to get a loitering ticket hanging around on a street corner or on the front stoop of a house. They are more likely to get a disorderly conduct ticket for talking loud out in the street or a noise complaint from a neighbor. The unpaid tickets result in commitments – to jail – for non-payment or a driver’s license revocation or they’ll take your income tax refund.

In fact, black Milwaukeeans are far more likely to have any contact with a police officer. And when they do, the quality of that interaction is dramatically different. They are far more likely to get searched, to get their name run for warrants, to have everyone around them asked for ID. This is a world most white folks are completely unfamiliar with. Officer Friendly conducting a frisk of your person and asking if you have "anything to hide"? Unheard of for us, but that’s the way it is for the citizens of Black Milwaukee, who often find themselves on the wrong end of a near police state.

Those who want to get off the streets and drive or ride in a car are also treated much differently. The pain of a ticket is one thing, but getting stopped driving down the road by police is no big deal for me. They come up to the window, get your license, check it and come back with a ticket, a warning or a pat on the back for good driving.

If you want to know what the difference is for a black person, ask a black professional. He’ll tell you that, while I would be able to drive around for months with a broken taillight, he will be stopped or any equipment violation, even something ludicrous like having snow covering a back-up light. Once stopped, he’ll tell you he will often be pulled out of the car and frisked. Even dressed up for a night out, his passengers will be asked for ID and run for warrants. He will be asked if the police can search the car, for no reason at all. He will describe an often humiliating, disrespectful encounter.

All this scrutiny on the streets and in cars, of course, results in small matters suddenly resulting in arrests. Unpaid fines, certainly. Sometimes, recreational drugs are found, open intoxicants, even a gun (unless it’s unloaded and cased in the trunk, illegal to carry in a car). You might try to avoid an outstanding warrant and give your brother’s name (obstructing). You might even try to run (resisting). Did you know that you can be arrested and made to bail out of jail for any traffic violation, like a bad license light? Don’t worry – if you’re a white guy, you probably won’t have to worry about it. If you are black, you do.

The result is that few black people who have lived in the city for a long time have a totally clean record if they are arrested for a misdemeanor or worse. The stupid tickets they got on the street or in a car will follow them to the criminal system and may affect charging and bail decisions. There are other issues in the more advanced stages of the system that result in the disparity, of course, and perhaps I’ll address those in future posts.

But the combined effect of the drip-drip-drip of petty ticket enforcement and undue scrutiny during police encounters results in a sense of distrust and injustice in the inner city. The stark fact is that young black men are all too familiar with the inside of a police car and a jail cell, if only for silly tickets. Young white men are much less likely to face the same scrutiny, build the same record or be treated the same way if accused of something more serious.

The bottom line is that blacks and whites don’t come into the criminal system with the same baggage. It should be no surprise that they come out of the system with different results.

Transcript: Axis of Evil Meeting

September 25, 2007 – United Nations, New York City

KJI: North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-il
BAA: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
MA: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
HC: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

KJI: Alright, let’s get started here. I know we all want to get to Wolfowitz’ neo-con soiree. As you know, we all have directions through the servants quarters, as usual. If you have not signed up for the dunk tank, there is a sheet being passed around...

BAA: Don’t worry, the gang that can’t shoot straight probably can’t throw a softball, either!

(Laughter)

KJI: I know some of you are anxious to get to Canal Street as well, so let’s keep this moving. As Old Business, I would like to thank President Chavez for his great job as Designated Clown at last year’s session. Truly a remarkable job, Hugo. That "smell of sulphur" bit was really a stroke of genius.

HC: Gracias!

KJI: We also should note, I suppose. The untimely passing of our brother Saddam at the hands of the imperialist stooges in Iraq...Bashar, what’s the matter with you?

BAA: I’m sorry Mr. Chairman, (stifles laugh) please continue.

KJI: Saddam was a great hero of his people who was deposed in an illegal invasion by the Great Satan...Bashar, please!

BAA: (Laughing loudly) I’m sorry! It just sounds so funny coming from you. You were the first to suggest throwing him under the bus. Laying it on a little thick aren’t we? "Great hero"? "Brother" Saddam? I mean, please...

