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Lessons For The U.S. News Media
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
Remember this line from that old candy commercial, "Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't?"
That's ringing in my head this morning as I write this:
Sometimes you feel like fighting; sometimes you don't.
Sometimes, it's more fun to sit back and watch others fight about it.
Sometimes it's enough to sit around in the Strat-o-lounger and watch people make idiots of themselves on C-SPAN.
I tend to do that a lot lately, although I could get out of my easy chair more - if the public interest seemed heightened enough to know there were those who would support such an effort.
Meanwhile, this blogging business sometimes provides the perfect forum to be an armchair quarterback, a back seat driver if you will.
Here's an example.
I was watching C-SPAN the other day and saw an interesting forum at the National Press Club in Washingtion moderated by Marvin Kalb. His guests included Dan Rather and his heir apparent tough questioner at the White House, NBC's David Gregory. Helen Thomas was also on the panel, along with the New York Times Washington correspondent David Sanger.
Reporters working for Alabama newspapers could learn a thing or two by watching these kinds of programs, or reading about them on blogs, but I suppose they don't care enough or have time for such trivial things like self-criticism and trying to figure out what they are doing wrong.
The blurb from the panel discussion that got the most attention in blogland was a comment from Gregory. He argued that, because there's so much polarization in politics today, people try to divine or assign motives for reporters asking certain questions at the White House press briefings. When Helen Thomas asked Gregory what was responsible for the polarization, he said:
"I think its because of the internet largely. The polarized atmosphere in the internet and blogs and whatnot have been a major contributor to that."
That's a meme, of course, designed to say "look at us. We are the Washington news media. Look no further to find out what's going on in the world. We will tell you what you need to know. Those newfangled blogs are not worth spitting on."
But let the analysis continue...
In February - at a similar event at the Press Club - Gregory pointed the finger at blogs for the reason that politics and political coverage has become so polarized.
But Glenn Greenwald pointed out at the time:
"The reality, of course, is that most media-criticizing bloggers do not want journalists to be 'political advocates.' They want them to do what journalists are supposed to do - which is not sit around with their good, trustworthy, nice-guy friends in the White House and simply ask questions and get information, but instead to scrutinize that information, treat it with doubt, investigate it before passing it along to determine whether it's true (or not).
"And the reason bloggers want them to do that, the reason that bloggers demand more of journalists is not because bloggers are enraged, confused, unreasonable partisans. It's because bloggers are American citizens who are deeply concerned about what has happened to their country over the last six years."
Gregory Says Blogs To Blame for Polarization?
They, we, are also concerned that the traditional, legacy press and broadcast news outlets are seriously letting us down.
So even those of us who have spent a considerable amount of time working for news organizations now realize that it is going to take a Web Press revolution to turn things around.
Here's one column about the Gregory incident that got a lot of attention in blogland. It makes some good points.
David Gregory Meet I.F. Stone and Tom Paine
What no one has seemed to focus on from that panel discussion was Dan Rather's comments about a big part of the problem being the corporate takeover of the news media in recent decades, which has almost completely torn down the wall separating news rooms and boardrooms.
Of course Gregory defended his corporate bosses at GE-NBC and gave the obligatory Washington reporters answer when that subject comes up. He said he has never been interferred with by the suits at NBC.
But I suspect if you could get Gregory over to the Irish Times bar near the Capitol in D.C. and get him talking off the record after a few beers, he might just talk about the self censorship that goes on all the time. It's not that the president of GE, which bought out NBC in 1986, has ever called him up and threatened his job if he didn't report things a certain way.
 | | White House | | President George W. Bush spins... |
In other words (to use a Bushism), reporters know which side their bread is buttered on. To use another food cliche to explain this, reporters know you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
One of the most useful things to come out of the panel session was a discussion of how the White House press corps should gang up and agree to followup on each others' questions, since Bush is adept at changing the subject by controlling who he calls on.
So that's what happened yesterday morning in Bush's press conference in which the Iran nuke question came up due to the new Intel report saying Iran is not such an eminent threat after all.
Bush nearly lost it completely. His body language revealed what a lot of us have been saying for a long time: Bush is a liar of the first order.
Video Part 1
Video Part 2
Transcript
And here's another lesson.
When the Los Angeles Times decided to purge liberal columnist Robert Scheer from its editorial pages a couple of years ago, he didn't die or go away. He started an online news site at TruthDig.Com.
His column now appears regularly in The Nation magazine, and he does something this week that a lot of people have been calling on the U.S. news media to do for several years: Tell the truth. Call it like it is. Go ahead and say it.
"Bush is such a liar," Scheer says in the lede to this week's column.
Bush on Iran: Fool Me Twice
Our new favorite blog columnist in Alabama, Scott Horton at Harpers.Org, also called Bush a liar in his post on the subject. He evens explains Bush's three kinds of lies.
Department of Poorly Coordinated and Unbelievable Cover Stories
Compare that to the so-called fair and balanced Reuters wire story out today. It's critical, but gives Bush his out.
True to Form, Bush Refuses to Budge on Iran
Now I've called Bush a liar so many times on this Web Press that I can't count the times in the archives over the past two and a half years. Maybe as time goes by and it becomes even more apparent, more bloggers will do it.
Then, perhaps one day before this disastrous period in our history comes to an ignominious end, someone in a big newspaper like the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times or the Washington Post might finally get around to telling its readers the truth about the current occupant of the White House, like Walter Cronkite did on CBS in the late 1960s after his now famous trip to Vietnam.
We don't expect the Birmingham News to get it, but perhaps if someone over at the Associated Press would do it, the local TV news talking heads might also tell their viewers the truth for a change.
And maybe one of these days, someone in big medialand will get around to catching up with another position blogs like this have been taking for some time.
Maybe David Gregory will go on NBC nightly news one day soon and say what we have known for several years. The only hope we have of restoring America's reputation in the world is either for Bush and Cheney to resign - or for Congress to impeach them and remove them from office.
We are not kidding. We are not making this stuff up. It's not an angry rant. It's not a conspiracy theory.
Maybe if you don't believe me, you should watch this video. I posted it the other day, but perhaps you missed it. If so, click on it today.
Then, if you are still not convinced, go buy this book or check it out from the library and read it.
The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
If enough people pay attention to this, maybe we can save the world from Giuliani ... and Huckabee.
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
The Thanksgiving editorial column is an American newspaper tradition.
Surfing around the Web looking for a good one leads me to believe it is a tradition that perhaps should be abolished.
But since I am thankful for getting to sleep really, really late today and avoid a large Baptist family gathering, I will offer up a few Thanksgiving columns for your perusal and a few pithy comments.
One of my favorite ideas for a Thanksgiving column comes from Gail Collins at the New York Times. In the end the column leaves much to be desired, but I like the idea anyway.
The subheader is: "Qualities We Don’t Want in the Next President." Now you have to admit, that's a column any lover of democracy and Bush basher would read, although it really doesn't deliver much in the way of a satisfying feast.
"The first undesirable attribute was loyalty, in the sense of valuing personal relationships over competence," she writes. "Really, we need to elect someone who would push his/her grandmother under a bus if she screwed up the mission."
That's not the way I would have put it, but you decide.
Presidential Shopping List
Another New York Times columnist, Richard Cohen, has an interesting idea.
In his column, Turkey Tune-Out Time, he advocates a break from e-mail:
"...e-mail is a bummer and addiction to it perverse," he says.
Why?
"First, e-mail is reactive, a wait-and-respond thing, the surest guarantee of inside-the-box thinking. Second, it’s a lousy tool for conflict resolution, a multiplier of misunderstandings. Third, it leads people to say things they would never say face to face. Fourth, once they’re said, they’re recorded in their colossal inanity for all eternity.
"What you accumulate," said an expert he found, is "interpersonal sludge."
So he recommends that we all, "Turn off, tune out, drop in. And a decent-sized turkey takes five hours to cook."
Not bad advice. Too bad I can't take it. You?
Continue reading "A Day To Do 'As Little As Possible'" »
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
A dozen times in the past few weeks I have sat down in front of this computer and started to write a column about the damn heat wave and drought enveloping Alabamaland and much of the country.
