Obama Derangement Syndrome

The vacant dreariness of what passes for Republican “thought” these days has now been exposed, both nationally and locally. As the public rightly sees them for their obstruction-for-obstruction-sake selves, the right-wing strains for post-Bush relevance. All they have left now is meaningless generalities, bad ideas and, when push comes to shove, name-calling.

As the new symbol of the GOP’s gaping irrelevance, take Gov. Bobby Jindal – please! After President Obama’s rousing speech to a joint session on Tuesday night, Jindal emerged – literally – out from the shadows of the Louisiana governor’s mansion to underwhelm the nation with his childish recitation of standard and empty Republican bromides about “wasteful spending”, the healing power of small business activity and more tax cuts for the rich. His deer-in-the-headlights performance set back his premature presidential ambitions by at least 8 years; and, by then, he won’t have much of a party left to lead. I agree with actor Jack McBrayer – any comparison between Jindal and his Kenneth the Page character on 30 Rock is an insult to Kenneth.

Closer to home, we have our own elected Republican making a fool of himself. Scott Walker, the man who wants to be governor after trying to run Milwaukee County into the ground, has spent the past week or so touring the wing-nut radio circuit pretending that he wants the stimulus money to fund a year-long sales tax holiday in Milwaukee County specifically and, what the heck, the whole damn state. It was an extremely cynical, unserious “proposal”; something Walker knew was impossible by the very terms of the stimulus legislation.

But it allowed him to grandstand before the nut-right tax-cut crowd that form the shrinking base of the evaporating GOP. And the bunch of useful idiots who are going to be using their various radio, newspapers columns and blog platforms to campaign for him full-time in the gubernatorial campaign were glad to have him on their publicly-licensed shows and run his embarrassingly self-congratulatory e-mails on their vanity blogs – “They loved me, Charlie!” Walker is going to be the biggest beneficiary of unreported in-kind campaign contributions in the history of Wisconsin or anywhere else, and most of it is going to be on the public airwaves. Actually buying commercial time is for suckers.

I (almost) wish President Obama would back up and call the little punk on his bluff. Let the state piss its $4 billion in stimulus money into the wind of a sales tax holiday. The result: nothing. A few well-off people – those who can pay cash – might save $50 on a new flat-screen TV or, if they really want to cut loose, $500 on a new car or boat. Everyone else will find the necessities of life a dollar or a dime cheaper, with no measurable improvement in anything. And, unlike the dramatic brick-and-mortar improvements to the infrastructure that will be evident in all temporarily Republican districts in 2010 from the real stimulus bill, there will be nothing to show for the amorphous tax-cut experiment except the drab disappointment when the sales tax returns at the end of the year. Walker deserves the emptiness of that moment as much as we need to be protected from the results of his political stunts.

But Jindal and Walker are just two desperate politicians getting drowned in stream of the rising tide of common sense and adult supervision. Forced from the dark crevices of the rejected right, the cockroaches are scurrying from the light, trying to find places to hide and excuses to make. I’m amazed how little the anti-Obama message has changed since the early days of the campaign. They still talk about Obama being the Messiah, still squawk about socialism, still praise the wisdom of – god help us – Joe the Plumber. There has been a new twist this week – calls for violent revolution -- including a poll on Sean Hannity's web site asking what kind of violent revolution his deluded followers might prefer. One would be concerned about all this if one could take it seriously. One cannot.

Speaking of being taken seriously, there is Rick Esenberg. The ubiquitous right-wing Marquette law professor and blogger has managed to get himself into mainstream publications – well, the Journal Sentinel, anyway – by pretending to be a sonorous Republican egghead; a man of supposed great reason and impeccable credentials. Of course, how anyone who runs interference for a hapless hack like Scott Walker and the ethically-challenged Mike Gableman has any credibility is beyond me. And you wonder if the Lords of State Street who run his drivel from time to time were paying attention when he called our new president a “freakin’ moron” the other day.

Esenberg has always been an Obama-phobe and I suppose it’s understandable that the president’s success and popularity in his first month in office has driven him right over the edge. Also, he wants you to know that he doesn’t “really think that” the president is a moron, although he blares the phrase in his headline and concludes he would understand if “the markets” believe it. [The main jist of the post is a tiresome expansion on the right-wing markets-have-tanked-since-Obama-took-the-lead-in-the-primaries talking-point.] But the good professor is happy to have the idea that the president is a “freakin’ moron” out there.

In the meantime, the rest of us can celebrate the return of the grown-ups to the White House. How refreshing to see a working mind on the podium at the non-State-of-the-Union address this week. How unique to see someone who thinks that government can be a source for good and who is willing to use his political capital to do the necessary things in unique and desperate times. How great to have torture revoked, health care addressed, the environment prioritized, education funded and transparency enforced over secrecy.

Stevie Wonder’s music wafted through the wings of the White House this week in a celebration of the new administration as much as it was about Wonder’s craft (If you can, find Paul Simon’s brilliant solo-acoustic take on “If It’s Magic” somewhere). The small musical event was a beautiful reminder of what we should be and what we should have been all along.

Let the losers bleat about revolution, socialism and freaking morons. We own it. We’ll do it. We’ll make it work despite you. And you’ll be out of power for a generation.

Of Cowards and Courage

As usual, a little context helps:

• Even as we fight a war against terrorism, deal with the reality of electing an African American as our President for the first time and deal with the other significant issues of the day, the need to confront our racial past, and our racial present, and to understand the history of African people in this country, endures. One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul. Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.
  -- U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder, February 18, 2009

As always happens when someone picks the nation’s worst historic scab, peels of mock outrage have sounded throughout the land in reaction to Holder’s challenge. The high-pitched squealing by the usual suspects who have no interest in racial understanding – he called you cowards! – has again managed to muddle the issues at the same time it makes Holder’s points for him.

The cowardice exemplified by a willing ignorance of history, an exaggerated sense of sufficient progress and the rush to unearned, premature closure should be self-evident and its exposure applauded. Instead, it is supposedly the nation’s first African-American AG who is the bad guy for providing educational perspective during Black History month. Go figure.

The African slave trade and its continuing legacy is America’s Original Sin. Along with the attempted genocide of the Native American by the European "pioneers" and the criminally unnecessary nuclear annihilation of hundreds of thousands* of innocents in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, slavery stands as part of America’s grim contribution to some of the greatest crimes in human history.

From the Middle Passage (the horrific ocean voyage in which between 2 and 4 million Africans died enroute) to the practices of the slave masters (deliberately divided families; repression of African language and religion; murder, torture and beatings) to eventual "freedom" in the Jim Crow South and the segregated North, black Americans have endured an experience like no other group in this or any other country.

And, as a country, we have never dealt with it. With every half-step, White America has rushed to declare the problem solved. Cause-and-effect is denied and victims are blamed. An African-American president is elected and caricatured as a chimp plugged full of bullets in a New York Post cartoon.

Pardon Eric Holder for speaking truth while himself in power. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be enough for he and President Obama to lead by example; they can and should lead us to new places of understanding and self-awareness. To deny and mock Holder's declaration of American cowardice on the issue of race is to pretend the problem is solved. It is to play enabler to the ultimate Big Lie.

It's way past time for America to come out from its hiding place and face the fear of its own compromised history. The nation was built in large part on the backs of a strong, talented race of involuntary immigrants who too many -- much less the drafters of the Constitution -- have never accepted as full citizens, neighbors or even strangers on the bus. We have already tried waiting long enough until everyone just forgets. It ain't happening.

Get real, America.

*corrected from "millions" - thanks, Patrick.

WISN Newsman Calls Lt. Gov. a “Ding-Dong”; Calls for “Bloody Revolution”

When WISN's regular daytime newsreader Nick Reed came to work on Thursday morning, he was wearing his fill-in wing-nut hat. By the afternoon, he was back to doing what passes for straight news breaks during national embarassment Rush Limbaugh’s show. It’s all in a day’s work for Milwaukee’s most unethical radio chameleon.

Reed was called in for the morning shift while regular waste-of-space Jay Weber was off, for whatever reason. While waxing uneloquent about tax breaks granted to film makers who decide to come to Wisconsin, Reed, the occasional newsman, for some reason decided to riff on Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton, calling her a “ding dong”. “I met her and she’s nice, but I think she’s a ding dong,” he said.

Now, who the ubiquitous Nick Reed is anyway and why anyone would care what his opinion is of anybody is one thing. But, his regular gig is as a news reporter. What other news reporter, anywhere, would be calling an elected official a “ding dong”? Does he take his reporter hat and go out to in the real world from time to time? If he walks into a press conference with supposed Ding-Dong Lawton, is he allowed into the room? Considering his ridiculous, condesending comments, should he be?

