OLBERMANN: Let’s just sit here a moment more as we watch this. And this touches on the idea of regal qualities that were not seen in South Carolina. This is the prosession, this is the parade, these are tonight’s debaters. The ten candidates, filing out, just in fact to our right. We can see them from where we are seated. There is a coronation quality that just was not present in South Carolina.
FINEMAN: Keith, if you look at that picture and took away all of the writing and all of the words, and just had the image, could the American people tell that those were Republicans? I think the answer is yes. There is a hierarchical, there is, dare I say it, male, there is an old-line quality to them that some voters, indeed a lot of voters, find reassuring. And this is something that the Democrats need to understand. The Democrats are the “we are family” party, which is great, but this is the other side of the conversation and this is their home here. We really are in Reagan country.
Anyone remember how Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign on a theme of State’s Rights…in Philadelphia, Mississippi…the town where civil rights workers Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered? Yes, it’s about old male superiority…but not just any old males…
But the "old guard" that so many people find reassuring isn’t just male, is it? The Democrats had a couple of other inappropriate people on that stage last week — a brown one and a black one. (Yet another example of that ridiculous "we are family" stuff.)
I think the Democrats know very well what "the other half of the conversation" is, don’t you?
I, for one, found it extremely "reassuring" that only three out of ten of the Republican candidates for president don’t believe in evolution. And only nine out of ten said it would be a good day if Roe v Wade were repealed. Hey, it could have been worse.
Only nine out of ten? Gosh. They’re really getting liberal over there, aren’t they.
Pissing On The Grave Of Edward R. Murrow…(continued)
In case you were wondering why the quality of journalism coming out of Washington is so Piss poor, David Broder explains here…
Let me disclose my own bias in this matter. I like Karl Rove. In the days when he was operating from Austin, we had many long and rewarding conversations. I have eaten quail at his table and admired the splendid Hill Country landscape from the porch of the historic cabin Karl and his wife Darby found miles away and had carted to its present site on their land.
It isn’t simply that they’re mindlessly parroting the talking points of whoever occupies the White House, as even a faint recollection of the unmitigated hostility Bill Clinton got from them recalls. No. They’re see themselves as part of that republican ruling elite now. There’s David Broder, the man they call the "dean" of Washington journalism, happily recalling his times eating quail…Quail, mind you…with Karl Rove in his historic cabin. And no…I strongly doubt they went out hunting quail beforehand. Not with Cheney anyway.
Sorta puts Broder’s crack about how the Clinton’s came in and "trashed the place" into perspective doesn’t it? Read that Sally Quinn column…it’s one big long inside the beltway bellyache about Clinton and Monica…and ask yourself where the puffed up moral outrage is over…oh say, Guantanamo Bay, the shredding of the Geneva Convention, torture, the destruction of New Orleans, the use of the Department of Justice as a weapon against political opponents and against dissent, being lied into a war that’s killed thousands of young Americans who had their whole lives ahead of them, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of the people we allegedly went to war to liberate. Don’t see it? Well there’s a reason for that. The Washington news establishment all regarded the Clinton team as nothing more then poor southern white trash in Their Town and that’s why they hated them. That’s all that mattered to them then, and it’s all that matters to them now.
One should note here that Step 5, the Final Stage, is almost always sponsored by those who endlessly proclaim how irresponsible and substance-free and unserious political bloggers are, and who thereafter write pieces which do nothing other than repeat the latest Drudge gossip.
You should go read it, because we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing when the 2008 presidential campaign really gets going.
As NRO’s designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake—one of them reportedly a .22.
The other was a nine millimeter Glock. Yes, in fact you Can hose down a place with a semi automatic handgun. Ask me how I know. And according to news accounts, he had a lot of ammo with him.
At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him.
You’re a kid sitting peacefully in class and then someone bursts in and starts shooting. Never mind you have not clue one at that point what kind of gun it is, let alone how many rounds it can hold. Never mind the blast of even a small caliber handgun inside a closed space can be positively disorienting. Never mind that with practice you can drop the clip on that Glock and have another in it and a round chambered faster then someone could probably rush you unless you were practically standing right over them. Just fucking for once in your life try to put yourself in someone else’s place you drooling soulless right wing babbling moron. You’re a kid…you are in class peacefully going on about your school day and then suddenly you and your classmates are being shot at. By the time the first few shots are fired your thoughts are a frightened scrambled mess. Count? Count? Grow a fucking brain Derbyshire, you pathetic warrior male wannabe.
Handguns aren’t very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can’t hit squat.
Why is that not surprising. I shoot mine all the time too John, and I figure I’m not all that exceptional at hitting what I’m shooting at, because most of the other folks at the range there with me usually do too. But you probably think the gun adds several inches to your dick and that’s why you’re not really working it. You think just holding it in your hand makes you something. No. It doesn’t. It’s just a damn gun and you’re still the sorry brain dead soulless asshole you were before you picked it up.
Yes, yes, I know it’s easy to say these things: but didn’t the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything?
Moron! Asswipe! The people on Flight 93 were grown Adults dealing with a situation that allowed them the means to find out what was happening to them (via their cell phones) and time to get themselves organized and together. And their attackers didn’t have guns, only crude knifes. The passengers of flight 93 had a chance the kids at VA Tech never did.
Point of fact, I read of at least one adult, a professor, who seems to have actually tried to save as many of his kids as he could, by staying behind and trying to block the doorway as his kids jumped out the classroom windows. Apparently the killer managed to get in anyway because that professor was one of the dead. But he stayed behind to try and save some of his kids. There’s a hero.