KJI: We all know that Saddam may not have been well liked (more laughter) or considered much of a leader on anything (guffaws, whistles), but his fate holds lessons for those who oppose United States imperialism...and...I’m sorry, I can’t do this with a straight face...

BAA: Kim, I never saw you crack a grin like that!

KJI: It’s just too funny. Saddam was such a chump.

HC: Amen, brother.

MA: I would like to discuss the UN sanctions on my country.

KJI: Hang on, Mahmoud. We’re still on Old Business. Anything else on Old Business? Alright, anyone have any New Business?

MA: Now, about those sanctions...

KJI: Too late! Now that’s Old Business!

BAA: Ha! I love that routine! Marx Brothers, Horsefeathers, right?

KJI: Nope. Duck Soup.

BAA: Of course, of course! I love that movie! (Singing) Hail, Hail Fredonia, Land of the Brave...and...Free!...

KJI: Seriously, Mahmoud, we do appreciate your serving as this year’s Designated Clown. Your schtick was beautiful at Columbia. What was that again? "We don’t have homosexuals like you do in this country." What a riot.

BAA: That’s not what my boyfriend in Tehran’s been telling me! (Laughter)

MA: What I meant was...

HC: Who cares what you mean? The Americans will spin it to make you look like a bad guy no matter what you said. Do what I do! Revel in their disdain; celebrate your target-hood! Hey, it's not all bad. You got face time with Christiana Amanpour!

ALL: Ah...Christiana...

MA: I would like to be taken seriously by my people and the world at large. The Iranian revolution was born of the strength of our people...

KJI: Well, good luck with that, Mahmoud. (Laughter) Look, we know our role, correct? We get to be targets of the American press, which creates a diversion and takes pressure off of our brothers in Saudi Arabia, China, Jordan, wherever. Our friends, the neo-cons, jabber and squawk but, in the end, won’t do anything. All they are interested in is creating bogey-men to stoke their military-industrial complex. Happy to serve! In the meantime, Hugo, how are those oil prices?

HC: Bueno!

KJI: You better believe, bueno. The more we play the game, the more our friends prosper. And, with the Great Satan attacking each one of us everyday, our people eat it up. Anyone who rises up to challenge is automatically an American stooge. Hell, we’re set for life. I am, anyway.

MA: Oh yeah? Why don’t I feel so good?

BAA: Well, you have your own internal problems. It might work out for you. But you might want to be careful in the airport when you get back -- I’d keep an eye on that men’s room in the north terminal, if I were you.

MA: I just don’t want to left swinging in the breeze like Saddam.

BAA: Oh, we got your back, Mahmoud!

HC: Yeah, bro.

ALL: [smile]

MA: Uh, OK, if you say so. Now, about those sanctions –

HC: Move to adjourn.

BAA: Second!

KJI: Alright, you guys. See you at Wolfie’s!

Talk Radio Not Up to Jena Challenge

The racist prosecution of six black youths in Jena, Louisiana was the subject of one of the most successful civil rights protests in years last week, focusing the national and international spotlight on an unfortunate but all too frequent misuse of the criminal justice system. Naturally, Milwaukee’s own race-baiting wing-nuts were right out front, attacking the leaders of the protests and blaming the victims.

Over on right-wing radio station WTMJ, supposedly legitimate public-policy egghead (so christened recently by Marquette University) Charlie Sykes was playing his usual smear-the-messengers-so-we-don’t-have-to-deal-with-the-issues game. Jim Rowan noticed that Sykes called two historic figures who, unlike Sykes, have actually done something positive with their lives – civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton – "race pimps" for daring to challenge the Jena outrage. Nothing new here – I caught Sykes calling Sharpton a pimp back during the Imus imbroglio and my post was widely ignored. So, I guess this is something that the mainstream outrage-spotters are willing to let go, if only to protect their spots on Sykes’ TV panels. Besides, at least Sykes was familiar with the subject of his comments, having pimped for the GOP for years.

