Andrew's Tiki Lounge

Farewell Manning Marable, (May 13, 1950 – April 1, 2011): A great scholar, a great man

2011-04-07T15:48:00.009-04:00

With a heavy heart, I read of the death of Manning Marable at the beginning of the month. Marable was one of America's foremost scholars of African American Studies. He taught at Columbia University and he wrote far too many books to list here. His last book, apparently his magnum opus, was a biography of Malcolm X called Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.

I confess to not having read the book yet, but I have ordered it and eagerly await its arrival. In the future, I'll blog about it here. Malcolm X's famous Autobiography, co-written with Roots author Alex Haley, helped cement Malcolm's important place in American mythology. For the sake of full disclosure, few books have had as great an impact on me as Malcolm's Autobiography. An authentic First Edition, complete with the original dust jacket, occupies a very special place on my office bookshelf.

Marable, who had tremendous respect for Malcolm (this isn't the first book he's written about man), shatters a lot of the myths created by the Autobiography. Among the new revelations from Marable are that Malcolm exaggerated his criminal record in the Autobiography and, in his early life, had a gay relationship with a white businessman. There is a fantastic review of Marable's book in The Guardian. Very long, very nuanced and very positive.

A key graf:

Manning Marable, an academic and respected authority on black America, doesn't use his book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention to destroy the reputation of the man who told the heartlands that the assassination of President Kennedy represented "chickens coming home to roost". But, over 487 pages, Marable does effectively destroy the cultivated brand. There is a wealth of detail, some of it new, some of it old stories confirmed, all aided by documents and new recollections from the US government, the FBI and the Nation of Islam, whose leader Louis Farrakhan gave the author an unprecedented nine-hour interview. At the end of it all, Malcolm X remains Malcolm X, for good or ill, one of the most fascinating historical figures of the 20th century. But it is difficult to see him in the same way again.

The book took twelve years to write. Marable, it turns out, had sarcoidosis (a disease involving swelling of lymph nodes, lungs, eyes, skin or other tissues - in Marable's case, he'd hat in his lungs for about a quarter of a century), which necessitated a lung transplant. Thus, the scholar was racing against the clock to finish the biography before he ultimately died of causes related to pneumonia on April 1.

A wonderful biographical sketch of Marable appeared in an African American newspaper, The Florida Courier, at the time of his death. Here's an excerpt:

Black newspaper roots
Born in Dayton, Ohio, on May 13, 1950, Marable wrote in his book, "Speaking Truth to Power," that as the child of middle-class Black Americans – his father a teacher and businessman, his mother an educator and college professor – He watched the largely Southern civil rights movement from afar.
He found his political voice as a teenager writing columns for a Black newspaper, the Dayton Defender. He served as the Defender’s correspondent and marched along with thousands of others during Dr. King’s funeral procession.
"With Martin’s death, my childhood abruptly ended," he wrote. "My understanding of political change began a trajectory from reform to radicalism."
Marable earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Earlham College and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. He taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Ohio State University, then served as the founding director of the Africana and Hispanic Studies Program at Colgate University before going to Columbia.
Prolific author
Marable wrote hundreds of papers and nearly 20 books, including "How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America" (1983); "Beyond Black and White: Race in America’s Past, Present and Future" (1995); "The Crisis of Color and Democracy" (1995); "The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life" (2003); "Freedom: A Photographic History of the African-American Freedom Struggle" (2002); and "9/11: Racism in a Time of Terror (2002).
A public memorial service is set for May 27. Besides Leith Mullings, his wife of 15 years, three children and two stepchildren survive him.

Incidentally, I have my own Marable story. Years ago, long before I was a professor of history - hell, before I was even in graduate school - I met Marable. At the time, he was guest lecturing in Utah. And I had the great fortune of going to dinner with him. This was back in the 1980s.

He was a wonderful man and, even though I was only a teenager at the time, he treated me very respectfully and listened as well as talked. Sadly, I never met him in person again after that, although I read a few of his books and followed his career with great interest. When he passed away, a wave of sadness hit me at the thought that America has lost one of its great scholars of African American history and life.

It had also lost a great humanitarian and a truly decent man.

Thee-thee-thee-uh-That's All Folks!

2011-04-06T21:31:00.005-04:00

Political commentator Glenn Beck, who's so far over the extreme Right that he's on the verge of breaking through the partition into MaoistTopia, is leaving FoxNews. Or he's been fired from FoxNews. Hard to tell. It depends on which headlines you believe. "Fox Gives Glenn Beck's show the boot," said a headline in The Los Angeles Times. By contrast, a CNN headline noted: "Glenn Beck leaving Fox show." Who's right? Beck himself, in his usual overwrought style, went on Fox and explained his reasons for leaving to his viewers:

When I took this job -- I didn't take it because it was going to be a career for me. Paul Revere did not get up on the horse and say, ha, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. He didn't do it. He got off the horse at some point and fought in the Revolution and then he went back to silversmithing. If you have watched this program and you really -- I ask you at times -- hear me, you know what I believe is coming. If you watch tonight's show, I believe you know that I believe we're heading into deep and treacherous waters.

It bothers me to be entering this phase and feel as though you might say, well, wait, wait, wait. I've been very clear with you. I've played my cards face up. We will find each other. I'm developing other content for Fox through specials and other things, on television and beyond. I will continue to tell the story and I'm going to be showing you other ways for us to connect, but I have other things to do. And not because it's good or bad for business, but I think you, out of all the people, will truly get this. Our only business is the business of freedom and our country at this time. It's why I told you about E4. I told you at the beginning of the year, prepare to be a leader. Educate yourself. Be the mouthpiece. Never rely on anyone else to spoon feed you.

Did you follow that? I sure as hell didn't. Maybe the master, Hunter S. Thompson, put it best when he said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

Whether he was fired or left on his own steam, Beck has achieved the dubious distinction of being too right-wing for FoxNews.

I hate to come out of the closet and say what I'm about to say, but I'll sort of miss the guy. I actually watch Beck from time to time. I get FoxNews and I'm one of the few lefties who finds his rants entertaining.

We haven't seen the last of Beck, that's for sure. He'll be back, on some other channel, giving some insane chalkboard conspiracy theories utilizing arrows and circles. And I applaud him for crying on the air. Some asshole liberals gave him grief for that. There are plenty of reasons to critique Beck, but getting emotional on the air isn't one of them, even if you think the guy is a pompous blowhard.

Beck will be back. Who knows? He may even get his own channel. Beck-24/7... Twenty-four hours of Beck. Day and night. Chalkboards galore. Conspiracy theories connecting Barack Obama and Woodrow Wilson to the International Communist Conspiracy. So many people love the guy. Not sure what that says about the state of the United States these days.

U.S. Politics 101: Making Sense of the Possible Government Shutdown Without All of Those Expensive Poli Sci Textbooks!

2011-04-06T19:48:00.006-04:00

Republicans: MY WAY!

Democrats: NO, MY WAY!

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

Democrats: No. My, um, way.

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

Democrats: Look, we're not really getting anywhere with all of this shouting...

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

Democrats: Surely, there must be some room for compromise...

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

Democrats: In the spirit of bipartisanship, can't we simply...

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

Democrats: The American people expect action, and, let's face it, we aren't delivering...

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

Democrats: Okay, okay. Your way.

Republicans: NO! MY WAY!

(Note: That rumbling sound is Harry Truman spinning in his grave...)

The Great Disillusionment

2011-04-04T21:32:00.009-04:00

What a difference four years makes.

Slightly over four years ago, on February 10, 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama announced his intention to run for the presidency in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, the same place another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, delivered his famous "House Divided" speech in 1858. Thousands of people huddled in subzero temperatures to witness that historic event. Obama criticized what he called the "smallness of our politics." "The time for that politics is over," he told the cheering crowd. "It is through. It is time to turn the page."

Obama spoke repeatedly of the importance of what he called "hope" and, in the words of The New York Times, portrayed "his campaign less as a candidacy and more as a movement." "Each and every time," he said, "a new generation has risen up and done what has needed to be done. Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call." (Source)

After years of George W. Bush's presidency, Obama captivated people. He hypnotized them. He became a modern-day Pied Piper. People succumbed en masse to his siren call. People snapped up his books on Amazon.com. They cheered him on as a "man of the people." Americans, young and old, rallied around him, supporting him despite attacks from inside and outside of his party. Obama could do no wrong in people's eyes. They viewed him as a savior. Without doubt, part of his appeal had to do with the fact that he was the first African American frontrunner in a major presidential campaign.

I myself called him "this generation's Abraham Lincoln."

But it was more than that. People saw in Obama what they wanted to see in him. Liberals regarded him as a liberal. Outsiders thought of him as an outsider, a man with limited experience who appeared destined to lead a great nation. Independents felt he was more of a genuine maverick than John McCain, his Republican foe. A "Cult of Obama" took hold. It swept people away.

Flash forward to today, April 4, 2011. Few took notice of Obama declaring himself a candidate for re-election. The announcement went out with a whimper, not a bang.

"We can't go backwards," he told the nation today. "We have to preserve the progress that we've made and take it to the next level, and that means that we're going to have to mobilize." (Source)

Or, as a campaign email in my Inbox from the Obama folks said, simply, "We aren't finished."

Despite a dimming of the enthusiasm, the White House will probably be an easy conquest for Obama. He will, in all likelihood, win handily in 2012. Most pundits are already concurring with that prediction.

Look at his challengers. The Republican opposition, thus far, has done a dismal job of finding someone up to the task of running against Obama. Michele Bachmann? Sarah Palin? Mitt Romney? Tim Pawlenty? Newt Gingrich??? Really? Newt Gingrich? Seriously? Newt Gingrich? Does anybody really think Newt Gingrich is going to be the next commander in chief? What a sorry state of affairs when some think he may actually be a contender.

The only credible challenger to Obama thus far has been Representative Ron Paul, who could easily forge a coalition of Republicans, Independents and even leftists who applaud his anti-interventionist politics. But the Republican Party leadership is likely to put the kibosh on those plans. Like him or not, Ron Paul, unlike John McCain, is a genuine maverick whose anti-establishment politics are a breath of fresh air in this age of tired, stale, partisan politics.

Barring any unforeseen disasters (particularly of the economic variety), victory in '12, at this point, appears highly likely for Obama. Professor Peverill Squire, who teaches political science at the University of Missouri, put it best: "If the economy does chug along the way it is now a lot of people may be more comfortable going with Obama." (Source)

Squire is right. And Tea Party talk about Obama being a "socialist" and a Muslim who wasn't born in the United States won't make a dent in his reelection bid if the economy continues to, in Squire's well-chosen words, "chug along."

But there will be something missing from Obama's victory this time around. There won't be any dancing in the streets. Don't expect two million people to journey to Washington, D.C., in chartered buses, carrying the iconic red and blue stencil picture of Obama with the words "Hope" and "Change" below his face.

Those of us who voted for Obama knew it would take time to repair Bush's errors. That is not the source of the disillusionment. No, the despair comes from a man who stands for nothing, who has reneged on so many promises, and who has done little to actually help people reclaim politics. So little, in fact, that some of his former supporters have actually flocked to the Tea Party, hoping perhaps its promises of change may yield greater results.

Today, the day Obama announced plans to run for president, a Los Angeles Times headline told of yet another broken promise. "No Guantanamo suspects will be tried in U.S. civilian courts." (Source) So much for the vow to close Guantanamo. Add it to a long list of unfulfilled vows.

Men and women who trudge to the polls on Election Day 2012 will not do so with the illusion that they're reclaiming American politics. This time, the idealism will be nonexistent. Joy will be knocked off her perch by pragmatism. And that euphoric moment on November 4, 2008 - Election Day - will be largely forgotten, recalled only be a few who look back fondly at a very different time, when an eloquent president-elect momentarily convinced ordinary voters that the system did, indeed, belong to them, and it was theirs for the taking.

Libya: Two Videos from Jack Hunter

2011-04-04T20:06:00.005-04:00

Conservative political commentator and talk radio host Jack Hunter, who alienated many Neoconservatives with his criticisms of George W. Bush's foreign policy in the early 2000s, offers two very thought-provoking videos here. I'm posting them because I think Hunter raises a number of compelling issues on American intervention on Libya. Specifically, he likens President Barack Obama's actions in recent weeks to Bush's foreign policy approach to the post-9/11 wars. Hunter is saying what I've been saying on this Blog from the start of this intervention. Obama and the Democrats are adopting a Neoconservative approach to Libya that involves regime change, forging alliances with indigenous elements within the country, and military actions in the form of Coalition airstrikes to carry out this agenda.

Meantime, at home, America is in a lot of trouble economically. Hunter and others like him are insisting that it is high time to pay attention to matters closer to home. While I have some differences of opinion about what needs to be done in the country, I agree with his concerns about the United States continuing its role as a global policeman. This is a costly endeavor and, by its very nature, it's highly selective. It is impossible to argue that what is happening in Libya is far worse than what is happening in the Ivory Coast. Why pick one above the other, when the crises inside both countries are so strikingly similar in so many respects, particularly when it comes to the violence unfolding in both places? This is not to say the United States should become a hardcore isolationist nation. There are things that Washington can do to help those who are struggling to uphold the primacy of human rights. It is difficult to see how dropping bombs from airplanes is one of them.

Three Cheers for Our Tea Party Comrades for Exposing the Running Dog Paper Tigers of the Reactionary Elitist Obama Clique! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

2011-04-03T23:25:00.012-04:00

Our comrades in the Tea Party, America's equivalent to the Great Maoist Purification Drive in the People's Republic of China, are thankfully exposing the Paper Tigers who are acting as lackeys of the Democratic Party! The People's Revolution will stamp out these Running Dogs and show them to be the Truly Impure Evildoers that they are!

A New Day is Dawning! The People's Revolution has exposed the Dangerous Miscreant that is Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, a lackey of the People's Enemies who is pretending to be a Republican and who has deviated dangerously from the People's Revolutionary Doctrine! This Running Dog will be paraded through the streets of Beijing in a Dunce Cap for all to see!

