Liberal Media Elite

My idea:

I’d fund Single Payer Healthcare and let Wall Street fend for itself. Then when the depression starts, we wont have to worry about how to pay for illnesses. We shouldn’t have to worry about it now either, but we do.

We would also have all that money from not paying insurance to buy a new electric car and restart a new green economy.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich sums it up for me:

“The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.

The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.”

What would you do with $700 billion?

The City of St. Paul announced today that they will not prosecute journalists arrested in connection with the RNC protests on Thursday night of the Republican convention. Here is MPR’s story.

Good. I’m off the hook for that misdemeanor they charged me with. I can tell Ron Kuby to stand down.

But I am still curious why it was necessary to arrest credentialed (some credentialed by the RNC themselves) journalists at all? And why some were placed under arrest and taken down town to Ramsey County Jail; while some others were processed and released at the scene?

I was astounded to see the next day on the internet that KARE 11’s arrested photog had made their live shot for the 10 o’clock news still wearing his credentials and with his citation (ticket) in hand. Are some journalists more equal than others?

I, on the other hand, was taken downtown and had my RNC credentials taken from me. I got them back in a “Blues Brothers” type of inventorying. They listed them as “other paper.” Then, I got my citation and was dropped off in a paddy wagon at 3 AM in a desolate spot of St. Paul.

But seriously if you were going to look at this picture and guess which one was a protester and which one was a journalist which one would you pick?

I helped you out by highlighting the green RNC credential and the notepad in the white circle…. things the guys wearing bandannas on their faces don’t have.

It still didn’t stop the riot police from shooting flash bombs seemingly right at me and corraling me in a scrum of photographers, journalists and protesters. After that maneuver, they held me and almost 400 others on the bridge for 3 hours. Then, they took me downtown for another 3 hours. They finally released me at 7th and Layfette (I still don’t know where that is).

At the same time I was released into the wild with the protesters I had bonded with -we were in the joint together ya’ know- I suspect the photog from KARE 11 and several other journalists through some unknown selection process were cozily in bed.

Don’t get me wrong. I am happy they are dropping the charges. It was a pretty weird situation that could have been worse.

But as one of the cops at the St. Anthony Ave. mugshot center at the foot of the Marion St. Bridge told me, “We got $5.5 million worth of riot gear for [the RNC]. When is the next time we are going to use it?”

And from the looks of it they still had a lot left over. They did have a very orderly, although slow, system for handling protesters and “out-law” journalists. I was even offered a brown paper bag with two slices of bread, PB&J and fruit. I turned it down though and went on an immediate hunger strike in my own protest.

So, assuming the charges stay dropped, I got an involuntary display of St. Paul riot police readiness, a tour of the Ramsey County Jail and an official looking citation.

But, I think there is a lot more to this story and I still have questions.

Normally I don’t reprint e-mails that I receive without first specifically receiving permission from the person who sent it — but in this case I kinda thought, well, fuck it.

hey… you pieces of shit. that was the most fagasious shit i have even witnessed in my entire life. you call yourselves actors, ha, I call you fucking, faggot, china babies, whose use of arrogant words such as, nigger, are for shock value alone. You call your selves playwrights? who the fuck do you think you are coming to my city? seriously? You come here thinking your cool and then you call my city a ghost town as you drive into the distance… fuck you! seriously? why don’t you fuckers go back to china where you belong and wright shit plays for them instead.

sincererly

FUCK YOU! minnisota nigger cunts!

niggggggggggerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
chink, gook, honkey, chinese piece of shit cong!

come back soon we miss you already!

NOT!

Now, putting aside for the moment that the most wounding part of this missive is its utter butchery of the English language — this is far from the first message of this nature that I’ve received, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’d hope that it’s self-evident that there’s more going on in the play than shock value, but the accusation of carelessness in my writing is always dismaying. The true arrogance on my part, I suppose, is the assumption that I can write political satire — containing much material that I know will be hurtful to members of the audience — and not expect to receive any backlash from it.

That said, it’s almost impossible to discern exactly what his purpose is — whether he’s someone offended by use of racist terminology (in which case his e-mail is either a case of failed irony or stunning hypocrisy), or whether he’s a racist himself annoyed at having been shown up (in which case, well, I will cheerfully and unapologetically say “Fuck him”).

Still — good to be back in Minnesota, y’know?

“I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president.”

–George Bush, June 17th, 2008. Referring to the levee break in Gulfport, IL.