Over on WISN, Mark Belling was in full I-don’t-care-if-you-call-me-a-racist mode, calling the Jena kids "thugs" (like he knows) and blaming the struggle for justice in Jena as the "pathetic" result of nostalgic longing by "idiots" who missed the ‘60s. In one of the more outlandishly stupid examples of wishful thinking in recent years, know-it-all Belling offered this: "By the mid-1970s, all the legal racism in America was pretty much done-away with." Wow, really? This completely insupportable claim ignores the treatment of crack cocaine (used by blacks) more severely than powder (favored by whites, who can afford it); the disproportionate use of the death penalty on black defendants; high percentage of blacks in prison; the fact that blacks are still far more likely than whites to get stopped just driving down the street, etc. The criminal justice system has been regularly used to accomplish what cannot be done by Jim Crow or Bull Conner wannabes, especially in racist backwaters like Jena.

Not satisfied to pretend well-established racial problems in the criminal justice system don’t exist, Belling decided – as he often does at the mere suggestion of African-American temerity – to add racist insult to injury. Belling suggested that, rather than marching for justice in Jena like a bunch of ingrates, blacks should turn on people in their own community. "Why not do something gutsy like march in front of the homes of some of these mothers who have eight kids by eight different fathers and aren’t paying attention to any of them," said the exaggerating, ignorant Belling. "...whose notion of a family is to simply pop out a bunch of kids and turn them to the streets and allow the gang members to raise them?" Why not, indeed? Thus the classic racist notion of poor black women "popping out" children is introduced into a discussion of justice in Jena. "Dealing with the pathologies of urban America is hard; Jena is easy," he said. Well, Jena isn’t that easy for him. He can’t deal with any subject involving black Americans without promoting racist canards that would only be welcome in the coffee shops of white Jena.

While taking friendly calls from places like Oshkosh, Brookfield and the South Side – "How can we look at members of the black community as equals?" wondered the chump from Oshkosh – Belling, obviously on a roll, wouldn’t (perhaps couldn’t) stop there. He also had the nerve to speak on behalf of Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK "would not have rallied behind a bunch of guilty kids", claims Belling, forgetting that King himself was a frequent victim of the criminal justice system, "guilty" as he was of being uppity. "Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application," he famously wrote from the Birmingham jail. While his focus was on the civil rights denied in the South, King’s world view was not limited to that issue. He would have recognized the injustice in Jena – and, certainly, its relation to the deep South’s historic racism – just like he recognized the futility of the Vietnam war just before his death.

As if twisting the King legacy beyond recognition wasn’t enough, Belling couldn’t help but draw attention to King’s "problems in his personal life", just in case you were thinking of throwing some King back in his face. "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity," King said. Now, run tell that.

Paul Soglin had a brief moment of attention last week when he said on his blog that "the problem with Milwaukee is talk radio. So long as Charlie Sykes, Mark Belling and Jay Weber dominate the discussion on crime and poverty, there is little hope for Wisconsin's most important city to work its way out of its troubles." He’s right, of course, and the "discussion" of the issues presented by the Jena prosecutions are the perfect example. Sykes, Belling and their ilk are comedians, entertainers. They don’t give a damn about crime in the city, blathering on about it only to patronize their angry-white-man demographic by talking about how bad and irresponsible blacks and their leaders are.

In Jena, Louisiana, we see the legacy of historic racism, now filtered, however clumsily, through the heavy-handed use of the criminal justice system. Milwaukee’s legacy of racism also survives, no longer through the vehicles of segregated schools and Harold Breier, but now through loud-mouths on the radio, who continue to poison the environment with racist tripe. It’s not helpful, to say the least, but as long as they are offered forums at Marquette, columns in local newspapers and TV shows, it is those who facilitate their poison and advertise on their shows who really bear the responsibility for the lack of progress in a city that needs unity while Belling and Sykes promote division.

Viewer Mail

I've been really proud of the activity on my comments section lately. Some people who disagree with me have been using the comments section to challenge me on various issues for some time now and I’ve enjoyed engaging with them in a way the right-wing usually doesn’t in the Real World. Sometimes, two commenters just go at it for a couple of days while I stand off to the sidelines and watch. I know I’ve posted something interesting if, two or three days later, people are still posting, still arguing, still engaging in the comments.