Reed, like all wing-nuts, fill-in or otherwise, didn’t stop there. He continued his anti-Hollywood diatribe (as if the state doesn’t give tax breaks to dozens of other industries) before drifting off into absurd blabbering about cigarette taxes that somehow led to this doozy of a monolog:

• “I tell ya, I hate the government...I think that we are headed straight to hell...I don’t know, outside of a bloody revolution that we are ever going to get back where we are...I really don’t have a lot of hope left. I really don’t...I know some people that have faith in the American people; not I...Some, I do...They’re the ones that 20 or 30 years from now are going to be held up in cabins with stockpiles of weapons and 12 kids a piece. I think I relate more to those people than so many others.”

Woof. What a load of hooey. This is all fairly standard wing-nut, fantasy-world fare, but, coming from a supposed journalist, it is quite a mouthful. Now the News Man hates government, pines for a bloody revolution, and wants to join crazed, armed survivalists out in the woods. We can really expect the fair-and-balanced from this guy, for sure.

As if to prove my point, Reed was back on the air in the same afternoon (after, I assume, a reasonable time to pull himself together), reading the news at the top of the hour as a “news reporter”. With all the news these days, what do you think he led with? Yep – Sen. John Kerry got a letter from “terrorist organization” (and elected Palestinian representative) Hammas and sent it to someone in the Obama administration. Get it? Kerry? Conduit? Hammas? You can’t make this stuff up. But Nick Reed can, or at least he can exaggerate it out of all proportion.

Notions of journalistic ethics are considered quaint and inconvenient by the greed-heads at Clear Channel, who obviously feel comfortable slotting the severely compromised Reed into the news-reader slot, not to mention letting him spin the news in wing-nutty directions. It's a disgrace, but what do they care?

The Audacity of Nope

The unanimity that the Republicans in the House have shown in opposition to the stimulus bill just signed by President Obama is really amazing. Just what does that House Republican leadership have to whip anyone with? Keys to the GOP-only washroom? Dinner dates with Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol? Promises of ambassadorships in the next Republican administration? Ha! Who would believe there is ever going to be one? Whatever the reason, all the House Republicans have decided to make a bad bed and sleep in it, satisfied only with themselves and accomplished of nothing.

Good. Hoist them on their own petard, I say. In a short 20 months, they will be facing another election with the tangible benefits of the stimulus bill all around them as they tour their districts. It should provide some interesting constituent interactions: See that road-building over there? I voted against it. Those cranes around that new green building being rehabbed in the middle of town? I voted against it. You got laid off and got more weeks of coverage and got $25 more per week while you tried to get back on your feet? I voted against it. Now, can I count on your vote? Hey, where’d ya go?

You wonder, really, about all those congresspeople in swing districts and why they would throw in with their increasingly overheated and hyper-partisan brethren. What about Wisconsin’s own Tom Petri, whose 6th District is just north and west of here? Unlike GOP glamor-puss Paul Ryan and North Shore neanderthal Jim Sensenbrenner, Petri often votes with the Dems on issues important to his district or to good government. What’s his problem on the stimulus bill? "...it simply was not focused enough on short-term stimulation," he says on his web site. Well, "not enough" is not nothing and there should be enough going on in his district in a year to make people wonder what he was thinking. Not to mention the increased strength of any Democratic challenger he will certainly draw next year.

Republican governors, on the other hand, are smartly and desperately embracing the stimulus bill. Their eyes closer to the ground in their states and free from the dark hands of people like the new dweeb in town, GOP House Whip Tom Cantor, the governors are playing the role of grown-ups to the children in the GOP House. They have one thing in common with President Obama – they are responsible for getting things going in their states and are less likely to participate in cheap posturing.

But, posture they have in the House, putting the very survival of the Republican party on the line and in deep jeopardy. The Washington elite in the GOP are betting they will be able to do the same thing they tried to do to Bill Clinton – prevent him from being a success. Despite their best efforts, a pack of lying Arkansans and Clinton’s own temporary personal weakness, Clinton's administration was still broadly successful and popular. Obama is even more likely to succeed, if only because only the hapless GOP doesn’t want him to.

The tireless and tiresome radio squawkers that so dominate what passes for Republican "thought" have been talking since early last year that the party’s cratering fortunes were as a result of their candidates not being nut-right enough. Unfortunately for them, the House Republicans and the RNC -- with the ludicrous choice of hyper-partisan Michael Steele as chairman -- appear to have drunk that Kool Aid.

The NoBama Republicans are hoping they can use their useful idiots on mainstream radio to make enough noise about the inevitable small failures of the stimulus package to make people forget the bigger picture of more confidence in an inspiring president and a brighter future through cash infusion into the economy. They’ll lose that bet, big time, in 2010. What will be the margin in the Senate in 2011 – 65-35? How many of the lemmings in the House will be pushed off the cliff as a price of their ridiculous unity -- 20 more seats? The Blue-ing of America continues and the long slide of Republicans into irrelevancy continues and, in fact, through their own arrogant ineptitude, accelerates.

Nichols the Knucklehead

Has there been a stupider column, ever, anywhere, than the drivel the Journal Sentinel printed by Mike Nichols on Saturday?

Honestly, what a load. The subject of the column was a proposal by some state legislators to finally put an end to the use of various racist names still attached to various public high school sports teams in Wisconsin. This was too much for the former-but-still-published J-S columnist, who decided to employ an air of sanctimonious derision to ridicule the proposal as so much undue intrusion by the "nickname police".

Nichols begins his radio wing-nut level discourse by insisting that Wisconsin be called "Meskonsing", in keeping with the original name given to the Wisconsin River by Native Americans and continues down this misleading path to identify a Milwaukee legislator as being from "Meneawkee or Mahnawaukee". Of course, nothing in the proposed legislation has anything to do with original-name purity, but that doesn’t stop Nichols from beating the idea with an irrelevant stick.

Nichols spends the rest of the column wondering if teams with names like Norskies, Cheesemakers and Midgets would have to change. After five paragraphs of this kind of hilarious exploration – "How about, say, the ‘Butternut Buttercups’?" he chuckles to himself at one point. Stop. Yer killing me. – he clarifies it all by letting one of the sponsors explain that only names with racial aspects would be affected. He then carries on for five more graphs in the same vein, this time exploring the origins of "Badgers" as, supposedly, a put-down of lead miners.

It’s an embarrassing performance that should have been clicked-and-dragged to the computer’s recycling bin the minute it floated in from Nichols’ home office. But, yet, the Kings of State Street saw fit to waste a good fourth of a page on one of its twelve-odd Saturday pages to inflict this garbage on its shrinking readership.

"Never mind that it’s a reference to our history - and who we are," Nichols closes in defense of things not threatened. What he never discusses is how team names like Warriors, Redskins, Indians and the like are too much a reflection of our racist history and who we were. What exactly is the defense for continued use of names, images and mascots that were created and maintained only to demean, belittle and dehunamize an entire race of our fellow citizens who bore the brunt of our ancestors worst violent instincts? You wouldn’t know it from reading this tripe from Nichols, who is too busy smirking and slapping the backs of his lowest-common-denominator readers, who are only too happy to stay stupid and backward while the rest of the world leaves them behind.

Dear Journal Sentinel: Get Over Yourselves!

UPDATED BELOW

Some newspapers have responded to the bursting of its advertising bubble with humility and circumspection. The best of them have even hired ombudsmen in recent years to take their papers to task for wrong information, bad spin, puffery and other journalistic sins.

Not your Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Ever since the Incredible Shrinking Paper publicly ‘fessed up to its collapsing advertising and circulation base and began to cut pages, sections and features like Edward Scissorhands on a bender, the J-S has made a point, every Sunday on Page Two, of telling us how wonderful they are. It is the worse kind of self-serving blather that they treat like gracious community service writ. You can imagine the editors and managers of the paper reviewing each puff piece from high in the State Street ivory tower every Friday, nodding sagely at the glowing prose, patting each other on the back and thinking how lucky the grateful populace is to have them.

A prime example of this weekly editorial circle-jerk is right-wing managing editor George Stanley’s embarrassing piece in this Sunday’s paper. Stanley’s goal is to brag about all the right-wing talking-points and knee-jerk political reaction that have been generated by some recent stories and campaigns run by the J-S in recent weeks. Indeed, from the trivial to the hysterical, the Only Newspaper in Town has provided plenty of fodder for those who think the worst about some people anyway. The paper has become expert at finding and exposing easy targets, such as camping outside the homes of inner-city women and otherwise employing the still-vast resources of what passes for the Milwaukee mainstream media to punish those who would dare to use public child care dollars for child care or use travel accounts for travel. Who can deny them this self-serving victory lap on their recent "success" at rooting out, well, whatever the hell they are rooting out.