Yes, Mr. Prezzz has been to too many disasters. Pity he hasn’t done anything to diminish the impact of them. Having learned nothing, apparently, from Katrina…having opted to defer doing anything whatsoever about our crumbling infrastructure…the Prezzz has, in the time since Katrina not yet proposed a single increase in funding for levee improvements.  Of course, he couldn’t do a thing about the rains that have led to the flooding throughout the Midwest. He could and should have done something about improving the infrastructure in place to mitigate the damage and even diminish the likelihood of these floods. The levees in Gulport, one of the 37 levee sites in the US considered at risk, broke today flooding millions of acres of cropland, destroying businesses, and ruining homes. In each of his previous budgets, the Prezzz has refused to allocate additional funds for critically needed improvements. Why? ‘Cause he can’t do that and continue his ridiculous tax cuts and corporate subsidies without blowing up his budget even further. Infrastructure ages and it takes more than maintenance money to fix it. If the next President chooses to address this issue (or the Dems in Congress…who I have little to no faith in given their track record of the last two years) he will have to raise revenue or hack the life out of spending elsewhere. And the Republicans will scream “tax and spend, tax and spend” like Rainman screaming about burning the baby.

I’ll take tax and spend any day over slash and spend. I’ll take a higher tax rate any day over more disasters that have more severe consequences than they need to have.

Yeah, Mr. Prezzz. You’ve been to way too many disasters as President. And you’ve done nothing but diminish our ability to address them.

So we’ve started rehearsals for our next show, All Rights Reserved: A Libertarian Rage, which is a rewrite and a remount of a show we did a couple of years back — the show that initially got me into political writing. Like most of Maximum Verbosity’s shows, one of its primary themes is language, in this case how it operates within the realm of politics. One of the ways this is represented is through the use of profanity and racial slurs throughout the script.

When I initially wrote those scenes, I recall sitting down and thinking through the implications very carefully. I recognize the fact that there are some people — indeed, a significant portion of the population — who can find the mere existence of a word to be offensive, even painful. Surely, I thought, I must be able to connect to that mentality on some level — there must be at least one word, somewhere in the English lexicon, that fills me with rage.

But there isn’t. As a student of language, I’ve always had the sense that words, by themselves, mean nothing — they’re complete abstractions of the concept they represent: an arbitrary collection of syllables; ink on paper. Their meaning is defined entirely by intent and context. I’m reminded of a quote by Larry Elder:

Hate crime legislation forces us to place greater value on some victims because of race. By all means, we should prosecute bad conduct. But if I’m standing at an ATM machine and a Ku Klux Klansman hits me in the back of the head with a brick, the operative word is not “Klansman.” It is “brick.”

I’m also conscious of individual words as bearing the weight of history. Am I being excessively semantic to point out that the word “nigger” ultimately emerged from the Latin “niger” — a form of speech that hasn’t been widely used in nearly 1600 years? That it has derivants in every Romance language? That it was a neutral descriptive in our own country until about 150 years ago? That 150 years from now, it will no doubt carry a completely different connotation?

Oprah’s serene assertion that the word should be stricken from the dictionary (to full-house applause by an interracial audience) seems to me to be to be nothing less than an attempt to — if you’ll forgive the phrase — whitewash history. Language isn’t an absolute, but an evolving organism; and for someone fascinated with that process, witnessing the attempts of the black community to consciously reclaim the word has been compelling stuff.

These are all arguments I’ve been making for years. But picking up this project again, I find that my thinking has developed, and I think that my beef runs a little deeper than that.

I’m not prepared to say that I’m totally immune to being offended by something, but I think I certainly have a higher threshold than most. If someone says something I disagree with, I’m far more likely to laugh, shrug my shoulders, think “Wow, that dude is crazy,” and go on my way. If I were to be physically attacked for my minority status, my emotional response would be fear for my life — being “offended” on behalf of the race I was born into would, I imagine, be very far from my mind in that moment! A lot of my writing has been offensive to a lot of people, although that’s never been my intention. And here, I think, is why it bothers me so much:

Ultimately, it’s hard for me to read taking offense as anything other than attempt to seize control of the conversation. To be “offended” by something is to immediately put your opponent on the defensive. This is one of the reasons that polical correctness is subjected to much ridicule: that, for example, the appropriate term for an American of African descent has been, at various points, negro, nigger, colored person, person of color, black, African-American, Afro-American — and none of them are an appropriate descriptive of the range of ethnicities it applies to! To use the wrong one in the wrong environment is to demonstrate how out of touch you are, to force you to apologize, to put you on the defensive.