My last post about "Peace" and "The Law" drew some of the usual suspects. I find that, the more I answer all of their (they think) trick questions, the more the right-wingers eventually raise the volume beyond 11 – all the way to shrill.

For instance, here’s some love from a regular commenter who regularly hides behind the Anonymous tag. It’s sometimes hard to tell one Anony from another, but this guy has a familiar aroma that I can smell a mile away:

Mike, why do you hate the military so much? Did they kick you out on a section 8 (a la Corp. Klingar)? My guess is that you successfully dodged the draft or else you wouldn't have the vitriol that you do. Please tell me a situation where our military action is warranted. You seem to be against all forms of intervention, attack, etc.

Here we see several characteristics of the right-winger with his back to the wall, desperate to score points. Note the groundless assertion that I "hate the military" and that I’m "against all forms of intervention". This is a regular game in all of wing-nuttydom – imputing to me words I’d never use and thoughts I never had. And, no comment thread (especially with this guy) is complete without the unwarranted the personal attack (how does he know I wear dresses? Sometimes, it’s just a lucky guess...).

Regardless of the fact that some of these folks do not approach the arguments in good faith and just want to do damage, I still ignore the personal asides and actually answer the factually-challenged questions. I wrote this in response, posting it here instead of on the comment thread:

In 1970, when I was 15, I wrote to Sen. Proxmeier and told him I would go to jail rather than submit to the draft. He wrote back and told me to calm down, the draft would be over by then. He was right. When I was 18, it was the first year of no-lottery and before mandatory registration, so I missed the whole thing. I know and respect people who went to Vietnam, went to Canada, went to jail. I also know all of the chicken hawks so bravely sending our sons and daughters to their deaths – from Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld to the media enablers Limbaugh, Kristol and the pathetic Newt Gingrich – never served a day during Vietnam or any other shooting war.

I don't hate the military. I love every soldier that has died or been maimed in this Stupid War. I want to prevent more such deaths. Why you want them to stay in harm's way for the neo-cons' grand designs is beyond me. If I were playing the same games, I would say: why do you "hate" them so much that you will allow 1,000 deaths and countless injuries for another year of this shit? I don't really think you hate them, Anony, but why so indifferent to the danger Bush has put – and kept – them in? I think the burden is on you, at this point.

Not that I have to anything to prove, but I wrote a song last year called "Shake a Hand, Make a Friend". Here's the last verse:

He takes off into the setting sun
Young soldier holding to his gun
Called to duty and he does it well
Free-fire in a living hell
In the airport I smile and wave
I give a shout out to the brave
I'll do my part I'll do my share
To beat the bastards that put him there.

There are lots of legitimate uses of the greatest military in the world, but one person's defense – especially this ridiculous "pre-emption" notion – is another person's imperialism. Are there threatening armies amassed at the Canadian or Mexican border (I mean soldiers, not immigrants)? That's easy. We have commitments to NATO, Israel, South Korea, whatever – if they are invaded, we honor our commitments.

It is quite another thing to say, if we don't like a country or its leaders, that we have the right to invade and depose just because they are blustering or because they don't have our version of "freedom". That this is madness – especially in the volatile Middle East – has been proven in spades in Iraq. But it’s nothing that anyone with any sense didn’t know ahead of time.

Another semi-regular is patrick, who can also be seen commenting on many of the right-wing blogs. This was a long one you can check out for yourself, but here are some excerpts:

Mike, As far as revisionist history goes, you're amazing. Look through all the statements of your democratic officials--the Clintons, Pelosi, all of them. Examine the UN record. Note the invasion of Kuwait, the use of poison gas on the Kurds, the mass graves discovered in Iraq in the first months of the war. That's not crap.

Those on the right like to pretend that, just because some Dems saw Hussein as a potential problem that they also advocated the same "solution". But it is one thing to identify problems and crimes in another country, as Clinton and others did with Hussein, and quite another to invade-and-depose. The goal for some was "regime change" but no Democrat (except Lieberman) ever advocated that. And they were right – now look at the mess we've gotten ourselves into in Iraq.

Whatever happened to the left I once celebrated--one that wanted to stand up for the terrified masses?...