Comrade Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation has drawn attention to this Cowardly Traitor's Outrageous Crimes Against the People! Last week, in an absolutely purge-worthy vile display of his love for the Enemy of the People, Senator Scott Brown, a dancing marionette of the Obama Clique, had the temerity to deliver a speech on the Senate floor saying that Tea Party cuts would hurt programs for the elderly and poor of the state of Massachusetts! How dare he?!?!?!? Thankfully, Comrade Phillips set the record straight, establishing the CORRECT PARTY LINE for the People! Here is what this man of the people said:

“Brown is a politician, and that is meant in the worst sense of the word. He knows self-preservation and self-promotion. He has aligned himself with the [Republicans in name only] crowd, which has no beliefs, other than getting reelected and appeasing whatever base he thinks will help him get reelected.” (Source)

Where would we be without Comrade Phillips leading us to the PROMISED LAND of the People's Revolutionary Utopia? We will purge this DEVIATIONIST ELEMENT from our People's Republic, for Criminals like Scott Brown hinder our Super Great Leap Forward! And let this be a lesson! ANYTIME SOMEONE FEELS THE NEED TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, THEY WILL BE MADE AN EXAMPLE OF SO THAT THEY DO NOT CORRUPT THE WILL OF OUR GREAT REVOLUTION!!!

So three cheers for Comrade Phillips!!!

(Cue the chirping crickets...)

Ivory Coast/Cote d'Ivoire 101: Making Sense of the Crisis

2011-04-03T22:52:00.010-04:00

For those of you trying to make sense of the crisis and the escalating violence in the Ivory Coast/Cote d'Ivoire (and, like me, wondering why in the hell the international Coalition is intervening in Libya but not this troubled West African country), this Al Jazeera Q&A is extremely helpful. It is somewhat longer than the typical videos I post on the Tiki Lounge (about 25 minutes), but the talking heads here are extremely intelligent, unlike the "Usual Suspects" you're likely to find on the Sunday morning gab fests (who, let's face it, really don't have any idea what the hell is going on in the Ivory Coast). These Al Jazeera guests know their stuff and they do an excellent job of putting the recent events in the broader political and historical context.

Even if you're a lay person and know nothing about the Ivory Coast (like Yours Truly), you'll come away from this Q&A a lot more informed. Have a look. The 25 minutes are well worth the time and once you're finished watching it, you - unlike most of the pundits on the political talk shows - will have a much better idea of what is happening in this troubled part of the globe.

Libya: More Evidence that Democrats are Morphing into Neocons

2011-03-31T05:34:00.012-04:00

Here's a video of Ed Schultz, an MSNBC "liberal" who sounds a hell of a lot like a Neocon (circa 2002 and 2003) justifying the Coalition intervention in Libya. Listen carefully to his arguments. If this isn't classic Neoconservatism, I don't know what is. He even cites the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 as a justification for U.S. intervention in Libya and regime change (i.e., dumping Gaddafi). If that horrific airline bombing is the real reason why the United States is involved in these military operations, why didn't Washington intervene years ago when Libyan involvement was first revealed?

Thankfully, some progressives, like Jeremy Schahill - a fantastic investigative journalist (and frequent contributor to The Nation magazine) who really tears Ed apart in this video - understand what is happening in Libya and aren't blinded by partisanship. Listen to his arguments. They make a hell of a lot of sense, in my view. It's a sad day when so many (but by no means all) Democrats have become the Neocons and quite a few Republicans have suddenly morphed into Cindy Sheehans. But in this pathetic episode, that's exactly what has happened.

Libya: The Confusion & Inconsistencies Abound...

2011-03-29T23:20:00.007-04:00

Somebody help me, because I'm still confused as hell about Libya!

Democrats, who were doves when George W. Bush was president, are now hawks. "Democrats Back Obama on Libya," said a MinnPost.com headline.

And Republicans, who were hawks when George W. Bush was president, are now doves.

In fact, in the tradition of President Warren G. Harding, the Republican commander in chief who invented the word "normalcy," Sarah Palin created her own new word: squirmish.

"Are we at war?" she asked the other day (as quoted in The Chicago Sun-Times). "I haven't heard the president say we are at war. And that's why I too [don't know] do we use the term intervention, do we use war, do we use squirmish?"

Here's the really crazy part: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Tea Party favorite, is now using the same rhetoric and logic employed by the Antiwar Movement in 2002 and 2003!

Listen to Paul's rebuttal (above) to Obama's speech defending Coalition intervention in Libya yesterday and you'll see what I mean. Many of the exact same arguments that prominent antiwar figures articulated eight or nine years ago, Senator Paul is repeating now.

At one point, Senator Paul said the United States is

already in two wars that we are not paying for. We are waging war across the Middle East on a credit card, one whose limit is rapidly approaching. And this is just wrong. We already borrow money from countries like China to pay for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and it would be interesting to know how many Americans believe we should continue borrowing money and saddling future generations with debt to pay for our current actions in Libya.

The senator went on to say, "We can no longer afford to spend what we don't have. And we can't afford to address every other nation's problems before we address our own." If that isn't classic Antiwar Movement rhetoric, I don't know what is.

It is a sad day when Republicans are the main voices in favor of restraint and non-intervention, whereas most Democrats are circling the wagons around Obama.

It goes to prove an old theory of mine - that once a Democrat comes to power in the White House, the forces of "progressivism" in the United States, which are so adept at resisting Republican misrule, often completely shut down.

This fact, coupled with the sudden appearance of a strong antiwar sentiment in the Republican Party, speaks to just how fiercely tribal and partisan so many high-profile political figures in the United States are today.

Libya: Up is Down, Left is Right, White is Black, War is Peace, Democrat is Republican... Twist it all around & what've you got?

2011-03-28T20:53:00.026-04:00

OK. Let me see if I've got this straight (because I'm pretty damned confused right now)...

The current Commander in Chief of the United States, Barack Obama, favors U.S. military intervention in Libya - which he defended in a speech tonight (in the video above) - yet he opposed it in Iraq and (as far as anyone can tell) waffled on the issue of Afghanistan.

Sound inconsistent? Obama is not alone. This current intervention highlights incredible inconsistencies on both sides of the political spectrum.

Conservative Republicans, who backed military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, are - in large numbers, anyway (with definite exceptions) - opposed to Obama's current intervention in Libya. As Mississippi Governor (and potential 2012 G.O.P. candidate) Haley Barbour told the Wall Street Journal: "What are we doing in Libya? I mean, we have to be careful in my mind about getting into nation-building exercises, whether it's Libya or somewhere else. We've been in Afghanistan for 10 years." (Source)

Where was Barbour when the Antiwar Movement was out in the streets marching against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Missing in Action.

Longtime Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar echoed Barbour's concerns on Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC:

There have to be objectives and a plan and an agreement that we're prepared to devote the military forces but also the money. It makes no sense in the front room, where in Congress we are debating seemingly every day the deficits, the debt ceiling situation coming up, the huge economic problems we have -- but in the back room we are spending money on a military situation in Libya.

To be fair, there are some conservative Republicans rallying around Obama, but many are opposing this current intervention. Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times explained what he called the "Republican dilemma":

Republican presidential hopefuls have been scrambling to figure out the right vocabulary for denouncing President Obama's decision to launch U.S. planes and ships into action against Libya's Moammar Gaddafi. Because Obama made the decision, they know they're against it. But it took most of them a day or two to settle on exactly why, in part because so many of them had called for intervention before Obama pulled the trigger.

According to McManus, Newt Gingrich, another likely GOP presidential hopeful, flip-flopped on Libya, first stating, "This is a moment to get rid of Gaddafi. Do it. Get it over with." Then Obama intervened and Gingrich said, "It is impossible to make sense of the standard for intervention in Libya except opportunism and news media publicity. Iran and North Korea are vastly bigger threats.... There are a lot of bad dictators doing bad things."

You'd think these GOPers, who were so impassioned in their support of George W. Bush's interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq - often for the same reasons (when WMDs were debunked, they switched to a largely human rights defense of the Iraq War, and human rights was often at the center of justifications for the Afghan War) - would support Obama's Libya intervention, which would be consistent with their reasons for supporting the two post-9/11 wars. And, like I said, some do. But many oppose Obama - and with a passion.

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Left is no more consistent than their Right-wing counterparts. As was the case with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there are plenty on the Left who are opposed to the Libya intervention.

But there are a surprising number of liberals and lefties who are cheering on Obama's tough new Libya policy. "I would like to urge the left to chew gum and walk at the same time," said Juan Cole, one of the most eloquent and brilliant and scholarly opponents of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his "An Open Letter to the Left on Libya," Cole came to Obama's defense in a strongly worded Blog entry.

An excerpt:

If we just don’t care if the people of Benghazi are subjected to murder and repression on a vast scale, we aren’t people of the Left. We should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo the way the Right makes abortion an absolute taboo if doing so makes us heartless (inflexible a priori positions often lead to heartlessness). It is now easy to forget that Winston Churchill held absolutely odious positions from a Left point of view and was an insufferable colonialist who opposed letting India go in 1947. His writings are full of racial stereotypes that are deeply offensive when read today. Some of his interventions were nevertheless noble and were almost universally supported by the Left of his day. The UN allies now rolling back Qaddafi are doing a good thing, whatever you think of some of their individual leaders.

Cole isn't alone. There are other leftist defenders of U.S. military operations in Libya, including veteran liberal/leftish political columnist John Judis and L.A. Weekly columnist and author Marc Cooper. While Cole and Judis are quite respectful and fair toward those who disagree with them, Cooper is downright nasty to anyone voicing doubts about the intervention. He saved one of his most vicious attacks for Phyllis Bennis, a respected progressive-left commentator and author who opposed Obama's Libya policy. In a nakedly ad hominem comment mirroring the most infantile sort of Sixties-era left-wing sectarianism imaginable, Cooper remarked that he's known Bennis "for years - even back when she was a Maoist and relaundered herself as some sort of reasonable 'analyst' an (sic) shrouded with the legitimacy of the Institute for Policy Studies."

What Cooper doesn't say in his blog is that much of what Bennis says mirrors the same sort of rhetoric used by antiwar activists in their opposition to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Moreover, if the pro-war leftists in America who defend U.S. intervention in Libya were being consistent, they would've supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, after all, Washington was instrumental in overthrowing one of the worst regimes in modern history, the Taliban, which repressed Afghanistan's civilian population far more violently than Gadaffi has done in Libya. The Taliban is, in fact, South Asia's equivalent of the Khmer Rouge - insane, brutal, violent, to the point of being apocalyptic. Corrupt as the government of Hamid Karzai is, when it comes to human rights, it is a huge improvement over the Taliban.

And in Iraq, once you strip away all of the now thoroughly refuted claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), U.S. military intervention resulted in the overthrow of one of the worst tyrants of the past 30 years. Say what you will about current-day Iraq, but the fragile government there has far greater respect for human rights than Saddam Hussein ever did. Saddam was a monster, and some of the most impassioned defenders of the Coalition bombings in Libya were dead-set against U.S. military operations to overthrow him.

So Libya is right, but Afghanistan and Iraq are wrong? If one bases their support of Coalition bombing of Libya purely on human rights, how is it possible to defend Libya but not Afghanistan and/or Iraq?

Is it because Afghanistan and Iraq involved large-scale commitments of ground troops, but Libya doesn't? Is it because those two post-9/11 wars have dragged on for years and have been extremely costly, both in dollars and human lives? If that's the argument, then it's a chicken-shit one. If you accept that the Libya intervention is a justified struggle against an aggressive and violent dictator trying to harm his own people, then you should be willing to put the proverbial money where your mouth is and back an all-out, full-scale military attack to stop Gaddafi from doing what he's doing. Unless, of course, at some level, you don't really buy it.

You hear a lot of defenders of the Libya intervention saying, "Libya is not Iraq." Talk about a hollow cliché. What does that mean, exactly? Does it mean that Obama is too timid to send ground combat troops into Libya? Does that mean it was wrong to overthrow Saddam Hussein, a worse tyrant that Gaddafi? Does it mean that the Bush administration lied to push the country into war in Iraq, but Obama didn't with Libya, so therefore this intervention is OK but Iraq wasn't? Why should it matter that Bush lied if the end result in Iraq is that a monstrous despot was removed from power? Isn't Obama pushing for intervention in Libya for the same reasons - to prevent a bloodthirsty dictator from harming his own people?

So why oppose Iraq and Afghanistan but not Libya? Is it because George W. Bush spearheaded the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and you can't trust him (and he's a Republican), whereas the intervention in Libya was the doing of Obama, whose motives are pure as snow? Perhaps partisanship is at work in all of these glaring inconsistencies, whether we're talking about the Right or the Left.

If it's right to intervene in Libya for human rights purposes, why not do the same thing in the Ivory Coast, where - as U.S. News and World Report points out - the violence is just as intense, if not more so, than it is in Libya? As U.S. News and World Report notes:

Thousands of supporters of Ivory Coast’s President Laurent Gbagbo enlisted in his army last week, fueling fears of renewed chaos in West Africa. Gbagbo’s refusal to accept his electoral defeat to Alassane Ouattara in the country’s November presidential election triggered bloody clashes between loyalists and Ouattara supporters. Rapes and killings, reportedly by Gbagbo’s forces, have left more than 400 dead. Over 50 people were killed last week alone. Gbagbo officials are encouraging young activists to join the army and fight against “the terrorists,” or backers of Ouattara, whom the United States and the rest of the international community recognize as the legitimate leader. Ouattara called on the United Nations to use force to protect civilians.

Where are the liberal and Democratic Party establishment and left-leaning defenders of U.S. intervention in Libya on the issue of the Ivory Coast? Answer: They're nowhere to be heard.

So what is with all of these wild inconsistencies on both sides of the political spectrum? Is it all about partisanship? Is it that "Good" Democrats were supposed to oppose the war in Iraq, waffle on Afghanistan, and take a hawkish position on coalition bombings of Libya, whereas "Good" Republicans are supposed to defend Bush's war against Saddam, be slightly less enthusiastic (but still supportive) about Afghanistan and oppose Obama on Libya?

If you can figure out this insanity and you think it amounts to anything other than blind partisanship, please - please - let me know.

Addendum: If you get a chance, see Christopher Hitchens' article in Slate.com titled, "The Iraq Effect: If Saddam Hussein were still in power, this year's Arab uprisings would never have happened." Essentially, Hitchens raises many of the issues I've raised here, but from a different angle. I do not agree with Hitchens apology for the Iraq War, just as I do not agree with the Iraq War itself, but if I were to support it, I'd support it for the exact same reasons he does.

Middle East Uprisings 101

2011-03-26T08:33:00.009-04:00

It is nothing short of remarkable to see the struggle for freedom sweeping across the Middle East, a region that, for quite some time, has been home to some of the most repressive regimes on the planet. We are witnessing incredible history unfolding before our very eyes on our television and computer screens, in our newspapers and magazines. Libyan rebels have captured the key strategic city of Ajdabiyah. More uprisings are planned for Syria. Protests are about to take place in Bahrain, Yemen and Jordan. It's all happening so fast, at such a dizzying pace. A new headline each day tells stories of demonstrations and violence. Crackdowns have become a regular occurrence. Meantime, a coalition of Western powers still strikes targets in Libya from the air. Where is it all going?