This is perhaps more visible in the left — but the right is, if anything, worse — it’s just that their sacred cows are differently placed. Try to say anything critical of America’s recent military ventures, and, oh! The offense! The umbrage! And we have to twist ourselves into knots apologizing, affirming our patriotism, beating the nationalist drum. It’s a dirty trick, and one that’s killed dead just about any meaningful dialogue we could have about the war. Or race. Or language. Or any number of other issues.

None of this is new — after all, it was just a few centuries ago in Britain where it was a stated crime, punishable by death, to think treason against the king. In a representative republic, we’ve organized our “forbidden language” around a different set of concepts. Could we at least stop being offended long enough to figure out where we all stand beneath this steadily-growing morass of forbidden words and phrases?

So I’m out on the road right now. Have been for about two months. Things have been quiet. I haven’t subjected our readership here to my screeds about saving fish and the necessity of dam removal or the evils of the proposed Pebble Mine.

What I have figured out is who I can’t stand. Connecticut Republicans. These are officially, after having traversed this country, the most repellant people I have ever met. These fucking people have everything: money, civil infrastructure, culture, and an economy that caters directly to their fucking ‘needs.’ And yet, AND YET, they are fucking fascists.

So here’s the situation: I wander into a bar. The Detroit Red Wings are in game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. All I want in the world is to drink a beer in peace and watch Nick Lidstrom hoist 35 lbs. of hockey history etched in silver (otherwise known as Lord Stanley’s Cup) over his head. What I get is a screaming match by everyone at the bar about how Barack Obama is at best a socialist, and at worst the anti-christ. And I was fine with that. I didn’t want to talk politics. I just wanted to watch The Wings win the oldest trophy in professional sports. It wasn’t until the bartender, trying to dismiss the Junior Senator from Illinois asked who was the last president to (in his words) ‘unify the country.’ Given that to him the ‘Kennedy’ is a bad word, I went straight for FDR. Franklin Delano himself. I hadn’t said a word in this conversation until this point, as it was cutting into my enjoyment of the third period. So it’s in part that these idiots were harshing my Stanley Cup mellow, and in part that they were trashing on one Barry Obama, that I had to speak up. I wish I hadn’t.

Did I mention that these people are fascists? I kid you not, he defended HITLER over FDR. Something about how he brought his nation together and FDR nearly became a tyrant.

This was the most egregious example, but the two women at the bar basically gave a pocketbook defense of Republicanism. Yes, yes, you don’t like Bush, and absolutely you don’t like how the war turned out (didn’t stop you from re-electing Bush 2004, but, I won’t say I told you so) and, of course, OF COURSE, you’re socially liberal.(I mean, The Gays are very nice) But you just can’t vote for a Democat because they’ll raise taxes.

When the Revolution happens I’m coming to Connecticut, taking your Beamer for a joyride, pissing in the backseat, and laughing my ass all the way back to the newly formed Great Lakes Nation. Where good people live.

Joe Lieberman never made so much sense to me until just now.

Connecticut. Worst Blue State, EVER.

So a while ago I read the novel “Empire” by Orson Scott Card. I’m a fan of his fiction, less so of his political writing — frankly, I think he’s off his rocker most of the time, and obnoxiously dismissive of anyone who disagrees with him, although he will occasionally startle me with a well-reasoned and fairly-argued point about a controversial issue. So I was looking forward to this one, not least because its premise — a civil war breaking out in the contemporary United States — is an interesting one to me.

It’s appallingly bad.

Leaving its politics aside, its literary qualities are pure camp, played with an absolutely unironic intensity. Its heroes are all unflinching, steely-eyed, square-jawed military men; its villains cringing, conniving academics plotting the overthrow of the free world. The prose is riddled with intrusive editorials from his blog. It’s almost impossible to believe that this emerged from the same mind that created the tales of Alvin Maker — stories about a group of men and women trying to stop a civil war that are thoughtful, layered, and inventive. Seriously. This reads like one of Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen novels, only it’s not a parody.

I suspect that all of these issues are symptomatic of an underlying conceptual problem. The basic argument of the book is as follows: that all of the moderates need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos will break us apart. On its face, this seems like a reasonable position, and echoes one that I’ve been hearing in political discourse for a while. The problem is that it’s bullshit. Read his work closely, and his definitions become a bit less opaque. Do you support homosexual marriage? Then you’re a wacko! Do you oppose the occupation of Iraq? Then you’re a wacko! And pretty soon, it becomes clear that the real argument of the book reads thus: that all of the moderates (people who think what I do) need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos (everyone who disagrees with me) will break us apart.