But each time, I have slunk back to the Stratolounger in front of the TV and said to heck with it. This is the time of year when the best thing to do is catch up on old movies on cable under a strong air conditioner. Simply moving one's body about the house is hard.
Besides, everybody knows it's hot, literally, as hell. So where's the news value in writing about it?
It's so damn hot and dry that we are beginning to wonder if there is enough rain out there in clouds of the future to ever bring the dead grass back to life again. To keep the tomatoes growing, they have to be watered twice a day.
With water restrictions in place, there is no way to keep the hydrangeas and the dogwoods alive. If we have an ice storm this winter, there will be lots of dead trees falling on houses, because the ground and their root systems are so dry they will snap like dry beans.
It's been more than 90 degrees in the shade on the screened in porch for so many days in a row that I can't remember what the count is anymore.
Yet there's not one peep out of weatherman James Spann on ABC's 33/40 this entire summer about global warming being a myth. But there's also not been one single story on any local television news station about global warming, and nothing in the local papers either.
Let's face facts. We live in a land of denial. That's why I call it Alabamaland.
Maybe all the criticism of the media from the left is starting to work just a little bit, however.
The Birmingham bureau of the Associated Press managed to produce a story the other day that I missed on the wires at the time, perhaps because the heat has turned me so lazy that I feel some days like I am back in the Big Easy.
Thanks to a couple of Republican Senators, Trent Lott of Mississippi and Dick Shelby of Alabama, developers are using federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding efforts in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina to build condos - complete with Bear Bryant art - near the University of Alabama's Bryant-Denny stadium in Tuscaloosa.
Katrina Aid Goes Toward Football Condos
When an alert reader pointed that out to me today in an e-mail message, I could hardly believe my eyes for a split second. Then I said to myself, "Self, that makes perfect sense in Bush's America, where everybody loves a tax break for the rich, especially when it REALLY screws the poor."
This is not the land of the free or the brave anymore, folks. We should change our national anthem and motto. How about this: "The good old US of A, the land where everybody looks out for themselves, and the rich get richer and the poor can go to hell after their teeth rot out."
That government is best which governs least indeed.
It's gotten so bad that one of the most powerful lawyers and Democrats in Alabama is so afraid of his own shadow that he insists anyone who supports the impeachment of the worst president in American history, that's right, George W. Bush, is too far to the left to be included in any Democratic Party discussion in Alabama.
I won't name this attorney just yet, because I have a surprise story in store for the Alabama Democratic Party I am working on to be published in the next few weeks.
But I will say this about that. Anybody who does not support the impeachment of Gonzales, Cheney and Bush should not be calling themselves a Democrat, and will certainly never be elected to any office in this state or any other in the future. So-called mainstream, centrist Democrats are so much road kill in the current political climate. And if you don't believe me, wait until you see the public opinion data that backs it up.
 | | Photo by Glynn Wilson | | Alabama author Rick Bragg |
Perhaps one of the reasons I got motivated enough to write tonight is because last night, I made my way downtown to the McWayne Science Center to see my old friend Rick Bragg read from his new book The Prince of Frogtown.
Now I know it's way too hot to be talking about football, but he also has a piece in a new special issue of Sports Illustrated about the upcoming Alabama football season.
The Rising Tide
The last column I wrote in this space was about the end of the era of the written word. I still stand by my conclusions. But that is not to say that some people won't still write. And some people will still read good writing – when they can find it.
Now if we could just get more people to write about this damn global warming – so we can begin to do some things to reverse it. Time's a wastin'.
Do you feel it yet? What have you done about it lately?
Me? I just a few days ago bought an insulation blanket for the hot water heater and installed it. We are capturing water in the sink as it heats up for washing dishes to use on the plants. And, we are gradually making the transition all over the house to energy efficient light bulbs. This winter, I plan on installing more insulation in the attic.
Now if we could just stop the tax breaks for condos and oil and coal companies and change the national policy to provide some tax breaks for solar power panels for homeowners, we might make some real progress.
Will it ever happen in Bush's America or Alabama Powerland?
Not if we keep electing centrist Democrats with no cajónes.
Connecting those dot, dot, dots...
This is hard to explain to someone from New York, or even Washington.
Let's see if I can take you through it quickly before I fall asleep after spending all day in Montgomery covering the show trial of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy.
If you wake up Friday and pick up a newspaper in Alabama, there will be three stories on the front page for sure.
The top story will be written as a historic piece about how a Democrat (Don Siegelman) was found guilty of taking a bribe from a wealthy businessman (Richard Scrushy). What they won't tell you is that the prosecution was cooked up in Washington by Karl Rove and company to get Siegelman out of the way - to clear the electoral path of Republican up-and-comers Bob Riley and his son Rob.
The next story down the page will feature a Republican Senator, Jeff Sessions, leading the fight to kill an immigration bill, supposedly backed by President George W. Bush himself. What they won't tell you is that the bill was sent up to Capitol Hill by Karl Rove so that Sessions could publicly kill it - to prove he's no rubber stamp vote for Bush in Washington.
Keep looking down the page, and you will see another curious story, a story taken right out of the political playbook of George C. Wallace. As Siegelman was being sentenced and Sessions was killing the immigration bill, our esteemed governor Bob Riley was all over the TV news asking the good and religious people of Alabama, I'm not making this up, to "pray for rain." He even issued a proclamation declaring June 30 through July 7 as "Days of Prayer for Rain."
OK, maybe ole Karl didn't have time to craft the proclamation himself. It would have come out with a little more panache, like "liberal, activist judges."
If you haven't read the Atlantic magazine piece about this, now might be a good time to go back and do it.
But you see, Alabama is in the midst of a severe drought right now, and Lord knows we could use the rain. What no one around here remembers, however, is that Wallace used to appeal to the masses to pray for rain - everytime he found himself in hot water with the state legislature in Montgomery.
We are just wondering: Considering all the reports in the New York Times, Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Florence Times Daily and the Locust Fork Journal about Riley's connections to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the plot to take down Siegelman in the courts, why is it that no news reporter at any Alabama news organization bothered to call the governor and get his reaction to the Siegelman, Scrushy verdict?
Even if it had occurred to them, the governor would not have been around to give his reaction. Because right after he asked the people to pray for rain, he was whisked off to Washington to have some kind of high level meeting with somebody about something. Could it be that Karl Rove is seriously considering getting Senator Fred Thompson in Tennessee to draft Bob Riley to run as his running mate in the presidential race in 2008?
Nah, that must be a conspiracy theory. Right? How about it right-wing bloggers? Did you figure that one out yet?
You can read all these stories today on the Locust Fork News page. None of them are worth reading by themselves. But when you put them all together, now that makes an interesting read, don't you think?
If I had the power of subpeona on my side, or if I was a really good hacker, I would like to see the phone records for Thursday from the White House, a certain Senate office, the governor's office - and the federal courthouse in Montgomery. It would also be interesting to know who actually wrote that sentence for Judge Fuller - while he was in the courtroom rubbing his nose.
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
As I woke up and smelled the coffee this morning and consulted the wires, the polls and Krystal Ball, it became obvious already what's going to happen in the Presidential election of 2008.
So you may as well go ahead and place your bets now at PaddyPower.Com, or take us up on the Yuengling odds.
Krystall Ball has been a tad fuzzy on '08 so far, since it's WAY too early to be talking about a presidential election that is more than a year and a half in the future.
But now, with Tennessee actor Fred Thompson's announcement that he is "testing the waters" and will jump into the race by July 4, it is fairly obvious how this whole thing is going to play out.
Thompson Moves To White House Run
It's Sen. Fred Thompson vs. Oscar winner Al Gore in '08.
What's Krystall Ball's reasoning?
Up to now, the Christian Right really hasn't had anyone in the race to vote for.
Rudy Giuliani of New York, with his pro-abortion and gay rights record, would never have cut it in the conservative Republican primary.
And Sen. John McCain's numbers have been way down in part due to his push for more troops in Iraq and in spite of his foray to the Falwell mountaintop.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney could never carry the day, because the polls show the Christian Right will never vote for a Mormon. Sad but true. That's the problem with this religious voting issue in the U.S.
Watch for the Karl Rove political machine, with the Bushes out of the way, to start painting Thompson as the next Ronald Reagan. He is a well-known Southerner from his days of playing the president in movies and a lawyer on TV and he has amassed a solidly conservative voting record in the U.S. Senate.