From the Right: From a realist perspective, Robert D. Kaplan offers an interesting analysis in the Wall Street Journal. Headlined "The Middle East crisis has just begun," the article is brooding analysis, a cautionary tale of seismic power shifts. You may not agree with everything Kaplan says, but his perspective is insightful. He is clearly worried about China's growing influence in the Middle East, which seems to increase each time the United States intervenes in the region. A highlight from Kaplan's piece:

In the background of the ongoing Middle Eastern drama looms the shadow of a rising China. China is not a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system, as we proclaim it should be; it is a free rider. We are at war in Afghanistan to make it a safe place for China to extract minerals and metals. We have liberated Iraq so that Chinese firms can extract its oil. Now we are at war with Libya, which further diverts us from concentrating on the western Pacific—the center of the world's economic and naval activity—which the Chinese military seeks eventually to dominate.
Every time we intervene somewhere, it quickens the pace at which China, whose leaders relish obscurity in international affairs, closes the gap with us. China will have economic and political problems of its own ahead, no doubt, and these will interrupt its rise. But China is spending much less to acquire an overseas maritime empire than we are spending, with all our interventions, merely to maintain ours.

From the Middle: From a slightly different P.O.V., Samia Nakhoul of Reuters offers a sweeping snapshot of events in the region in an analysis titled "Ground shifts as new Middle East order takes shape." This piece may be the best succinct overview of everything that has happened to date. Nakhoul tells us who the main players are, what they're struggling for, and reveals the common threads that tie all of these recent events together. Bottom line: It is a balanced assessment, with no axes to grind, and a very clear-eyed and lucid view of the region, grounded in a deep understanding of its politics, culture and history. Very well done.

From the Left: Gary Younge, a very eloquent and thoughtful British journalist who writes for The Guardian and lives in the United States, weighs in on the intervention in Libya in an outstanding column titled "The Innocence of the Liberal Hawk," which appears in the April 11 issue of The Nation magazine. As the headline indicates, Younge weighs in on the issue of folks on the liberal-left side of the spectrum who applaud this latest military intervention. The best thing about the column is that Younge sees the nuances and complexities very clearly in this issue. A highlight from the article:

This time around, however, there is no need for historical references, because the hypocrisy is playing out in real time. When protests started in Tunisia in January, the French foreign minister offered the Tunisian police training to “restore calm.” The day before Libya was attacked, dozens of protesters were shot dead in Yemen. Less than a week before, Saudi forces invaded Bahrain, where many protesters have been killed. These are American allies.
So while the West clearly has the power to intervene, given its history of colonialism and imperialism, it has no more credibility to do so on humanitarian grounds in this region than Iran would to bomb Bahrain in defense of the Shiites who are currently being killed there.

Farewell Leonard "Lenny" Weinglass (1933-2011), a gentleman and a soft-spoken "people's lawyer"

2011-03-24T16:38:00.023-04:00

Lost amid all of the headlines about Elizabeth Taylor's passing was news of Leonard Weinglass's death. He died last night at 6:30 p.m., at age 78, in his favorite place: New York City. Weinglass - "Lenny," as his friends called him - was a soft-spoken and assuming attorney who dressed in frumpy clothes and went into the courtroom ready to take on the Goliaths.

Weinglass is one of the forgotten giants of the 1960s. He's not mentioned in most of the standard Sixties' history texts. When one thinks of "the Sixties," Lenny is not the first person who comes to mind.

Too bad, because nobody did more to defend the marginalized, the radical, the down-and-out, the railroaded and the "lost causes" generally than Lenny. When it came to the heavy hitters of the "people's lawyers," Lenny wasn't as flamboyant as fellow radical attorney Bill Kunstler, nor was he as connected to people in high places as Civil Rights champion Joseph L. Rauh, Jr. But he was always there for those who needed him the most. He gained fame as the attorney for the Chicago 8 (later 7), the group of activists accused of conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

"Leonard Weinglass, an attorney from Newark, ...was asked to enter the case by Tom Hayden, a former client," wrote Frank L. Jonas and Diana Kelbanow in their book People's Lawyers. "A detail-oriented attorney who did much of the research for the case, Weinglass had never previously tried a case outside of New Jersey."

The Chicago 8 Trial catapulted Weinglass to nationwide fame. He went on to defend the late Anthony Russo (1936-2008), Daniel Ellsberg's co-defendant accused of helping to leak sensitive documents in the Pentagon Papers case, imprisoned Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Cuban Five (a group of five Cubans accused of spying on the United States for the Castro government), and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as well as a myriad of other activists, prisoners of conscience and assorted dissenters. He got his start as a U.S. Air Force judge advocate. He later went to Yale Law School.

Weinglass was constantly busy, yet he never liked attention, and shunned the role of celebrity attorney. Way back in the 1990s, before I decided to write my Ph.D. dissertation about Vietnam Veterans Against the War, I asked Lenny if he'd be willing to be the subject of a biography. He wrote back, simply, "No. If I were willing, I'd pick you to do it. But I'm not, so there you go."

Yet years later, in August 2001 (just a few weeks before the 9/11 terror attacks), I had a chance to interview Weinglass in his spacious, yet cluttered office in Manhattan. The place was full of framed political posters, some dating back decades, others very recent. There were stacks of case files everywhere. We had the most fascinating conversation imaginable. But never once did Lenny take credit for any of his successful cases. He wanted to talk more about the history he witnessed and the other people he met. He always tried to keep himself out of the picture.

A few weeks later, when those planes hit the World Trade Center, Weinglass, a lover of all things New York, was devastated. But he still took on the cases nobody dared touch, from Muslims who'd been the victims of racial profiling to militants who marched in the streets against George W. Bush's policies. "The typical call I get is the one that starts by saying, 'you are the fifth attorney we've called,'" he said. "Then I get interested!"

When I heard Lenny was ill, I signed the guest book on a tribute website. I noticed the countless other wonderful messages from men and women, young and old, from all walks of life, who'd been touched by him in one way or another. What a poignant thing to read all of those well wishes, all of those words of hope and kindness.

In my little note to Lenny, written just weeks before he died, I told him that American democracy was much healthier because of him. No doubt Leonard Weinglass, attorney for the outcasts, the falsely accused and the dispossessed, would have been the first to object to such an accusation.

Farewell Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011): Her finest moment...

2011-03-23T23:11:00.011-04:00

Boy, oh boy, this scene is hard to watch. Two acting titans - a couple on screen and off - Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton lock horns in Mike Nichols' 1966 masterpiece Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. This is a particularly painful moment in the film, when Martha (Taylor) lets George (Burton) have it over his lack of ambition and his low-paying job as an associate professor of... (deep sigh) ... history. Ouch, man!

Elizabeth Taylor, of course, died today, at age 79. Taylor was one of those incredible figures in film who straddled two generations of Hollywood: the so-called "classic" age of the 1940s and early 1950s, and the more modern era of the late 1950s through the 1970s.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was one of those films of the Sixties that anticipated the coming of post-Production Code filmmaking, an era of new movie realism that introduced profanity, violence, nudity and gritty depictions of life - elements absent in the movies made in Hollywood's Golden Age. Who's Afraid was based on the 1962 stage play, written by Edward Albee, of the same name. In its day, it was considered quite revolutionary for its painfully honest depiction of a deeply dysfunctional codependent relationship.

Taylor was in so many great movies: National Velvet (1944), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Raintree County (1957) and my personal favourite, Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Even when she was in a dud, like 1994's dreadful live-action version of The Flintstones, she gave it her all, the same way Bela Lugosi did in those old Monogram cheapies of the 1940s.

You often hear that tired old saying when someone dies about it being the "end of an era." In this case, those words ring true, though. Elizabeth Taylor was one of the last stars of Golden Age Hollywood, and her death comes less than a month after silver screen starlet Jane Russell passed away at the end of February at age 89.

There are still a few "classic" Hollywood stars still alive: Mickey Rooney, the sibling rivals Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, two-time Academy Award winner Louise Rainier (who recently celebrated her 101st birthday!), Shirley Temple, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Ann Blyth, Esther Williams. I'm sure if I thought long and hard, I could come up with some others. In the Netherlands, prolific Dutch film actor (and, sadly, Hitler apologist) Johannes Heesters just celebrated birthday number 107 in December.

So there are a few classic stars left. But their ranks are thinning out more and more with each passing year. And each time we lose one of these precious people, the world is a lesser place because of it.

From the Nixon Files: The Funniest Conversation Ever Captured on Tape in Human History

2011-03-23T22:12:00.009-04:00

I truly love this insane conversation (taken from the infamous Nixon Tapes) between President Richard Nixon and his Chief Domestic Advisor John Ehrlichman and his White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman. The conversation starts off focused on a made-for-TV movie, then quickly shifts to the hit early 1970s' TV show All in the Family. They spend a little bit of time discussing Archie Bunker and his relationship with his "hippie" son-in-law Michael "Meathead" Stivic. When Nixon becomes fixated on a gay character that appeared on the show, all hell breaks loose and the conversation goes spiralling off in all kinds of maniacal directions. These three White House chums can't stop talking about homosexuals. It turns into sheer lunacy as Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman end up saying the most over-the-top things, touching on history, gays in San Francisco, gay hair dressers, and so forth. Normally, as a supporter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and gay and lesbian rights, I'd find this kind of thing almost too repulsive to listen to. But in this case, it's so over the top and loony that you can't help but laugh in discomfort. No doubt if he were still alive today, Dick Nixon would be an ardent foe of political correctness.

Give this crazy conversation a listen. You'll laugh like mad.

Christopher Hitchens on 60 Minutes (March 6, 2011)

2011-03-22T09:20:00.000-04:00

I'll let the master speak for himself...

Hilarious Japanese video "Nuclear Boy" explains the nuclear crisis to Japanese kids...

2011-03-22T07:16:00.003-04:00

I know "hilarious" is not a word you'd want to apply to the current nuclear crisis in Japan, but this is a very funny cartoon made in Japan and full of scatological reference (ample references to "poo poo," diarrhea, soiled diapers, etc.). The cartoon is about a character named Nuclear Boy, who gets sick after the huge Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The video is full of humor, but it ultimately takes a poignant turn toward the end.

Have a look at it. We're only talking four and a half minutes here. It's a fascinating glimpse at how Japanese culture handles its crises. And the animation is very cute and funny. It's a sweet salute to a brave people who have been coping with a hell of a lot of devastation and loss in recent days.

Vanishing America: A Sad Farewell to Drive-in Theaters...

2011-03-22T07:00:00.003-04:00

This is a wonderful four-part documentary that aired on a Lansing, Michigan public access TV show called "Outdoor Moovies." (The word "Moovies" is their misspelling, not mine...) Some of the production elements are a little bit dicey, but this low-budget 2006 documentary, called "Ohio Drive-in Theater Road Trip," is well worth the time it takes to watch it.

Have a look if you get a chance. I have very fond memories of going to the drive-in theater when I was a kid. When I was a little kid, our drive-in theater of choice was the Van Buren in Riverside, California, which is apparently still going strong. I remember seeing Jaws there with my dad and brother and it scared the s--- out of me.

Unlike the Van Buren, most of the classic American drive-ins are either gone or rapidly deteriorating. In this documentary, you'll see that even the ones still going are aging poorly: falling apart, rusting, relying on crummy old roadside marquees.

But the drive-in was a great American institution. Rather than forgetting about it, treating it as a relic of the past, we should celebrate it. That's why I'm posting these documentaries here, which are a well made and loving homage to these great outdoor arenas of entertainment.

The Many Faces of Muammar Gaddafi

2011-03-21T22:06:00.014-04:00

Ever since the Allies launched their massive air campaign over Libya, Muammar Gaddafi has shown himself to be a man with many sides to him. His moods switch dramatically from hour to hour.

Here are but a few of the many faces of the Libyan dictator...

Bemused

Self-Assured

Jovial

Humble

Gay/Mirthful

Vivacious

Nostalgic

Zany

Tickled

Sad (or is it Happy?)

The Return of the Tiki Lounge from Hell!

2011-03-21T21:13:00.006-04:00

Greetings friends. The Tiki Lounge, I'm proud to say, is back.

Where did it go, you ask? Well, even if you didn't ask, I'm going to tell you. Back in 2008, the Tiki Lounge relocated to The Record, the local newspaper here in Waterloo region. I blogged regularly when the Tiki Lounge was housed on The Record's website. I blogged about damn near everything: Barack Obama, the financial meltdown, world crises, loud-mouthed FoxNews types, chickenshit liberals, mushy-minded political correctness, Sarah Palin, inner-city poverty, overseas wars, nuclear weapons, music, movies, TV, books. You name it, I blogged about it.

Then something happened. I got sick of Blogging. By the late summer of 2009, my Blogging had tapered off significantly. I decided I needed to step back. Andrew's Tiki Lounge had taken on a life of its own and I'd gotten burned out.

There was another reason I ducked out. I have to admit, I got sick of the Politics of Nastiness, which is so abundant on the Right and the Left. It's more pervasive on the Right, but Lefties have their fair share of assholes, too.

Also, my politics changed, as politics are bound to do. Not my commitment to human rights, which is unwavering. Not my sympathy with the vulnerable, which is stronger than ever.

No, the change came in the form of an intensified aversion on my part to all forms of dogma. I became more of a Libertarian Humanist. I became an Animal Rights advocate. I went vegan.

I neglected the Tiki Lounge. Then the people at The Record deleted it. Months and months and months and months of hard work and writing disappeared with one keystroke. I was fucking pissed off. I'm still fucking pissed off when I think about it.

I started a whole new blog, We're All Animals: A Celebration of Animal Rights and Vegan Living. My main focus is now Animal Rights, which I think is the single most important issue confronting the human race right now. Close to 60 billion animals are being murdered each year by the Factory Farm System. Billions of other animals - aquatic and land - perish at the hands of human beings for no good reason at all.

So I blogged about Animal Rights. I blogged and blogged. I still do.

But I grew to miss my non-Animal Rights blogging. I wanted the Tiki Lounge back.

And here I am.

I figured I'd return to my old, abandoned Tiki Lounge, still on that same run-down little Cul-de-sac, clean the place out, and start blogging again. The New Andrew's Tiki Lounge will be a departure in many respects from the Old Tiki Lounge of '08-09. For one thing, the blog entries probably won't be so detailed (when did I find time to write those suckers????). But one thing will remain the same: It'll be my own little soapbox where I can pretty much say whatever in the hell I want.

To quote the theme song of one of my favorite 1970s' TV shows: "Welcome back..."

ANDREW'S TIKI LOUNGE HAS MOVED TO A NEW LOCATION!!!