Yeah, sure you did, patrick....that's what they all say. And they all lie.

As for Iran, consider the way they treat those who descent, the beatings of women who fail to cover themselves. the treatment of women in general. ...Consider their material support for the insurgents in Iraq today...Consider their pursuit of nuclear weapons and their holocaust denyer president....Finally, note how our cultures are opposed: we love freedom, debate, vicious debate, even; they value slavish conformity to brutal and repressive, patriarchal and fanatic religion. ...Maybe you need to read a little more about Iran. I'd recommend Michael Ledeen as found at NRO. Either way, Iran embodies everything we in the west find disgusting and low.

Now you want to invade "disgusting and low" Iran. Please.

One of the primary reasons the neo-cons invaded Iraq – although they won't admit it – was because Hussein was such a weak pushover. Iran and Syria are the real targets of the neo-cons, but they were (just barely) smart enough to know that both countries have the broad support of enough of its populace to put up a fierce resistance if the Bushies were foolish enough to try this stunt in either of those places.

So they knocked over Hussein, the paper tiger, immediately moved bin Laden’s hated military bases from Saudi Arabia and tried to occupy the Arab version of the Wild West. We have already ruined our relations with the Arab world for generations by invading Iraq. The dirty secret, despite our blustering, is that invading Iran is absolutely out of the question. It falls to neo-con Michael Ledeen to pollute the Iran bogey-man stories with the same sort of breathless hyperbole that gets Republican candidates saying stupid things and, not coincidentally, sells books for him. The rule of thumb should be: Don’t believe anything about Iran that comes from the administration or the National Review. No two institutions have ever been more consistently wrong. About everything.

So keep those comments coming, campers! The more we engage, the more we learn from each other. The comments section can be like a crowbar to create the open mind. Or, as another famous Clinton (George, he of Parliment/Funkadelic) once proclaimed: Free your mind, and your ass will follow!

Wing-Nuts: "Peace" and "The Law" is for Suckers

Two talk-radio-driven campaigns this past week – one national, one local – show the continuing power of the right-wing echo-chamber. By all of their surrogates saying the same thing – and saying it loudly – the GOP was able to get its twisted messages wedged into the MSM, whether it was newsworthy or made any sense or not. The result, as usual, was the continued poisoning of the political well; the result of the twisted message without a sufficiently-funded or radio-distributed answer.

The first example was the theatrically hyperventilated "reaction" to a full-page ad MoveOn.org bought in the New York Times and that ran on the first day of Bush-apologist David Petraeus’s "report" before Congress. MoveOn had the gall to rhyme "Petraeus" with "Betray Us", and the race to smear the messenger – and, more important, the messenger’s perceived friends – was on. From the halls of Congress to the "golden" microphones owned by inflated egos across the country, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth of this infamous slander against "our general in the middle of a war".

How dare they say he betrayed us?! Are you calling him a traitor? Well, no, MoveOn wasn’t – just saying Petraeus betrayed any trust the general populace may have had in him to come and tell the truth about the continuing disaster in Iraq. Instead, the ad accurately predicted that he would pump the propaganda of his masters in Washington. Other than the rhyming name-calling, the supporting text of the ad is uncontroversial and fully supported by the facts. Knowing not the meaning of irony, the noise came from the same chicken hawks who impugned the good, heroic names of John Kerry, Max Cleland and anyone else when it suited their purposes.

But, never mind what MoveOn was really saying or whether they were right. It wasn’t about them anyway. The whole phony controversy was used to drive the GOP talking-point that the leading Democrats running for president are beholden to the "fringe" of the party. Demands were made for Hillary Clinton and others to condemn the ad with the same heavy breathing employed by the purveyors of the fraud – bait which, to their credit, was not taken by any of the targets of the demands.