Hillary might have been able to beat Giuliani or even John McCain. But she hasn't a prayer against Thompson. Sorry Bill.
As for why Al Gore will run, Krystal Ball says she doesn't believe Gore when he says he is not running. He may not be in the race yet.
But when it becomes obvious from the polls that Hillary or Obama or even Edwards won't be able to out-celebrity Thompson, the liberal bloggers will draft Gore and the Democratic Party hierarchy will have to go along or face losing in '08 - which could bring back talk of the party's demise at the hands of Karl Rove.
Another interesting question is: Who will get the nod for Veep on the Democratic side?
Krystal Ball says it will most likely be Barack Obama, the popular black senator for Illinois, since chances are, Hillary would not be interested in being the first woman vice president without having Bill living in the White House as first hubby. Obama is young enough and new enough in American politics to take the Veep slot to position himself to run for president in the future.
But don't place your Yuengling bet or Irish political bet on this one just yet. Krystall Ball needs to wait and see how everyone reacts to Thompson's announcement around Independence Day.
The one other calculation is: Who will win in '08? Krystall Ball says the Democrats will still pull it out in a squeaker. It won't come down to hanging chads in Florida this time or a few thousand stolen votes in Ohio. It will all come down to Louisiana, which will go Democrat no matter what due to the Bush administration's handling of Katrina.
Bet against us if you dare. But the Thompson v. Gore match-up is a one Yuengling bet right now. It should be up to a six pack by the Fourth of July, when Thompson formally makes his announcement.
And that's the word from Locust Forkland, where the river runs cold and true, the great blue herons dance like Elvis and the people like to shoot the breeze (and they are usually right).
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
TUSCALOOSA, Ala., May 27 - If it is too hot to paint here on the verge of what promises to be a classic global warming summer of heat waves, droughts and forest fires, imagine how it must feel in the deserts of Iraq trying to fight an unpopular, unwinnable war.
And think of how hot it must feel in Washington, D.C. for those trying to find a way out of the war and get Americans to pay attention to the news on global warming and stop driving gas guzzling SUVs everywhere they go.
A recent study showed that only when gas prices reach $4.48 a gallon will a change take place in the U.S. car culture.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans do not pay much attention to politicians or the media. And you almost can't blame them, considering the double-sided bullshit that passes for knowledgeable information pumped out by PR men everyday.
Rather than paying attention to serious news, many Americans do seem to pay attention to TV shows like "Family Guy" on Fox, a show that makes fun of their nuclear family lives.
"Family Guy" is an Emmy award winning animated television series about a family in the suburbs of Quahog, Rhode Island, created by Seth MacFarlane in 1999.
It holds the distinction of being the first cancelled show to be resurrected based on DVD sales in 2005 after it was canceled in 2002.
Most episode titles of the show are parodies of movies, popular slogans and television shows, and for the first half of the first season, the writers tried to work the words "murder" or "death" into the title of every episode to make the titles resemble those of old-fashioned radio mystery shows. They quit when it became too hard to keep up with the limited range of titles.
TV critics panned the show, and for good reasons, Not the usual family-values based reasons of too much gratuitous violence, sex or profanity.
Entertainment Weekly seems to have an ongoing war with the show, leading to an episode in which the main character and dysfunctional dad Peter wiped his ass with a copy of the magazine when he ran out of toilet paper.
In another recent episode, a big, fat woman flirts with Peter at a party and says, I kid you not, "Do you like my ass? Would you eat cake off my ass?"
We know President George W. Bush doesn't watch TV news, but if he had time to watch TV at all, I bet he would laugh at that joke and maybe think to himself or tell Condi, "Hey, that's a great line. Think I'll use it. Let them eat cake off my ass. Ha. Ha."
The show has also been panned using premises and humor very similar to "The Simpsons," where the writers have taken their own jabs at "Family Guy" on the same network. The show was mocked in a two-part episode of South Park. The cast called "Family Guy's" jokes interchangeable and said their frequent "cutaway gags" had no place in the storyline.
The show is at its best when it makes fun of politicians, the media and even the Fox network.
In a recent show, a character resembling George Bush falls off the wagon, gets drunk and runs around naked on a putt putt golf course. In the season finale, the character Death tells Peter he has had a busy day: "Dick Cheney, the president of Haliburton, shot Justice Scalia in a hunting accident and the bullet went through him and killed Scooter Libby and Tucker Carlson."
In the 400th episode of "The Simpsons," little Lisa tried to get people to understand the contradiction between the conservative Fox News and the often irreverent Fox TV.
"They just don't match," she said.
Which is much like a lot of real family life in the U.S. It is sometimes hard to understand the disconnect between people's "beliefs" and "actions."
But maybe that's why it seems too easy for the mass public to be manipulated by lying politicians, who toy with the line between belief and action all the time, and crass commercial capitalists, who make billions fooling some of the people enough of the time.
Beliefs don't mean shit. It's what we know that matters.
It's just that you can't get away with saying it on the stump or in the news. Sometimes you can only find the truth in satirical animated TV shows - or maybe on blogs these days.
But there are some things you can't even get away with on a blog. Does anyone doubt that the Bush-Gonzales Justice Department would spring into action if one were to suggest that Cheney AND Scalia should be shot?
Just kidding Alice. When I say shot, I mean with a camera, not a gun.
Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson
There is no accounting for taste, or for how people learn and use new technology.
While I am an avid student of how people use the Internet, especially, I hate to be called a preacher or even a teacher. Although I've been called both - sometimes as a compliment; sometimes not.
But I've been thinking lately that it would not be a bad idea to start one's own church in the good old US of A, considering the penchant on the part of the masses to search out someone else with the aura of authority to tell them what to think and how to live - and considering the tax laws.
Present company excluded, of course, since I suspect most of the readers lurking here are more likely to search out a great watering hole than a church. But there are several points worth considering for even the most intelligent audience in what I am about to say.
One of the smartest guys to ever walk the earth, Albert Einstein, once said: "Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
There is a lot of technological change going on. Some for good; some for bad. And there are some attempts being made to explain it, but you have to search them out - or find a journalist or blogger to find them for you and provide a free and easy summary you can get to on your computer screen.
That is my job, in a way. So here goes.
Continue reading "On Technological Ch-Che-Change..." »
by Glynn Wilson
Sometimes I wish I had Harry Potter's amazing wizard powers to fight for good against evil in the world.
Alas, all I can do is blog about injustice and the maneuverings of the corporate b-b-bastards now running things like the corrupt Ministry of Magic that oversees the World of Wizarding and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
I woke on Satuday morning and immediately got into a major tiff with Charter Communications. Why? Because as they continually change their channel line up of late to try and sell customers on upgrading to digital cable, Saturday morning was the second day the public television channel failed to work on basic cable.
Frantic and angry phone calls and e-mails to the charter technical help people in, of all places, Nova Scotia, Canada, with threats to take the issue to the FCC - along with phone and e-mail messages to Alabama Public Television offices in Birmingham - resulted in a restoration of that service.
But just as I was about to shut down the computer for the night and vege out on some more lame TV after watching a couple of Harry Potter movies this afternoon and tonight, this story flashed across the local TV news screen and popped up on the regional AP wire.
It turns out Alabama Power company is going to seek a major rate hike before the Alabama Public Service Commission Dec. 12, and they are going to try to blame environmentalists.
Alabama Power to Seek 5.29 Percent Rate Hike
And, according to the AP, President Bush is deciding whether to try and lift a ban on oil and gas drilling in federal waters off Alaska's Bristol Bay, home to endangered whales and sea lions and the world's largest sockeye salmon run, sources say.
Bush May Try To End Drilling Ban in Alaskan Bay
Could all of this action be coming now, during the holiday season when people are not paying as much attention to the news, and as the lame duck Congress gets ready to wrap up its business before Christmas without doing much of anything?
The Washington Post is reporting on Sunday that Congress will convene on Tuesday for what some fear will be the lamest of lame-duck sessions, and GOP leaders have decided to take a minimalist approach before turning over the reins of power to the Democrats.