Well, I can. While some of the Journal Sentinel investigations have been important and interesting – the BPA stuff and the doctor-whore pharma expose – most of it has been exploitative piffle. African-American school board and county board members now have to call Dan Bice to clear receipts for taxi cab rides in foreign cities where they may happen to be for outrageous events like conferences or if they want to take advantage of the fact that everybody who is somebody happens to be in Washington for some event or other – better to try to network when no one is around. Of course, right-wing and noticeably Caucasian nutbag James Sensenbrenner – the most repulsive member of Congress I have ever had the misfortune to be represented by – racked up at least $179,814.16 for his various pleasure junkets to Las Vegas, Germany, Las Vegas, Paris, Las Vegas, Japan and other exotic locales through the years. But, the J-S can’t be bothered to expend its selective outrage on rich congressmen – better to beat up on hapless minor local officials who talk-radio can sink their teeth into.

Likewise the harumph-heavy tone of the "Cashing in on Kids" series. When I saw the headline, I was sure the Journal Sentinel had finally come to its senses and was going to go after the scam artists cashing state checks by pretending to run some of the so-called "choice" "schools". But no – the "choice" program continues to have sacred-cow status at the paper, which still stuffs the closing of yet another bunch of pretend educators (only five kids at one of them) in the back pages with small print. But the J-S has other child-care fish to fry. Apparently, some women figured out how to get paid for providing child care for themselves and their sisters’ kids, completely legally, through a state program. Oh, god, the horror. Happy to play "gotcha" with otherwise poor women, the reporters actually stalked the women outside their homes. I’m sure the reporters involved felt so proud while they sat in car waiting for the women to do...what?

Then there is the continuing anti-drunk driving campaign. There is not an easier target in the world for opportunistic news organizations looking to get on their high horse about something than drunk driving. They can drive their sanctimonious campaign by exploiting the sad victims (one in every county!). They can tell story after story of defendants gaming the system by – gasp! – insisting that they know their rights to a lawyer before getting their rights and liberty taken from them. They can compare Wisconsin’s shockingly lax laws on first offenses (because they are not criminal) and third offenses (because they are not felonies). All of which accomplishes nothing in influencing those unfortunate to get caught once and stupid enough to get caught numerous times. But, the J-S can feel good about itself for driving a change in state law that will result in increased costs of prosecution and defense, not to mention the enormous expense of the kind of lengthy incarceration promoted by the paper’s lock-‘em-up campaign.

It’s hard to say what the paper hopes to accomplish with this kind of self-back-patting. Has some consultant somewhere really told them that everything will be fine if people just knew how wonderful they are? Do they really think that spending so much of their shrinking news hole on this kind of ridiculous self-congratulation gets them anything but a laugh and a turn of the page? Fully a third of Stanley’s column is taken up with supposedly spontaneous testimonials from grateful readers, including this gem: "You truly do not get enough credit for the great work you guys do." Really, now. When Stanley is typing this tripe into the story, doesn’t he wince or shudder, just a little? Shouldn’t he?

Adding insult to injury, the paper had the balls to run a business story next to Stanley’s puff-piece on the same Page Two, trumpeting that the J-S ranked first in the naiton in "market penetration", meaning that a higher percentage of people around here read the paper in some form or other than in other metro areas. "An amazing connection" is therefore claimed (by none other than J-S president and COO Elizabeth Brenner) between the local burghers and the paper that covers them. Might I suggest some other reasons? 1) there is just not a whole lot else going on around here – we might as well read the damn thing while it’s still a daily; 2) it is fascinating to watch the paper shrink every week, like it’s disappearing before our eyes; and, finally:

3) we hope against hope for better. We want the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to stand up and again take the place that the old Journal had of one of the best papers in the country. Alas, given Stanley’s misbegotten bravado, it appears the path has been chosen and the die is cast. There are many reasons all newspapers are in trouble and most of it the leaders of the dead-tree industry can do nothing about. But the J-S appears to have chosen the path of trying to pull out of its tailspin by providing material for talk-radio and otherwise reaching for our least common denominator. It is a cynical ploy that is doomed to fail.

UPDATE: The parody-as-reality self-congratulation theme continues this morning in the J-S. The paper bought a full-page ad from itself (hey, there's a way to fix the bottom line! No, wait...), celebrating the selection of Editor Martin Kaiser as "Editor of the Year" by the newspaper trade magazine Editor and Publisher. Let's see...shinking ad revenue...reduced number of pages...cratering stock price...hysterical, trivial news coverage...yep, give the guy an award, for sure. With that track record, it makes you wonder how the first-runner-up feels. The money quote from the E&P puff-piece is this beaut: "If the staff is having fun even in these parlous times — and a surprising number of people will tell you they are — it’s because Kaiser has turned the newsroom to his view of staff reductions, says Managing Editor George Stanley: 'We never look back on what we had.'" I'd love to know how the embattled staff at the paper feel about that one, besides wanting to head for the elevators with torches and pitchforks. The "surprising number" of staff "having fun" these days? That would be "one".

Retire the Half-Time Show

After Bruce Springsteen's show at HarleyFest, I ran into a sheriff's deputy that I saw on the grounds and asked him what he thought of the show. "Not enough hits," he grumped. Hmm. What the men don't know, the little girls understand. Or something like that.

Faced with 12 minutes of airtime on a make-shift stage at the Super Bowl tonight, Bruce and the E-Streeters had some decisions to make. Time for three short songs, or they could easily stretch out "Kitty's Back" or "Rosalita" for the whole set.

But, no. Ever the populist, Bruce saw his opportunity to introduce the world to the magic of an E-Street concert, squeezed expertly to fit the time they had. From the opening riffs of "10th Avenue Freezeout" to the declaration of "Boss Time!" by Little Steven at the end of "Glory Days", the joy and dynamic thrust of the band -- beefed up by what I assume was the Seeger Session horn section -- Bruce and the band put their beautiful perfect selves in America's face in those short 12 minutes. If those who weren't hip to the Bruce thing didn't get it this night, they never will.

All the songs were shortened to make time for more songs and more mugging by Bruce with the lucky Tampa residents invited onto the field. The only surprise in the set was the promotion of new product, a moving rendition of "Working on a Dream", featuring the same kind of gospel singers he did "The Rising" with at the Lincoln Memorial celebration two weeks ago. Bruce better watch out -- he looks and sounds pretty damn good with that kind of support. Clarence and Steve in choir robes? I don't think so.

Anyway, the performance and choices made couldn't have been better. I've never seen Springsteen connect on TV the way he did this night. For the record, I predicted the easy ones ("Born to Run" and "Glory Days") and whiffed on the others (a little too cute, I called "Dancing in the Dark" with a Courtney Cox cameo).

The Super Bowl half-time show has come a long way since Janet Jackson's exposed nipple in 2004 (a golden moment I shared with a room full of amused 10 year-olds). Now, they should just retire the damn thing and bring back the marching bands. Next year's performer will be like the card trick guy who followed the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I felt sorry for him, too.

The Baby Mama Club

I try to stay away from blogging on courthouse issues, my day-job being, as it is, criminal defense in Milwaukee County. I could tell stories all day, every day about courageous and outrageous behavior by the many judges before whom I have had the honor of appearing. I don’t need – and my clients certainly don’t want – to worry about whether I have offended some judge in print such that he or she is subliminally or overtly punishing or (worse) ignoring me as I try to get them to give my clients a fair shake.

But the Baby Mama decision has been kicked around like a football by the usual gang of right-wing radio and blog "personalities" in their continuing effort to pooh-pooh any namby-pamby exercise in racial sensitivity, that I thought I would throw another perspective (mine) into the mix.

I personally know everyone involved in the decision – Joe Wall and I both started work in the DA’s office on my first day as a lawyer in 1986; Judge Kessler was once a neighbor; and it is not unusual to encounter the whole doggone Court of Appeals in the elevator of my office building (they are on the 14th floor, I’m on the 10th). Both Wall and the three appeals court judges involved are prime examples of the kind of fine legal and (more importantly) judicial talent that you will find more often than not on the bench in Milwaukee County. Although they reach different conclusions under different analysis, all four are toiling in good faith as they struggle to strike the difficult balance between understanding and accommodating without excusing the often-taboo impact of race and the treatment of the underclass in criminal courts. The bottom line for me is that, although I understand exactly what Judge Wall was trying to get at in his remarks, he did it in a way that tainted the sentencing process such that there has to be a re-do.

Some people can serve for decades on the bench and have no discernable concern about the growing underclass, the impact of poverty and the legacy of racism on the children and adults who make up a majority of those charged with crimes in Milwaukee. This is certainly not the case with Joe Wall. Exhibit One in the defense of his language in the Harris sentencing is his brilliant piece in the Journal Sentinel in 2003 explaining the nexus between poverty, race and the loss of hope and, too often, life for many city children. Joe was the kind of judge who was unaccepting of the damage he saw in the lives of those who appeared before him. As an outsider to the underclass experience – as 99% of the judges and lawyers in the Courthouse (myself certainly included) are – he made a major effort to understand what the hell is going on with those who have fallen out of the bottom of straight society.