One of the fake controversies within the controversy (the best of these sideshows have cleverly false sub-plots) was the lie that the Times had given MoveOn an over-friendly $100,000 discount on the full-pager. Never one to pass up an opportunity to turn death and tragedy (be it 9/11 or Iraq) into political hay, Rudy Giuliani cynically put together an ad attacking Clinton for her excellent "suspension of disbelief" comment to Petraeus and her failure to condemn the red-herring MoveOn ad. He also bravely demanded the same rate for his ad. He got it, of course, on the same terms MoveOn did (you get the discount if you don’t ask that it run on a specific day). And, of course, Rudy’s ad was not so much a defense of Petraeus as it was his first major political broadside at Clinton. Who used Petraeus more – the organization trying to point out the truth to end a disastrous war or the politician who jumped on a bandwagon populated by the usual Bush-enabling yahoos to pump up his venal campaign for president?

There was indeed offensive language used last week surrounding the Petraeus/9-11 circus. House Minority Leader John Boehner used the occasion to opine that the American soldiers dead and soon-to-be was "a small price to pay" for whatever the hell we are doing over there. Not to be outdone, professional blowhard Bill O’Reilly put a number on it and announced that he is happy to provide Petraeus another year and, even if it means (and it does) another 1,000 dead GIs. In terms of offensiveness, this makes MoveOn’s perhaps impolitic name-calling look like a schoolboy’s speaking in class out of turn while his classmates are out tagging the outside of the school with obscene graffiti.

Meanwhile, back at home, the radio and blog wing-nuts were in full lather about a judge in Sheboygan who tossed a jury verdict in a child enticement case because the alleged slug chatting up the poor girl wasn’t trying to get her to a "secluded" place, as required under the law. The judge, who, we presume, after all, did take an oath to uphold the law no matter what the wing-nuts think, took all manner of abuse from big-city out-of-town demagogues Sykes, Belling and various of their third-rate counterparts, who pretended not to know how the obviously liberal judge could do such a thing. True to form, the Journal Sentinel, its weak ear ever to the radio while looking for a clue, ran front-pagers in the Metro section two days in a row (with more to come, no doubt) about the "outraged" citizens and the hot-to-appeal DA.

The dirty little secret is that all of them know why the judge did what he did. Even if they are not lawyers, they know he was faced with a law that required enticement to a secluded place and that the park shelter (a roof with four legs) was not secluded. But they decided to fudge the facts and the law, pretending that the judge had done something outrageous, calling for his defeat in the next election, using the case as a wedge to eliminate the judicial substitution law, etc.

Their loud squawking has nothing to do with what is right and wrong and everything to do with creating distrust of the criminal justice system and generally stirring up the woe-is-me victimhood of those who are vulnerable to this kind of blather. The criminals have all the rights and we have none and blah de blah blah. You’d think, if they want to cast aspersions on the judiciary, they’d just look across the dining room in their country club at their buddy, Annette Zeigler. But, no.

Even their fellow traveler, attorney Rick Esenberg, admits to knowing better and ever-so-gently says so. But they didn’t need to call him to get the legal scoop. They know what is right and pretend not to in order to enrage the townsfolk to head for the courthouse with pitchforks and torches. In the middle is the family of the poor girl, another victim of an over-charging prosecutor and a bunch of agenda-driven wing-nuts who don’t care who gets hurt in the process.

The Lies of McBride – Bin Laden and the Dems

Has is really only been four months since WTMJ barged in and ripped their microphones from the Bucher-McBride household? One day, McBride was basking in the unearned glory of her non-sports night wing-nut spot on Wisconsin’s only powerhouse AM station. The next day, after a childish piece of ridicule aimed at Journal-Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane, McBride’s home-schooled mic was silenced and they changed the locks on Capitol Drive, just in case she decided to darken the corridors of Radio City.

After whining about the loss of her radio entitlement for a week or so, McBride settled in to her new diminished life as a UWM "lecturer" for (gasp!) journalism and the occasional column in the Waukesha Freeman, which apparently will run nonsense from any wing-nut, anywhere. But you can tell McBride misses the high profile that can only be achieved from three hours of free airtime to read GOP talking-points in her own inimitable style on a mainstream right-wing radio station. She has made several attempts to throw bombs on the very thin vanity blog that she converted to after TMJ took down her page, but no one noticed because, hey, who was that again?