Lame-Duck Congress May Run Out the Clock
Also according a column by Historian David Brinkley in Sunday's Washington Post, while it's dangerous for historians to wield the "worst president" label like a scalp-hungry tomahawk simply because they object to Bush's record, Brinkely says, "we live in speedy times and, the truth is, after six years in power and barring a couple of miracles, it's safe to bet that Bush will be forever handcuffed to the bottom rungs of the presidential ladder."
Move Over, Hoover: Is Bush The Worst President Ever?
We are wondering what Harry Potter would do to stop these bastards. And we are wondering what you think. Feel free to let us hear from you.
You don't need your own magic wand. All you have to do is hit the comment link below and let it fly...
You can't fake it. If you're gonna make it you've gotta live it.
- Hank Williams Jr.
by Glynn Wilson
There is no way to escape it. It is too late. America is a car country, especially in the American South.
This fact hit me in a traffic jam at the Alabama-Georgia line the other day while I was driving the Chevy van from Birmingham to Atlanta to buy a used Macintosh laptop computer from a woman in Buckhead.
I wrote a cover story for The Southerner magazine about this during the summer of 1999 after researching the issue for a chapter in a Sociology textbook: The War on Sprawl.
I have made a point of living in places where you can walk to a neighborhood store and ride a bike along the water, including Gulf Shores, Alabama, where I used to ride every day along the Gulf of Mexico. In Knoxville, Tennessee, I used to ride along the Tennessee River. In New Orleans, for almost four years I rode along the great Mississippi every day and even shopped at a Whole Foods store on Magazine Street, using a backpack for a grocery bag.
But for most people in this country, walking or biking is just not an option. Our living spaces are organized into sprawling suburbs with no significant mass transit. So the only way to get around is in a car.
Not surprisingly, people come to love their machines like they do their pets. They name them, and who can blame them?
I love my Chevy van, especially when I can get the canoe on top and the Cannondale in the back and head off for some adventure without having to fly commercial.
The Eisenhower administration first started building the Interstate highway system for defense purposes in the 1950s. Now it has become the primary travel route for moving people around the country for work and play.
So it was inevitable that "the road" made its way into the American arts, literature and folklore.
Willie Nelson is perhaps most famous for the song "On The Road Again." He was recently arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for smoking pot on the road in his tour bus. The fact that a musician can get away with that in Bush's America of 2006 is cool for us Baby Boomers who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the coolness of classic rock and pot were at their zenith.
It is also inevitable that Americans love older cars. The antique car movement in America is almost as big as religion itself.
America is also a country of technology, where Apple computers and the Internet were invented. Americans tend to love their computers. I'm no different. I love my Mac. And I am not enamored of new computers any more than I am drawn to new SUVs.
The best era for the American automobile came in the late 1950s and lasted until the early '70s, when rising gas prices and technology began to favor the smaller cars made by the Japanese.
The best era for personal computing occurred from about 1996 to 2006. It is going to be downhill from here, because the corporate bastards are taking over the business and making it harder for the little guy to break through.
So it should come as no surprise that I tend to use a car metaphor to describe why I just bought a seven year old Mac G3 Powerbook instead of something newer. I love the way it drives, like car aficionados may swoon for the 1973 Mustang.
When I talk to computer geeks about this, I have to preface my remarks with the statement: "I know I'm driving a '73 Mustang. But hey, I like driving a G3 and building Web pages with the fat version of Simpletext that holds a bold command and allows me to see what I'm doing amongst all the gibberish computer code."
They understand exactly what I'm saying, if the average non-computer geek doesn't.
It may not be possible to continue driving a computer of this era much longer, although seeing all the '73 Mustangs still on the road gives me some hope. Where do they find parts for their old machines? Someone's making them.
The thing about this machine business is that we use the best machines to do something, either for work or entertainment or both. You have to have tools in this world to do what you are meant to do. A crappy car or a shitty computer just doesn't get it.
Back in The Bunker Saturday night, I ran across a special on the Country Music channel with Kid Rock playing alongside Hank Williams Jr. They sang a song about the road called Hamburger Steak Holiday Inn. It is a song about the road, and has a message for would be musicians who buy cheap guitars and play all by themselves on the side of the road and never learn to finish a song.
I take this message to be just as true in journalism or politics. Some people think they can fake it and make it. George Bush comes to mind, along with most of the corporate PR press.
If you are reading this far you must understand it. You are looking for alternatives to the fake journalism and fake politics that passes for understanding in Bush's America.
We are doing our best to put together the tools we need to provide that alternative and gear it up even more in the coming months.
Like Hank sings, "You can't fake it. If you're gonna make it you've gotta live it."
We ain't faking it folks. It may not be making us rich, but the way we live and work is rich in experience. We are determined to live it - and make it. So come on along for the ride...
by Glynn Wilson
Waking up early to a cooler morning on Labor Day 2006, and with some important labor tasks out of the way that have kept me busy and distracted from the journal in recent days, I decided to entertain you, dear intelligent readers, by finding some idiocy in Alabama's newspapers to make fun of this morning.
It didn't take long.
Turning to the Montgomery Advertiser editorial page from the Alabama news links page, in a matter of seconds I was laughing at the ignorance that passes for understanding. Is it any wonder newspapers are having such a hard time keeping enough readers interested in their clap trap these days?
Get this for a lede.
Reflecting on the ancient words of Sophocles may not be the way you'd planned to spend your Labor Day holiday, but the old fellow did have a way with words and some serious insights to offer. As the nation celebrates Labor Day, it's worth noting a pithy observation of his:
"Without labor nothing prospers."
The point of the editorial came down to this: Celebrate (the) Value of Work Today
A quick search online for quotations from Sophocles turned up that misused jewel, but also this one:
"Ignorant men don't know what good they hold in their hands until they've flung it away."
For a history on this famous Greek philosopher who knew absolutely nothing about modern labor, you could turn to the online encyclopedia the business editor of the New York Times has declared off limits for that newspaper's reporters to quote, Wikipedia.Org.
For a better search to understand the U.S. Labor Day holiday, try this in Google: "History of Labor Day."
Right away you can read a page that somehow survives on the Bush Labor Department's Web site: The History of Labor Day.
Skipping down to one important part on the first Labor Day, you learn that it was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, planned by the Central Labor Union. In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, first named "workingmen's holiday."
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers, according to the site. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.
As it was first proposed, Labor Day involved a street parade to exhibit "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families.
Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades are not as common as the labor movement has shrunk significantly and lost much of its political clout. Newspapers, radio and television news stations inevitably cover the speeches and the barbecues, although quite obviously, the anti-union newspapers of the American South only misguide their readers on what the holiday is supposed to be all about.
"The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy," the labor site claims. "It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership - the American worker."
So the holiday is not a celebration of work. Nothing much is made in the U.S. today anyway, since most of the jobs have been "outsourced" oversees to places such as China and Central America.
But the holiday is a tribute to the workers themselves, who in 1882 did not have the benefit of a Fair Labor Standards Act which said they only had to work 40 hours a week. There was nothing to prevent factory owners from working women and children six days a week, 12 hours a day, and paying them a nickel a day.
That changed in the late 1930s, when Sen. Hugo Black of Alabama, a Democrat, teamed up with President Franklin Roosevelt, also a Democrat, to try and save America from the Great Depression by forcing business owners to pay a living wage to American workers. They passed the first minimum wage law, which of course hasn't been raised in a decade.
Since at least one politician in Alabama seems to have a sense of what this holiday is about, I will show up at Birmingham's Sloss Furnace today to see what Lucy Baxley has to say about raising the minimum wage in Alabama, a plan to go around the do-nothing Republican Congress and do the right thing at the state and local level.
We may not make much of anything in America, although we do make a few cars in Alabama and we raise chickens and grow pine trees. Most people here work to keep those cars running, maintain the roads they run on, and count the money of those who control all the capital. Many work in the hospitals to keep those workers alive, if not healthy.
One of the quotes used in the Advertiser editorial did make some sense and it is worth remembering.
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital," Abraham Lincoln said in his first message to Congress in 1861. "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Of course that rarely happens in Bush's America. So let's pay tribute to that - at least for this one day of the year.
And while we think about it, we could quote another philosopher who knew far more about capitalism and the industrial worker. Remember what Karl Marx said? "Workers of the world unite."