He did an exemplary job doing just that in the J-S piece. He did not do so well on Harris’ sentencing date, making the mistake of guessing rather than knowing about Harris in particular and, in his off-the-cuff exposition of the women-supporting-men phenomenon in inner city economics, getting in over his head on what is, more than anything, a symptom of societal breakdown rather than the disease itself.

Women remain the bedrock of economic and residence stability (such as it is) in the inner city. This has been the case before, during and after the AFDC era. Women are generally in a better position to do so based on the nature of child-bearing and rearing and because they are more employable in the entry-level service industry that make up the majority of available employment in post-industrial inner-city Milwaukee. The home-is-where-I-hang-my-hat situation of many young unemployed men in the inner city, as they float between the women in their lives – ex-wives/girlfriends/baby mamas, current wives/girlfriends, their mothers, and others in the extended family – is nothing new or unique to the kind of drug user/small-time dealer that Wall was sentencing. Much has been written about the historic emasculation of the black male, during and after slavery and is a major part of the continuing legacy of that crime. Whether Landray Harris is part of that history or a victim of his own selfish mistakes, I can't say and, more importantly, neither can Judge Wall. He certainly didn't know enough about him to make his living and financial situation -- much less that of "every fourth person" -- even a minor issue during the hearing.

Although the use of the term "baby mama" and lumping Harris in with some unidentified "you guys" who supposedly find working women to support them are the phrases that cause the most problems for Wall in terms of casting a racial tinge to the proceedings, it is not the worst of his attempt at educational sarcasm on that day. The most offensive, I think, is his wondering out-loud whether all these men and women belong to a "club" to make these nefarious living arrangements. Although he meant it as a joke (and despite his excited reaction to the opinion), Joe Wall knows better than that and those comments really belittle what is a very serious systemic problem. His understandably-frustrated thinking-out-loud at the Harris sentencing does not do him or the problem he feels so passionately about any good.

This is especially so since coverage of the Court of Appeals action has been seized on by the opportunistic know-nothing local right-wingers, who would just as soon have judges call defendants "thugs" and worse during such hearings. The J-S even brought one of their many spoiled suburbanite columnists, Mike Nichols, into the fray, accusing Judges Kessler and Curley of "piffle" and calling on all judges everywhere to throw caution to the wind and tell us what they really think. It is this kind of ignorant bloviating you get from grandstanding right-wingers and other prissy writers who wouldn’t know the demands of justice if it came up and bit them in the ass.

In trying to make sense of the non-sensical, Wall ended up confusing things further; about the nature of the dysfunction we are all concerned about, the proper demeanor of a judge who is about to take away someone’s liberty for a number of years and about the discretion needed when saying something that will be presented to the reviewing court on a transcript that you know will include no footnotes, sidebars or expanded explanation for the later benefit of the Court of Appeals.

Without getting too much into the precedential particulars (for that, as usual, see my friend and bass player, IT), in the end, Judge Brennan gets some things right in her dissent by saying the defendant failed to establish that Wall’s comments had any impact on the result. But Judges Kessler and Curley are right to recognize the racial implications of the language used and to hold trial judges to a higher standard of avoiding even the slightest hint of those types of considerations in sentencing.

Joe Wall’s excellent reputation precedes him and, knowing him as a friend and a judge, I know he meant no racial disparagement whatsoever. Quite the opposite – I think he was trying to breach the divide and reach some tough-love understanding. However, there are some judges who I would not trust with such language. It is the language and not the judge that becomes the issue with naked words on the page of a transcript. His silly complaints of "political correctness" notwithstanding, it is the defendant that gets the benefit of the doubt – not Joe Wall.

Wall sentenced Harris to two years in-custody and three years ES, with a chance to cut the incarceration time with boot camp and/or early release. It’s a result that some defense attorneys would consider pretty good for a guy caught with over 15 grams of cocaine in the midst of a ridiculous, expensive and fruitless "war on drugs". It’s the kind of relatively moderate sentence we expected from Judge Wall. I know several judges who would studiously keep the record clean of any Baby Mama controversies and hammer the guy much worse. I worry much more about them than the once-and-future Judge Wall, but it best for everyone that they keep their more strident sanctimony in their hat.

Grassroots Northshore Inaugural Ball

Mike Plaisted and the Change (We Can Believe In) are playing at the Grassroots Northshore Inaugural Ball tonight, starting at about 8:30. Come and celebrate history and get ready for the hard work to come. UPDATE: It was a GAS! Thanks to Tom and Ron for the hard-driving support! Can a European tour be far behind??

Crawling Through the Wreckage

Watching Junior Bush take a last, ridiculous victory lap around the East Room Thursday night, I could think of nothing but that last disgraced president who chose that venue to say goodbye to the last of the loyalists. An hour or so before he left the White House for the last time, in deserved disgrace, Richard Nixon had a near-psychological breakdown in the East Room in front of several hundred stunned family members and staff, putting on reading glasses and blubbering about "T.R." (Nixon imagined himself a Teddy Roosevelt soulmate) and his mother and father. You could see Henry Kissinger, David Eisenhower and other final enablers giving subtle signals to each other – Have we seen enough? Should we go get him? – as they watched in horror. Eventually, he sucked it up, got out of the room and on the helicopter, never to darken the People’s House again.

It was a pitiful performance and the most revealing video in presidential history. The stagecraft failed and his dream destroyed, Nixon stood naked before the country and cracked up. At last we could see how disturbed he was; how truly psychotic. It let us understand why he sat in the Oval Office, tape recorders whirring, spinning his selfish webs of revenge and deceit, plotting to protect himself from himself.

It was a gift, really, for him to let himself go like that. Like Jimmy Cagney at the end of Angels With Dirty Faces – when he gets fried in the electric chair, crying like a sniveling coward, after telling the boys on the street that he would go proudly and "spit in their face" – maybe Nixon was sending us a message that he couldn’t bring himself to speak in words: That he was weak, he was wrong, he was sorry and he was gone.

George W. Bush isn’t worthy to serve Nixon and Pat cocktails in San Clemente. He remained, to the end, an unrepentant, spoiled punk, who is leaving office the same way he came in – smug, stupid and shameless. The charm offensive conducted by him and Dick Cheney in the past month or so has been stomach-churning in its audacity and unspeakable in its lies. As he smirked and winked through one last teeth-grinding performance before his own assembled collection of dead-enders, you had to wonder just who he thought he was talking to. Was he trying to put a slick gloss on his disastrous presidency to try to rescue the Republican party, which will never recover from his failures and hubris? Why would he care what the history books write about him when he never cared about anything but the wealth of his benefactors? Do these people really think anyone is listening to the gibberish they have been churning out in this pathetic Legacy Tour?

So Junior Bush, unlike Nixon, denies us the satisfaction of seeing any of the sorrow or remorse for his failures and crimes that he might have been able to muster in his small heart. To do so would have been a shocking instance of the kind of introspection and intelligence of which this small man is so obviously incapable. After undeservedly basking in the glow of Barack Obama’s historic moment, Bush will slink off to his new mansion in Dallas this week, the rewards of his service to the unbearable elite and the cushy pension of even our worst presidents waiting for him. The wreckage of his eight years in power is immense, but the burden is lifted ever so slightly by the fact of his leaving.

The Us Derangement Syndrome

As usual, Still-President Junior Bush disappointed in his last press conference Monday morning. Too bland to be interestingly psychotic like Nixon; too stupid to be sad about all the unnecessary death he has caused like LBJ; so clueless he makes Reagan look like he knew what he was doing – it was and is impossible to get an emotional handle on this most vapid and vacant of presidential hand-puppets. And, yet, we hold out to the bitter end for any flash of reality-recognition from this dimmest of bulbs. Come on – couldn’t he at least pretend he "gets it", just once, just for us?

Alas, no. Bush waltzed through his last presser without a care in the world, with one eye on his script and another on the clock ticking down his long-sought Final Days.

As usual with Bush, insights were few, but it is amazing how reactive (reactionary?) Bush admitted to being. Making excuses to his ignorantly simplistic economic base for abandoning his supposed "free-market principles" (principles...Bush...HAH!) by agreeing to the various bailouts of the financial industry, Bush yammered "well, if you were sitting there and heard that the depression could be greater than the Great Depression, I hope you would act too". Faced with a decent question about his decimation of America’s moral standing in the world by all manner of international lawlessness, he blames it on...wait for it..."Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here?" Well, no, tell us, President Dipshit, what was it like around here? Do you think maybe that’s why Bin Laden still sits in his cave laughing all day long? Push a button with Bush and anything can happen as he flails around trying to fix his many failings by making everything ten times worse.