It’s a rhetorical trick — six of one, half a dozen of the other. For that matter, I have a hard time seeing the virtue of moderation as a guiding moral principle, period. Sure, you can look around you and draw up an average of the opinions of everyone within your political boundaries — and I guess that would make you a moderate, if such a thing is to be desired — but in nearly every other place and time in human history, you’ll be a raving extremist. You believe in representative government? Guess what? In the context of most other civilizations throughout time, you’re a wacko. I know that it’s an extreme example. but if you were a moderate in Nazi Germany, I wouldn’t want to know you. What’s to be gained by seeking a middle position between two morally untenable ones? The founding fathers weren’t seeking a reasonable middle position, and they were quite openly contemptuous of those who did. This guy sure as hell wasn’t a moderate about anything.

After I spoke at my Republican caucus, I was followed by a man who stood up and asserted that “an election is not the time to assume a moral position.” Buh? Then when is the appropriate time? When there’s nothing at stake? When there’s nothing to be either gained or lost by espousing a principle?

I’m annoyed with myself, because I’ve been so hesitant to support Ron Paul. For a number of reasons. He seems too good to be true, for one thing, and I’ve been burned by politicians before — the last time I was this enthusiastic about a politician was Bill Clinton in 1996. (Which, I suppose, demonstrates how far my politics have swung in the past decade.) For another, I’m embarrassed to be playing to type, to be so utterly predictable. A fellow playwright asked me who I was supporting a couple of weeks back, then cut me off before I could respond: “Oh, you’re a libertarian. You’re just going to be supporting Ron Paul.”

So yeah, I’m annoyed with myself. Not because I haven’t been shoving my opinions down people’s throats (like, I’m afraid, so many other Ron Paul supporters have been doing), but because I’ve been squatting over my enthusiasm for him, stammering and changing the subject even when people ask me point blank who I like in the race — when I’m faced with the most exciting political candidate I’ve seen in my lifetime. In a way, that’s why I’m pleased to see the success of Obama’s candidacy, despite my profound dislike for his policies — that someone has the opportunity to support a candidate that they can believe in. Lord knows the Republicans don’t. When presented with the options, they chose the path of political expediency.

And if that’s the voice of moderation, then I’ll none of it. If there’s a basic argument to what I’m trying to say, it reads thus: that all of the extremists need to keep arguing…

…before the self-styled moderates find a way to pull us together.

I got back from a little pre-holiday visit to Seattle and found three documentaries from Netflix in my mailbox. They were all very good, especially “Helvetica,” the one about the font Helvetica, which hasn’t anything to do with politics, so we’ll skip that here. Anyway, the other two were “Manufacturing Dissent” by Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine and “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” by Kirby Dick.

Taken together, “Manufacturing” and “Rated” present a deeply unnerving portrait of American popular culture and American political culture. Because, in a media-saturated republic, what is politics than just another form of celebrity? Our elections are more about who Americans want to have a beer with and what church it’s perceived the candidates attend than any sort of serious, real-world concern. Many differences between Red and Blue, GOP and Democratic are really more cultural than political, after all. Which is a legitimate and deep split, but let’s not confuse that with being serious-minded citizens.

I maintain that the pro-torture crowd is deeply out-of-touch with reality and history. How else can it be explained that these self-aggrandizing defenders of America have so little idea about America? They have spent too much time with Kiefer Sutherland and too little with Montesquieu. To wit, there is no political thought behind the American right, there is only pop culture. Torture works in movies, so it must work in reality. No liberal school of thought would allow them to think what they think and still be democrats (notice the little L and little D). No, they are beyond that; they have grown up and out, like so much ether. Alas, the legitimacy to modern conservatism is fiction because, well, the ideas behind it are rooted in fiction. Specifically “Die Hard.” It is not philosophy, it’s a screenplay with a very horrible ending.

Not that us on the left are much better; indeed, much of the time we express envy at how forcefully passionate the right wing can be over nothing. Watching the clashes Michael Moore inspires in “Manufacturing” was tragic: people were thinking, but in a very reactionary, reptilian, brain-stemmy kind of way, that is, they were not thinking at all, but playing a game, a reality show with 300 million in its cast, all tears and betrayal. Our polarization is real but superficial. It’s an accessory. It’s like a big, important version of debating which New Kid on the Block you’re totally going to marry someday.

While mine is a dim view of the American people, it’s also a fairly accurate one and maybe being harsh on my fellow citizens isn’t so much I-hate-freedom as it is just a profound disappointment in what we’re able to squander at light speed. Which is, um, a lot. Uncontested superpowers have never been very good at discipline, I suppose.