2008-07-24T11:26:00.002-04:00

Dear Blog Pals,

I am pleased to announce that Andrew's Tiki Lounge has moved to a new location!

My friends at the Waterloo Region Record have given the Tiki Lounge a wonderful new home. You can access the weird and wild world of the Tiki Lounge by clicking HERE. Other than the location, nothing really changes. You will still get the same news and views from a Jeffersonian/humanitarian/irreverent/Canadian-American perspective.

I am still going to leave the Old Tiki Lounge open for business, but new posts will appear on the New and Improved Tiki Lounge.

Please join me at the New Tiki Lounge. I look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,

Andrew Hunt
Proprietor, Andrew's Tiki Lounge

Campaign Trail Follies of 08 (part 2)

2008-07-24T00:03:00.012-04:00

The S.S. McCain: One Rapidly Sinking Ship!: You know things aren't going well for John McCain's presidential campaign when the candidate attacks the media for being too biased in favor of the "other guy." In a combination mass email and YouTube video, the McCain campaign declared, "It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair. The media is in love with Barack Obama. If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny." To the tune of the 1960s' hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," the video shows images of influential media figures swooning over Senator Barack Obama. Sad. Very sad. These are the tactics of a desperate, go-nowhere campaign. And this isn't the only troubling sign -- not by a long shot. Campaign deserters tell tales of entire communities without any real McCain campaign presence. The refusal by the New York Times to print an op-ed piece by McCain added to his woes. The extensive media coverage of Obama's recent trip overseas also heightened frustrations in the McCain camp. As conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh noted, "My prediction is that the coverage of Obama on this trip will be oriented toward countering the notion he has no idea what he is talking about on foreign policy and defence issues and instead will prop him up as a qualified statesman. McCain, on the other hand, is a known quantity on these issues and his position does not excite nor fit the mainstream media's narrative on Iraq and Afghanistan, so they simply ignore it and him." Then McCain was stung by the news that one of his big donors, Craig Berkman, is being sued in a fraud case and has been ordered to pay $28 million in damages. Arr, me maties! From where I'm standin', the S.S. McCain don't look none too seaworthy!

The Gutter Gazette Strike Again: The National Enquirer is reporting that former North Carolina senator John Edwards "met with his mistress, blonde divorcée Rielle Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton on Monday night, July 21"and left the Hilton (in Beverly Hills, California) in the wee hours of the morning. The Enquirer is insisting that Edwards and Hunter had a "love child" together (what a nasty term). Luckily, the story has failed to get much play in the mainstream media. Edwards, easily the most progressive and humane political leader out there, is now in the midst of trying to launch his own one-man War on Poverty. He is busily touring the country, speaking out for a higher minimum wage, improved medical insurance for the poor and other measures to protect the jobs and livelihoods of ordinary, working-class families. A Rocky Mountain News headline said it all: "John Edwards passion to war against poverty." No other politician is out there fighting the good fight on behalf of the poor as aggressively as Edwards. Unfortunately, the sleazy Enquirer has never given a damn about the plight of the poor in America. All they want to do is destroy good people and good reputations -- as long as it translates into selling copies. Let's hope this story stays in the gutter where it belongs. Edwards, more than anyone else I know, deserves a prominent spot in the new Obama White House.

A Watershed Year for Democrats?: A recent article in the British Guardian quoted New York senator Charles Schumer is predicting several Democratic victories in Red States this fall. So far, poll after poll seems to support this prediction. Local state polls show Obama way out ahead in most races. Nationwide, the numbers tell the same story. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll says Senator Obama leads Senator McCain by 47 per cent to 41 per cent for the November 4 election. Senator Schumer predicted a watershed for the Democratic Party this fall that may rival that of 1932. He said, "Every generation, generation and a half, there are these dramatic changes, and if they're permanent they are governed by people's relationship to government." In a letter to the Republican leadership earlier this year, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) expressed his concerns: "The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worse since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006." But the battle is far from over. The Chicago Tribune's political reporter Matthew Hay Brown's latest Blog entry is appropriately headlined, "Dems: Beware 'Irrational Exuberance.'" Or, as Han Solo told Luke Skywalker, "Don't get cocky kid!"

Give Those Girls a Raise!: Finally, from People magazine comes the news that Obama gives his daughters, Malia (10) and Sasha (7) a $1 a week allowance. $1??? Come on, Senator, you can do better than that. If you win the race for the presidency -- no, no, no... make that, when you win -- in November, you have got to give those girls a raise. According to People, they do a lot of work around the house (and on the campaign trail, too!).

Hello! Reality check! These days, $1 a week just doesn't cut it. In fact, it hasn't cut it since, oh, 1971. Get with the times!

From the Nixon Files: Nuggets of Wisdom From Richard Nixon

2008-07-21T11:16:00.003-04:00

Richard Nixon on Italians: "They're not like us. They smell different, they look different, they act different. The trouble is, you can't find one that's honest."

Richard Nixon, Man of the People: "This would be an easy job if you didn't have to deal with people."

Richard Nixon on Golf: "By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours."

Richard Nixon offers Reassuring Words: "Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too."

Finally, Pat Nixon on Her Husband's Peculiar Nocturnal Habits: "Nobody could sleep with Dick. He wakes up during the night, switches on the lights, speaks into his tape recorder."

Honoring the Noble Side of America: The New Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond, Virginia

2008-07-21T10:13:00.011-04:00

It was thrilling to see the dedication of the new Virginia Civil Rights Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, the "Heart of the Confederacy." The statue honors an early and largely forgotten episode in the history of the Civil Rights Movement: A 1951 protest, led by local activist Barbara Johns, against the deplorable conditions in the all-black Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The main goal of the protesters was to push for a new and improved school house. They ended up becoming pioneers in the infancy of the Civil Rights Movement, several years before Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat on a public transit bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Many of the older figures depicted in the statue -- including protest organizer Barbara Johns (who passed away in 1991) -- are now dead. Sadly, they did not live to see the day when a glorious statue honoring their noble work was dedicated on the grounds of the state Capitol, where the Confederate Flag once flapped proudly in the wind.

A great deal has changed since 1951. Now, an African American is the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States and he stands an excellent chance of winning the election in November. If you could somehow go back to 1951 and tell Barbara Johns or any of the other protest participants that one day, there would be a statue honoring them in the heart of Dixie, or that an African American man would be running for the highest office in the land, or even that black and white kids would one day sit in the same classroom together, they'd probably think you were a foolish, wide-eyed idealist; maybe even a raving nutjob. Back in the dark days before the Civil Rights Movement, virtually nobody -- not even liberals -- envisioned the day when the virulent Jim Crow racism so pervasive across the American South would become a relic of the past.

Most inspiring is how a small group of dedicated Virginians went from door to door, raising money to finance the $2.6 million memorial. This celebration of the Civil Rights Movement was built with private funds, including a generous donations from over 400 groups. Fund raising began in 2005 and continued for the next few years. The end result is a statue depicting 18 heroic men and women -- including young students -- in what sculptor Stanley Bleifeld refers to as a "living memorial." Similar monuments have been built in other key Civil Rights Movement battlegrounds, including Columbia, S.C.; Little Rock, Ark.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Memphis, Tenn. Another memorial will soon go up in Raleigh, N.C. Lisa Collins, former First Lady of the state of Virginia, was one of the leading forces behind raising money to build the statue. One day, several years ago, her young daughter asked why only white men were commemorated on the state Capitol grounds. Thanks to the Civil Rights Movement Memorial, that has changed. As Collins put it, "It is a statement of knowing that these African Americans, who happen to be Virginians, at great personal risk brought about sweeping change to our society and legal system."

It's easy to find what's wrong with America. All you have to do is read most of the headlines in the newspaper. Sometimes, it is important to take a moment to find out what's right with America. The country has come a long way. But as Barbara Johns said fifty years ago, "It seems like we were reaching for the moon." It's important to remember that quote. Justice is not guaranteed. It takes brave people -- ordinary people with extraordinary courage, often struggling against enormous odds -- to fight for it. This memorial is a celebration of those people.

The Tragic Decline of the Midwest

2008-07-18T12:13:00.009-04:00

Republican presidential candidate John McCain (right) was in Michigan today meeting with General Motors CEOs and auto workers. Things are rough in that part of the country. For the past 30, 35 years, we've been hearing tales of the declining "rust belt." By the time Michael Moore made Roger & Me in 1989 -- by far Moore's best film, about the irreverent filmmaker tracking down GM CEO Roger Smith -- it didn't seem like things could get much worse in America's Industrial Heartland. But in 2008 -- not quite 20 years after Roger & Me played in movie theaters across the country -- things are worse. McCain realizes that the "rust belt" region of the Midwest -- especially Michigan and Ohio -- are feeling the pain of America's economic downturn most acutely. That's why he is spending time there and listening to the stories of troubled auto workers.

"We all know in this room a job is more than a job," McCain proclaimed, right in the heart of Auto Country.

But McCain's tough populist talk is often at odds with his unwavering advocacy of free trade, corporate welfare and minimal regulation of industry and environmental laws. Still, the Arizona Republican knows he is lagging behind in the polls in the race against Obama, particularly when it comes to economic issues. That's why this visit to the GM plant at Warren, Michigan, is so important to him. He has to appear sympathetic to the average American worker or he is going to lose much-needed votes to Obama.

By going to Michigan, McCain is right in the center of the sinking "rust belt." Adding to the woes of that region's inhabitants has been the nationwide housing crisis, which has hit that part of the country particularly hard. A recent Reuters article highlighted the terrible housing slump in the Midwest, which shows no signs of recovery anytime soon.

The Reuters article quoted Katherine Porter, associate professor of law at the University of Iowa College of Law as saying, "I expect the hardest hit places to be those such as Ohio and Michigan where the foreclosure crisis was driven by serious, if not permanent, economic downturns." Porter is quite correct in her analysis. Unlike the "Sunbelt states" of the South and Southwest, the "rust belt" is not experiencing steady increases in population growth or migration. The Reuters article also included a telling quote from Andrew Jakabovics of the think tank the Center for American Progress: "The sad truth is that in economically stagnant places, the value of foreclosed properties is often the value of the land less the cost of demolishing the structure."

Hard to believe that less than a half century ago, the troubled spot that McCain is touring was once literally the engine (no pun intended) of economic growth for the nation. The tragic decline of Michigan -- and indeed, the Midwest -- reflects the shifting economic priorities of the last forty years. As the country has moved away from protectionist policies that favored American industry and toward a greater emphasis on free trade, the service sector and high-tech industry, the ailing "rust belt" has become even rustier. And it is difficult to see how McCain's modest proposals -- which include giving a $5,000 tax credit to Americans who buy no-emissions cars -- are going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Can Rev. Jesse Jackson's credibility be rescued?

2008-07-18T09:01:00.018-04:00

In the United States, a lot of commentators, pundits and seasoned political observers have already written Rev. Jesse Jackson's political obituary. Rev. Jackson has apologized repeatedly for remarks he made when he was off the air in a Fox News interview earlier this month about Senator Barack Obama. Jackson, as most of us know by now, said he wanted to "cut off his nuts." It is now known that Jackson remarked, "Barack...he's talking down to black people...telling niggers how to behave."

A short time later came Rev. Jackson's apologies:

I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologise again to Senator Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as to the American public. There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me.

Well, that's a start. But Jackson has already used up some of his 9 lives in the political world. In January 1984, he referred to Jews as "Hymies" and New York City as "Hymietown." His critics have also pointed to other, lesser known flubs, strategic mistakes and errors in judgment on his part (too numerous to list here). Which begs the question: Is there any way he can rescue his credibility?

But it is important to remember that, in addition to his notorious blunders, Rev. Jackson has also been at the helm of many great progressive triumphs. His brilliantly organized Rainbow Coalition in the 1980s brought together a number of marginalized groups -- gays and lesbians, veterans, disabled people, working-class families, Native Americans, etc. -- into a massive united front that, if nothing else, showed that progressives were still a force to be reckoned with, even in the Age of Reagan. Jackson rallied this support in his two runs for the presidency, first in 1984, then again, even more impressively, in 1988. His speech at the Democratic National Convention that year was absolutely electrifying -- maybe one of the finest American speeches ever delivered in the final quarter of the Twentieth Century.

Rev. Jackson has said -- and done -- some regrettable things in his political career. It is difficult to forgive or forget his flagrant anti-Semitism from 1984.

And then there was his use of the so-called "N-Bomb" in his rant earlier this month (this is the same Jesse Jackson who condemned comedian Michael Richards for using the N-word two years ago his incendiary, self-destructive stage routine). Equally unsettling was his crass, gangster-like reference to cutting off Obama's testicles. Rapper/actor/director Ice Cube (right) offered some especially insightful comments about Jackson's outburst: “It’s kinda sad, for one thing for a black man to even consider cutting off another black man’s nuts. Especially in a country like America, where that’s happened to us over the years countless and countless times, being sanctioned by the government. It’s kinda sad that he would even think about that. Even though it’s not literal, it’s just as painful.”

It isn't enough to say that Jackson should be careful about these sorts of outbursts in the future. For every one of these crass comments Jackson makes in public -- whether it's about "Hymies" or cutting off someone else's gonads -- you have to wonder how many equally vulgar statements he makes in private, beyond the reach of the microphone. The damage has been done and it can't be undone.

But it would be a shame to allow those comments to take away from the legitimacy of the progressive work that Jackson has done and the noble things he has accomplished. Down the road, historians will likely pass a verdict on Jackson that he was an incredibly complicated man, fraught with contradictions. Compassionate yet judgmental, visionary yet reactionary, bold yet self-destructive, perceptive yet narrow minded. Sadly, many conservative commentators are pointing to Jackson's remarks as proof that old-school Civil Rights leaders who still play the "race card" are merely delusional fools who do not understand that racism is a relic of the past. On the contrary, racism still permeates and plagues so much of American society, despite Obama's grand achievements. That is why Jesse Jackson's ideas -- rooted in the age of Martin Luther King, Jr., yet tempered by the realities of post-Civil Rights America -- are so important in today's dialogue on race relations. Sadly, the more he stumbles like he did earlier this month (and like he did in 1984), the less credibility and weight his vision of social justice carries in the eyes of the American public.

Iraq War Deserters and Canada

2008-07-17T10:02:00.004-04:00

On Monday, Canadian authorities deported Robin Long (right), a U.S. Army deserter who left America and came to Canada hoping to escape the horrifying bloodbath that is the Iraq War. Even though a recent poll noted that 3 out 5 Canadians believe the Iraq War deserters should be allowed to stay here, the minority opposed to allowing them to stay is extremely vocal here in Canada. And their main argument is that the United States now has a volunteer, professional military and people like Long volunteered to serve in it (unlike Vietnam War-era resisters who came to Canada, many of whom were evading the draft). I wrote a column about it in the Waterloo Region Record that appeared on Saturday, June 12. For my Tiki Lounge friends, I'm posting the column here, too. I hope you find it interesting.