And so, since Bush has apparently passed up his last opportunity to get on his knees and beg us all for forgiveness (even if he did, the answer would be "no forgiveness for you" anyway), we have to look to others on which to take out our frustrations with the Bush Disaster. I suggest we look to ourselves. After all, we all let this happen, in one way or another:

• Ralph Nader voters let it happen in 2000 when they selfishly insisted on some kind of impossible purity and took enough votes from Al Gore in Florida and other states to make it the close call that it was.
• We let it happen in 2000, when we allowed Bush to take office after democracy was hijacked by judicial fiat in the Supreme Court.
• We let it happen in 2001 when Bush stood on the pile at the World Trade Center and grandstanded over the wreckage and the dust of the dead at his feet.
• We let it happen when Bush rolled the Congress into passing his tax cuts for the rich and the Patriot Act.
• We let Rumsfeld and Cheney happen.
• We let it happen when Bush invaded and occupied Iraq in the Stupidest War in American history.
• We let it happen when too many of us turned our nose up at John Kerry in 2004. If there is one thing this country needed for its own self-respect, it was to make Junior Bush a one-term president. His getting another four years was inexcusable.
• We let it happen when Bush went to Jackson Square in New Orleans after Katrina for a TV show and took the lights out of town with him.
• We let Guantanamo happen.
• We let the politicization of the Justice Department happen.
• We let Blackwater happen.
• We let random warrantless wiretapping happen.
• We let (fill in your favorite Bush Disaster here) happen.

Sure, some fought the good fight, opposed it all, organized, litigated, blogged, etc. But it wasn’t enough, now, was it? The radical Bushies still got away with it. Their contributors got more than their money’s worth. There was a time during the Bush years that the Constitution hung by a thread, almost falling into the abyss of mad power grabs. The Bushies – those of them that don’t stay behind to poison the federal bureaucracy – will leave town with their heads high and their pockets full of loot. And, glad to see them go, we’ll let them, without the prosecution and the jail time they deserve.

There were many times in the past eight years we could have stopped the madness; through Congress, in the courts or in the streets. Bush’s name will always be on the history of these hard years, but the blame is – or should be – on us.

How Tommy Toy Changed My Life

In late 1975, I was 20 years old, a college drop out; looking for some meaning in life and a decent job. I was working painting the walls of the Jackson Center, a home for the developmentally disabled in the inner city (interestingly, now being renovated into a Days Inn). It was an okay job, but I was running out of walls to paint and was interested in something more public and interactive.

I saw an ad in the paper and went to one of the original Cousins sub shops that was downtown on Wisconsin Avenue to apply for a job opening. The shop was closed, but there were a couple of guys in there taking applications for a new shop that was opening soon on the Marquette campus at 17th and Wisconsin (only the fifth in the chain at the time). I approached timidly, saw the shop was closed, and started walking away. "Hey, where are you going?" said one of the guys inside. "Uh, you look closed," I muttered. "Well, do you want a job or not?" he said. "Uh, sure..." "Then fill this out – and wake up a little bit," said Tommy Toy.

He was being funny. Sarcastic, impatient and funny. He was screwing around with me and he didn’t even know me. It was a test, not that he took his sandwich shop job or me very seriously. But, with Tommy, there was no point doing anything without jazzing it up a little bit. He was wondering – was I going to be a fun guy to work with, or was I going to be a drag? I guess he decided I was alright. I’m not sure, but I think he hired me on the spot and told me to show up at the Marquette store on Monday.

So I did and worked at Cousins for nine months or so, until I took a job at Peaches Records in late ‘76. Tommy ran the Marquette store for a while, trained us, and moved on fairly quickly. I don’t remember working with him as much as I remember that first encounter with the total stranger who made me get back in the store and apply for the damn job I wanted. He had a tremendous force of personality, all driven by his good sense of humor and a somewhat serious, no-bullshit purpose. "Get with the program so we can have some fun already" appeared to be his motto.

I ran into Tommy a couple of times in later years when he bartended on the East Side – at Century Hall and Hooligans a couple of times, but the last time was at least 20 years ago. I was sad to read about his death from a heart attack last month in a very thoughtful obit in the Journal Sentinel. He knew a million people and didn’t know me from Adam, but he would always pretend to when I ran into him those couple of times. He certainly had no idea how he changed my life. But he did.

Now, most people wouldn’t identify their first fast-food job as a major turning-point in their life. It’s a long story, but: Cousins begat Peaches; begat UW-Madison for education degree; begat MPS substitute teaching; begat law school; and so on. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t meet Tommy Toy that day and get the Cousins job – it seemed to set a lot of things in motion for me that might not have happened otherwise. Meeting Tommy was one of the happy accidents of my life, one of those fleeting encounters that somehow creates direction from chaos, meaning out of confusion. It seems, from that day on, I was always working at an interesting job or going to school or doing something positive. Something about that day propelled me forward.

Of course, I never realized all this until I heard Tommy had passed. But that’s the way these things are, when you hear someone you know has died and remember how you know them. I imagine, if I had told him about all this across the bar, he would have listened very intently until I was done – and then laugh uproariously, buy me a shot and tell me to shut the F up. And, as usual, he would have been right.

I thought about Tommy Toy today while having lunch at the Cousins on Port Washington Road. I was having my usual – cheese steak with mayo, the daily ingestion of which while I was working there permanently destroyed my skinny former self – when I noticed a young woman in the corner with a TV and some papers on the table in front of her. The graphic on the TV said "Cousins Training DVD". We didn’t have a DVDs, VCRs, cassettes, 8-Tracks, LPs or even 78s to train with back in 1975. All we had were people like Tommy Toy, a sharp knife, and big bins of bread to slice and fill with perfectly fine food.

I muttered something to the new hire about my history with the franchise and wished her well. All young people deserve at least that one person who moves them forward, either by accident or design, knowingly or unknowingly. I know I’m lucky I had one.

WISN: A Wing-Nut in the Newsroom

UPDATED BELOW

Clear Channel’s WISN is running a promo spot this week about how wonderful their all-wing-nut-all-the-time lineup is. And what a line-up it is! They have the unapologetic racist, Mark Belling, winning his afternoon time slot by successfully exploiting and validating his audience’s darkest instincts. In the morning, they feature a steady stream of third-rate "talent" like drive-time chucklehead Jay Weber and hyperventilating Madison import Vicki McKenna to carry the daily Republican message and otherwise poison the political environment. Nationally, they run the table in the race to the bottom with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the ridiculously apoplectic Mark Levin.

You could listen to the station all day and night and not find one legitimate opinion backed up by one true fact. That’s WISN for you – beating you over the head the license they hold from your very own government.

Of course, the never-ending parade of fabricating squawkers have to catch their breath once in a while during the broadcast day. They will certainly step aside for commercials, the printing of money by use of the public airwaves being the sole purpose of all for-profit radio stations. Then at the top of every hour, WISN pretends to lurch back from their right-wing fantasy world and present "the news". It might be only a minute-and-a-half of content, crowded by more commercials, traffic, weather and sports, but, still...They call it a "newscast", it sounds like a "newscast"; what the heck. If they want to pretend to be a good corporate citizen by giving their listeners a little unskewed information – even if it is only to placate the toothless FCC and their quaint "public service" expectations – let’s at least give them credit for that.

But, not surprisingly, WISN’s commitment to the "news" is as thin as its commitment to the truth the rest of the broadcast day. For one thing, their national news feed is from Fox News. The only difference between Fox News on television and Fox News on the radio is you can’t see Brit Hume smirking through the stories about Democrats on the radio. It was a couple of years ago that Fox took over for legitimate news organizations that had provided hourly news updates for affiliates like WISN for decades. Apparently, the wing-nuts complained that the truth was getting in the way of their shtick, and Fox News very existence is to give them a softer landing.

Then there is the local part of the "news" programming. Clear Channel never took local news seriously, actually trying to run it out of their studios in Cleveland several years ago, the "anchors" and "reporters" pretending to be in Milwaukee.

These days, the news during the day is frequently read by a "reporter" named Nick Reed. Reed has even anchored some of the station’s election coverage, I believe. Just one problem: Nick Reed is also a fire-breathing fill-in for WISN’s regular wing-nuts when they get days off.

So, there he is, the same guy who read the straight news yesterday is on the radio today, running the same talking points as the other wing-nuts, scoffing at the same Democrats, making excuses for the same Republicans. He is quite the little whack-job, too, obviously having gone to the finest finishing schools for such art. For instance, after the news of John Edwards’ affair broke last year, he followed a proud WISN tradition by making racist comments, saying we didn’t have to worry about Obama straying in such a way because a black woman would "slap the tar" out of her husband if such a thing happened. Get it? Black...tar. Classy, no?