Anyway, I came to be very depressed after the 196 minutes of those two documentaries. Our country’s politics and media and corporations have all been kind of combined into some sort of über-goo that permeates our culture and is so pervasive that we can’t even move. Kirby Dick, for example, brings up the idea—and then proves it beyond a reasonable doubt—that a handful of companies control 90% of all media and that the Motion Picture Association of America is an unelected force that controls Hollywood, always erring on the side that the most pandering, hucksterish, nannyish, hamfisted sort of decision on a film’s rating is the best decision to make. Because that’s inevitably the decision that makes cash. Because fuck honesty. I mean, I suppose I know all of this intellectually—we all do. But there’s something incredibly disquieting about being reminded of it, especially when there is research and figures to go along with it.

Which is part of the problem: Americans are no longer interested in protecting democracy or the republic and we don’t think it is being eroded because it “can’t” be, no matter how much evidence mounts to the contrary. I can’t really find another interpretation except that we’ve become incredibly lazy and unlike, say, Teddy Roosevelt, we’d rather have cheap plastic imports from China than worry about corporations completely undermining the rule of the people. There’s a certain exquisite sin to this behavior, I think.

As of this moment, we’re very unworthy of our history.

The genius was that we had a government that drew its legitimacy not from God (cf. Divine Right) but from the consent of the governed. But there is no such thing as a corporation running its business with the consent of its workers. No, that doesn’t really happen, not even in forced collectives.

But what made me really queasy was this:

“If there were a vibrant left in the United States, Michael Moore’s milquetoast radicalism would be laughed at rather than laughed with.” —David Marsh of Rock ‘n’ Roll Confidential

Yes. Anyway, all I really wanted to do was talk to Natascha about all this; I don’t actually have a point. But she’s visiting her mom in Germany. And seriously, how stupid is it that she carries the passports of three countries but doesn’t have a triband phone so I can call her when she’s out of town? God! So dumb! Bitch, get with the 21st century.

I ♥ it. Watch much.

Just saw on the AP that Iran says it will retaliate against Israel if Israel attacks it. The press is in a tizzy about it and the Israeli’s and various US officials are hoppin’ mad.

Um…what’s the surprise? Forget the names involved…country A says to country B “if you bomb us we’re gonna bomb your ass back”.

Like, no shit, dude.

I’m not a fan of Iran. Never have been. But, why is it everyone’s acting like they said something outlandish?

Weird.

In an airport again. On my way to Canada this time. Stopped to use a restroom — three stalls, all lined up, all occupied. Used those motion-activated flushing mechanisms, which means that each time one of us shifted, the damn thing flushed again, which happened roughly every five seconds.

Aside from the horrific environmental waste, this is just stupid. Everything in the bathroom was automated, the sink, the soap, the toilets, the towels, and not one goddamn thing worked the way it was supposed to. An extraordinary amount of time, money, and effort went into making my bowel-moving experience both more wasteful and less convenient. And — why? Because we’ve literally become too collectively lazy to wipe our own fucking asses?

I caught a few episodes of “American Inventor” a while back. I had some interest in the concept — my father’s a scientist, and most of our money growing up came from patents on his inventions — but I was vaguely appalled by the steady stream of new bike seats, sunglasses, and perfume bottles. There wasn’t a single new idea there, and these people had devoted years of their life and thousands of dollars to — what? A better bar of soap?

If this (admittedly sensationalistic) piece of pop-culture is any indication, the new god of invention isn’t progress but convenience. It’s a sad irony that such an astounding amount of intelligence has gone towards developing new technologies that have pampered us into drooling incompetence. Living in such a decadent culture is almost enough to make me run off into the woords and become a survivalist.

But not quite. After all, what would I do if I needed to rent a Buffy DVD at 11:59pm?

It’s been a long time since I looked at Minnesota Democrats Exposed (I don’t actually read it, as one can get a pretty good idea of what’s happening there by quickly scanning the headlines, i.e., lots of outrage at polysyllabic words). But I noticed that it got a face lift! Good for them. It was time they grew up and stopped looking like Miss Jensen’s 3rd grade class’ Halloween party e-invitation.

Being a designer myself, I was curious about the guy who put it together. And I found these testimonials for Derek Brigham, Graphic Designer to personal trainers and right-wingers throughout the Upper Midwest. And good for him. It’s certainly not a niche market I’d ever fuckin’ want.

One of his happy clients is the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. David Strom, president of the League and (correct me if I’m wrong, here, ’cause this is what it looks like) part-time bartender at chub night at the Eagle, says “Derek exceeds my expectations.” Seriously? They’re happy with that? Really? I won’t even start with how many rules of decent Web design the page breaks… Let’s take a look at the source code:

<!–[if IE 7]><!–></a><!–>![endif]–>

Dude uses Adobe PageMill 3.0! What?!? And who puts their logos on their clients’ pages? It’s not 1996 any longer. There’s a Google now.