But, over the weekend, McBride posted her most outrageous post yet, throwing herself on the sacrificial altar of the Republican campaign to impugn the integrity of anyone who disagrees with them. Declaring that, on the new bin Laden tape, the terrorist leader "sounds like so many of [the Democrats] do", McBride proudly plays her tiresome role as surrogate for the GOP, saying the worst so Bush doesn’t have to. "[T]he liberal abuse blogs will write, frothing at the mouth..." she predicts in her post on Saturday night (always a productive time for Jess), deliberately mistaking honest criticism for "abuse" and "frothing" for, well, saying anything, I guess.

Like all wing-nuts, McBride hopes that her readers won’t actually look at the source material that she provides a link to – a transcript of the bin Laden video – letting her deliberately deceptive description of it stand as the basis to make her phony points. In fact, the bin Laden screed is an appallingly obtuse mash of gibberish – about what you’d expect from a religious fanatic with a megalomaniacal streak. It reads much more like Pat Robertson than any Democrat I know of. "Don't blame me. I'm only repeating what bin Laden said," claims McBride, except that she’s not – there is not one direct quote of more than a single word in the whole post. As usual, the wing-nuts won’t let the facts get in the way of a good political hatchet job.

In the video, bin Laden offers laughable moral-equivalence justifications for his own criminal behavior on 9/11 – pointing out that the Holocaust did not happen in the Middle East but in mid-Europe, and "we" aren’t like that because "burning living things is forbidden in our religion". And how did too many of those poor souls in the Twin Towers die, again? He also praises himself for leaving millions of Christians alone in Egypt and elsewhere, "whom we have not incinerated and will not incinerate". For this lack of incineration, we are duly thankful, you murderous asshole.

McBride claims that he "expresses disappointment that Democrats" haven’t ended the war in Iraq. But bin Laden doesn't do any such thing. In fact, he can’t express disappointment in a result he fully expects. He offers a garden-variety, college sophomore version of how capitalism distorts democracy. "Those with the real power and influence are those with the most capital," he says, sounding like a student on a deadline for a Chomsky book report. "Democracy" is a fraud, a front for the corporate state, and blah de blah blah – he cites Chomsky, but could just as easily have chosen Nader. But he doesn’t say anywhere that he was glad Democrats won in ‘06 and is now so sad they haven’t succeeded in ending the war. He considers our entire system a sham and doesn’t see a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. McBride claims: "He clearly was happy they won, but is growing disappointed." This is simply not true, and she can’t point to any thing in the transcript to back it up. Like much of what she writes, just because it’s nonsense doesn’t mean she won’t say it.

In fact, her entire premise is ridiculous. There isn’t one phrase or one idea (to the extent you can figure out what he’s talking about) in the bin Laden speech that any mainstream Democrat, anywhere, would agree with. "Or are you secretly thinking," says under-employed mind-reader McBride, "‘you know, I can't admit it, but in a lot of ways he makes sense.’" Um, no, Jess, we’re really not. Oh, and she says, since we "hate" Bush and bin Laden does, too... Again, sorry to disappoint. As I have explained before, Bush isn’t personally involved in anything enough to "hate" him. We do hate what he does in our name. I would say it is more likely that we "hate" bin Laden personally, for what he actually did and still does. Get it straight: don’t hate Bush personally; hate bin Laden. Now, go spin that, McBride.

The GOP sends willing lackeys like McBride out to spout this junk for two reasons. First, it is a classic smear to say that Democrats and bin Laden want the same thing. But second and, more importantly, with bin Laden popping up just before the 6th anniversary, it distracts from the fact that the bastard is still at large, his stature unduly enhanced in the rest of the world by his very survival. In his wildest dreams, bin Laden could not have envisioned the impact of the 9/11 attacks; not so much in the unspeakable violence of that day itself, but in the reckless, destructive reaction of the Bush administration, who have managed to take the weeks of international unity after the attacks and turn the whole world against us by their arrogance and stupidity.

History will show that the 9/11 attacks were a turning point, all right. It will forever mark the time when American influence and respect in the world took a perhaps permanent turn for the worst, due not to any outside threat, but to the disastrous mistakes of our "leaders" after the fact. In the end, bin Laden is just a murderous religious punk who got lucky with a series of brutal criminal acts. But the vast majority of damage from 9/11 in not due to bin Laden. It is self-imposed.