Another Reason Why Public Education In America Is Under Attack…
No…not because the religious right doesn’t want anybody to learn any science that contradicts the bible. Not because right wing republicans don’t want an educated public going to the polls. Yes…it’s all that…but it’s also this: a lot of American adults have bad memories of their treatment at the hands of teachers, administrators, principals. Not quite as extreme as this kid’s…but similar in kind…
A Hempfield Area High School sophomore spent 12 days in juvenile detention after authorities in Westmoreland County mistakenly charged him with making a March 11 bomb threat, in part because the district had not changed its clocks to reflect daylight-saving time.
Cody Webb, 15, of Hempfield, was arrested March 12 and charged with a felony count of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction and misdemeanor counts of making false alarms to public entities, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and making terrorist threats.
Webb, an honors student involved in student council, tennis and the Japanese Club, was immediately taken to the county’s juvenile detention center.
"Cody never even had a (school) detention," said his mother, Linda Webb. "It was a nightmare."
Cody called the school’s automated delay announcement system. An hour later someone called in a bomb threat. But the time stamp was off by an hour because of the new start of daylight savings time this year.
Now…the school officials also had, by the time they dragged Cody into the Principal’s office, a recording of the threat, but…well…like I said…there are a lot of Americans who know by now, how this story is going to go…
"Mrs. Charlton asked me if I had a cell phone. I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said, ‘What’s the number?’ I told her, and she started saying, ‘We got him. We got him.’ I was completely oblivious to what they were talking about," he said.
In the Principal’s office, administrators demanded that Webb admit to calling in the bomb threat, he said.
"I wasn’t going to admit to something I didn’t do," he said. "Me and God know I didn’t do it."
Webb’s parents, Linda and Budd Webb, arrived at the school and listened to the recorded bomb threat. Linda Webb told administrators it wasn’t her son.
"They kept saying that it was his voice. They didn’t even know him," she said.
After a state trooper arrived, Charlton told the teen he was being arrested, and the trooper read Webb his Miranda rights.
"I was in shock," Webb said.
They had their man and nothing was going to change their minds about it…let alone the facts. Yes…it gets better. But you probably knew that…
The next day, Webb had a detention hearing and was held for court. After 10 more days in detention, Webb was back in court for his case to be heard. He was released to his parents’ custody that day after Westmoreland County Common Pleas Judge John Driscoll continued the hearing when the state police failed to appear.
The kid, an honor roll student, has now been held in a juvenile detention center for 12 days and the police can’t be bothered to show up for his hearing because…why…? Well…
Trooper Jeanne Martin, spokeswoman for state police at Greensburg, said the time change was an issue. Driscoll dismissed the charges March 27.
The teen said he did call the school’s delay hot line early Sunday, March 11. But that was an hour before the bomb threat was phoned in, said the family’s attorney, Tim Andrews. After Webb’s parents obtained his cell phone records, Andrews found the call times did not match.
"I found out the district had not changed their clocks to reflect daylight-saving time," Andrews said. "They were changed Monday morning."
Somebody else besides the kid’s attorney was also looking at the evidence…
"The district attorney subpoenaed the cell phone records, and it didn’t take more than a minute to see the times didn’t match," Andrews said.
Whoops! Of course…the school considers itself blameless…
Hempfield solicitor Dennis Slyman said law enforcement did not question administrators about the school’s clocks.
"The authorities never, never asked us anything about the clocks and daylight-saving time," Slyman said. "Whatever they did was with their own investigation and outside the auspices of the school district."
It’s their fault they arrested a kid we told them had made a bomb threat, and threw him in jail…
Yes…it gets better… You knew it did…
Budd Webb wept as he described learning that his son would be cleared.
"I got a callfrom our attorney that said he had paperwork signed by Judge Driscoll dropping the felony and misdemeanor charges against my son," he said.
County juvenile detention officials wanted to keep Webb in custody, Andrews said. "They wanted him to have a mental health evaluation because he wouldn’t admit to making the call."
(emphasis mine). They had the wrong person, but since they couldn’t make him admit to making a bomb threat that he had not made, they felt that was evidence of a mental problem.
And of course…they’re blameless too…
County officials said Tuesday that Webb was in custody no longer than the law requires.
"Legally, we were OK. We didn’t step on this kid’s rights," said Mike Sturnick, supervisor for the juvenile probation office.
Well thank goodness they only kept an innocent kid in jail no longer then the law allows.
Now…at this point…if you haven’t attended public school in America, or you had a much, Much better experience with teachers and school officials during your childhood then most people, that tape recording of the bomb threat may still be nagging at you. How could they sit a kid and his mother down and play a recording of that does not sound like that kid making a bomb threat, and still insist that it was that kid making that threat…you may be wondering. I see you’ve never been accused by a teacher or a principal of something doing something that you didn’t do…
Webb gave an insight into the school’s impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied ‘she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”’
‘They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,’ he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: ‘Well, why should we believe you? You’re a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.’
Upon further reflection, you can see how the whole republican right wing attack on public education, even, how their attack on our system of justice, plays on a deeply felt resentment a lot of Americans have toward their childhood experiences at the hands of ignorant kid hating louts who only became teachers because they couldn’t master the art of flipping hamburgers at McDonalds.
Home schooling…it isn’t just for religious fanatics anymore…
Webb’s mother arranged home-schooling for him until he decides where to continue his education. He doesn’t want to return to Hempfield.
The kid was an honors student. He had an active academic life. Was in the school council. And in an instant, a jackass principal taught him a lesson about life, hard work, academic excellence and achievement he’ll never fucking forget. And lesson about the public schools. Somewhere, Pat Robertson is smiling.
Oh…and…
Martin said the state police investigation into the bomb threat remains open.