No. But tomorrow, he’ll be back at the news desk (if they have one), churning out supposedly objective content, for people gullible enough to believe he is going to play it straight. Not that WISN gives a rip about tradition or journalistic ethics or anything else, but does anyone else see a problem here? Why would anyone believe anything Reed says during his "news" spots? What stories does he choose or not choose to fit the Republican agenda he drives on the right-wing shows? When he leads with the GOP reaction to a Democratic proposal rather than the proposal itself, do you think maybe he might be playing favorites? Gee, ya think?

As long as this is going on, why not just cast all pretensions of objective journalism to the winds and just let Belling read the news? What’s the difference? At least it would be entertaining to make him try to read straight stories all this year about Obama's high approval ratings. Maybe, just maybe, we might be lucky enough to hear his head explode.

UPDATE: REED SPINS ONE FOR THE TEAM

As if to prove my point, wing-nut reporter Nick Reed was wearing his "news" hat this afternoon (1/5) when he "reported" on Obama's pick for head of the CIA. After announcing it was Leon Peneta, in the same breath, he "reported" that the selection created "shock" from unnamed someones, somewhere, because Peneta had no intellegence experience. Never mind that Penetta was emersed in all manner of intellegence as Clinton's chief-of-staff or even that he was an intellegence officer when he served in the armed forces. But the good wing-nut reporter never lets the facts get in the way of a good spin job that his compatriots or even he can use in the coming days. He sets 'em up, and, if McKenna gets the hiccups tomorrow, he'll knock 'em down.

2009 Predictions

• Barack Obama will start his term with a tremendous amount of good will and support for his economic stimulus package – whatever it is – because too many people will want and need it to succeed. If Republicans get in the way on the basis of their usual petty nonsense, they will just dig a deeper hole for themselves.
• Barack Obama will start his term with a tremendous amount of good will and support around the world as he tries put the nation in a position to recover from the tremendous damage done by the arrogant, radical and reckless Bush administration. Hillary Clinton won’t be home much as she jets around the globe on a mission to unruffle feathers and get America back to its deserved respected-leader status. Not all of the damage is reparable, but Obama will have an advantage because of his background, because he has Clinton leading the effort and, most importantly, because he is Not Bush.
• America and the world will breathe a collective sigh of relief when our brave troops start coming home from Iraq. Violence there will increase, as the kind of thugs who have always run that country make their move. In the end, Iraq will end up right where it started – with the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the country presiding over a brutal regime. The only difference between that guy and Hussein will be that Iraq will be a theocracy, aligned with Iran, and even more of a potential threat to Israel. Nice work, Bush.
• Obama will have a chance to appoint at least two Supreme Court justices and, unlike Bush, will nominate people with impeccable legal pedigrees and no discernable ideological tilt, except for the inclination to be fair, which is a lefty trait, anyway. Republicans and their wing-nut lap dogs will pretend they are all lefty socialists anyway, and the general public will ignore them and move on.
• Obama will end the year with an approval rating in the high 60s or higher.
• Talk-radio clowns will continue to be completely flummoxed by Obama’s success and popularity, and will suffer ratings problems as a result. By the end of the year, they will spend more than half their time talking about finances and sports. Locally, the radio wing-nuts will shill full-time for Scott Walker’s campaign for governor. Their in-kind contributions will not be reported to the Government Accountability Board.
• The conversion from analog to digital television in February will be delayed when it becomes clear that the need for a converter box will take free TV away from millions of Americans who still don’t have the box and couldn’t figure out how it works if they did. UPDATE 1/8/09: And here comes the delay...
• The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will follow the lead of the Detroit Free Press and limit home delivery to three days a week. By the end of the year, the paper will stop pretending to have separate sections and fold everything into two sections; maybe one. The paper will resort to hysterical headlines and endless self-righteous campaigns, like its current one about drunk driving. If something is missing from the paper, referrals will be made to the on-line edition. No matter what happens, the J-S will continue to find room to run 25-inches of Patrick McIlheran's blathering three days a week. By the end of the year, his tedious right-wing talking-point recitals will take up 25 percent of the available non-ad column inches.
• The Brewers spend money and, maybe, trade one of their young superstars to create a decent-enough starting rotation. Prince Fielder will come into camp having dropped 30 pounds. Corey Hart will drop his at-bat country music for Nirvana and, this time, have a complete season. National League pitchers will continues to be stymied by Ryan Braun, who will hit 45+ homers despite being the most-walked batter in the league. The Brewers will win 90+ and win the division.
• Despite strong lefty credentials and occasional accidental brilliance, Plaisted Writes will not be recognized by the Shepherd Express' Best of the Blogs page. Also, sometime this year, society page embarassments Boris and Doris will be invited to a party where no one but them shows up. They will write it up as a wonderful evening with Lou Fortis, Rip Tenor (as S-E mascot Art Kubalek) and other close friends.

2008: The Good and the Bad

I first fancied myself a writer back in the early '70s. It was a heady time for arts writers at the time, with Rolling Stone and the Village Voice producing high-quality rock and film criticism on a weekly basis. Of course, there was better product to write about then. But there has been no one in recent years like Robert Christgau, Greil Marcus, Andrew Sarris, Lester Bangs, Pauline Kael, etc., to bring meaning to the great music and movies that were being produced at the time.

So it was that, in the fine tradition of Christgau's Pazz and Jop Polls, I produced my first best-of list of record albums (yes, albums) for the year 1975. It was handwritten -- and that's not the only way it was amateurish. I swear I just saw it around here somewhere -- if I find it, I'll scan it and put it up. In the meantime, I do remember that my top album was Neil Young's masterpiece "Tonight's the Night". Say what you want about by 2+ years of blubbering on this blog -- as least I got that right.

I am in no position to do a music best-of this year, nor have I been for the past twenty years or so. I am as disconnected from popular music trends as they are from me. The last great album was, what, "The Rising"? The last great radio singles were both from OutKast ("Hey Ya" and "The Way You Move"), and that was over five years ago ("I Kissed a Girl"? Please.). I hear there might be other things going on out there - at least I get exposed to some of them on the life-saving Radio Milwaukee 88.9 - but music as a force that can cause seismic societal change (like the Beatles) doesn't exist any more. Now: you have a niche, I have a niche, and seldom the twain shall meet, except maybe on Facebook.

But that doesn't mean we can't recognize some of the things that made 2008 such an entertaining, terrifying joy-ride. Ergo, 2008: the Good and the Bad:

LOCAL

Good:
Springsteen at HarleyFest - a glorious multi-generational celebration.
CC Sabathia - he'll never be as dominant with the Yankees as was he was during the Brewers' frantic playoff run, but what a beautiful thing to watch.
The Illusory Tenant - a smarter and better blogger than I'll ever be.

Bad:
James T. Harris - the biggest buffoon on radio, blogs and Fox Noise all rolled into one. Produced the funniest video of the years by stomping off of CNN when he couldn't answer a simple question.
David Clarke - if you're drunk and lucky, your publicity-hungry, wing-nutty sheriff might help you get out of the snowbank and send you on your way, too.
Mark Belling - proudly flying the racist flag for 20 years now.
The Shepherd Express - continuing to slip into the abyss, with idiotic weekly polls; ludicrous transcribed conversations about sports with their ridiculous mascot and some other guy; and, this week, an embarrassing poem by their embarrassing society columnists. The death of the newspaper industry can't come too soon for the S-E. The difference is they 1) brought it on themselves and, therefore 2) deserve it. Well, there goes my Best of the Blogs citation, eh, Lou?
Journal Sentinel - Desperately trying to maintain relevance while its pages shrink and price increases. Its limited content is strangely clogged with Patrick McIlheran and, every Sunday, some editor or other making pathetic excuses for themselves. By the end of '09, the paper might be just a weekender.

NATIONAL

Good:
Barack Obama - good luck, brother -- make us proud
Hillary and Bill Clinton - put up with more bullshit than any couple, ever, and still continue to make the nation a better place, everyday
Democratic Congress - if they do it right, it's ours for a generation.
Sen. Al Franken - funny, right and his soon-to-be-confirmed victory steams the right more than any other loss.
Shoes Thrown at Bush - the perfect ending for a pathetic excuse for a president.

Bad:
John McCain - embarrassed himself by abandoning his better judgement and his principles by giving himself over to the usual Rovian GOP consultants. The result was the disaster he deserved.
Sarah Palin - in over her head, beyond parody (as delicious as Tina Fey's parody was), and Exhibit Number One for McCain's incredibly irresponsible campaign. Had as much business being on a national ticket as Joe the Plumber.
Sean Hannity - Took over for Rush Limbaugh as the nation's number-one wing-nut, on the "strength" of his cable platform and willingness to shill and provide smarmily-friendly platforms for Palin and any other Republicans afraid of real journalists.
Dick Cheney - The most demonstrably deranged, evil executive presence since Nixon, without the endearing psychosis. "You Don't Know" Dick is doing a farewell tour showing how wrong he is about everything. Bye-bye, now. And take Junior, your little rodeo clown, with you.