Pampered No More...

After I posted a link to my short attempted intervention with Charlie Sykes on a blog-talk-radio show last week, my comments page lit up with all manner of accusers who were outraged by my inability to see the simple "truths" of the Sykes permanent campaign against too-tolerant teachers, indulgent parents and pampered children.

After avoiding my inquiries with a bemused "that’s not what I meant" to everything I brought up that he said he meant, I even got a grudging nod on Sykes’ vanity blog (which never seems to hold on to items very long these days, although I'm sure exceptions are made for the usual love letters from Scott Walker and David Clarke). Without mentioning me by name (Wing-nut Rule Number 1: Never acknowledge possibly worthy adversaries by name. Rule Number 2: Play up all lefty nutbags by name and proclaim them the "mainstream" of lefty thought), he proclaimed victory on behalf of himself and the gullible hosts of the show, one of whom, at least, claims personal knowledge of such injurious coddling by inferior parental units. Sykes claims to have taken particular pride in his comment that I "just wasn’t getting it".

So that's it, is it? If you don’t agree with Sykes or deign to challenge the phony premises of his sloppily-constructed "arguments", then you "don’t get it". Well, that’s easier than actually having to defend the nonsense that’s in the book. Among other things I "don’t get": the Iraq war, warrantless surveillance, wing-nut radio, etc. When I wondered out loud where, exactly, teachers were letting kids off with not knowing the value of pi, as alleged one Rule of his small, thin book, Sykes said he wasn’t saying teachers did this (although this is supposedly one of the rules "kids won’t learn in school" – I mean, it’s right there in the title of the book) and seemed to be saying that I shouldn’t take so seriously all this stuff he pretends to take so seriously when he’s not being directly challenged, which he never is.

Anyway, one of the hosts of the Dr. Blogstein show was so outraged about my lack of outrage about the daily damage to our poor coddled children, he splayed our whole conversation in my comments section on his blog and his comment page was thus lit up with helpful "I saw this happen" anecdotes and a side conversation about the ridiculousness of the No Child Left Behind "standards". The Blogstein crew made sure I was aware of a news item from just this week about a school in Colorado that was banning the game of tag on its playground. Right-wing sites across the internet made a point to play up the tag-banning as yet another example of the Coddle and the Damage Done.

Given this universally-accepted evidence of self-esteem and safety concerns run amok, what are we to make of this item in the paper on Sunday? It seems there is a growing movement – there must be, or else why would it be on the wires? – to raise the diaperless baby. Talk about not Pampering... Apparently taking Sykes and other scolds at their word, a new generation of parents is prepared to impose a Tough and Smelly Love regime on the pre-toddler set, from birth on. This can only lead to other you-figure-it-out practices later in life. Soft baby food? Hah! Suck on this carrot until you get some teeth in your head, you wimp. Toys? Here’s some sharp tools, blocks of wood and lead-based paint – make your own, you big baby. No reading books to these kids – they’ll have the books, alright, but they have to figure out what all those squiggly lines mean on their own.

I expect praise for the poopy-pants movement on the wing-nut blogs – until, that is, they figure out that the no-diaper experiments are probably being conducted by some back-to-the-land cult with a misplaced concern for disposable diapers that survive 3,000 years in landfills, or some other nutty notion like that. It is only a matter of time before they are rejected as reckless parents with a secret agenda to destroy Huggie Capitalism.

Well, you have your anecdotes and I have mine – that’s why they are called "anecdotes". Because Sykes can’t point to any studies, teacher training, or school board pronouncements that would, in the real world, establish a "trend", he pulls isolated incidents from various places on the planet, delcares the trend and dares anyone not to "get it". This campaign is like nothing so much as the phony "War on Christmas" that has become a holiday staple of the wing-nut talk shows. You take a banned Santa from a public park, mix in some lie about kids being banned from wearing red-and-green clothing in school and – voila! – you have another way that the secret leftist agenda is trying to Destroy You and the Way You Live.

Forget the Facts...it's the Fear that you'll remember...