The Ugly Un-American 09.19.07: Week 8
Posted by Ray Church on 09.19.2007
A large list of short shots. The Jena 6, Sean Hannity, Hillary Clinton, moveon.org, net neutrality, Alan Greenspan and this week's Shut the Hell Up Award, all on the Ugly UnAmerican.
OK, a shorter column this week as I'm a little pressed for time. There are a few things that have popped up in the last week that I have to talk about, but with so little time I'm forced to do a truncated column this week.
So, without further a do, on with the show.
Get O.J. off my television screen!
I mean it. Stop telling me about the latest breaking news in the OJ Simpson story and give me some real news, like the Jena 6. You see, O.J. Simpson has once again committed a crime, and instead of treating it like it really is, we get round the clock reports on the intimate details of O.J. Simpson.
In the meantime, 6 African American students await trial for attempted murder and aggravated second degree battery after a school brawl. They face this after a series of fights between black and white students around Jena. The students were initially threatened with nooses after sitting in "the wrong part of the school", while one African American student was set upon by a number of students with broken bottles, while at another time a white student pulled out a pump action shotgun on three black students.
This lead to a lunch room brawl where the 6 African American students attacked one of the white students. They were charged. Justin Sloan, who was one of the boys responsible for the beer bottle attack? Battery, and received a probation sentence. The boy who pulled out a shotgun? No charge, in fact it lead to three charges against Robert Bailey, the boy who wrestled the gun away from him (theft of a firearm, second-degree robbery and disturbing the peace).
So while we're all sitting around wondering if a black man will get away with kidnapping, don't forget that for the average kid on the street, the system favors the white kids.
Sean Hannity: Open Mouth, Insert Foot
We report, you decide? Fair and balanced? Maybe you better listen a bit more carefully to Sean Hannity, explaining his role in the immigration debate.
... like on the immigration bill. The fix was in. Everybody agreed to it. They didn't expect a push back. Talk radio got involved, FOX NEWS, the new media all of a sudden people got informed. They started dialing—instilled fear in their politicians and it changed.
OK, talk radio and the new media are all about taking sides, but isn't Fox News supposed to be Fair and Balanced? Are you telling me they might be… gulp… biased? Nooooooooooooo!
Clinton Watch
OK, I'm absolutely conflicted about Hillary Clinton. Given Hillary v anybody on the Republican side and if I were able to vote she'd get my vote every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
But I'd take almost any member of the Democrats over her.
What got me worked up this week was her claim about knowing how to "work the system". Her latest selling point is that she has the savvy to get things done. Why does this get me upset?
The system is the problem. Knowing how to use a broken system is useless when the thing that needs to change is the system itself.
Moveon.org… the new Michael Moore
Everybody this week was falling over themselves to condemn Moveon.org over their ads against General Patreus. John McCain went so far as to say they should be thrown out of the country.
So, while all the right wing pundits were yelling about how much liberals wanted America to lose and all the liberals were called on to defend or reject it, we forgot to go back to the actual debate.
This is how it works. There isn't a reasonable defense of the war, so when people start to pull away the veneer of the spin, start to question the numbers that were given to them, the "How Dare They" machine goes into action.
You know this machine: How dare they question Patreus' patriotism? He's presenting facts and figures twisted to present the Administrations talking points, contradicting the previous GAO report, but how dare you question his patriotism!
Moveon.org joins the list of "how dare they" liberals: the same ones from Bernard Goldberg's big book of lists. Phil Donahue, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan… high profile liberals get painted and cast aside. Just look at Tom Delay trying to throw Keith Olbermann under the bus.
Liberals get one mistake. How often do high profile conservatives get to screw things up? How many times does Sean Hannity get to tell people they don't love America? How many times does Bill O'Reilly get to launch a war on the non-existent war on Christmas? How many times does Anne Coulter get to run her mouth off without engaging her brain?
Beware the Department of Justice
We all thought opposition to net neutrality was a dead issue after Senator Ted Stevens tried to describe the Internet as a series of tubes. This week the Department of Justice decided to restart the whole process by declaring its opposition to Net Neutrality in a filing to the FCC.
If you don't know what Net Neutrality is, it's a bit hard to explain, but basically it means that any two websites, all things being equal, should have equal access to the Internet. It means that if you want to read our site, as opposed to say msnbc.com, you should equally be able to access both of them. You connection should give you just as much bandwidth when you read our site as when you read msnbc.com, and that when you search for information you are as likely to find information from our site as anywhere else.
OK, it's more complicated than that, but here's where the problem comes. At the moment, what makes the Internet so great is the chance to find out about information you don't get from the mainstream news. When I'm searching for information for my columns, I spend more time on independent media, such Democracy Now or Dan Carlin or mediamatters than I do on the mainstream media. If Net Neutrality goes, it's quite conceivable that your Internet Provider may well decide that you should pay more if you want to visit independent media such as us. We would become cable. You get PBS for free, the big sites for cheap and the vast majority of us plebs for what ever they charge you.
No More Blood for Oil
If you haven't heard this one, Alan Greenspan has been under attack this week for a throw away line in his book where he intonated that oil was one of the reasons behind the Iraq War.
This has caused a firestorm in the blogosphere, with people like Chris Matthews up in arms, complaining "why didn't he tell us earlier".
So here's the question for the minute: Why didn't you listen to the millions of other people who were telling you it was about oil? Every time Bush set his foot outside the US in 2003, there were signs yelling "no more blood for oil", while people like Mathews were crying about Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction and the plans for democracy in the Middle East.
Maybe the real reason they're angry at Greenspan is that they're angry at themselves. It wasn't that Greenspan didn't tell them, it's that they didn't consider the possibility that the government was lying to them.
Shut the Hell Up Award
OK. I never watch Glenn Beck. In fact I never watch CNN if I can help it.
But Glenn Beck had some… interesting… observations about Greenspan's oil comments this week.
uhh… yes. Obviously I believe that Saddam's desire to obtain nukes was a primary factor. So was Iran. But so is stabilizing the region and turning oil rich enemies maybe into friends or allies or maybe just stable.
Yup, Beck believes that this is creating stability in the Middle East. But he goes further.
You might read the ex-Chairman of Shell that said over the weekend that oil could hit over $150 a barrel as world production begins to peak, not really good news for a country whose entire economy, not to mention it's entire way of life, is based on cheap oil. Be far better to have $150 a barrel of oil, than none at all, wouldn't it?
Boo hoo.
Forget the fact that environmentalists have been telling you about peak oil for the last two decades, or that we've been highly critical of America's way of life.
This is, shamefully, quite indicative of American Capitalism.
Last week I got into a debate with Ray Robinson over the economy and he fired off the idea that "liberals don't understand capitalism". I responded that I do, which is why we are against it. Here is a perfect example of that principle.
What Beck is suggesting is that America, when faced with a lack of supply has the right to attack and invade another country. Instead of finding alternatives, which is what us "liberals who don't understand capitalism" suggested two decades ago, instead we get a war of choice, hidden under the moniker of making the world safe for democracy, or ridden Saddam of non-existent weapons, or providing a counter point to Iran (which, until Beck said it, I had yet to hear as a reason for invading Iraq).
If you haven't seen it, the worst part is the glee on Beck's face when he launches into this. He's giddily laughing about it. Its arrogance personified.
And these people wonder why people hate America.
No time for links this week. I'll try to catch up next week.
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