Sentimental Hogwash

The right-wing has a Ronald Reagan fetish. And now, it seems to have found another dead movie star who can rescue us from ourselves and, particularly, the evils of middle-class home ownership. His name is Henry F. Potter, the money-grubbing curmudgeon in one of my guilty-pleasures of a movie, It’s A Wonderful Life. As Potter’s direct descendant, The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns would say: Exxcellent...

The Journal Sentinel’s resident wing-nut, Patrick McIlheran – for whom the shrinking paper still seems to be able to find lots of room, with no progressive counterpart – celebrates the holiday in the Christmas Eve edition of the paper by calling for a revival of Potter’s skinflint ways in the fine art of mortgage lending. "Time for us to find our inner Potter," says Paddy Mac, in one of the most deliciously stupid columns in his decidedly undistinguished oeuvre. On the occasion of a visit by several community bankers to the ivory tower on State St., he puts what I’m sure they would think is unfortunate words in their mouths, "But they were saying, in essence, that when the fictional old grump harrumphed, ‘Ideals without common sense can ruin this town,’ he might have had a point." Hey, presidents of Continental Savings Bank and Johnson Bank, you have just been compared to one of movie history’s greatest villains – Merry Christmas!

Of course, the Potter character had much more on his mind and his agenda than fiscal austerity and vague notions of "common sense". As played by the iconic Lionel Barrymore, he was a maniacal control freak with the goal of owning or at least holding a mortgage on every piece of property in a place that we now know, if not for the accident of George Bailey’s birth, would have been called Potterville. All of his sanctimonious bromides about the Baileys’ more accommodating path to home ownership creating a "discontented lazy rabble rather than a thrifty working class" were just a cover for, as George put it, keeping people in Potter-owned slums. If he could have figured out a way to make more money by handing out loans to the lazy rabble, he would have done that quicker than anyone.

Henry Potter didn’t have high morals about debt-to-assets ratios, adequate down-payments or anything else. He didn’t believe in anything but his own monopoly, power and wealth. That’s why his win-at-all-costs attitude led him to steal money from Uncle Billy so he could eliminate George and get the Building & Loan (a theft, by the way, left unresolved in the movie – did Potter get away with it, while the whole town pitched in to make up the money he stole?). And this is the kind of guy McIlheran thinks we need more of?

I think the elevation of an attractive role model like Mr. Potter is just what the Republican Party needs. Palin/Potter in 2012!

The Audacity of Rick Warren

Screw Rick Warren. Seriously. Who needs another greed-headed Christian minister spewing nonsense all over another inaugural pageant? Can’t we retire this nonsense with Billy Graham? Why do we have to legitimize the worst of the sky-god charlatans every four years? Why can’t they stay in their churches or stadiums where they belong?

Warren - the king (or whatever) of the Saddleback church (why Saddleback? Why not the Ponderosa, fer cryin' out loud) is only the latest of the self-styled snake-oil salesmen that have managed to capture the imagination of enough suckers to make a nice living for themselves by doing an entertaining dance while spouting their version of some gospel or other. From strangely respected bible-thumper Graham to Jim Bakker to Pat Robertson to Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a.: Pope Benedict XVI), no one with a loud enough megaphone ever lost any money screeching about Christ and passing the hat. No less so Warren, who apparently can’t even be bothered to don a tie or a miter, dressing Friday-casual as he spouts the recycled glittering generalities of Robert Shuller for the gullible thousands who fill his megachurch.

As with anyone whose basic reason for existing on the public stage is a fraud, there are problems with large parts of Warren’s mostly vague, warmed-over messages (he seeks Christian "self-sufficiency, scalability and reproducibility" for "the Purpose-Driven Life". Whatever.) His ambitions are nothing less than global, suggesting that churches around the world do the work that government can’t or won’t – of course, with a large dose of faith-propagating nonsense thrown in with your health care. However, while pretending to draw us together with one hand, he smites with the other; actively advocating an end to reproductive choice, comparing homosexuality to pedophilia while actively campaigning against gay marriage, opposing embryonic stem cell research and taking other similarly loopy positions.

For reasons known only to him but easy to surmise, Barack Obama has invited the homophobic, anti-choice Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, thereby offending many supporters. I don’t necessarily think we should single-issue these kind of speakers in what I assume will be an inoffensive ceremonial role. You take what you can get with religious figures – by nature, they are bound to be wrong about many things and some are wrong about everything. Obama is also trying to take the partisan edge off of the national discourse by reaching out to the right-wing evangelical community, something for which that group will neither recognize or give him credit.

But rewarding Warren, essentially, for his notoriety, despite his offensive rhetoric and inclinations, is unnecessary. Whatever happened to the humble Irish Catholic priest who would mouth some quick gibberish and get out of the way? No, we have to have the grand statement from the grandstanding evangelical who didn’t vote or support Obama and who will be there with his lemming-like congregation and his hoard of fellow-traveling ministers to try to get in the way of some of the president’s attempts to return the government to sanity and normalcy. It’s like John McCain inviting Jeremiah Wright to his swearing-in. Audacious, sure, but what’s the point?

Aretha Franklin is also in the inaugural program, probably delivering something from her gospel tradition rather than one of her Top-40 classics. If she chose to, I suppose, she could take the edge off of Warren’s unseemly presence with some timely selections. How about some "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" for a woman’s right to choose? Maybe she could serenade some of the so-inclined women in the audience with "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman." Maybe she should just get in the new president’s face like she did with Matt Guitar Murphy in the Blues Brothers movie: "You better THINK".

Clear Channel's House Racist Strikes Again

The pride of Clear Channel and the shame of Milwaukee, Mark Belling, made national news this week – featured as he was on Media Matters for one of his all-too-frequent racist diatribes.

"Whether it's blacks, Mexican-Americans, whatever," said Milwaukee’s most obnoxious racist on his unfortunate radio show on December 10th, "people who live in a neighborhood should not have to put up with newcomers deciding that that neighborhood is going to be ‘Crimeville.’ You wonder why racism occurs, why people fear ‘look what's happening to the neighborhood’ when some -- when a minority person moves in. The answer is because sometimes it does mean an increase in crime."

I don’t know who tipped of Media Matters to this particular outrage – I mean, Belling - when he isn't causing undue pain by libeling grieving family members - says something stupidly racist almost every day. I was driving around on Friday, I think it was, and he was blabbering about kids in ritzy-North Shore Bayside middle-schools were buying, selling and otherwise sharing the ADHD drug Adderall. These are good kids from good homes, he said, not like those bad kids from bad homes who spend all of their time ruining their own and the rest of our lives. This is something we expect and don’t care about from inner city kids, but if it’s going on in white suburbia, well, now it’s a crisis. Why this distinction needed to be made – I mean, drug dealing is drug dealing, is it not? – is clear only in the fevered imagination of Belling, who thinks so little of his listeners that he thinks this is the kind of race-baiting crap they want to hear.

As I have said before, Mark Belling is worst than a racist. He doesn’t believe a word of the fear-mongering, blacks-are-ruining-your-life crap he peddles everyday on the radio. But he plays on the prejudices and ignorance of his targeted South Side, angry-white-male audience by feeding them what they want to hear; by validating their disgust for the black people they encounter on the bus and on the streets; by telling them that all their racist perceptions are correct. The insecure clowns that hang on his every word are being played like a violin by Belling, who is smart enough to know better, but cynical enough to poison the community discourse for the sake of rating points and a few extra bucks in his pocket when it comes time for contract renewal.

By all appearances, Belling exists in a world of his own, strangely isolated from the community of other right-wing talk-show hosts and bloggers who spout the same tired GOP talking points but also engage each other and, sometimes, some of us on issues big and very small. He doesn’t maintain a blog himself, largely ignores what is happening on the political blogs and, on the right anyway, they ignore him. By comparison, Charlie Sykes is a social butterfly, even as he hides in the same studio cocoon as Belling. This gives the other right-wingers plausible deniability on Belling’s racist excesses – Rick Esenberg, for instance, pretends not to listen to him and therefore refuses to defend or condemn any of it. But, scurry as they might from Belling’s stink, they are all part of the same echo-chamber and ultimately responsible for the poison messages spewed by one of the two guys with the largest megaphone.