No shit Sherlock. Gotta love those awesome police investigative skills you folks there have. When someone at the station complains their computer isn’t working, how long before someone checks to see if it’s plugged in…? Just curious…
I caught a reference to a 2005 article in the Boston Globe about the propaganda machines of the religious right. It was one I’d read before, but I don’t think I’d managed to blog about it then. It’s a good one…well worth reading still. These are religious right front organizations that take on the trappings of legitimate science and then inject themselves into the news stream as opposing viewpoints to well established institutions. They’re completely fake, but the mainstream news media, and in particular the TV networks, all give them a platform to spread their lies under a bogus effort at "balance", and because it suits the money at the top of the media corporations to keep republicans in power…
President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ”Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.
Bush’s assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.
But Bush’s statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ”Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" — a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.
The president’s statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ”dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.
That pediatric study asserted a ”considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.
The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.
Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.
For example, Cameron’s Family Research Institute, with an annual budget of less than $200,000, tries to counter the views of the 150,000-member American Psychological Association, which has an annual budget of $98 million. The tiny American College of Pediatricians has a single employee, yet it has been quoted as a counterpoint to the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.
(emphasis mine) The quickest way to deflate the propaganda of these religious right front groups is to shine a light on them. More often then not you find their bogus studies and stats getting injected into the political conversation without acknowledgment of where it came from. That’s because these outfits are well understood to be propaganda mills and not real scientific institutions, whatever their names make them sound like. So whenever politicians like president Nice Job Brownie start quoting their numbers, reporters need to ask where those numbers came from.
Senior Bush aides, asked for the basis of the comment about adoption, now say they are unaware of any studies comparing heterosexual and same-sex adoptions — by Cameron or by any pediatric association. The president, they say, was probably referring to studies that show children are better off living with both biological parents — though those studies have nothing to do with adoption by same-sex couples.
Duck and weave, duck and weave. You may remember the time Mr. Book Of Virtue Bill Bennett got caught on ABC’s This Weekquoting Paul Cameron’s bogus figure for the average lifespan of homosexuals. He first denied he got it from Cameron, then he said there were other researchers who got the same figures. And so there were. The other researcher Bennett pointed to, Jeffrey Satinover, had in fact, gotten his figures from Cameron too. When that was pointed out to him, Bennett retracted the claim, only to make it again some years later.
In June, the Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York chapter of the Christian Coalition, said in a speech protesting Gay Pride Day that gays should be legally required to wear warning labels, not unlike Jewish stars under the Nazis.
"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one or two years off the average life span, yet we celebrate a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span, according to the 2005 issue of the revered [sic] scientific journal Psychological Reports."
One month later, Dr. John Whiffen, chairman of the board of the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, a faith-basped advocacy group that was contracted by Bush Administration federal health officials to develop an abstinence education curriculum, said that, "There are obvious effects for male homosexuals from a health standpoint. Parents should discuss those with their child." Then he added: "It’s fairly well-accepted that smoking is not a good idea. It takes seven years off your life. It appears that male homosexuality takes more than that off your life. Naturally you should warn them about that."
You notice that none of these people said anything about where they got their information about homosexuality. That’s because they know full well that it comes from a completely untrustworthy source. And yet even knowing that, they continue to cite it, and all those other bogus groups with names that mimick actual institutions of science. All the while posturing as defenders of virtue and morality and godliness…that pesky ninth commandment exempted.
What Digby said… See…what you need to paying attention to in the story about Imus…isn’t what Imus did…
As the media elite and various political insiders continue to behave as if they’ve just been hit over the head with a cudgel on this Imus matter, perhaps they should wake up and recognize that there have been people out there noticing the raw hypocrisy among this Imus Elite for years. And this does not just come from the more recent bloviating by scruffy bloggers in their deplorable "efficiency" apartments…
Hey man…don’t fuck with Vinny…
There have always been a handful of columnists and journalists who got it. And no one got it better than the late Lars Erik Nelson:
. . .
Washington Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) came to the Senate floor with a look of sad concern on his face. He was deeply troubled, he said, at the vulgar, morally repugnant content of the new TV season. "We are lowering the standards of what is acceptable in our society and we are sending a message to our children," he said. He denounced an "acceptance of rude language, foul imagery and gross behavior in the entertainment mainstream."
Then, warning parents who might be watching on C-SPAN to move their little children away from the TV sets, Lieberman cited a few of the outrages: On ABC’s "Wilde Again," a character asks to be called "Daddy’s little whore." Another ABC program showed an upraised middle finger. CBS’ "Bless This House" used the phrase "little hooters" in reference to a girl’s breasts. "Profoundly disturbing," Lieberman intoned. "Sophomoric."
Funny thing: The previous morning, Lieberman had been a guest, as is his regular custom, on the Don Imus radio show on WFAN…
And as it turns out, there were a lot of other self righteous congressional scolds stopping by the Imus show back then. Democrats and republicans, chasing the vote in Imus’ young white male demographic. And did our mainstream news media ever bother to point out the hypocrisy of politicians bellyaching about the decay of television entertainment while appearing regularly on one of talk radio’s biggest cesspools? Oh grow up.
There’s a phrase you hear now and then in political campaigning…Dog Whistle Politics. It’s the art of using certain words and catch phrases that a specifically targeted audience will hear and respond to, while going over the heads of most of the rest of the audience as a whole. The republicans, and in particular the Bush team, are masters of the dog whistle. A good example of it was when Bush said that the Iraq war would "look just like a comma" to future historians. It raised a lot of hackles that Bush would trivialize a war that had killed so many, wounded so many and was still killing and wounding. But as Ian Welsh pointed out in The Agonist, it was a dog whistle to his hard core religious right base, recalling the proverb "Never put a period where God has put a comma."