Accepting U.S. deserters is a small step in the right direction

Andrew Hunt

Should the Canadian government give asylum to American military deserters seeking to escape the Iraq War?

The question has prompted a lively -- sometimes contentious -- debate across Canada. An Angus Reid survey of 1,001 Canadians taken earlier this month shows that three out of five people in this country believe Iraq War military deserters should be allowed to stay in Canada.

In early June, the House of Commons passed a non-binding resolution urging the government to permit the deserters to remain in Canada. Of course, the resolution is not official policy. Rather, it was a symbolic statement intended as a sign of sympathy from antiwar MPs.

Nobody knows exactly how many Iraq War resisters there are in Canada, but estimates vary between 100 and 600. Some American asylum seekers, such as 25-year-old Robin Long, have come perilously close to being returned to the United States by Canadian authorities.

Canadians who support sending the deserters back to the United States argue that, in contrast to the Vietnam War, when tens of thousands of draft evaders sought asylum in Canada, there is no draft in present-day America.

The reasoning goes that the Iraq War deserters flocking to Canada voluntarily enlisted to serve in the U.S. armed forces, unlike the Vietnam War-era Americans who dodged the draft. As Citizenship and Immigrations spokesperson Danielle Norris put it, "Those coming to Canada now volunteered for military service."

But that's a specious argument. During the Vietnam War, when the Selective Service Act (or draft) was in place, young American males had as much of a legal obligation to serve the Vietnam War as today's professional volunteer soldiers have to serve in the Iraq War. If we are examining the issue purely from a legalistic position (as opponents of giving asylum to Iraq War deserters often do), then draft evaders were breaking the law and violating rules in the 1960s every bit as much as Iraq War deserters are doing now.

And the current situation is exacerbated by the "backdoor draft" - the arbitrary extension of military service for thousands of volunteer reservists, often against their will. This problem did not exist in the Vietnam War.

We now know that even before the first American troops were deployed to Iraq, leaders at the highest levels in Washington, including President George W. Bush and former secretary of state Colin Powell, lied repeatedly and flagrantly to the American public (and, indeed, to the rest of the world) about the reasons for intervening in Iraq.

In doing so, they violated the trust of the military personnel serving overseas.

But there is a higher principle at stake. The occupation of Iraq is a catastrophe that is bleeding the nation to death. We will never know the precise Iraqi death toll - estimates have ranged as low as Bush's figure of 30,000 and as high as one million. Whatever figure one accepts, too many Iraqis have died.

Meanwhile, overcrowded refugee camps in neighbouring countries have become massive human rights crises ignored by much of the outside world. The Iraq War has evolved into a lethal combination of civil war and counter-insurgency war, with no end in sight. Iraq needs self-determination and a new Marshall Plan - not continued war -- to bring a halt to its destruction.

Giving asylum to deserters is a small step in the right direction. Canadians assisted runaway slaves in the 19th century and Vietnam War resisters in the 1960s. Today's Iraq War deserters are as deserving of our help as these past victims of misguided policies.

Andrew Hunt is the chair of the department of history at the University of Waterloo.

Odds & Ends: Guns, Dogs & Boycotts!

2008-07-14T12:26:00.009-04:00

Welcome to "Odds & Ends," a regular feature of Andrew's Tiki Lounge, bringing you the news of the weird, nutty and downright absurd from North America and, yes, around the world! With no further delay...

From the "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" File: This from United Press International: The Windsor Hills Baptist Church in Oklahoma canceled its plans to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle away at a weekend gathering of teenagers. The reason? One of the event's organizers could not make it. The good news: Windsor Hills will resume the contest next year and some lucky teenager will be the proud owner of a sleek little assault rifle. Bob Ross, the church's pastor, assured local news outlets that the church has no interest in "putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn't respect it who are then going to go out and kill."

That puts my mind at ease.

From the "So, what's the interest rate on your dog's credit card?" File: A Lhasa Apso dog belonging to a couple in Sacramento, California, recently received a $142.34 bill from Verizon Online, reports UPI. The dog's owners complained vociferously, insisting their dog did not have a Verizon account. Turns out there was a mix-up at Verizon's billing headquarters. The dog's name is Andy Fanelli. It just so happens there is an Andy Fanelli in some other part of the United States that owes Verizon $142.34. How did Verizon find the address of Andy Fanelli, the dog? Simple: Andy Fanelli's owners applied for -- and received -- an American Express charge card in their dog's name. One of Andy's owners admitted he take friends to lunch "from time to time... on Andy."

My question to the owner is: Does Andy get a doggy bag?

Finally, from the "We Shall Overcome Someday" File: In Gallivare, Sweden, 64-year-old Karl Eric-Borg is launching a boycott against a local supermarket. Why? A cashier in the supermarket refused to sell Borg cigarettes because Borg did not have his identification card to prove he was over 18! In the spirit of the heroic Montgomery Bus Boycott of the 1950s, Borg has decided to boycott the supermarket for this terrible outrage. Borg issued this impassioned statement: "Seriously, if the cashiers can't tell the difference between an 18-year-old and a pensioner who has served in six U.N. battalions, it's enough to make you wonder if they can even tell the difference between a 500 kronor note ($83) and a 50 ($8)." There is a silver lining to this harrowing story. Borg happened to be with a female friend who had her ID and was able to purchase a pack of Marlboros for him. Also, the ordeal has produced another unexpected result. As Borg announced, "The whole episode has made me so angry that I've decided to quit smoking for good!"

That's stickin' it to the man!

(Sources: United Press International wire service reports.)

From the "Better to Ignore It" File...

2008-07-14T11:28:00.009-04:00

The Blogosphere is abuzz with debates about the controversial cover of an upcoming New Yorker magazine (right) depicting Senator Barack Obama as an Islamic terrorist and Michelle Obama as a 1960s-style Black Radical. While some liberals dismissed it as the work of Karl Rove, the artist responsible for the cover, Barry Blitt, is actually sympathetic to Obama and wanted the cover to poke fun at all the outrageous claims of Far Right loonies who wish to discredit the Democratic presidential candidate. As Blitt put it, "I think the idea that the Obamas are branded as unpatriotic [let alone as terrorists] in certain sectors is preposterous. It seemed to me that depicting the concept would show it as the fear-mongering ridiculousness that it is." No surprise: The Obama Campaign saw the image and went ballistic. Campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a statement: "The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

One of my favorite political websites, Steve Benen's The Carpetbagger Report, had this to say about the cartoon: "There’s clever, poignant satire, and then there’s ham-fisted, garish satire that’s in poor taste. The New Yorker cover falls comfortably into the latter category." The Carpetbagger Report quotes progressive Canadian Blogger Rachel Sklar as saying:

Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism — well, here’s your image.

I tend to agree with New Republic Blogger Isaac Chotiner, who insists that Senator Obama would be better off ignoring the cover instead of making an issue out of it. If you don't like the cover -- and most progressive Bloggers have made it abundantly clear they dislike it -- then keep quiet. The more Obama condemns it, the more his right-wing foes are going to use the cover to fuel uncertainties and misconceptions. Blasting the cover -- calling it tasteless, crude, Islamophobic, right-wing, failed satire, etc., etc. -- is only going buttress its street cred among anti-Obama yahoos.

If you don't believe me, look no further than Canada for an important cautionary tale. A while back, the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against conservative syndicated columnist Mark Steyn (left) for his column in the October 2006 issue of Maclean's magazine titled "The Future Belongs to Islam," which was an excerpt from his book America Alone. Steyn's article claimed that Western society was under the threat of being overrun and taken over by the world's rapidly growing Muslim population. At one point in the article, Steyn quoted a European imam who allegedly said that Muslims are reproducing "like mosquitoes." The CIC's complaint went all the way to the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, which launched a tribunal to investigate whether Steyn's article ought to be considered a violation of the human rights of Canadian Muslims.

It was a terrible move and it backfired. It triggered a firestorm of protest from Canadian civil libertarians across the country (including yours truly), who thought this tribunal threatened to stifle free speech. I fervently defended Mark Steyn in my regular newspaper column, despite the fact I disagreed with his claims. There was a brief show trial out in British Columbia in early June. It was a joke and it was attacked by people around the world as a sham. Luckily, the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- following an outburst of nationwide protest -- dropped the CIC's complaint. But sadly, in the course of the tribunal, Mark Steyn became a hero of "free speech," and untold numbers of readers who would have otherwise ignored his column in Maclean's were instantly drawn to it.

There is something about "taboo," "politically incorrect" topics that atrract people like magnets. While there are no Human Rights Commissions in the United States like the ones in Canada, the same general principle in the Maclean's/Steyn case applies to the case of the New Yorker Obama magazine cover. The moral of the story is: Let sleeping dogs lie. Leave it alone. Ignore it. If you ignore it, it will go away. Make a big deal out of it and your foes will know where your vulnerable spot is located and they will hit you hard there. That is the nature of politics. It was like that long before you or I came along.

Roswell Update

2008-07-10T20:30:00.007-04:00

This bit of encouraging news comes from the Las Cruces (New Mexico) Sun-News:

Roswell UFO Festival Attendance Increases

The Associated Press
Article Launched: 07/08/2008 07:42:19 AM MDT

ROSWELL, N.M.—International UFO Museum and Research Center officials say attendance at Roswell's annual UFO festival jumped more than 25 percent this year.
The museum's executive director, Julie Shuster, says 7,216 people attended lectures, workshops, celebrity appearances and other events Thursday through Sunday.
She says she would have been happy if last year's attendance total had been met, especially with the economy the way it is and with gasoline prices rising.
The annual festival marks the anniversary of the Roswell Incident, a purported UFO crash on a nearby ranch in July 1947. The military later said it was a top-secret weather balloon.

At this rate, America might have its first Extra-Terrestrial President in another fifty years.

"Joseph Never Came Home"

2008-07-10T19:44:00.008-04:00

The iconic Iraq War photograph of Private Joseph Patrick Dwyer carrying an Iraqi child to safety (above) was used repeatedly by the war's apologists to justify the intervention in Iraq. On June 28, 2008, police found Dwyer dead in his Pinehurst, N.C., home as a result of sniffing an aerosol cleaner. This was not the first time Dwyer had abused the aerosol. Until the day he died, he suffered from a sleeping disorder as a result of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) he brought home with him from war-torn Iraq. The aerosol relaxed him. It gave him relief. That is, until June 28, when it finally destroyed him.

The death of Dwyer at age 31 brought a tragic end to a tormented soul. For years, the veteran had been plagued by insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, nervous stress and explosive temper outbursts. People who knew him said that he came back from Iraq a shell of his former self. As his mother, Maureen Dwyer, pointed out: "He loved the picture, don’t get me wrong, but he just couldn’t get over the war. He wasn’t Joseph any more. Joseph never came home."

Dwyer, like countless other Iraq and Afghanistan War vets, did not receive the treatment he so desperately needed. While the Bush administration and Congress pump billions -- ultimately, trillions -- of dollars into a war that is destroying one nation, they ignore the needs of the men and women who put their lives on the line overseas after they come home. America's soldiers risked everything for one simple reason: Because they loved their country. And after serving, so many of them have been ignored, marginalized and put out to pasture.

Dwyer was yet another veteran who was given the shaft by his government. Worse yet, he lived in agony until the day he died. His father, Patrick, said, "He went away to in-patient treatments. None of it worked. And the problem is there are not adequate resources for post-traumatic stress syndrome."

In the end, Patrick and Maureen Dwyer are two more parents who will never see their beloved child again as a result of this most horrible of wars.

True patriotism should be about more than just regurgitating buzzwords like "freedom" and "democracy" and wearing Old Glory lapel pins. It ought to be about caring for the weakest, most vulnerable members of society. The best place to start is with the tens of thousands of veterans who struggle every day with mental health issues, financial challenges and readjusting to American society. Too often in history, America's veterans have been shamefully discarded by the very same politicians who talk the loudest about "freedom" and "democracy." If more Americans awaken to this reality and kick these crooked warmongers out of office, then maybe Private Joseph Dwyer -- an American hero and a victim of his government's misguided policies -- did not die in vain.

Reflections on the Roswell UFO Incident -- 61 Years Later

2008-07-09T21:48:00.010-04:00

Dear Tiki Lounge Blog Pals,

Last year about this time, I wrote a column for the Waterloo Region Record (you may recall that in an earlier Blog I mentioned I'm a regular Record columnist) about the 60th Anniversary of the alleged Roswell UFO Incident. It turns out that I scrapped the column and wrote something else instead (I can't remember why I decided not to run it -- maybe I thought readers would think I was a crackpot if I weighed in on the Roswell UFO Incident.) At any rate, I re-read the column the other day -- it being the 61st Anniversary of the UFO Incident and all (I know 61st does not carry the same well-rounded meaning as 60th, but hey, go easy on me). I know this sounds self-promoting and self-congratulatory, but liked the column and I regret not running it. Oh well. What better place to put it than Andrew's Tiki Lounge? I hope you enjoy it!

Andrew

Above: Roswell alien autopsy film.

Sixty years ago, something happened in a lonely stretch of desert near Roswell, New Mexico. Even though nobody knows exactly what happened to this day, a legend was born.

Since then, Roswell has become a household word. The so-called Roswell UFO Incident continues to stir the imaginations of millions of people worldwide. It has become a staple of modern popular culture. Countless books and numerous feature films, documentaries and television shows have focused on the alleged UFO crash that occurred sixty years ago. And the legend shows no signs of fading away.

As a general rule, academics are loathe to comment on the incident. For the most part, they’ve consigned it to the realm of supermarket tabloid sensationalism. Yet the mystery of what happened in the New Mexico desert remains potent, still prompting widespread curiosity and speculation.

The legend of Roswell began sixty years ago, when W.W. “Mack” Brazel, a ranch foreman in rural New Mexico, went out to check on some sheep following an intense thunderstorm and found metallic debris scattered across the landscape. Word of the discovery quickly reached the authorities at the Roswell Army Air Field, and within days, the normally quiet ranch near Roswell was crawling with military personnel.

On July 7, 1947, Brazel went on a local radio and told an interviewer about finding “little bodies.” Coincidentally, the Roswell Army Air Field released a statement that it had found pieces of a “crashed disc” (pictured right) at the ranch outside of Roswell. The revelations caused quite a stir. By July 8, newspaper headlines across the country told of a crashed “flying saucer.”