I do think that this says far more about the Taxpayers League and MDE than anything. Namely, that they’re tasteless and boring. The design is crammed, unfocused, the kind of thing you’d see in a direct mail circular shilling something you’d apply directly to the forehead. So, snake oil, really. Which, all told, isn’t that far off the mark from the products they’re selling.

(Okay, granted, the code on this site isn’t the best. But, of course, I’m not actually paying myself to design it. Nor does LME make any money. So this isn’t the best to judge my work. Plus, most of the local blog designs suck, so it’s maybe a moot point. With those caveats, I stand by this post. And I still think Strom looks like a bartender at chub night.)

Dear President Ahmadinejad,

Fuck you.

That is all.

Love,
Matthew

Gaaaawwwd. Dammmmmiiiiittttttttt.

Anyone else noticed how we’ve gone from talking about gettin’ out of Iraq (Dec. 2006, post-Iraq Study Group and Democratic wins in the election), to talking about drawing down the troop levels heavily (about the time Hilary started campaigning) but not bailing out, to now drawing down the number of troops who were part of the Surge. Petraeus is talking about the latter, which is effectively talking about ending the Surge. I thought our Democratic leadership, when they caved in to the Prezzz last May, positioned September as the critical date. If, by now, conditions in Iraq weren’t sufficiently good (in the form of the 18 benchmarks the Prezzz identified back in May,the Dems were gonna get all aggressive about pulling the plug. Wanna bet on that happening? Didn’t think so.

This is largely the result of the spinelessness of the Dem leadership combined with the ongoing obsequiousness of a servile press. If I was Bush and I wanted to make Iraq someone else’s problem, thus making the ugly withdrawal that’s sure to happen sometime (’cause we will withdraw and it will be ugly) something that I don’t have to be held accountable for, then I know I have two trump cards. First, the press will let me determine the language, ground rules, and context of the debate (ending the surge vs. ending the war). Second, the Dems are going to be eternally afraid to push me too hard on getting out. The Surge may have been a questionable military strategy but it was solid gold as a political one.

…one of your guys falls down the stairs and dies.

As if things weren’t fucked up enough for the Republicanz, a story that hasn’t gotten much play in the news the last couple days is the quiet tragedy of the death of Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-OH), part of the ultra-conservative conservative Ohio congressional contingent. The 68 year-old congressman fell down the stairs in his DC area townhouse on Wednesday and died from injuries sustained in the fall.

It’s kinda sad that among all the various losses and scandals hammering the Republicans at present, a real live tragedy…the accidental death of a member of the House…gets almost no attention outside of his home state. I mean, the dude’s voting record fills me with terror but he wasn’t consorting with hookers, accepting bribes, rigging elections, horse fucking the Constitution, getting hummers in airport mens rooms, or hitting on underage kids. Near as I can tell, regardless of what I think of his politics, he served his constituents honorably. And I only found out about it ’cause I was at the Washington Post website and bored enough to scroll way down the page to the tiny, tiny print and found the article.

Anyone else out there old enough to remember when the death of a sitting congressman…even under circumstances that aren’t the least bit suspicious, woulda been the banner headline on the front page? I do, way back in my childhood days. But I’m the old guy around these parts so I’m bettin’ I’m alone amongst the LME contingent as far as experiencing it.

…since New Orleans drowned. Since the gulf coast was decimated. Since our national humiliation. Since the Prezzz, and the Gov, and the Mayor Man killed a bunch of people through their incompetence.

Bet they’re all making speeches today.

I’m gonna do me something private. I’m gonna put on the iPod and go sit by the ocean…something about wanting to be near water today…when it ain’t being a killer…I’m gonna crank up John Boutte’s set from the 2007 jazz fest and I’m gonna listen to a perfect voice singing “City of New Orleans”.

And I’m probably gonna cry.

God Bless New Orleans. God Bless her people. God Bless their joy and rage and laughter and tears. God Bless the survivors and the rescuers. God bless the ones that are gone.

They say that one useless man is called a disgrace. Two useless men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress — John Adams, from 1776, the musical

Our Congress, that one with the Democratic Majority in both houses (little good that has done us) has once again capitulated. But this round is for a few more marbles than a funding bill with troop withdrawal deadlines. No, this one is a clear dereliction of duty. When Mr 26% got to deciderin’ that he wanted a new FISA bill, all he had to do was say “boo!” and our Democratic congressional “leaders” folded like clean laundry and gave him what he wanted. And all I (and basically all rational people left in the country) am left to ask is why? Why the fuck would you do that? Whatever reason the Congressional leadership has, it’s lame.