It may be hard to think of Imus as a kind of dog whistle, but bear with me. The audience that Lieberman and all the others were trying to appeal to when they went on their crusade for TV decency wouldn’t be caught dead tuning into Don Imus cesspool, even out of curiosity. That kind of thing just disgusts the hell out of them. So all the voters who would have been nodding their heads approvingly while Lieberman and other politicians were puffing themselves up condemning all the tits and ass on prime time TV, wouldn’t be regular listeners to Imus anyway. The only people who would have known the extent of their hypocrisy, because they’d seen it with their own two eyes, were the news media talking heads who were also Imus regulars…and they kept their mouths shut too because they had books to sell on his show. So the politicians get to troll Imus for votes among that hard to reach resentful young white male demographic at the same time they’re trolling for votes among the shocked middle class soccer mom demographic.
And now the lot of them are all looking like they’ve just been caught in a police raid on a whorehouse.
By all means, Lieberman, Bradley, Dole and the rest should go on Imus. But if they do, spare us the sanctimonious sermons about the vulgarity of modern broadcasting.
They never stopped. in fact three years later Lieberman took to the floor of the Senate and "helped" Bill Clinton by saying to the whole world that he was immoral. All of these moral scolds, but most especially Lieberman, are rank hypocrites.
I do not want to hear another word from these people about civility, rudeness and the decline of the discourse. And I certainly don’t want to hear any more BS about blogging ethics and good manners on the internet from any of them. For more than a decade we had to endure lectures from many of these people about "values" and more recently we’ve had to listen to them call for the smelling salts over the degradation of the public square from the barbaric polloi. Yet throughout they loved to hang around with that overgrown adolescent and let him sell their books for him when he wasn’t cruelly disparaging everything in his sights, including them. If those are the decent values Joe Lieberman has been braying about incessantly for the last decade, he certainly got what what he was looking for.
A 15-year-old gay Centennial High School student was taunted and attacked by six classmates last week because of his sexual orientation.
The victim was undergoing surgery for a broken nose and facial injuries today, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Gay Alliance.
The incident happened last Thursday afternoon, when Anthony Hergesheimer was walking home from Centennial High School along Denver Boulevard, the organization said. Six male students, ages 15 and 16, in a vehicle apparently passed by Hergesheimer several times before they stopped and hurled anti-gay insults at him.
One of the students also got out of the vehicle and threw a can of Lysol at Hergesheimer, who suffered a broken nose and severe facial injuries.
Lysol. Like they were cleansing the street of some kind of human garbage…
The six male Centennial students, who were not identified, were suspended Monday until a decision is made about possible expulsion. The district usually has 25 days to make a recommendation on whether to expel a student.
Pueblo police is also investigating the attack and possible criminal charges may be filed against the youths.
But it’s not the teenagers who attacked the gay kid who need to be ashamed of themselves, according to The Alliance Defense Fund…
God has condemned them. They should live in shame. What was I saying the other day? You can’t paint a bulls-eye on a group of kids, tell their peers that those kids are condemned by god, and not expect that every now and then one of them will get the shit beaten out of them. But…that’s the intent isn’t it? A fearful homosexual is a good homosexual. You have to beat the pride out of them young. Christianity has come to this in the Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave: Accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior means you can set kids loose on other kids, and still look at yourself in a mirror. Who would Jesus throw the first can of Lysol at?
I don’t know when this aired, and I’ve never seen it on any list of Imus’s racist bits, but it’s pretty awful.
You can listen to it at the link here, and also here and here.
Transcript:
IMUS: Some of you may know, who listen to the Imus in the Morning program on a regular basis, there is a new group being formed called the Black Beatles.
BLACK BEATLES MEMBER (in a stereotypical black accent): That’s right, Don. My name is Tyrone McCartney…
IMUS: Uh-huh.
TYRONE McCARTNEY: … bass player for the fabulous Black Beatles, and me and my friends Leroy Lennon, George Jellybean Darnell Rashad Mustafa Muhammad Harrison, and Bingo Starr, we have a new album out of our very famous #1 hits called Beat the Meatles.
IMUS: What’s that?
TYRONE McCARTNEY: Beat the Meatles. We wanted y’all to get it ’cause it’s got some of our famous #1 hits, like this one: (singing) "When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary come to me and speak those woids of wisdom, ‘What it be.’"
And how ’bout this one? (singing) "I shoulda known better with a bitch like you." "Jo Jo was a man who only had three inches, but he knew it wouldn’t last, Jo Jo never had much luck with all the bitches, but I said, ‘Hey, Jo, get black. Get black, get black, get black and watch your johnson grow.’" "Lucy in the sky with a lot of jewelry on." "Strawberry-flavored malt liquor." "Here come my son, he play football. Here come my son, and I say, ‘He bad.’" "I’m back on the old FDR." "Yesterday, my parole came through just yesterday." "Hey dude, lend me a dollar." "I can play center, I can play forward, I be six foot four."
And, of course, my personal favorite: (singing) "We all live in a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville. And my friends is all aboard, many more of them is in the trunk, vinyl tires with wire wheels, in my yellow Coupe de Ville."
Swell. Just swell.
IMUS: A lot of friends of mine called, but I didn’t want to put up — put anybody on this morning who wasn’t scheduled, because I can make my own case, and it is what it is.
OLIPHANT: But to me, that only means that those of us who, through an accident, were scheduled, who know better, have a moral obligation to stand up and say to you, "Solidarity forever, pal."
Right Tom. "We all live in a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville, a yellow Coupe de Ville.
Trash Talk Radio – New York Times: LET’S say a word about the girls. The young women with the musical names. Kia and Epiphanny and Matee and Essence. Katie and Dee Dee and Rashidat and Myia and Brittany and Heather. The Scarlet Knights of Rutgers University had an improbable season, dropping four of their first seven games, yet ending up in the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball championship game. None of them were seniors. Five were freshmen.