The drama proved short-lived, though. Within days, the Army revised its story. The debris came from a downed weather balloon, insisted top Army brass at a press conference. The dramatic newspaper headlines abruptly ceased. The story faded. People stopped talking about crashed “flying saucers” and moved on. And for more than thirty years, the Roswell UFO Incident was largely forgotten.

The legend of Roswell was reborn – with a vengeance – in 1980, with the publication of Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore’s bestselling account, The Roswell Incident. Over the past 25 years, the Roswell incident has gone from being a forgotten occurrence to a worldwide phenomenon. Larry King, the late Peter Jennings, and many other television news personalities have hosted specials on the incident. Living witnesses told of seeing alien bodies and strange, metallic debris with hieroglyphic-like symbols on it.

Before long, the word “Roswell” became shorthand for a sinister government conspiracy. Reflecting post-Watergate sensibilities, stories soon spread of federal agents orchestrating a massive cover-up. The Air Force fanned the flames when it reiterated in 1994 that the UFO crash site debris came from a weather balloon, and the “alien bodies” were actually “anthropomorphic dummies” placed inside the balloons for testing purposes.

The Roswell Incident has also found a prominent spot in pop culture. The 1996 blockbuster Independence Day referred to it repeatedly. The cult television hit X-Files contained Roswell-related plotlines. When Fox television aired grainy, black-and-white footage allegedly showing a Roswell alien autopsy (pictured above), it proved to be a ratings bonanza for the network. The short-lived 1996-97 NBC series Dark Skies upped the ante, linking John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 to the Roswell aliens.

The city of Roswell (dubbed “the Alien Capitol of the World”) has successfully capitalized on the craze. Tourists from around the world flock to Roswell in droves, filling the local hotels. Sixtieth anniversary celebrations are already underway. A carnival-like atmosphere pervades the community, as alien-themed museums, hotels, bookstores, gift shops and restaurants thrive along the main drags.

“Little green men” are everywhere, including towering inflatable aliens at car lots, waving greeters in alien costumes, and toy aliens sold by street vendors. Each year, geeky UFO researchers invade the city to butt heads, holding roundtable discussions and attacking each other’s research and conclusions. In 2010, a multimillion dollar, alien-themed amusement park will open in the town.

The actual Roswell UFO Incident remains shrouded in mystery. We’ll never know what happened sixty years ago. But the lasting popularity of the legend highlights some important truths about contemporary society.

It’s no surprise that Roswell went from being a forgotten episode to occupying a central place in the popular imagination. It is really a tale for our times, more so than it was at the onset of the Cold War, when it actually happened. Roswell’s continuing international appeal points to a deeper, collective yearning by people around the world to find out whether we share the universe with life forms on other planets.

But there’s also a dark side to the tale. Stories of a government cover-up, of alien bodies being whisked away to secret locations and dissected, and of malevolent government agents in suits intimidating eyewitnesses, are also key elements of the narrative. If the enduring Roswell story underscores a widespread hunger to know what else lurks in the heavens, it also highlights a pervasive lack of faith in governing institutions to help solve this most profound of riddles.

Andrew Hunt is the Chair of the Department of History at the University of Waterloo.

Re-creating 68? The Democratic Convention Then and Now

2008-07-07T10:51:00.013-04:00

Protesters are gearing up for the Democratic National Convention in Denver next month. Email lists are busier than ever. Activist bloggers are weighing in. Indymedia outlets regularly issue updates about upcoming plans. A number of protest groups have formed a coalition called "Re-create 68" to protest at the Convention (the name refers to the upheavals at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago 40 years ago). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is objecting that the protesters will be confined to an area 700 feet from the Pepsi Center (where the convention will be held). As ACLU attorneys noted, "No human voice, or any other sound . . . can ever hope to reach a person at the entrance." Adding to the drama is a split within Re-create 68, which has led to the birth of yet another protest organization, this one called the Alliance for Real Democracy, a coalition of some 12 groups of mostly 20 and 30something activists. This splinter group, according to the Rocky Mountain News, "promises free concerts, art displays, classes for activists and a "massive" anti-war march during this summer's Democratic National Convention." All over, activists are girding for the protests.

In more ways than one, the upcoming protests are starting to resemble the upheavals of '68. Like the demonstrations four decades ago, today's militant activists are already confronting naysayers and critics. Commenting on Re-create 68, conservative Denver columnist and radio host Mike Rosen noted, "Glen Spagnuolo, Marxist revolutionary-in-chief, describes his group as representing minorities, anarchists, communists, socialists and radicals. He expects 25,000 people from across the country to join his Denver protest. So what? Whom do they represent? And why should anyone else care? Do the math: Twenty-five thousand people out of a population of more than 300 million is eight one-thousandths of 1 percent. That's less than one person out of 10,000 in the country. Even if it were a hundred times that number, what would it matter?"

Meantime, the Denver police are gearing up for action. Last month, you may recall, the Denver PD ordered 88 Mark IV launchers, "a less-lethal" weapon that fires a pepper spray-type substance. There are even rumors among activists that the powers-that-be will unleash a weapon -- according to Fox News reports (so you know it's trustworthy) -- that relies on "infrasound frequency that debilitates a person by making them defecate involuntarily."

Activists who insist on "Re-creating 68" ought to study the events of 1968 carefully. Times have changed. A lot. For one thing, the Vietnam War -- while supported by hawkish Republicans -- was really the creation of Cold War Liberals in the Democratic Party. So in 1968, militant street protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago made a great deal of sense.

Above: Chicago 1968.

Forty years later, in our post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, the chief architects of the dismal Iraq War are Republicans -- especially neocons. To be certain, there will be protests at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul on September 1-4. But the more ambitious and militant protests are being planned for the Democratic convention. This is definitely a repeat of '68, when demonstrations were much larger and more dramatic at the Democratic National Convention than its Republican counterpart (who even remembers the '68 Republican Convention protests? -- they were pretty minuscule). Forty years ago, activists believed it was more important to target Democrats because Republicans were more set in their ways politically, less willing to change.

You see some of that same line of thinking at work today. Some of the protest organizations demonstrating in the streets of Denver next month will be pro-Barack Obama groups. But there are also some hardcore shit disturbers who are working to trigger dramatic clashes with authorities. The folks in this uber-militant wing are the ones who should be studying the events of 1968 more carefully. Violent street clashes between police and demonstrators during the Chicago convention (which, in fairness, were mostly the fault of the police -- although they were sometimes exacerbated by over-the-top protesters) only served to alienate the American public from protest.

Times have changed since 1968. Police brutality -- while still a problem -- has decreased significantly over the decades. More importantly, in today's America, dissent is not necessarily seen as a bad thing (as much as it was in 1968). According to a USA Today poll taken earlier this month, "Protesting U.S. policies you oppose is also patriotic, according to two-thirds of those polled."

Above: Chicago 1968 (again).

There is still the same sense of urgency today as there was in '68. The Iraq War has been horrifying in its sheer destructiveness and Washington shows no signs of ending the occupation anytime soon. So we need voices of protest. But the upheavals of '68 teach us that street violence is not only abhorrent, it's impractical. It slows down the pace of change. It turns public opinion against protest. That's why undercover FBI agents who infiltrated the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War encouraged activists to embrace extremist violent tactics. They knew bloodshed in the streets would only hinder -- not advance -- the cause of change.

Before activists attempt to "Re-create 68," they first need to find out what about that period is worth preserving and what ought to be discarded.

Above: My sentiments exactly! A protester in 2007.

From the Nixon Files: Dick Nixon, Fashionista!

2008-07-06T10:11:00.005-04:00

From the White House Tapes (May 13, 1971) -- we join a conversation between John Ehrlichman and President Richard Nixon on the latest fashion trends:

NIXON: You know one of the reasons fashions have made women look so terrible is because the goddamned designers hate women. Designers taking it out on the women. Now they're trying to get some more sexy things coming on again.

EHRLICHMAN: Hot pants!

NIXON: Jesus Christ!

Saluting a Rocker with Guts

2008-07-05T09:09:00.008-04:00

Neil Young (left) is at it again. The Canadian-born rocker has never been afraid of controversy. Ever since the Vietnam War, he has used his music to protest injustices in American society. Now he will be the star of a new documentary. The film will chronicle his "Freedom of Speech Tour," in which he sang mainly antiwar songs on stages across America. The cameras followed 62-year-old young, along with fellow performers Crosby, Stills and Nash, from city to city, capturing his performances on film. Many of his songs lacked subtlety. For instance, there is no mistaking what his tune "Let's Impeach the President" is about. No hidden meanings, no veiled messages, no concealed subtexts. This is tough, fighting, edgy political music, as only Young can deliver. Along the way, the energetic performer encountered a number of angry folks who were in the audience. A female fan -- now maybe an ex-fan -- declared, "Neil Young can stick it up his ass" after one of his performances. "Sonofabitch — I’d like to knock his teeth out," said another.

But Young is fearless. He is also insisting that all sides of the often contentious debate over the Iraq War be included in the documentary. As Young put it, "It’s important to have the other side. Plus, those people were part of the story, so why leave them out? We decided to have an embedded correspondent documenting the tour like he was documenting a war."

Young has no illusions that the film will set box office records. This is no Iron Man. He told a reporter, "I mean, let’s be realistic: it’s a film about war and a bunch of old hippies, so that’s the way the public will view it. We spent a lot of time on it, and it means a lot to us, but in the overall scope of things . . . it has a moment, and this moment is coming up, and after that it’ll be a DVD, then it’ll be gone. It’ll be a piece of history."

So here's an Andrew's Tiki Lounge Salute to Neil Young. After all these years, he's still going at it, hammering away at the powers that be, full of piss and vinegar and not afraid to speak his mind.

Happy Birthday, America!: Cool Factoids About the July 4 Holiday

2008-07-04T10:33:00.007-04:00

Those of us who love America -- and I count myself solidly in this category -- rejoice every time the Fourth of July rolls around. It's a time to celebrate the democratic experiment known as the United States. I have lots of nostalgic memories of July 4 celebrations: the fireworks shows and flags, the barbecues and parades.

There are some cool factoids about the Fourth of July that are worth highlighting on this Blog. You may already know some of them, but please bear with me. A holiday this important deserves a special tribute. So with no further delay...

-- 232 years ago today, the Second Continental Congress approved of the Declaration of Independence, which was first revealed to the public two days earlier in Philadelphia.

-- Although a huge holiday in America, the Fourth of July was not officially a paid holiday for federal employees until 1941.

-- Thomas Jefferson and John Adams -- two of the most important figures in the birth of America -- died on the same day: July 4, 1826 -- fifty years to the day after the Continental Congress approved of the Declaration of Independence. (Cue the Twilight Zone music...)

-- At the time the Declaration of Independence was approved, 2.5 million people lived in the colonies.

-- The Fourth of July has always meant different things to different people. On July 5, 1852, the abolitionist, human rights activist and ex-slave Frederick Douglass delivered an important speech in Rochester, New York, where he commented on the meaning of the holiday to slaves:

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy's thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

-- Even though Independence Day is celebrated on July 4, the first person to actually sign the Declaration of Independence was John Hancock (whose signature is the most famous thing about him) on August 2, 1776. The last person to sign it did so in November.

-- Thomas Jefferson (my ultimate hero) tried to insert an anti-slavery passage into the Declaration of Independence, but his efforts were met with intense resistance. As Ronald Hoffman, director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, noted: "Jefferson’s original draft included a strong condemnation of slavery and the slave trade. The southern delegation wouldn’t go along with it, so Jefferson backed off and allowed it to be removed.”

-- Founding father John Adams predicted that July 2 -- not July 4 -- would become America's independence day. His reason for arriving at this conclusion had to do with the Second Continental Congress approving a piece of legislation calling for independence on July 2. In an enthusiastic letter, John wrote to his wife Abigail:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfire and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

The dude was only two days off. Cut him some slack.

-- The first fireworks ban occurred in 1731 in the colony of Rhode Island, which outlawed "mischievous use of fireworks." Today, many states ban most types of fireworks, especially in the West, where wildfires are raging out of control. In Pacifica, California, Police Chief Dave Bertini pointed out, "We have signs in almost every business. We have lawn signs. We have two electronic signs at both ends of the town that say '$1,000 fine for illegal fireworks.'"

-- First Fourth of July celebration to include fireworks shows: July 4, 1777.

-- Out With a Bang: In February 2008, Mr. Meredith Smith of Indianapolis died at age 74. He was a beloved member of the community who orchestrated the local fireworks show for more than thirty years. To honor him, some of his ashes are going to be mixed with a firework that will burst in the sky as part of the big grand finale. It seems like a fitting farewell.

Remembering the Sixties

2008-07-03T14:32:00.014-04:00

I admit, I'm a hypocrite. Yesterday, I said that humanitarians/progressives/lefties should exercise caution when criticizing Barack Obama during the presidential race. Now I'm going to criticize him. But this is meant to be constructive. The guy still has my vote.

The ghosts of the Sixties will not leave Obama alone. In his recent speech on patriotism, the Democratic presidential candidate discussed the culture wars and the polarized climate that birthed them in the 1960s. Here's an excerpt:

What is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s--in arguments that go back 40 years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic. Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counterculture of the '60s reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself--by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.

Sadly, in his otherwise eloquent commentary on the beauty of patriotism, Obama accepted many of the most odious right-wing stereotypes about the 1960s. His purpose here is obvious: To distance himself from Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, who, along with Obama, was a member of the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago (the story, incidentally, was first brought to the attention of the world by Peter Hitchens, the conservative brother of fiery contrarian columnist Christopher Hitchens, in February).

There is no need for Obama to continue distancing himself from Ayers. Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, issued a statement a few months back (when the story about the Ayers-Obama connection first broke) pointing out the fact that Ayers a) didn't kill anybody; b) has been a professor of education for years at the University of Illinois; c) and has worked as an aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. The statement concluded:

Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous.

It was an eloquent statement and it should have been the last word on the Obama-Ayers link.

As for the 1960s, it is time to start shooting down some of the false myths perpetuated by the Right. The fact is, flag burners were a tiny minority of protesters in the 1960s and many of them were actually agents provocateurs on the payroll of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Sixties was a polarized time in American history and it did produce extremists who advocated violence.

However, the overwhelming majority of protesters were both nonviolent and motivated by a deep love of their country -- whether they were part of the Civil Rights Movement, the Antiwar Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Liberation Struggle, Chicano Rights, Feminism, Environmentalism, etc.

It is also important to remember what a profoundly destructive war they were protesting. The Vietnam War was laying waste to all of Southeast Asia, leaving millions dead, forests wilting under defoliation, bomb craters and unexploded munitions all across the countryside, and paving the way for the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge.