There is more in this than electioneering. There is more in this than being tarred as “soft on terrorism.” Whatever the fuck that means, to begin with. As others have pointed out, do you think Fox News is going to declare, trumpets blaring that the Democrats are suddenly strong on national defense? This is more than being partisan. It’s not about the fact that Commander Codpiece is quickly becoming the least popular and surely the most dangerous president in US history, yet you listen to him anyway. It’s about something bigger. The Republic. Remember? You people are trashing the Constitution. You have given a back-door amnesty to all the misdeeds this “administration” has carried out spying on it’s own citizens. GOD DAMN IT PEOPLE, IF YOU DON’T START DOING YOUR JOBS OF DEFENDING THE CONSTITUTION, THERE WON’T BE MUCH OF A CONSTITUTION TO DEFEND.

Others are articulating their frustration anger sheer revulsion over this bit of legislative surrender better than I. For instance Glenn Greenwald

The common, defining political principle here — what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea — is a fervent and passionate belief in our country’s constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who — having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it — instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

And Meteor Blades at DKos:

Frankly, you epitomize weak. Your every pore exudes feebleness. You are surrender monkeys. And you’ve just casually tossed away a basic protection as if it were a banana peel.

I’m currently working on a production of 1776. Every night I watch actors portray the men that made our country a country. Men that risked the hangman. Risked their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor.” And what a cowardly lot our Democratic “leaders” are by comparison. Every time I think they are getting a back bone. Just when I think they’re ready to go after the pricks in the Executive Branch with both barrels, they promptly point said barrels at their feet and fire at will, more worried about what the ticker on Fox News might say, and with blatant disregard to what the Constitution actually says.

During the show I have a few big breaks. I’m taking advantage of these long breaks to do some reading. I’m currently absorbed in Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason. (It’s really great, and I’ll probably write about it at length when I’m actually done with it) In the midst of writing this post, I read this paragraph:

This administration simply does not seem to agree that the challenge of preserving democratic freedom cannot be met by surrendering core American values. Incredibly, this administration has attempted to compromise the most precious rights that America has stood for all over the world for more than two hundred years: due process, equal treatment under the law, the dignity of the individual, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from promiscuous government surveillance.

Welcome to that club, Democrats. And you signed on why? To pander to. . . somebody. So the meanies on the other side of the aisle wouldn’t throw nasty mud at you next election? Cool, calm political calculation? Meteor blades is right. Surrender Monkeys. I supported, volunteered for, donated money to, and voted for a Democratic Congress that would finally stand up to this administrations power grabs–and that’s all this is, it has about as much to do with fighting terrorism as Iraq does–but in the end you’re all just chickenshit. So, Mr Reid, Ms. Pelosi, just how dry is that powder these days?

It’s time for a song. I dedicate this song from 1776 to our Democratic Congress. (Mind you, this song is sung by the Tories and Loyalists)

What we do we do rationally
We never ever go off half-cocked, not we
Why begin till we know that we can win
And if we cannot win why bother to begin?

Rutledge:
We say this game’s not of our choosing
Why should we risk losing?

All:
We are cool

To the right, ever to the right
Never to the left, forever to the right
We have gold, a market that will hold
Tradition that is old, a reluctance to be bold.

Dickinson:
I sing hosanna, hosanna
In a sane and lucid manner
We are cool

All:
Come ye cool cool considerate men
The likes of which may never be seen again
With our land, cash in hand
Self-command, future planned
And we’ll hold to our gold
Tradition that is old, reluctant to be bold.
We say this game’s not of our choosing
Why should we risk losing?

We cool, cool, cool
Cool, cool, cool
Cool cool men.

Good work guys, we’re all really proud of you.

(UPDATE) Now that I got that off my chest, I think Buffalo Girl is right. Bloggers need to get better at the whole legislative process, not just doing the election thing, and throwing a tea party every year.

Republican David Vitter (R-LA) had his phone number turn up in the little black book of the DC Madam. Oops. Aaah, never mind. It’s okay. He apologized to God and his family a couple of years ago. All is forgiven. And he just apologized to his constituents. Seems a little late. The cynics among us might say it was strictly a matter of political expedience. But, they’re cynics so they don’t count.

And then it turned out that he had been a regular patron of a business run by a woman in New Orleans known as the Canal Street Madam. Double Oops. Dating back to the early 90’s. Triple oops.