Unfortunately, the undereducated American worker has been brain-washed into thinking that Marx was a bad old Socialist-Communist. So his dream of seeing an egalitarian world rise from the ashes of run amok corporate capitalism has yet to be achieved.
If Bush and company continue to have their way, all aspects of government will be privatized and handed over to the Haliburton's of the world. And we may yet see wages go back to the inflationary equivalent of a nickle a day.
by Glynn Wilson
It looks like another JonBenet Ramsey kind of day on cable TV news.
So this would be a good time for a boycott or a vacation from the news - like President George W. Bush does every day, and more so in August, when he hangs out at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The last time we checked, the Bush administration was still spying on Americans in spite of a federal court order to stop. There are still wars going on in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. And hundreds of thousands of Americans are still scraping by on low wages with friends in low places.
The once great Ford motor company is slashing production, shutting down plants and laying off workers. The BP oil pipeline is still leaking. The city of New Orleans is still suffering from the post-Katrina blues, while no-bid contractors laugh all the way to the bank.
But a little, rich, white blonde girl from Colorado - who has been dead for 10 years - can enthrall the talking heads because there is some intrigue about a former substitute school teacher from Alabama who has confessed to the crime.
Even the local talking heads cannot resist leading their broadcasts with the JonBenet Ramsey story, with a close second the latest crack down on drunk driving.
What the moralists could not accomplish with national prohibition in the 1920s, the MAD mothers are trying to accomplish by using taxpayer dollars to deploy more cops to stop people from drinking beer and getting home from the bars. The churches must be hurting financially. They don't want you to drink and gamble. So you can either go to church, or go to jail, and to hell with you if you disagree with the president.
Even the church people bitch about the heat, but are too hoodwinked to do anything about global warming or suburban sprawl. In a place like Birmingham, Alabama, how in the fuck are you supposed to get home from a party without driving?
There is no mass transit to speak of here. No sidewalks either. A cab ride from one side of this town to the other costs more than a night out in New Orleans. You can't even ride a bike around or walk anywhere in this culture.
But by all means, hire more cops and put more people in jail for drinking beer.
Want out of this asylum called America? No, you can't carry your own shampoo on an airplane or take a fast jet out of here without being checked on the "no-fly" list.
Is that the "terrorists" fault? Or the complete incompetence of our current political leadership?
Or is it the fault of half of all Americans who either don't bother to vote or who are too uninformed to vote intelligently?
A successful democracy depends on an educated populous. Since more and more Americans do not read and depend on talking heads for their news and information, is it any wonder that we have such a screwed up situation - when all they want to do is run old footage of a little girl in a dance class and talk about whether her confessed killer is really guilty or not?
A jury will decide the fate of John Mark Karr. Meanwhile we are off to put the boat in the water and take a vacation from the talking heads. We'll be back when y'all decide to cover the real news again.
And hey Mr. Softball question Larry King. Isn't it about time for the retirement home man? You just look more silly every day.
At least on MSNBC, former conservative Congressman Joe Scarborough asked the question the other day: "Is George Bush really an idiot? Or is he just inarticulate?"
Hey Joe. We say it's both. And the polls show more and more people are finally realizing it.
The only thing we have to say about the 30 percent of the people who still support this dumbass president is: It takes one to know one.
In other words, you have to be a real dumbass to think George W. Bush is anything other than a dumbass frat boy who got himself elected by virtue of his family connections.
And it is pretty clear he has not learned a damn thing in office. Remember, he depends on Condi for his news and views.
Funny, she seems to have disappeared of late - since they kicked her out of Lebanon and Bush had to distance himself from the news that they were hot tub buddies.
Here's drinking to you kid. This is the end of a beautiful friendship.
"Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing."
- Edward Abbey
It's Bush's Fault
by Glynn Wilson
It's hard to concentrate on the luscious flavor of the homegrown tomatoes with cheese grits, scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits with St. Clair County honey and ripe cantaloupe, what with all this news cramming the airwaves of the escalating violence in the Middle East.
When will the religious dumbasses on this planet learn that war and religion are contradictory things? Ditto for politics and religion?
The Washington Post and other news organizations reported this weekend that the leader of Hezbollah promised an all-out war after Israeli warplanes attacked his residence and Hezbollah's main headquarters Friday in an apparent assassination attempt. Israel vowed to press its offensive in Lebanon until the Shiite Muslim militant group was disarmed, leading to a quick succession of violent events.
While the Lebanese government urged the U.N. Security Council to establish a cease-fire, how did the Bush White House respond? By releasing a statement that said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its attacks.
Let the war games continue.
Speaking of games, meanwhile back in St. Petersburg, Russia, Bush was out riding his mountain bike like any rich kid would be, while Rome burns.
But a senior correspondent for the Associated Press was at work, writing about Bush's "chilly summit prelude," in which Bush reportedly blocked Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization on Saturday, leading President Vladimir Putin to mockingly suggest that Moscow doesn't want the kind of violence-plagued democracy the United States has fostered in Iraq.
Does it strike anyone else as odd that Bush would take this position, knowing that we are trying to get Russia's cooperation in a program to detect and track terrorists who are trying to get their hands on nuclear and radioactive materials?
What a complete dumbass.
It will be interesting to see how Bush responds to the latest invitation to meet with the leaders of the NAACP, now meeting in Washington and fighting for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. The law is under attack in the U.S. Senate by a few conservative Southerners, including our very own Alabama dumbass - Sen. Jeff Sessions of Mobile.
Again according to the Washington Post, the Voting Rights Act has been credited with stopping the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters through barriers such as poll taxes and literacy tests in the 41 years since its initial passage in the mid-1960s.
Several key provisions of the law were passed as temporary measures and will expire next year if not renewed by Congress. One provision requires certain states with a history of voter discrimination to get federal approval for voting law changes. Another imposes a language assistance requirement on jurisdictions with a high percentage of voters whose native language is not English.
The House voted to extend the provisions last week after GOP leaders quelled a rebellion among some members from Southern states who objected to it as an affront to "states' rights."
Bush has turned down invitations to attend five previous NAACP gatherings, and we suspect he will decline this one too - and take off instead to ride his little bicycle.
In other news, as I woke up this morning and started the coffee, columnist Bob Novak was on NBC's "Meet the Press" spilling the beans on his role in outing the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame-Wilson, who sued Bush political aide Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney this week for ruining her career and violating the very national security they claim to love.
Coming up this week, Bush is still throwing red meat to his conservative Christian base by threatening his first veto as president, to of all things, stop stem cell research on fetuses that are slated for the trash heap anyway. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has seen the political writing on the wall and defected from Bush's position on this issue, in part since he is a doctor and knows that the research would save many more lives than banning the research.
Dumbass.
Meanwhile back in Alabamaland, I was called a dumbass and a socialist myself this week by a little conservative Republican blogger in Montgomery. His entire idea for a blog is to focus on his own attendance at Republican dinners and Alabama politics, as if there were not far more important things going on in the world, like war in the Middle East - and homegrown tomatoes with Sunday breakfast.
I tried to explain to him in the comments section that I was in fact not a socialist at all, but a liberaltarian.
I believe in real freedom, not police state stateism like we're living under today. I certainly do not believe in run-amok corporate capitalism either, a system we're also living under with Bush on the handlebars.
If these kinds of so-called "Christian conservatives" had their way, a large chunk of the country's population would be forced to live off of scraps from the garbage cans of local fast food joints, like their jailed former hero, Eric Rudolph.
They don't believe in any kind of a safety net for people who start out poor in life and have precious little chance of advancement. And they call that Christian?
I don't know what Bible they are reading, but it's not the one I grew up on. Maybe that's why I don't read it anymore. Most of the people who throw it in your face have not actually read it anyway. Or in any event, they don't practice what Jesus taught.
They want to use it to get elected - then enrich themselves and to hell with the rest of us.
But you know what the good book says about the chances of the rich, like the Bushes, getting into heaven. It would be like a camel making its way through the eye of a needle.
I would like to see Bush try that trick. Will Congress please get on with impeaching this guy so we can go about the business of creating a better world where we do not fight each other over oil or religious differences?