Most antiwar activists -- and a significant number of them were antiwar Vietnam Veterans, as I point out in my book The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- opposed the war out of a deep love of their country. The easy way out for them would have been to reject politics, stay at home and watch their nation implode. But they took the difficult approach: They loved their nation enough to protest injustice.

I salute Obama for saying that only "some of those in the so-called counterculture" resorted to such extreme tactics as flag burning and "failing to honor" Vietnam Veterans. Yet he also should have mentioned that the worst dishonor to Vietnam veterans came from the horrendous treatment they endured from their own government. And the very same conditions that so many Vietnam veterans encountered in the 1960s and 1970s are still evident in America today, this time contributing to a declining quality of life for Iraq War and Afghanistan War vets when they return to America.

Not long ago, I posted a moving video on the Tiki Lounge from Ron Kovic, the heroic Vietnam veteran who came home and opposed the Vietnam War. It is worth quoting his words again:

How can you send young men like myself and those of this generation to Vietnam and to Iraq? How can you send them and spend billions of dollars on a war that is lost, a war that cannot be won? A senseless war. A wasteful war. How can you do that? How can you put their lives at risk? How can you put them through that emotional trauma and not care for them when they come home? This is- this is unacceptable. I love this country. I was willing to risk my life. I gave three-quarters of my body to this country in Vietnam. And I'm watching this same thing happen all over again. What is it gonna take? How many more have to die? How many more have to come home wounded and maimed like myself?

Barack Obama should be sure to remember that truly great Americans -- real patriots -- such as Kovic, Martin Luther King, Jr., César Chávez, Gloria Steinem, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Mario Savio, Joan Baez, the Berrigan Brothers and William Sloane Coffin had a much bigger impact on the movement against the Vietnam War than misguided young militants whose acts of resistance included flag burning and extreme, over-the-top, anti-authoritarian rhetoric.

Today's right-wing myths about the Sixties present a distorted view of the period. Yes, it was a painful time in American history. But the United States emerged from that decade a freer, nobler and more open place than it had been ten years earlier.

Did Obama Gravitate to the Center?

2008-07-02T09:33:00.007-04:00

Less controversial than Retired Army General Wesley Clark's comments about Senator John McCain's military service -- but every bit as important -- is the current debate about whether Senator Barack Obama has moved to the political "center" in the aftermath of the highly contentious primaries. And you guessed it, Blog Pals. Yours truly is prepared to weigh in.

"I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center," observed Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. In his June 30 New York Times column titled "The Obama Agenda," liberal economist Paul Krugman wrote, "It’s feeling a lot like 1992 right now. It’s also feeling a lot like 1980. But which parallel is closer? Is Barack Obama going to be a Ronald Reagan of the left, a president who fundamentally changes the country’s direction? Or will he be just another Bill Clinton?" Meantime, Michael Gerson's Washington Post column on Obama's move to the center featured the headline, "The Audacity of Cynicism." "Obama Turns Centrist," said the headline of Ruth Conniff's column in the Progressive magazine. In her commentary titled "Memo to Obama: The Center is for Losers," Arianna Huffington wrote:

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don’t let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December. Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn’t work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn’t work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn’t work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his “microtrends” and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

I could go on with countless other examples of commentaries about Obama moving to the comfy middle of the road. Many -- but not all -- of them come from progressives and lefties who worry that Obama is jettisoning his progressive views to win support from centrists. The strategy, they say, backfired for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. By contrast, Obama triumphed in the primaries, they insist, because he was decidedly progressive in his positions.

Movement is all relative, I suppose. For the longest time, I was a John Edwards (right) supporter. Now there is a genuine progressive -- in the fighting, populist Robert La Follette/Paul Wellstone tradition. I admit, I was a Johnny-come-lately to the Obama cause. In fact, after Edwards dropped out of the race, I was depressed for two weeks. My loved ones and friends were starting to wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

It took me a while to throw my support behind Obama. You may recall that during the primaries, an awful lot of folks -- including many who are now lamenting Obama's post-primaries drift to the center -- expressed concerns about his vague positions. They agreed that Obama could deliver a hell of a speech, but he was short on specifics. Author, film professor and screenwriter Trey Ellis commented about his reluctance to support Obama during the primaries: "I didn't find his positions, especially on universal health care, as progressive as I would have wished. Both he and Hillary seemed very much of the DLC centrist mold despite calling themselves progressives." Ellis suggests that Obama was always a centrist candidate on a host of issues, but the candidate also took some bold and humane stands, especially on the Iraq War. Ellis concludes with this parting shot: "Obama's strength isn't his slavish adherence to party line but his ability, issue by issue, to decide the right medicine at the right moment. If that makes you call him a centrist then so be it. Get over it already. He's nobody's man but his own."

I agree with Ellis. I think Obama is walking a tightrope, carefully juggling progressive ideas and centrist pragmatism. It's a difficult balancing act, but so far, he has pulled it off and maintained his freshness and credibility. In fact, he's so good at it, he makes it look downright easy. I'm not saying for a minute that progressives/liberals/lefties/dissenters/nonconformists (or whatever your chosen label might be) should refrain from criticizing Obama. Throughout the campaign, he has taken serious missteps and embraced dubious positions. And from time to time, he needs to feel pressure from principled people to put him back on the right track.

But I also think commentators on the left side of the spectrum have a responsibility to circle the wagons around Obama and keep their criticisms constructive. Too many folks on the Left have, for too long, viewed even reasonable compromise as a sin and they've aimed for a level of moral purity that simply does not exist in the charged and brutal world of American politics. As a third party supporter in my youth, I used to be one of those purists -- always attacking the notion that voters should support Democrats simply because they were the "lesser of two evils." Back in those days, I agreed with Michael Moore that American politics was a contest between the "evil of two lessers."

I have left my dogmatic moral purity behind with my youth, though, especially after I've seen what two terms of George W. Bush has done to America. Whatever you may think of Bill Clinton (and a quick perusal of my earlier Blog entires will show that I can be a pretty hard on Old Bubba), he was light years better than Dubya. Light years. My bottom line is: Goal No. 1: Get Obama in the White House. Goal No. 2: At that point, turn up the heat and keep the pressure on from the progressive side of the fence.

McCain, Obama, War and Patriotism

2008-07-02T07:34:00.005-04:00

It has been a hectic last week on the campaign trail. The nationwide buzz from the highly publicized "United Front" demonstrated by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama proved short-lived, knocked off the perch by Retired Army General Wesley Clark's (above) comments about Senator John McCain's military service over the weekend on CBS' Face the Nation. When host Bob Schieffer raised the issue of Obama's lack of military service, Clark said, "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Clark clarified his remarks the following day on Good Morning America: "As a retired serviceman, someone who came home from Vietnam on a stretcher, someone who spent 38 years in uniform, someone who’s worked his way up through the ranks of the United States Armed Forces, I would never discredit anyone who chose to wear the uniform. I fully respect John McCain and his service, and I’ve said so repeatedly. My point is that there’s a difference in preparing yourself for the highest office in the land. … John McCain as a young officer demonstrated courage and character. But the service as president is about judgment. And the experience that he had as a fighter pilot isn’t the same as having been at the highest levels of the military."

On Monday, the day after Clark's comments caused so much commotion from coast to coast, Obama apparently thought the time was right to deliver a speech on patriotism, in which he emphasized his deep love of America. "Throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given. It was how I was raised. It was what propelled me into public service. It is why I am running for president. And yet at times over the last 16 months, my patriotism has been challenged -- at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for."

The McCain campaign, meantime, has been denouncing Clark and insisting that if Obama really respected McCain's service to his nation and the five and a half years he spent as a POW in North Vietnam, then Obama would cut all ties to Clark.

It would be a foolish move for Obama to cut ties to Clark. Instead, Obama did the wise thing by re-stating his commitment to patriotism. The man has his finger on the pulse of the nation. He understands that there are a number of people across the nation who question his love of America, especially white, working-class voters. And Obama's speech recast patriotism as more than just a connection to a particular country or people, but also a love of ideals. As Obama put it: "That is why for me, patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it's also loyalty to America's ideals, ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion."

The controversy caused by Clark's remarks will soon pass. Liberal Bloggers have been rejoicing that a high-level Democrat finally had the courage to question McCain's insistence that his military service helps qualify him for the presidency. But -- as well-intentioned liberals often do -- they're missing the bigger picture. The Vietnam War was a catastrophe that laid waste to much of Southeast Asia, leaving millions dead and the landscape scarred by defoliants and bomb craters. But we don't need another debate on Vietnam in this campaign, because -- as was the case with the Swift Boat Smears in 2004 -- such debates are counterproductive and always focus on the wrong issues. Obama needs to keep discussing the economy, the Iraq War (which is slowly bleeding to death another nation in a different part of the world) and the declining quality of life for ordinary Americans after eight years of George W. Bush. For too long, Republicans have been dictating the terms of political debates. It is time for Obama to set the rules, to call the shots, and to determine which issues are of utmost importance. Let historians debate the 1960s and the Vietnam War. Obama needs to get into the White House. He needs Wesley Clark to get there. And he needs to keep hammering today's -- not yesterday's -- issues home.

The Simple Art of Nader Bashing

2008-06-28T15:25:00.006-04:00

Democrats are huffing, puffing, scoffing, snarling and cursing once more about Ralph Nader's (right) third party run for the presidency. The famous consumer advocate's latest comments (just days ago) that Obama is "downplaying poverty issues, trying to 'talk white' and appealing to 'white guilt' during his run for the White House" -- triggered an angry response from Democrats. Nader stirred the hornet's nest even more when he remarked, "There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards."

With the exception of Barack Obama, who was quite restrained in his response to Nader ("What's clear is that Ralph Nader hasn't been paying attention to my speeches," he said), most of the talking-head Democrats on CNN and the various political talk shoes really trashed Nader for his remarks.

Of course, Democrats are still angry at Nader for being a "spoiler" in the 2000 elections. They should get over it. Al Gore has only himself to thank for losing that election. Had he been more inspiring, had he been more successful in motivating and mobilizing voters, had he not been so intertwined with the scandal-ridden presidency of Bill Clinton, and had he articulated a clearer -- less muddled -- vision of the future, he would've beaten George W. Bush by a wide enough margin that it wouldn't have mattered whether Nader was running as a third-party candidate. Gore, like Jimmy Carter, evolved into a more decent person once he was no longer at the center of a presidential administration. His loss in 2000 was far from the worst tragedy in American history.

Democrats can't pride themselves on being small "d" democrats one minute and then trash Nader for running for the White House the next. A far better approach is to ignore the guy if you don't like him. As a longtime Democrat (both big "D" and small "d"), I'm thrilled that third party candidates such as Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are out there, running symbolic campaigns to give voters more options. They know they don't stand a chance in hell of winning, but they're running anyway, which is an onerous, time-consuming and thankless job. By doing so, they make the democratic process even more open. Too bad they are kept out of the national, televised debates. Ralph Nader and Bob Barr ought to be allowed to debate Obama and John McCain. In the meantime, Democrats would do well to ignore Nader. He is not going to be a spoiler for Obama, just as he was not a spoiler for John Kerry in 2004 (Kerry, like Gore, needed no help in blowing that election.) The White House, in all likelihood, will go to Barack Obama in November because he is the strongest of the candidates, especially when it comes to his vision of how to transform America into a better, more livable nation.

Hiatus

2008-06-23T08:01:00.002-04:00

Dear Blog Pals,

I'll be away from the Tiki Lounge for a few days. I'm off taking care of various odds and ends. As good old Gus Chiggins (pictured right) used to say back in the depths of the Great Depression, "Aww, cider sauce!" But please stay tuned! I'll be back in a few days with more news and views from a Jeffersonian/humanist/oddball perspective.

Andrew

George Carlin 1937-2008

2008-06-23T06:33:00.011-04:00

It is impossible to believe that George Carlin -- a man so full of life -- is dead. And he died much too young, at age 71, of heart failure. I owe a huge debt to Carlin and I've never even met the man.

Carlin might scoff at the short tribute I'm about to give him here. He was acerbic, full of rage, a brilliant master of words, and an unrelenting skeptic. He has often been accused of being cynical. He countered the charge by saying, "I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist. But I understand the word 'cynic' has more than one meaning, and I see how I could be seen as cynical. 'George, you're cynical.' Well, you know, they say if you scratch a cynic you find a disappointed idealist."

No other comedian unleashed a fury of words against hypocrisy in America with the same force as George Carlin. He was a one-man hurricane, lashing out against religious bigotry, consumerism, destruction of the environment, grammatical errors, narrow-mindedness, dogmatism, congested freeways, conspicuous consumption, extreme inequality, racism, war, nuclear weapons, shitty TV shows. The list goes on and on.

Carlin's accomplishments speak for themselves. His comedy albums netted him four Grammy Awards -- for "FM & AM" (1972), "Jammin' in New York" (1991), "Brain Droppings" (2000) and "Napalm & Silly Putty" (2001). He starred for a few seasons as Mr. Conductor on Shining Time Station (he took Ringo Starr's place, narrating the Thomas the Tank Engine Stories). His BBC obit noted some of his many accomplishments: "Carlin produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies."

He was born in New York City and raised in an Irish Catholic home by a single mother. He grew up in Morningside Heights, which he preferred to call "White Harlem" because that sounded grittier. Always restless, he dropped out of school early (he once said, "When you quit school in ninth grade and you're smart, you spend your life in some small or large way proving yourself.") He served in the Air Force for a time in the 1950s, became a disc jockey in the early 1960s and moved into stand-up comedy, performing on the Ed Sullivan show and on stage in New York City. At first, his comedy routines were relatively innocuous. He recalled: "I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people."

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, he had fine tuned his comedy routines and emerged as George Carlin, the counterculture icon/hero. He was an heir to the Lenny Bruce tradition. He grew his hair out long. He also grew a beard and moustache. He experimented with drugs (he'd been smoking dope since his teen years). He developed a routine called "The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV," and when he was arrested after performing it in Milwaukee in 1972.

Over the years, Carlin made audiences howl with laughter at his often over-the-top rants about American society. What was great about Carlin -- among so, so many things -- was that as he gold older, he got more and more pissed off. The man was a tornado on the stage. But his savage comedy routines concealed -- and sometimes revealed -- a troubled life, full of drug addiction, alcoholism and despair. His beloved wife Brenda died in 1997, the day before he turned 60. In 2004, he checked himself into rehab in L.A. because of an addiction to "Vicodin and wine." He had a long history of heart problems.