No word yet on if his apologies to God and Family covered the Canal Street incidents. As we know, though, through years of empirical observation the Official Republican God is very forgiving of moral slips as long as you are a proponent of tax cuts (rendering unto Ceasar), gutting social programs (helping the least among you), and wars (thou shalt not kill). It seems contradictory, even hypocritical, but God works in mysterious ways known only to Social Conservatives, etc.

Dave, “The Horizontal Bopper”, Vitter has also been one of the leaders in Congress, first in the House and then moving on to the Senate, of the charge for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage.

A greatest hits of sorts…

“Marriage is the most fundamental institution in human history.”

Actually, I’m betting prostitution is a more fundamental institution. But, it’s maybe a chicken and egg thing.

“We have to acknowledge how important those institutions (marriage, church, faith communities) are in influencing behavior.”

The Horizontal Bopper is married. He is a member of a church. He is a leader of the faith based community (whatever that is) and he digs hookers. Ergo, church, marriage, and faith cause a desire for hookers (yeah, I know it’s bullshit but I’m trying to embrace the Right’s use of if-then logic…I can see why they like it so much, it really is fun).

“I think it is appropriate given the results that we focus on upholding an institution as important as traditional marriage.”

No word on how nailing hookers impacts an individual marriage. Must not be important.

I have a long standing policy of not commenting on who a politician fucks. For the most part I don’t care. It’s irrelevant. But The Horizontal Bopper has been on a focused campaign since at least 1998 to use the choice of who someone fucks (in this case gays) as the criteria for whether or not said someone qualifies as a full or a partial citizen. Who he fucks is relevant in that he has made it relevant. Of course the question (that the Right will never answer) is should someone who fucks who they shouldn’t fuck (in the Right’s view…in this case a series of prostitutes over a long period of time) be relegated to partial citizenship status? The answer from paragons of morality like David Vitter is, yes…that’s exactly the test that should be applied. The Bible (not my choice of legal guide but it is certainly Dave’s) is unambiguous about sex outside of marriage…gay or otherwise. It is undoubtedly the case that banging a pro, unless you’re married to her, is an affront to Mr. Vitter’s critical institution of Traditional Marriage. So, then, as a Traditional Marriage terrorist, Mr. Vitter should not be allowed to marry as he is a threat to the enduring nature of the institution. He may couple with someone but he should lose all the privacy and property rights associated with the institution of marriage.

This is the core of the Fundamentalist hypocrisy on the issue of gay marriage and we have yet another Poster Boy for it. Most of its proponents are savvy enough to speak in terms of defending traditional marriage blah, blah, blah. ‘Cause just coming out and saying that fags are icky wouldn’t cut it with enough of the voting population. But that is all the marriage debate is about. If it were truly about the sanctity of marriage then adulterers and divorcees would also have some rights taken away from them in the proposed amendments. But that’s never been part of the proposals. ‘Cause the Right don’t really give a shit about the sanctity of marriage. Dudes like the Horizonal Bopper just don’t like gays.

But they do like hookers. ‘Cause hookers are cool, you know? And nailing hookers is NOT a threat to the sanctity of marriage. God says.

Okay, Katherine Kersten is one thing: We’ve all come to expect every last quotation mark, we can all predict the drivel and she’s not even worth reading any longer, because we all know she’s going to rewrite press releases from the Heritage Foundation… But this?!? Claude Peck and Rick Nelson in “Whithering Glance” are doing what they do best:

Yeah, it’s the unspoken role that the DGU [Doting Gay Uncle] takes on: fabulousness appreciation.

What year do they think it is? What drugs are they on? Why do they constantly describe being a gay guy as if they have “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” on continual loop in their heads? Has their blood been replaced with crushed sequins and cotton candy? And since when are sentences like “Ralph Lauren is adorable in miniature” insightful and witty instead of trite and clichéd? ANSWER ME!

What bothers me the most is that they’re given carte blanche to present their trite, plastic little world as gay reality to all those Anoka County weirdos their publishers have been lusting after and tacky young women with more credit than souls who admire shit like “Ralph Lauren is adorable in miniature.” I don’t care if it’s supposed to be amusing—or amusant, sorry—it is patently offensive in its stupidity. It needs to fucking stop. Claude and Rick need to stop with the Uncle Tommy Hilfiger act. The Strib needs to stop treating its readers like mentally deficient reality-TV addicts who can only think in pigeonholes.

God, I hate them. Hate them, hate them, hate them. And Claude Peck, you fuckwad, you’d better not review my Fringe show. You’re a terrible journalist and a failure as a gay man.