Thank you very much for all the wars, Mr. President. If there is a heaven and a hell, we suspect we know which one will claim you in the end.
Dumbass.
Birmingham Loses Ozone War
by Glynn Wilson
After waking up Monday morning with an asthma attack after spending Saturday and Sunday trudging around in the heat at City Stages, and then reading the newspapers online this week, a couple of things are becoming clear about my home town in spite of the ozone haze.
The Birmingham News editorial department is reporting that the City Stages Music Festival is saddled with debt and may lose money again this year, right alongside an editorial saying the city is losing the war on ozone.
Here's a connecting the dots moment. Ozone builds up in the summer heat thanks to Alabama Power's coal-fired power plant pollution and the area's suburban sprawl, which makes it necessary for the people of Birmingham to drive everywhere they go. So why hold the city's premiere music event of the year during ozone season?
Move the festival to, say, Mother's Day weekend instead of Father's Day weekend.
Birmingham had an incredibly cool spring this year, in part due to a quirky side effect of global warming - a cooling effect in the Southeast. Mother's Day weekend would have been a great time to hold an outdoor festival this year. It might be a better time of year every year.
And here's another clue. Don't try to compete with the New Orleans Jazzfest or the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee. Birmingham is not a world class city and City Stages is not a world class festival. Sorry to say it, but it is our job to call them like we see them and tell the truth.
The Fairgrounds in New Orleans draws people from all over the world because New Orleans has a long history of creating original musical talent. Taylor Hicks may be the winner of a stupid TV talent show, but he's not an original talent. He's a copycat. So is City Stages.
Here's another message for the organizers of the festival. If any media outlet, even a blogger, wants a press pass to the event, give it up heartily. You need all the publicity you can get. Why be arrogant about it and act like you hold the golden key to some sacred temple? It's a piece of plastic to get into a second rate concert.
Chances are, the media coverage will help draw people in the future and, if other reporters and bloggers are anything like us, they will eat enough food and drink enough beer to more than make up for the revenue you would lose on a day pass.
Here's an alternative suggestion. If you just have to hold the festival on the third weekend in June, why not come up with a theme to make City Stages about helping the Birmingham environment? Rather than promoting Alabama Power at the festival, why not use the event to pressure the Southern Company subsidiary to do more to clean up the air?
Maybe then more people would come to the festival - and not wake up after it's over with asthma.
Disappointing day sales
Entering the ozone zone
by Glynn Wilson
If readers are a writer's true companions, as Edward Abbey said of Henry David Thoreau, then perhaps I owe you, dear reader, another bit of writing today.
The explicit fact of the matter is, I don't owe you a damn thing. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because I can.
This thing called a blog started out as a form of online diary. I have a different view of how to use this new technology, although it is hard to escape the temptation to go personal at times, if not postal. People seem to like reading people's diaries. Maybe it is the hope that one might learn a secret.
Here's a secret. I hate to lecture, which is one of the reasons I do not teach anymore, almost as much as I hate being lectured to, especially via e-mail.
But sometimes there is no other way to get a point across in this traumatized world where the name of the game is explicitness. Irony doesn't work anymore, or at least it doesn't seem to.
Be comforted that at least for now, it is still possible in this world to pick up a book and go read it by a river.
I almost made it to the river today, but visited friends instead. One of them loaned me a book. Not a new book, but one I should have read before. Today is as good a time as any, and may be just the right time.
In Down The River, a series of essays by Abbey, a Western author, environmental journalist and self-described "agrarian anarchist," the ghost and writings of Thoreau are taken along on a trip down the Green River in Utah.
It seems like a trip well worth taking. I wish I were there now.
When I read a good book, it is hard to do it without a pencil in hand to mark the quotable parts. Otherwise, how would you go back and find them again when you write the review?
Here's a jewel from the preliminary notes.
"None of the essays in this book requires elucidation," Abbey says. It is a lie, but let him continue . . . "other than to say, as in everything I write, they are meant to serve as antidotes to despair. Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry, and other bad habits."
I don't know if he stole that line or not, but it is one of those lines just about any writer would wish he or she had written.
Poetry indeed.
I will one day get around to writing more about the river, the Locust Fork that is, the river that will haunt me for the rest of my days like the Mississippi haunted Twain.
That is hard to explain in a sound byte. But for those of you who are new here, perhaps you have heard of a sprightly fellow from these parts by the name of Spider Martin? His photographs of the civil rights days are a testament to another time. I won't write his obituary here today.
But a few summers back, he and I spent a number of days running just about every run you can make on the Locust Fork in a 17-foot Kevlar canoe. We did it with two coolers in the boat, one full of food, the other full of beer.
If you ever got to know anything about him, you would have known that Spider didn't do anything the easy way.
So imagine being in the front of a canoe approaching white water and the river runs naturally to the left, but the guy steering the boat in the back takes you to the right. Looming ahead of you are several large, slippery rocks, and there appears to be only a sliver of an opening for a boat in the foaming water ahead, growing louder with every approaching foot.
It is one of those fear-gripped moments in nature when you suspect the earth is about to teach you a lesson in humility. I used to spend more time searching out these phenomena in nature than I do lately, although I need to get out there and do it more.
Have you ever experienced anything like this? Have you ever gone body surfing in the Gulf of Mexico and ridden a wave all the way into shore and been slammed like a little piece of flotsam on the beach? It is humbling. To do it right, you have to make sure the wave catches you exactly in your center of gravity at the waist. BLAM!
Or, have you ever gone water skiing and been ripped away from the rope and your skis by a wave, turned a flip in the air and landed on your face in the lake? Now that is humbling. It hurts good.
 | | Photo by Kenny Walters | | LocustFork.Net Editor and publisher Glynn Wilson atop Ruffner Mountain overlooking Birmingham, Ala. |
Some of the original new journalists used to like to humble themselves on peyote. I've tried that too, and it works for a week or two. Then that old human ego just comes right back and makes you think the world is your oyster. It is not, but you can think that all you want to until you truly fuck up and cripple yourself for life.
The last time I ran the Locust Fork with Spider Martin and shared a salmon steak and a 12-pack with him on the mountain in Blount County, he chastised me to write a story about the river.
"You could write one hell of a story just about today," he said.
Of course he was right, but it wasn't what I was assigned to do, for a paycheck, at that time. I was doing research for a story about the nerve gas incinerator in Anniston, and as every journalist knows, it is hard to write a story for nothing when you spend your days writing stories for money.
Abbey is the master at the kind of story a writer might write for free in a diary. Only he managed to get paid for it. If he were alive today, he might be publising a blog. And chances are, his blog would have bashed Bush on a regular basis for his administration's routine rape of the environment.
What do I mean by the statement that Abbey is a master at telling that kind of a story?
Well, it's like this. While you are reading Down The River, Abbey makes it seem as if he were writing the story at the same time he is floating down the river. Even though you know he must have taken some notes on the trip and written the story up later on a typewriter, the story has a first person, present tense feel to it. He brings you along for the ride, so to speak.
I've written a few stories like that myself - when the editors have paid for them. But they've never given me the freedom to write something like this. Maybe there is a good reason for it besides the profit. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what that good reason could be.
The blogs are proving that people like to read stories like this. It's just that the corporate publishers have not yet figured out how to make enough money from them in a way that protects them from criticism, political retribution and libel suits.
They will. Give them time. They will steal the idea one day soon and ruin the entire enterprise, like we suspect the oil companies will do to "alternative energy" sources.
One more reason to like Abbey. He didn't like the energy companies either, and he didn't like being lectured to. He had this to say about science, which just about sums up my own views of the social sciences.
"The face of science as currently construed is a face that only a mathematician could love. The root meaning of 'science' is 'knowledge;' to see and to see truly, a qualitative, not merely a quantitative, understanding. . . . That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, an indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding."
Thoreau was aware of this tendency even in his time. It is an epidemic today, an epidemic that can only be cured by finding a writer whose talents include the ability to synthesize information and put it into a readable fashion. Sometimes we call that connecting the dots . . .
by Glynn Wilson
U.S. Rep. Terry Everett, a back bencher Alabama Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Birmingham News Monday that he supports Gen. Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA director.
"He's the best guy in the country for the job and he probably knows more about intelligence than anybody in the country," Everett said.