But those most responsible for Belling’s racist regime are not officially political at all – Clear Channel, the monopolistic owner of WISN and five other radio stations in Milwaukee and the advertisers who make his continuing irresponsibility possible. The reason Belling has always been untouchable is because he gets the best ratings in Milwaukee’s ridiculously weak afternoon drive-time radio market. He and his nonsense are still there because he makes money for Clear Channel, through the advertisers who throw money at WISN to air ads during his show. It is way past time to make an association with Belling painful, not beneficial. None of Belling’s advertisers should be patronized by anyone who is against racism – which should be everyone. Those who pretend to be good corporate citizens, starting with Clear Channel and ending with every advertiser right down the line, should take a good look in the mirror and figure out what is more important – a temporary presence on a highly-rated radio program or a healthy community, unblemished by the daily broadcast of blatant racist garbage.

UPDATE: Commenter David M. asks a legitimate question: why do I think Belling doesn't believe what he says on the air? I thought I would bring my response out here.

The primary reason I think this is because he is otherwise too smart, too well-read, too conversant on other complicated issues to reduce things in his own mind to the black-and-white idiocy he spouts in front of the microphone.

Belling is not the only one who insults his listeners' intelligence - Sykes and the others do it all the time. For instance, when the GOP sends out a talking-point about, say, the supposed taint of "Chicago machine" and Illinois politics on Barack Obama, all the wing-nuts talk like they are totally convinced and, in fact, "worried" about this. But they know better -- they have read the articles all over the place that Obama directed his career above and around regular Chicago pols and was a distant as he could be from the dreadful Blagojevich. But they pretend to believe it in an effort to score phony political points.

Same with Belling and racism. I don't know anything about him personally -- I saw him at a Bucks game once -- but he is too much of a cosmopolitan city-dweller to believe that nonsense. He is being deliberately provocative, dangling the prize of validation before his needy audience.

Like I said, this makes him worse than a racist. Those willing to say ugly things they don't believe to stir up the emotions of those they think are manipulable and weak are the worst kind of demagogue, whether it's for ratings or political power.

Anyone who actually believes the racist nonsense spouted by Belling wouldn't have the capacity of talking for three hours a day on the radio. Belling has the brains and talent to do so, and chooses to manipulate people with what he doesn't believe rather than enlighten people with what he does. In radio, it's called "being a cynical hack". In politics, it's called "fascism".

The Future of Television

I have seen the future of television. And it is not Jay Leno.

Leno was introduced this week by NBC as the host of a prime-time show along the lines of his current Tonight Show, but not really, to run five nights a week at 9. This is supposedly NBC’s revolutionary answer to waning interest in network television generally – give the middle-aged something they can’t stay up past 10:30 to watch now, and let the kids watch Conan and stay up all night. All they need is a comfortable pop celebrity to show up every night and they'll be happy as clams. Why anyone could stand to watch Leno for longer than five seconds is beyond me, but then, I’ve always been a Letterman fan. Why not Junior Bush – I hear he’ll be available soon.

The Leno stunt also has the distinct advantage of being about ten times cheaper to produce than the drama/cop shows that dominate that hour of programming. This is the TV equivalent of the shrinking of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other newspapers, as ad revenue and readers flee to the internet. Both network television and newspapers are facing the same reality as the car companies – they are enormous, inefficient, labor-intensive organizations that have managed to exist past the time that anyone cares anymore. The most successful shows on TV are now reality shows, where millions of nondiscriminating viewers lazily tune in to see stupid people doing stupid things. The Leno show is the next logical step – just set up a camera, put Leno in front of it and see what happens. Television may end up coming full circle, with the modern equivalent of David Garroway and a monkey chatting up whoever happens to stop by their empty studio.

The future of television, we are also told, is digital. In a short two months, moving pictures will not fly through the air anymore, at least not the version that can be picked up on most current TV sets without a satellite or cable connection. The industry has been squawking for months about the conversion, urging people to get the converter boxes they need to continue their "free" programming. But the fact is that millions of elderly, poor, uninformed and chronic procrastinators will turn on their only window to the outside world on February 17th and wonder what the hell is going on. TV will lose a significant part of its universal, democratic character on that day, becoming just another toy for the elite. Some people have had the same TV for twenty years or picked it up for $25 at the rummage sale down the street and now they have to do what now? This is going to be a much bigger mess than the Y2K flash-in-the-pan. The house-bound underclass is going to wake up someday soon and find that someone has destroyed their easy access to Jerry Springer. And they are going to be pissed.

So, although Jay Leno and DTV are unfortunate parts of television’s immediate future, they are not the future of television. The future of television is something like...Netflix.

Yeah, I said Netflix, but not the part that delivers DVDs through mail (Hah! The mail! Just wait until that bad boy goes digital. What do you mean you don’t own a computer?). It’s the instant internet delivery option that Netflix offers on a limited number of their selections that is so facinating. And not just playing the things on your computer – it’s putting the content through a box that explodes it onto your TV, in full-screen and living color.

I discovered this quite by accident last week while I was goofing around the menus on my son’s Xbox360. All of a sudden, there was a button that invited me to get Netflix content through the Xbox. Having just caved in to a free two-week offer from Netflix, I thought I’d check it out. First, you have to go on the computer to jam some selections in your "instant queue" and then, son of a gun, the damn things turn up on the Xbox. Pick one, hit play, and in no time at all, high-quality video content fills the wide-screen. You want to watch all 37 episodes of the first two seasons of 30 Rock? Yes you do, and so do I. How about The Office, American and British versions? King of Kong? Deja Vu, the excellent documentary of Neil Young’s Freedom of Speech tour in 2006 with those other three guys (including some footage from the Milwaukee show)?

Television’s union with broadband internet was only a matter of time, but Netflix-through-the-box (also works with some Blu-Ray players, Tivo and Netflix' own little box for $99) shows how it might work. I can see a time very soon when it will be announced that a pile of new episodes of various series will be available on a given day, and all you have to do is go grab it off the virtual shelf.

Live content – news, sports, QVC – will be a little trickier, but I’m sure somebody is working on it. There is also that small matter of how you pay for the production of shows and actually make money off the deal, but that doesn’t sound like my problem, now does it? Besides, how much can it cost to set up a camera and aim it at Jay Leno and his monkey?

Bring Me the Head of Rod Blagojevich

Fred Dooley at Real Debate, apparently with more time on his hands than I and other lefties have, is calling us out for not immediately calling out the Wizard of Springfield for his various nefarious plans to build himself a new house, pay for the kids' college and pad his retirement account on the backs of Illinois citizens looking for a decent Senate replacement for Barack Obama. Allow me to take time out of my busy day and evening to say, unequivocally, that I would like to wring the little man's neck, swing him around the top of the nearest Christmas tree by his hair and fling him, Hancock-like, into the deepest part of a frozen Lake Michigan.


I have several motivations for wanting Gov-for-now Blagojevich to swim with the metaphorical fishes. Very little of it has to do with "good government". Like Richard Nixon, Blagojevich is by all accounts and by evidence of his very words on the wiretaps ("I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing," says Governor Genius) an insular and singular dick, the product of an unseemly combination of "arrogance and stupidity". As such, he is representative of nothing. You end up wondering less about the governor himself than whoever he is talking to on the phone. Are those people telling him how nuts he is? Are they laughing, hoping it's all an unfunny joke? (Prediction: The defense will be he was just kidding around. What else does he have?) In any event, the threat of any actual corruption occurring was slim-to-none: who would have agreed to give him anything for the appointment? No one, that's who.

But Blagojevich's real crime was what he has done to give the right-wing echo-chamber a way to beat Obama over the head. Ever since Obama won the election a month ago, the usual suspects on talk-radio, cable TV and blogs have struggled to find a way to find cracks in Obama's increasingly solid composition. They have been treading water, recycling McCain campaign talking-points about how the closet Marxist pals around with terrorists and Joe the Plumber was right and Sarah Palin is great and blah de blah blah. Their flop-sweat has been audible through their venom-dipped microphones, as Americans looking for something other than poison lies turned the dials to something more reality-based. The lack of wing-nut effectiveness was reflected in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this week, that shows the President-Elect with a 67% positive rating.

But now Blogo-Mania has given the wretched slime-mongers of the right new ammunition to destroy hope and prevent change. Since Tuesday morning, every last one of them has been fully stocked with fresh talking-points from the RNC to smear Obama with an imaginary association with Blagojevich's fevered irrationality. Did you know the phrase "president-elect" appears 44 times in the criminal complaint? Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said there are no allegations "in the complaint" that Obama knew anything about it. "In the complaint"! That means there might be something somewhere else! Obama said he never talked about a replacement for him in the Senate with Blagojevich. Yeah, but who did on his behalf?

And so on. It doesn't take much for the right-wingers to get a hook to drive their agenda. They are hardly concerned about intellectual honesty. Blagojevich gave them the only thin window of opportunity they need, and for that alone he should be sentenced to 20 months as a coin-collector at an Illinois tollbooth.