In the end, they were stopped only by Tennessee’s Lady Vols, who clinched their seventh national championship by ending Rutgers’ Cinderella run last week, 59-46. That’s the kind of story we love, right? A bunch of teenagers from Newark, Cincinnati, Brooklyn and, yes, Ogden, Utah, defying expectations. It’s what explodes so many March Madness office pools.
But not, apparently, for the girls. For all their grit, hard work and courage, the Rutgers girls got branded “nappy-headed ho’s” — a shockingly concise sexual and racial insult, tossed out in a volley of male camaraderie by a group of amused, middle-aged white men. The “joke” — as delivered and later recanted — by the radio and television personality Don Imus failed one big test: it was not funny.
The serial apologies of Mr. Imus, who was suspended yesterday by both NBC News and CBS Radio for his remarks, have failed another test. The sincerity seems forced and suspect because he’s done some version of this several times before. I know, because he apparently did it to me.
I was covering the White House for this newspaper in 1993, when Mr. Imus’s producer began calling to invite me on his radio program. I didn’t return his calls. I had my hands plenty full covering Bill Clinton. Soon enough, the phone calls stopped. Then quizzical colleagues began asking me why Don Imus seemed to have a problem with me. I had no idea what they were talking about because I never listened to the program. It was not until five years later, when Mr. Imus and I were both working under the NBC News umbrella — his show was being simulcast on MSNBC; I was a Capitol Hill correspondent for the network — that I discovered why people were asking those questions. It took Lars-Erik Nelson, a columnist for The New York Daily News, to finally explain what no one else had wanted to repeat.
“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”
I was taken aback but not outraged. I’d certainly been called worse and indeed jumped at the chance to use the old insult to explain to my NBC bosses why I did not want to appear on the Imus show.
I haven’t talked about this much. I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me. It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.
Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’s program? That’s for them to defend, and others to argue about. I certainly don’t know any black journalists who will. To his credit, Mr. Imus told the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday he realizes that, this time, he went way too far.
Yes, he did. Every time a young black girl shyly approaches me for an autograph or writes or calls or stops me on the street to ask how she can become a journalist, I feel an enormous responsibility. It’s more than simply being a role model. I know I have to be a voice for them as well. So here’s what this voice has to say for people who cannot grasp the notion of picking on people their own size: This country will only flourish once we consistently learn to applaud and encourage the young people who have to work harder just to achieve balance on the unequal playing field. Let’s see if we can manage to build them up and reward them, rather than opting for the cheapest, easiest, most despicable shots.
I’m old enough to remember when it was merely taken for granted that white males had the right to piss on everyone who wasn’t white and male. That was in addition to having the right to piss on everyone who Was white and male and below them on the economic ladder. Ever wonder why poor whites consistently vote republican against their better economic interests, especially in certain parts of this country? It’s because racism gives them status, even over well-off people of color. Without racism they’re just another face on the bottom of the pile. The resentment these people feel, and have felt ever since the black civil rights movement began tearing down the walls of race segregation in America, are enormous and run very, very deep. They feel as though they’ve lost their place, their status, Their Manhood, in a country that was once theirs…them and the rich white men holding them and everyone else down on the economic ladder. Rich white men like Don Imus…but more to the point, his producers…the people that make his radio and TV platform possible with their money, and their radio and TV networks.
They give Imus his platform to play his Good ‘Ol Boy shtick, knowing full well who it plays to, knowing full well it allows that audience to imagine itself as part of the same privileged class as the rich white guys who own the airwaves. They’d be escorted quickly to the door by well dressed butlers wearing gloves so as not to get their hands dirty if they ever showed up in any of the exclusive clubs and playgrounds the people who pay for Imus’ broadcasts enjoy. But for a few moments listening to him going through his crude, racist, bigoted Good ‘Ol Boy patter routine, they can imagine that they’re all comrades in arms, all sharing the same bitter resentments toward the uppity darkies, women, and faggots who used to know their place.
So it’s spectacularly unsurprising to see the simple, straightforward reflex of Imus and his crew to spit in the faces of a group of young black girls who had succeeded where nobody thought they would. That’s What They’re On The Radio For. This gutter crawling racism on Imus’ part isn’t anything new…nor is it anything particularly out of place on Talk Radio. That’s why talk radio has the large audience it does.
And that large audience, is why Talk Radio’s big names are held in high regard by the guardians of mainstream media opinion…why Rush Limbaugh and Imus and others of their kind can command the respect of the mainstream news media and its pundocracy, even as that pundocracy wags, wags, wags its finger at bloggers…well…progressive bloggers anyway…for being such an uncouth, uncivilized rabble. There’s no double standard here. No hypocrisy. The moral standard is, as always, money. How many of copies of our books can you sell?
OLIPHANT: What I thought would be instructive for people is to go back on the tape to a minute or so before this happens and see if you can see it developing. Now, believe me, as you well know, I don’t know beans about hip-hop culture or trash-talking, or what do you call those things where you run on forever? Riffs, or whatever.
But even I could see the beginning of what appeared to me to be a riff. And the train went off the tracks, which, you know, can happen to anybody. And, of course, what counts when the train goes off the tracks is what you then do. And that’s why I, you know, didn’t have a moment’s hesitation talking to this guy from The New York Times yesterday. Of course I didn’t think about reacting like that because I saw the whole episode in context, including your statements about it.
IMUS: A lot of friends of mine called, but I didn’t want to put up — put anybody on this morning who wasn’t scheduled, because I can make my own case, and it is what it is.
OLIPHANT: But to me, that only means that those of us who, through an accident, were scheduled, who know better, have a moral obligation to stand up and say to you, "Solidarity forever, pal."
Solidarity Forever…
IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between — a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women’s final.
ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night — seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.
IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and —
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
Solidarity Forever…
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don’t know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
Solidarity Forever…
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes — that movie that he had.
IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough —
McCORD: Do The Right Thing.
McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Solidarity Forever…
IMUS: I don’t know if I’d have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?
ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.
IMUS: Well, I guess, yeah.
RUFFINO: Only tougher.
McGUIRK: The [Memphis] Grizzlies would be more appropriate.
Solidarity Forever…
“Isn’t The Times wonderful,” Mr. Nelson quoted Mr. Imus as saying on the radio. “It lets the cleaning lady cover the White House.”
Welcome to the gutter Tom. I hear book sales are pretty brisk once you get that initial sale of your soul taken care of…
Another “homosexual lifespan" study has hit the news. According to a flurry of press releases making rounds, married gays in Scandinavia die 24 years younger than everyone else:
Once more, Burroway completely destroys Cameron’s propaganda (even calling it junk science ennobles it, really) by way of the simple trick of actually looking at the data. This is Cameron’s essential technique…one he has perfected over the decades he’s been generating bogus statistics on homosexuality for the religious right: first gerrymander the data, then analyze it as though you hadn’t. His classic study which is still being used today as proof that the lifespan of gay people is significantly shorter then that of heterosexuals, was conducted on data Cameron pulled from the obituary pages of two gay newspapers. At the height of the first wave of AIDS deaths. He averaged the age of death in those obituaries and compared it with that of the average lifespan of the population as a whole. His supporters have argued since that you can compare the average age at death in mainstream news papers and even in small ethnic ones and get a figure that is comparable to the average lifespan figures of the population as a whole. But this still makes the same essential mistake of assuming that the social and cultural context gay community papers exist in isn’t different enough that it would skew the data you’re pulling out of the obituary notices. In fact it is. Staringly obviously so.
The local gay paper was then, and is now, a fairly new phenomena in a nation that only until the latter part of the twentieth century was even disposed to admit that homosexuals existed, much less allow them to print their own newspapers. In fact, until the hated Warren Court decided that homosexuals could in fact, distribute their own magazines and newspapers through the mail in 1958 in One v Olesen, it was pretty much impossible. So you have the fact that local gay papers are a recent phenomena. You have the fact that older gay people grew up in a climate of repression that marked most of them for life. You have the fact that even by the time Cameron started collecting gay obituaries the out and proud part of the gay community was decidedly skewed toward younger generations. You have the fact that obituaries are generally not placed in newspapers by the person who died but by their families, many of whom even today are reluctant to acknowledge the homosexuality of a dead relative (a number of obituaries in the mainstream press back then were written so as to conceal the fact that the deceased had succumbed to an AIDS related illness). They would be unlikely then to even consider placing an obit in a gay paper. You have the fact that the readership of gay papers then, as now, played to a largely urban and younger and more sexually active slice of the community as a whole. And on top of that you have the fact that Cameron was collecting his data while the death toll from AIDS was just coming off its peak. This is what Cameron was comparing to the average lifespan in the nation as a whole.
That’s his trademark: not so much falsifying the data, although he won’t shrink from doing that either whenever he thinks he can get away with it…but skewing the initial dataset, so right from the get-go any conclusions drawn from it will break in the direction he wants them to.
And his latest artwork may be his masterpiece:
Statistics Denmark and Statistics Norway publish official population cross-tabulations of marital status by age for each sex in their annual statistical yearbooks. Since 1994 in Denmark and 1995 in Norway, these tables have included separate categories for homosexual-partnered individuals…
Cameron is comparing the ages at death of married heterosexuals with same sex couples in registered partnerships. At first glance it seems shocking that the average age at death is so much lower for the same sex couples. But in reality it’s nothing more then a brilliant slight-of-hand…maybe his best yet. The problem, as Burroway notes, is that the statistics for married couples have been gathering for an entire century, but for the same sex couples, only for as long as there had been domestic partnerships in Denmark…just since 1989. There was no rush of older gay couples to register. So as Burroway put’s it…
Why is this important? The heterosexual sample has been accumulating under-forties for an entire century.(In 2005, the average age of the groom was 37.4 years; for the bride, 34.7 years) But registered same-sex partnerships have only been available in Denmark since 1989, which means the gay sample got a late start. And if the typical age of someone entering into a same-sex partnership is around forty, then it stands to reason that the typical age at death of someone who has died so far would be similarly young.
If I have a flock of mostly young sheep, and in one year five are eaten by wolves and two more die of disease I can’t look at that and say what the average lifespan of a sheep is. The age of my flock is skewed young to start with. I’d need to keep collecting lifespan data on my flock for a period of many years before I could assume I was getting a handle on the average lifespan of my sheep. What Cameron does is use data that only amounts to snapshots, and he is very careful to get just the right snapshots he wants, to end up with the results he wants:
Cameron’s Danish and Norwegian statistics show an average age at death in the fifties for registered partners simply because there aren’t many older partners in those samples to begin with. And the reason they aren’t in that sample is because for whatever reason, they haven’t registered their partnerships.
Now what might the reason for that be? Once again, you have the generational differences between those of us who grew up before Stonewall, and those of us who grew up after…
Cameron dismisses the idea that homophobia is a major factor in Scandinavia because “Canada, Norway, and Denmark are far more accepting of homosexual practitioners than the United States (where homosexuals are still barred from the military and ‘gay rights’ laws do not exist in most states).” But saying that homophobia is lower in Scandinavia isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t exist. For example, it is still illegal in Denmark for gay couples to adopt children except for the children of their registered partners. And homosexuality is still not acceptable among many Danes and Norwegians, particularly among those living in rural areas and among the older generations — precisely the populations that haven’t availed themselves of registered partnerships.