Hayden was nominated Monday by President Bush to replace Porter Goss, who resigned under a cloud of scandal involving late night gay poker parties.
Everett, who claims to have been an Air Force intelligence specialist in Germany in the 1950s, according to the News, took issue with critics - Democrat and Republican - who argue that Hayden's active duty military status would conflict with his CIA role.
Hayden most recently was the deputy under National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, a job that also required Senate confirmation, although the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held hearings indicated Hayden's responses were less than totally forthcoming.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., told a reporter on National Public Radio this morning that he was not satisfied with Hayden's answers about the NSA domestic spying program and would use his confirmation hearings to try to obtain more and better answers.
Negroponte, best known for directing the covert funding of the Nicaraguan Contras and the coverup of human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Central America in the 1980s, was Bush's pick for the new position of Director of National Intelligence after the uproar that erupted when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and then-CIA director George "Slam Dunk" Tenet resigned in early June, 2004.
Everett, who used to be the publisher of Gulf Coast Newspapers in Baldwin County in the early 1980s but sold out to Worrell Enterprises, the now defunct weekly newspaper chain started by a former FBI agent, told the news: "To say this will be disturbing the balance between the (Department of Defense) ... and the intelligence community is a red herring. I just find it frankly disappointing that this kind of rationale has sprung up."
Everett's position is in sharp contrast with the Republican chairman of his committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who called Hayden the "wrong man" for the job.
Hayden's confirmation will also involve additional scrutiny of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, which he directed at NSA. Everett said the controversy over the program may be troublesome during confirmation hearings but shouldn't derail Hayden's appointment. But then, what does he know?
When contacted in Washington last year on a visit there, it became clear that Everett spends most of his time working to speed America into the space weapons war against China. That's a big mystery, unless there is some secret space weapons manufacturing plant somewhere near Enterprise.
Everett defended NSA's ability to listen in on communications between Americans and suspected terrorists, which so far has bypassed review by the secret court that oversees government wiretapping.
"I feel like that, whatever the method, if somebody in this country is talking to al-Qaida, I want to know about it and I think most of the public feels that way," Everett said.
Well, Mr. Everett should read more polls. A majority of Americans now list warrantless domestic spying as one of the reasons they support Bush's impeachment.
Although Everett said he's satisfied with the NSA program, he would "feel better" if the law was changed to clearly define it. So why hasn't he done some work to do just that?
Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, the other Alabama member of the House intelligence panel, would not take a position on Hayden's nomination. He issued a written statement that said:
"Through my position on the intelligence committee, I have worked with General Hayden and have a great deal of respect for him. The next CIA director needs to understand the relationship the agency has within the DNI (Office of the Director Of National Intelligence), and I think General Hayden recognizes this and the other challenges that face the CIA."
But who cares, really, what Alabama's Congressional delegation thinks on these issues? They are all a bunch of featherweights anyway - who mostly just kiss Bush's ass...
Now hear this! Get the scoop!
Gen. Michael Hayden of the NSA will never be confirmed to head the CIA.
Bush Turns to Gen. Hayden to Lead CIA
Why? Because the Senate will never confirm him, and he approved the illegal wiretapping of American citizens without warrents.
Key Lawmakers Wary of Likely CIA Pick
We predict this nomination will never make it to the Senate. Hayden will step down when it becomes apparent that a military general is not suited to run the civilian CIA. Of course Bush wants another loyalist to head the agency. The bureacracy will never approve of it.
Remember, you heard it here first!
Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say
by Glynn Wilson
It's no mystery why a lot of Americans are disengaged from the news and cynical about politics. It's hard to find a news organization or a politician that will just give people the straight dope and say what they really mean.
Sheep are hard-wired to be led, but it takes a shepherd in possession of some knowledge and the confidence to get out front on the issues to get a majority of the flock to follow into difficult terrain.
To demonstrate the point, I still somehow remember an old story I heard from a political science professor at the University of Alabama who came here from Cuba after Fidel Castro took power there in 1959. In the heady days after the Cuban Revolution and the early days of television and in-door plumbing, Castro took to the tube to explain to the people there exactly how to use a flush toilet.
That's right. Castro explained to the Cuban people how to use a flush toilet to get them all onboard making the country a more sanitary place. I'm assuming the new sewer systems were funded by the old Kremlin, but hey, who cares who pays for it as long as it works.
The point is it was a striking story to the professor, and he told it to his classes to demonstrate how leaders should lead by shooting straight with people and being willing to actually "educate" the masses.
I bring it up this morning because, while the polls are looking up for the Democrats in the upcoming elections in 2006, there is also a danger that the new leaders in the Democratic Party will squander an opportunity to take this country in a "brighter" direction.
Look no further than NBC's Meet the Press, where I just wanted to scream when I saw the disingenuous but so-called "objective" questioning from Tim Russert and the side-stepping answers by the Democratic Party's House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
As one prime example, in his act to appear to "nail down" a politician on an issue, Russert asked over and over again if she would support banning "all" political campaign contributions from lobbyists.
Well, that's a stupid question, first of all because it will never happen. In fact, it may not even be Constitutional under the First Amendment.
In her attempt to avoid being nailed down, the best Pelosi could come up with was to say she supports public financing of political campaigns. The problem is, no one, save Ralph Nader, has tried to educate the public and explain exactly how that idea would help diminish the giant corporations' influence on our government and give the public a say in politics once more.
There is no serious proposal on the table in Congress to move to a system of public financing. There should be, but who can explain it and lead the masses to that trough?
Pelosi also dodged the question on whether she would support an impeachment trial for President George W. Bush if the Democrats take back a majority in the House or Senate come November. At least she supports an "investigation," but the public is already ahead of the politicians on this issue. A majority of Americans want Bush impeached. So why dance around the issue?
Pelosi even danced around the question for a story in today's Washington Post. Here's the lede.
Democratic leaders, increasingly confident they will seize control of the House in November, are laying plans for a legislative blitz during their first week in power that would raise the minimum wage, roll back parts of the Republican prescription drug law, implement homeland security measures and reinstate lapsed budget deficit controls.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ... said in an interview last week that a Democratic House would launch a series of investigations of the Bush administration, beginning with the White House's first-term energy task force and probably including the use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Pelosi denied Republican allegations that a Democratic House would move quickly to impeach President Bush. But, she said of the planned investigations, "You never know where it leads to."
Democrats Plan Probe Of Bush If It Wins the House
Stop dancing Nancy. The public will back you up - but only if you are willing to take a strong stand and "just do it."
Where's the evidence that the Republicans are in trouble?
Look no further than the non-partisan Cook Political Report.
There is growing evidence that Republicans will face a voter turnout problem in the November midterm elections.
The GOP faces not only enormous misgivings among voters about the war in Iraq, which amounts to 70 or 80 percent of President Bush's problems, but also a combination of Social Security, mounting budget deficits, Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers, port security, immigration, gasoline prices and various scandals. History tells us that when one party is either complacent or disillusioned, and the other party is highly motivated, agitated or angry, the results can be devastating to the former while providing boundless opportunities for the latter.
A new Cook Political Report/RT Strategies national survey of 1,003 adults, conducted Thursday through Sunday, showed 36 percent approving of the job Bush is doing and 59 percent disapproving. The results were virtually the same among registered voters....
Studies show that voters in Bush-friendly red states drive significantly more miles each month than those in blue states, and it's a pretty logical assumption that gasoline usage is much greater in the predominately suburban, rural and small town congressional districts most often represented by Republicans, than in more compact, urban districts usually held by Democrats. That means the longer gasoline prices remain high, the worse it will be for GOP candidates.
Also in today's Post, a prominent GOP pollster, who also happens to be a chief architect of the Republicans' 1960s and '70s Southern strategy, says the recent White House shake-up - an attempt to jump-start the administration and boost President Bush's "rock-bottom" approval ratings - are "too little, too late" to "salvage Bush's presidency."
"This administration may be over," Lance Tarrance said last week. "By and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over."
He cited the RT Strategies polls, which shows that 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance.
Tarrance said it would be extremely difficult for any president to bounce back this late in his administration and reassert influence on Capitol Hill when his approval rating barely exceeds his party's base support and half of all adults surveyed said they "strongly disapprove" of his performance. An overwhelming 73 percent of independents disapprove of Bush's performance, and two-thirds of those "strongly disapprove."
Washington Post story
Back in Alabama
Meanwhile back at the ranch in Alabama, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley picked up another endorsement in her quiet march to become the state's Democratic Party nominee for governor.
Alabama New South Coalition Endorses Baxley for Governor
As reported in a somewhat misleading story by the Montgomery bureau of the Associated Press this week, in the absence of a dramatic acquittal in the Siegelman-Scrushy trial in Montgomery, Baxley will likely face Gov. Bob Riley in the November general election.
The AP story overplayed early expectations about Judge Roy Moore, although as we have reported here before, it is too early to count the Ten Commandments Judge out just yet. Much of his support will be of the "stealth" variety, which is to say they will not show up in the polls.
So what's the lesson for Journalism 202?
If you are a news reporter, ask intelligent questions that get to the point - and don't be afraid to educate your audience. But to take on the mantle of educating an audience is way too much responsibility for today's corporate news media. They might offend an advertiser or stockholder and lose a dollar or two.
A great Southern writer told me not so long ago that he "learns something" every time he reads one of my articles. It was not a compliment, because the philosophy of corporate, objective journalism is never to educate, only to "inform."
But many readers have e-mailed since this Web site came online to say they turn here on a regular basis because it is one of the few places in media-land of any format where they can expect to find "the truth."
As for Political Science 202, politicians should stop being afraid of taking too strong a stand and losing a few votes. Say what you mean and mean what you say, and the flocks will follow you into the promised land - a land where George W. Bush is tried, convicted and removed from office for "high crimes and misdemeanors."
If there is a God, God knows Bush has committed enough crimes in his lifetime. Shouldn't he have to pay for a few of them before he heads back to the ranch?
by Glynn Wilson
It's blackberry winter in Alabama with cloudy skies and cool temperatures and there's not much light for shooting bird pictures. Plus, the spring migration is about over anyway.
So it's a good time to read and/or catch up on weekend programming on C-SPAN, where you can learn allot about what's going on in the world beyond the suburbs.
It's always funny and somewhat instructive to watch the annual White House correspondents dinner at the National Press Club building in Washington, D.C., especially for a credentialed Congressional reporter who has attended events there myself.
Last year on a trip there I met a lot of interesting people, including some of Hunter S. Thompson's editors and friends - and the famous White House shill reporter and gay male prostitute, Jeff Gannon.
It was interesting to watch President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura flee the building as soon as the dinner program ended after the spoof conservative comedian Stephen Colbert reamed the president while pretending to support him as his hero. It was also seriously funny to watch Bush lookalike comedian Steve Bridges do Bush better than Bush.
Bush Faces Press With Comedian Lookalike
Earlier in the evening, however, there was an interesting program on C-SPAN's Book TV, which featured MediaChannel's Rory O'Connor interviewing Danny Schechter, who calls himself the "news dissector."
Schechter's new book When News Lies: Media Complicity and The Iraq War is billed as "an up to date indictment of the role media played in promoting and misreporting the war on Iraq."
According to the MediaChannel.Org Web site, "It is an analysis of how and why the media got it wrong that pinpoints the failures of journalism and the collusion of media companies with the Bush Administration."
"Most of the anti-war movement focused on the crimes of the Bush Administration ignoring the mainstream media, its far more effective accomplice," says Schechter, a former network producer with ABC and CNN. "The government orchestrated the war while the media marketed it. You couldn't have one without the other."
With the book you also get a feature-length DVD of the prize-winning film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception), which chronicles the media war fought alongside the military campaign and the struggle to stand up for truth and a foreword by acclaimed media writer and Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, along with prefaces by independent Iraq reporter Dahr Jamail and information warfare specialist Colonel (Ret) Sam Gardiner, a war analyst for the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer.
The film WMD, distributed on DVD by Cinema Libre Distribution, won top documentary prizes at film festivals in Austin Texas, Denver Colorado and Durban, South Africa.
For more information and to see the trailer narrated by Academy Award winner Tim Robbins, visit wmdthefilm.com.
Or check out Schechter's media watchdog site, MediaChannel.Org.
It has long been my position that the media and the press need critics from the left as well as the right. As an investigative reporter who got into the news business at a time when then-President Ronald Reagan had the press on the ropes and the Moral Majority had the media on the march to the right, I have watched with great angst as this trend has continued under the fear-mongering Bush administration.
It is unclear whether the media and the press in this country will take up the call and respond to this criticism, or whether all the new alternative media sources will supplant them. But it is clear that large numbers of people are disgruntled with the mainstream media and turning to alternative sources for news online.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, the World Wide Web continues to grow as a source of news for Americans. One-in-four, 24 percent, list the Web as a main source of news. Roughly the same number, 23 percent, say they go online for news every day, up from 15 percent in 2000; the percentage checking the Web for news at least once a week has grown from 33 percent to 44 percent over the same time period.
We say long live the press, the Internet, the First Amendment and the United States of America. But the media critics are right. The corporate media is complicit in this war and the damage this administration has done. The public should hold them accountable and raise hell about it.
Now that President George W. Bush has stolen his last election and the American people are wising up and getting tired of the lies and spin, a few historians are beginning to weigh in on what Bush's legacy might be.
Even before LocustFork.Net went live from the Washington, D.C. area on March 28, 2005, we reported that Bush was the worst president in United States history on October 26, 2003.
Theologian Says It's Time for Civil Disobedience
Now Rolling Stone magazine has found more historians who are starting to say the same thing. It has been said that journalism is the first draft of history, or history on the run...
The lead?
George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.
Well duh. You think?
We just wish they had not used the line about a cataclysmic event in that paragraph. It might give the new White House chief of staff an idea...
New Bush Policy Chief 'Brooks Brothers' Rioter?
But it may not even matter. In the past few days, there have been two new videos released from radical Muslim extremists, called terrrorists of course by the Bush administration. Need we connect the dots and point out that every time in the past when there was a new video, a major attack followed?
Terrorist Leader Rejects Iraq Government
Terrorist Al-Zarqawi Pops Up In Video
Osama Bashes 'Zionist Crusade'
What does the Bush administration do to try and diffuse the situation? Do they try and make more friends in the world? Or more enemies?
Iran Threatens to Hide Nuclear Program
Perhaps if we move quickly to impeach the bastards we might be able to avert the wrath of these religious zealots. Unfortunately, it is pretty clear that is not going to happen fast enough.
It has been said before that there is some strange connection between Bush and bin Laden. Maybe they met at a haram orgy in Saudi Arabia in 1972 and had a falling out after a brief affair.
Or maybe it is just that Osama hates the Bush's for killing his favorite brother in Texas in 1988.
What should be apparent is that no country in the world will care if the American Empire comes crashing down, not even Canada, since Canadians hate Bush as much as the French.
Stock up on beans and shotgun shells, along with water and other stuff. I'm not kidding, sort of. It may be a long siege.
by Glynn Wilson
CLAY, Ala. - It had been 15 years since I last ran into Bob Sargent, a retired electrician and amateur bird scientists from Clay, Alabama. It was nice to see he still practices his passion for birds and their habitat and is still working hard to educate the young about the importance of conserving the environment.
He and his wife Martha were instrumental in helping to launch the Clay Elementary Bird Fest last year, along with Shirley Farrell's fourth-grade enrichment class. The second annual festival took place Saturday. Here's the link to the little story about it in the Birmingham News.
Clay Students Meet Some Big Birds
That last time I talked to Mr. Sargent, the United States Navy was trying to take out a 200-square mile area in the Gulf of Mexico off Alabama's coast to locate an electromagnetic pulse simulation device to test ships for hardening against an atmospheric nuclear blast.
He spoke out publicly against some bad science being conducted as part of that project by University of Southern Mississippi researchers. And along with a budding environmental and economic public movement against the project and some aggressive press, he helped to kill the program's $78 million line item in the Defense Department budget and put the EMPRESS II in dry dock - permanently.
I quoted Sargent in the first of about 40 stories I wrote on the subject. And since that story was one of my favorites in the series, you can now read it on this Web site in my old clip archive.
Research Ruffles Birders' Feathers
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