This generational difference in the willingness of people to be open about their homosexuality, or that of their family members, is something every honest scientific investigation of the gay community must acknowledge and deal with somehow. But for Paul Cameron its a handy way to filter out the old people, when he wants to prove that there aren’t any. Cameron’s trademark is to pull from pools of data that are intrinsically skewed strongly towards a young, urban, and sexually active slice of the gay community and then analyze that data as if it were a random sample that was representative of the whole. Wherever possible, he finds snapshots of those data pools…timeframes…that he knows will skew the results even further in the direction he wants them skewed.
We software engineers have long had a saying for it: Garbage In – Garbage Out. Give the man his due…Paul Cameron is a master at selecting just the right garbage to put in, to get the garbage he wants back out. And he’s getting better at it. In this latest propaganda missive of his he displays an impressively deft hand. Thank goodness for people like Jim Barroway.
Go read the rest of his report: Paul Cameron’s Footprint. And if you haven’t already, go read some of his other magnificent takedowns of this man’s propaganda. If you are someone who is gay, or knows someone who is, you will likely have some of Paul Cameron’s claptrap waved in your face at one time or another. He is, as he likes to call himself, the wellspring of all the anti-gay statistics religious right groups use to demonize homosexual people. He gets away with it because so few people bother to actually look closely at his work and see where he’s pulling his numbers from. Do the one thing they’re counting on you not to do: look behind the curtain.
I’m going to steal this shtick from Atrios, but I don’t think he’ll mind…
So I make myself some coffee and open my dead tree version of the NY Times this morning only to see a call for blogger ethics on the front page. How interesting. Another call for "managed civil speech" (which is claimed to be "freer" than unfettered free speech.) There was no word on who would be the managers of such speech, but I think we can count on those who call for it to be the ones who feel they are most qualified to define and enforce it. (Apparently, this will all be done "voluntarily" and will be dealt with through purges and link boycotts and the novel concept of moderated comment sections. Or something.)
Meanwhile, on the media page is a story about the execrable Don Imus and the fact that he routinely makes racist, misogynistic and eliminationist jokes on his show while half the Washington press corps spends time there kissing his ring. For some reason that kind of "incivility" doesn’t upset the journalistic prima donnas half as much as the uncivil blogosphere does.
So what’s up with this? The blogosphere is admittedly an uncivil place. Nobody disputes that. But it is comprised of a bunch of disparate individuals who are arguing amongst themselves with varying degress of seriousness and talent as part of the national (and international) dialog. There is a corner of it that is despicable and revolting, as the misogyny that set off this latest debate clearly demonstrates. But for inexplicable reasons it’s the liberal blogosphere that is being particularly attacked for our alleged incivility by the mainstream media. (I suspect it’s the fact that we drop the "F" bomb too much, which is simply shocking in American life)
However, for almost two decades now, talk radio has been spewing vile racist, misogynistic and eliminationst spew — and their stars have been feted and petted for it among the highest levels of the capital cognoscenti. I don’t know for sure why that would be, but I have my suspicions.
Via Atrios…via Digby… Okay…Now I understand why that gutter crawling bigot Don Imus is so popular among the Washington Beltway glitterati. I was always puzzled by that, always kept wondering how many times that babbling bar stool bigot would have to go over the line before someone finally booted his ass off the radio. Yet every time I look in his direction I see that he’s just gotten bigger, and Even More respected. What the fuck was it about this low-life crank’s power to attract big names onto his show? Now I know. His blessing on their books directly translates into book sales…
I can’t help but be reminded of the Imus profile of a year ago in Vanity Fair (not online, unfortunately) in which his psychotic freakshow was fully revealed. I’m sure all these disgusting sycophants read it. After all, it featured them in starring roles — being insulted by Don Imus:
"They don’t make good decisions," he says of MSNBC and its programming. "You can’t make idiotic decisions like (hiring hosts) Tucker Carlson and Ron Reagan." Of conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, he says: "He’s a twit. He’s a pussy." This is in the same spirit as an earlier comment on Senate majority leader Bill Frist ("a fucking criminal"). Similarly, when he looks up from his circular desk at a television monitor during a commercial break and sees Chris Matthews, the host of Hardball, silently nattering away, he says, "There’s that idiot," to no one in particular.
It makes you wonder why they continue to appear on his show and are making complete fools of themselves today assuring everyone that Imus is a "good man."This might explain it:
I can feel the high of becoming part of his incestuous circle of regulars-the media elite who have entree with the I-Man and have never seemed troubled, at least publicly troubled as far as I can tell, by the show’s forays over the years into homophobia and crudeness and sexism. I like this idea of being right in there with columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich of The New York Times and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory and Tim Russert (husband of Vanity Fair special correspondent Maureen Orth), all Imus regulars. I wonder if there’s some secret media-elite handshake I need to learn, just so I can hear the jubilant sound of the cash register ringing when it comes time to sell my next book, because nobody (with the clear exception of Oprah) sells a book better than Imus.
He likes that power, enjoys going on Amazon to see just how much he can boost a book. During the week I’m there, he has Larry the Cable Guy on as a guest-Larry has just written a book called Git-r-Done. Before the show, according to Imus, the book was about 1,800 on the Amazon list. But when he checks on the Internet just after the show, it’s No. 122.
I wonder if the media elite’s failure to seriously take Imus to task for anything is due to a fear that their book-promotion pipeline will be cut off if they rub him the wrong way. In a 1998 New Yorker piece, Ken Auletta drew up a list, confirmed by Imus, of more than a dozen high-profile journalists who made contributions to the Imus Ranch. It’s hard to quibble with donations to a worthy cause. As George Stephanopoulos said on the air to Imus in 1998, with his book on the White House still in the works, "I’m not too proud to suck up for a good cause. So count me in for $5,000 on the ranch!"
I wonder what I would have done, had I been an Imus regular with a book to sell, when the previous sports announcer for the show, Sid Rosenberg, said on the air last May of a female entertainer who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, "Ain’t gonna be so beautiful when the bitch got a bald head and one titty." I wonder how I would have reacted to the cackling of various members of Imus’s ensemble over the next minute or so to Rosenberg’s remarks, as well as Imus’s own hardly outraged response: "There’s a reason I fire you about every six weeks." He did get fired from the show, and Imus distanced himself from what Rosenberg had said. He says the remarks were "horrible," but there seemed to be something disingenuous about Imus’s repudiation-complete bullshit, as he might put it-given that Rosenberg had already distinguished himself on the show in 2001 by calling tennis player Venus Williams an "animal" and noting that she and her sister, Serena, had a better chance of posing nude for National Geographic than Playboy. I wonder what I would have done had I been in the audience the night Imus made his crude and unfunny remarks about President Clinton and his wife. Would I have said, That’s it, never again. Or would I have been like Cokie Roberts of ABC television, who called Imus’s remarks "profoundly rude," vowed never to go back on the show, and then did several years later when the opportunity arose to push her new book, We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters.
It’s as if they believe we can’t read or are too stupid to figure out what they are doing. I read Vanity Fair. I hear his disgusting show and hear them on it, kissing up to him like he’s some sort of oracle instead of a spoiled, petulant bully with an incoherent worldview. And I also listen to their complaints about the vituperation on the internet, how the bloggers — especially the "angry left" — are horrible people who treat them disrespectfully. And I have to laugh because I know that Don Imus can call them and their colleagues twits and pussies in Vanity Fair and they come back licking his boots, begging for more. And we know why.
They have earned their reputation — even some of the good ones, the ones who write things I like. When you sell your personal integrity for money to a racist scumbag like Don Imus, you have to expect that people are not going to treat you with a lot of respect.
Well that about sums up the history of the mainstream news media ever since Reagan, doesn’t it? They followed the big money into the gutter. They followed the big money into the gutter. And they’ve been busy trying to drag their country into the gutter along with them ever since, so they won’t have to know that they’re not living on main street anymore, but in the gutter.
Daniel Gonzales, formerly of ExGay Watch has created a little video about the anti-gay counter attack on the Day of Silence. Cynically named “Day Of Truth”, it seeks to legitimize harassment of GLBT kids in school by their classmates, in the name of freedom of religion. The problem is, as always, that the religious right isn’t on speaking terms with Truth, or anything even remotely resembling it. Their website, as the video shows, helpfully provides kids with cards printed up with informational resources on homosexuality that all link back to Ex Gay ministries and their usual myths, lies and superstitions. The party line is that this is all supposed to give gay kids “the other side” of the story. But as always this “other side” is actually a message directed not at gay youth, but to their heterosexual peers. The resources handed out to school kids are nothing less then a collection of handy excuses for them to treat their GLBT peers with disrespect, if not outright contempt.
We see in the video the t-shirt their poster child got tossed out of class for wearing on a previous Day of Silence, which tells gay kids to “Be Ashamed” and that God condemns them. On its face then, this is not a message of love directed toward gay youth, but an exhortation to their peers to treat them like human garbage. It is incitement that at some point is certain to result in outright physical assaults. And when that happens you can bet that like Pilot the grown adults who are instigating this will wash, wash their hands of the consequences. But you don’t paint a bulls-eye on children, tell everyone that those children are condemned by God, and not expect violence to result.
Cameron has now documented Early Gay Death Syndrome (EGDS). According to this new research, which Cameron claims is the largest random sex survey ever conducted, the oldest male that could be found who engaged in homosexuality was 54 years old and the oldest female was 49. According to Dr. Cameron the reason for this is because the average life span of a homosexual is 20 plus years shorter than for a heterosexual.
According to Richard Rothstein at QueerSighted, this new Paul Cameron propaganda offensive is bases on his sex survey of a single Canadian community of just over 120, 000 adults. And you just know you can take Cameron’s word for it, that his methods and his data on this were all top notch…
The best part of this story is that Cameron put out a press release that suggests that he presented his latest research during yesterday’s sessions of the annual Eastern Psychological Association Convention in Philadelphia. According to his press release, "Drs. Paul and Kirk Cameron told attendees of the Eastern Psychological Association Convention…" In fact, he did not present and was not on the agenda at this meeting. The fact is that he roamed the public corridors of the convention venue and "told" doctors about his research. Cameron was neither a registered speaker nor a member of the convention faculty.
Yeah…and he once cited a letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine, in one of his publications, as if it were an actual peer reviewed article. Trustworthy guy, eh? The Morals and Values crowd just loves him.
Nonetheless he will present this research to lawmakers and judges as data that was "presented" at this legitimate convention and it will be published (@ $27.50 per page) in a so-called scientific journal, a publication that will be slapped down on desks in court houses and legislatures and successfully used against us.
Yes. That’s how the game is played by the Morals and Values crowd. Rothstein gives us an insight into how junk like this effectively poisons the political process…
As an aside, I rarely reference my professional life, but for the purpose of this posting I will tell you that I have engaged in professional lobbying on behalf of private industry both in Albany and in Washington. And this kind of crap really resonates. If it’s easy to read, can be summarized on one official and slick looking sheet of paper, lists titles like PhD, MSS and ARNP and was published in a journal with an impressive name, congressional and legislative staffers and their bosses will not look beneath the surface. Only two things really matter: how will it play with voters and will you be supporting my campaign efforts.
(Emphasis mine…) So the Morals and Values crowd has understood for a long time now, not only that lies are effective, but Why they are effective and How to make them even more effective. And you thought it was us godless heathens who made the best liars.
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