I have my own personal Carlin story. Back when my parents were going through a divorce in the early 1970s, I was just a little boy -- only 5 -- nervous, afraid, uncertain of the future. My parents were drifting apart. My world seemed to be unraveling. It was a terribly painful time. One of my most cherished possessions at the time was George Carlin's FM & AM album (right). Sometimes, when I was alone and insecure, I'd put it on the turntable, plug in the gargantuan pair of headphones, and listen away. At that young age, I didn't understand all the humor on the album, but that didn't stop me from doubling over with laughter. Carlin became an old friend at a difficult moment in my life. And after all these years, I've never forgotten how his humor made me feel better. For the next few years, I played that album until I wore it out.

When I had the good fortune of seeing Carlin perform many years later in Salt Lake City, it was like being reunited with a long lost pal.

I still can't believe he's gone. Like Lenny Bruce, Carlin leaves behind a rich legacy of humor. Just before he died, it was announced that Carlin would be the next recipient of the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. What a fitting honor. Twain, like Carlin, used humor to lash out at the injustices and hypocrisies of American society. Beneath the skepticism of both humorists, one could find an idealism and a little glowing ember of hope that maybe -- just maybe -- America might one day live up to its most cherished ideals.

Andrew the Political Junkie Weighs in on the Democratic Veepstakes

2008-06-21T14:53:00.024-04:00

Hi Blog Pals,
Time to weigh in on the Democratic Veepstakes. Rumors are swirling as Senator Barack Obama considers possible running mates. Which ones would strengthen his ticket? Which ones would hurt him? Bloggers from Coast to Coast are voicing thoughts on the matter, so I figure it's time for yours truly to throw in his 2 cents. Without any further delay...

1. Senator Hillary Clinton: For many Democrats, Hillary is the obvious first choice. Clinton and Obama are campaigning together a lot these days, trying to bury the hatchet and put behind them the brutal Democratic primaries. Strengths: Clinton brings so many things to the campaign, as I pointed out in a previous entry. She comes with a large base of support, an army of professional strategists, the respect of many Democrats and Republicans, and the reputation of tough fighter. Weaknesses: Bill "Old Bubba" Clinton hogged the spotlight too often in the primaries. Plus, Senator Clinton is a polarizing figure. Die-hard conservatives will try to marginalize her as a northeastern liberal, which she clearly is not. Her naked (or, at the very least, mostly unclothed) ambitions often get the best of her.

2. The Beltway Boys: Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Sam Nunn (not to be confused with Manny, Moe and Jack -- or Moe, Larry and Curly): This trio of Democratic Senators -- Biden (from Delaware), Dodd (from Connecticut) and Nunn (from Georgia) -- are all under consideration as possible veeps. Strengths: These guys know how to get things done in Washington. Biden would bring charisma, Dodd a humble dignity, and Nunn a conservative counterbalance. Weaknesses: Outside of their home states and the nation's capital, none of these SixtySomethings are especially famous. Can we somehow blend the three together? Of course, I'm not sure how a three-headed Veep would go over with the American public.

3. Wesley Clark: This former NATO commander and retired general is a serious contender for the veep spot. Strengths: He brings the presence of a balanced advocate of strong national security to the table. Plus he's bright, articulate, handsome and strikingly progressive for someone with his background. He'd help Obama win over independent and moderate Republican voters. Weaknesses: Ran a pretty half-assed campaign in 2004. Some Veep watchers fear that he might not motivate Democratic Party activists, but maybe that isn't such a bad thing. (For the record: I disagree -- I think Clark would actually motivate the activists...)

4. The Governors (Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Ted Strickland of Ohio) : All Democratic governors, all highly regarded in their own states. Strengths: All of them will bring impressive political records. They have strong experience as governors and in their previous political careers. These are governors who are accustomed to working across party lines to get things done. Weaknesses: Same as the Beltway Boys: On the national stage, they are not as well known. Of the five, I think Richardson -- a former UN ambassador and energy secretary -- is the most promising.

5. Jim Webb: Virginia senator, former Secretary of the Navy and author of seven novels, Webb is Democratic superstar. Strengths: A blunt-talking moderate and heavily decorated Vietnam veteran, Webb will win over a lot of support from centrists, moderates, independents and Republican crossovers. He is also a renaissance man: a writer, filmmaker and producer. His credentials are more or less spotless. He is also a populist who worries about the fate of ordinary Americans in the age of globalization. He would win over a lot of the same voters that Clinton would attract. And he is solidly against the Iraq War. Weaknesses: He hasn't been a senator very long -- two years this November. His lack of experience in politics at the national level in recent years leaves the ticket vulnerable. If Webb is chosen as Obama's Veep, expect more Republican charges of "inexperience."

6. Chuck Hagel: The Nebraska Republican senator has indicated that he'll give serious consideration to a request from Obama to come on board as his running mate (in the event that Obama asks...). Strengths: Choosing Hagel -- a moderate, anti-Iraq War Republican from the heartland -- will show that Obama truly is committed to a new form of bipartisan politics. To select a Veep from a different party would be a startling move. Moreover, Obama and Hagel are in complete agreement on the Iraq War. Obama needs Republican support to end the catastrophe that is the war in Iraq. Weaknesses: He's pretty conservative on a lot of issues other than the Iraq War. As Mike Madden noted in Salon: "Hagel may be a more attractive candidate in theory than in reality. The buzz about him seems to overlook the fact that he is, despite how much he may like to criticize his own party, a conservative Republican, especially on issues that don’t involve foreign affairs. Politics, the saying goes, stops at the water’s edge. So might the Obama-Hagel ticket."

My Prediction: If I were a betting man, I'd say Jim Webb will be the next vice president, with Hillary Clinton a close second. Stay tuned, Blog Pals...

The Rosenberg Execution: 55 Years Later...

2008-06-19T19:16:00.013-04:00

The execution of alleged husband-and-wife atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (right) 55 years ago (June 19, 1953) remains a source of controversy, even after the end of the Cold War. To conservatives and Cold War liberals (and a sizable segment of the American public), they were vile Red spies who compromised the security of the United States in the worst way imaginable. By contrast, leftists, communists, progressives and nonconformists championed the cause of freeing the Rosenbergs. And then there were a number of people who stayed out of the polarized debate. Over the years, there have been countless books about the Rosenbergs, from Walter and Miriam Schneir's sympathetic account Invitation to an Inquest (1965) to Ron Radosh and Joyce Milton's The Rosenberg File (1983), which concluded that Julius was guilty and Ethel was complicit in his actions. E.L. Doctorow's 1971 novel The Book of Daniel explored the case and the lives of the Rosenberg's sons from a fictional perspective. A gripping recent contribution was Sam Roberts' The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case (2003). Published on the 50th anniversary of the execution, Roberts dropped the bombshell that David Greenglass, brother of Ethel Rosenberg and the man whose testimony carried so much weight in sending the couple to the electric chair, perjured himself on the witness stand (a fact that Greenglass openly admitted to Roberts during interviews for the book). The Brother is haunting, sad and painful to read.

A heartbreaking documentary (and, in my view, the best account of the Rosenbergs) was Ivy Meeropol's stunning 2004 film Heir to an Execution. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor: track it down and watch it right away. The film packs a punch as it shows how four generations of Rosenbergs (Ivy is the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel and the daughter of their son Michael) coped with the execution of Julius and Ethel. By the time the credits on the film came up, I found myself emotionally drained after journeying with Ivy on this deeply personal tour of the past. And Ivy Meeropol is incredibly honest about the recent revelations in the declassified Venona Papers (secret Soviet messages intercepted by American and British intelligence in the 1940s) that point to Julius Rosenberg's involvement in atomic espionage.

There is still a great deal of emotion involved in the ongoing debates over the Rosenbergs. Many conservatives still defend the execution as justified and necessary (in particular, David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine routinely condemns the couple and supports their grim fate). To the left, the Rosenbergs remain martyrs, although a growing number of people who are sympathetic to the Rosenbergs and condemn their execution are starting to believe that Julius, indeed, was involved in some sort of espionage activity (for years, it was virtually verboten within the left to even wonder whether Julius was guilty). But there is also a sense among leftists that the punishment did not fit the crime, and the Rosenbergs were executed chiefly because, unlike David Greenglass, they refused to cooperate with the anticommunist inquisition.

For the past several decades, the Rosenberg's sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol (who took the surname of their adoptive parents) have kept the memory of their parents alive by speaking out against their execution as an unjust act. Watching Heir to an Execution reminds us of what a dark and painful moment this was in American history. Ivy Meeropol's masterpiece ought to be required viewing, especially for those who still laud the violent electrocution of the Rosenbergs over a half century ago. Even if Julius was guilty of participating in an atomic espionage ring, neither one of them deserved to meet such a barbaric end.

McCain, Obama and Women

2008-06-18T11:36:00.007-04:00

Senator John McCain is working hard to portray himself as the candidate best suited to support women and women's causes. He has been crisscrossing the country trying to win over Senator Hillary Clinton's supporters. Most of them are solidly behind Senator Barack Obama, but some of them have gone over to the McCain camp. Maxine Schwartz, 39, of Westfield, New Jersey, told National Public Radio that she went from being a Clinton to a McCain backer because she thinks McCain is a stronger supporter of Israel: "Israel's security is an issue is for me. Either president will secure the United States, but as far as being an ally and friend of Israel, I think McCain is the right person, not Obama."

Israel's security may not be the top issue on the minds of most ordinary American women, but Schwartz is certainly not alone in switching her support from Clinton to McCain. A minority of Clinton's supporters are still stinging from her defeat in the primaries earlier this month. McCain is doing his best to win them over with statements like this one: "Every place I go, I'm told Sen. Clinton inspired millions of young women in this country — and not necessarily young women — inspired a whole generation of young Americans in this country. So I admire and respect her."

Polls show that Obama has stronger support among women than McCain. But a Chicago Tribune report today (June 18) indicated that McCain's aggressive recruiting efforts are making a dent in America's suburbs, where support for him is on the rise with women. So while Obama maintains an edge over McCain, he should not (and most likely will not) take it for granted.

The same Chicago Tribune article said that Clinton voters support Obama over McCain by a 3-1 margin. It quoted former Clinton supporter Lorraine Marino on Obama: "He manages to be strong and clear, but he pulls that off while being inclusive and listening to opposing views. I admire how he approaches problem-solving."

Like McCain, Senator Obama has been stepping up his appeals to women voters. He is taking the issue seriously. He also effectively countered McCain's drive when he noted, "I think John McCain is going to have trouble making the case, when on almost every single issue that's important to women, he's been on the wrong side. You know, he is in favor of judges who would overturn Roe v Wade. He has opposed equal pay. He has opposed the CHIP (health care) program that would make children insured. He has opposed efforts to protect women against some of the discrimination that they experience in the workplace. You know, that's not going to be a track record that I think is going to be very appealing to women."

But Obama needs to tell American women something that McCain is not saying. He has to reassure them that they are not simply the "issue of the day." So far, all indicators appear promising for Obama. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week showed that women favor Obama over McCain by 52 per cent to 33 per cent. My question is: Can we have the election tomorrow? And can we ban men from voting? Women had to wait an awfully long time to vote in America. Universal woman suffrage was not in place until 1920. I say it's time for a little payback.

UPDATE: Obama Sock Puppet Controversy Continues!!!

2008-06-18T10:29:00.006-04:00

Well, Blog Pals, looks like old Andrew jumped the gun (for the umpteenth time). You may recall my Obama Sock Puppet post from the other day (see below) about David and Elizabeth Lawson of West Jordan, Utah, and the uproar they caused with their monkey puppet of Senator Barack Obama. A headline in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune said it all: "Creators of The Sock Obama seek new company to produce doll." So it looks like Sock Obama is back. Apparently, the Lawsons are selling him on a new Website called Sock Politicians (click here to see it). Turns out they're also selling a Sock McCain (pictured here). It's hard to say why the Lawsons had a change of heart. In a really, really weird statement, the Lawsons said, "In the good ol' fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism, free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America." Huh??? The statement gets even more bizarre: "Last we heard, a posse of bloggers from back East are on their way over to conduct - how did they phrase it? - a good ol' fashioned KKK house burning party at David and Elizabeth's. Kinda exciting stuff, but this in America?"

What the hell? They lost me at "good ol' fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism."

Not surprisingly, members of the Salt Lake City branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are fuming. Charles Henderson, an African American Democratic candidate for the Utah House of Representatives from the town of Kearns, posed the question, "After you've been told it's not acceptable, why do you pursue this unless it's motivated by financial gain, notoriety or some other more malicious path that you're trying to take?"

Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to give the Lawsons the benefit of the doubt. And maybe, just maybe, the Lawsons were inspired by those Bloggers who insisted that Sock Obama will one day be a collector's item. Who knows? Interestingly, for you Canadian readers, there is a Canadian angle to the story. Originally, before the outcry erupted, the Lawsons had worked out a deal with Brinkley Custom Toys of Hamilton, Ontario, to manufacture Sock Obama. The folks at Brinkley got cold feet when the poop hit the fan.

Stay tuned, Blog pals. I think Sock Obama just got his second wind.

Attack Ad Pioneer Dies at 88

2008-06-17T13:36:00.015-04:00

On June 15, Tony Schwartz -- the media consultant responsible for the famous "Daisy ad" (above) in the 1964 presidential campaign -- died at age 88. Schwartz was a pioneer. His famous ad, in the words of political reporter Dick Polman, was "the first TV attack ad in American political history, and thus blazed a trail for all the negative craftsmen who have flourished ever since." President Lyndon Johnson's campaign hired Schwartz to create the advertisement, a 60-second spot that showed a freckle-faced little girl in a meadow, picking the petals off of a daisy, with blue skies and birds chirping all around her. Suddenly, a ringing voice (with a southern drawl) on a loudspeaker begins counting down from 10. The camera zooms in on the girl's eye and . . . BOOM! A mushroom cloud fills the television screen. Then LBJ's voice comes on and says, "These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." It closes with an announcer saying, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."

The ad aired once (September 7). LBJ's campaign pulled it from the airwaves after facing a firestorm of criticism. But the damage was done. The impact was profound. And for the past 44 years, the advertisement has been studied as a key early attack ad. The ad didn't mention Senator Barry Goldwater (right), LBJ's Republican opponent, but viewers understood the ad's implication: If Goldwater wins, a global nuclear war is inevitable.

And what of its creator, Tony Schwartz? According to a fascinating Washington Post obituary on him, he was a reclusive man who suffered from agoraphobia and absolutely loathed going outside. In addition to the "Daisy ad," he is famous for his use of different sounds in advertising, including nature (hence, the chirping birds in the "Daisy ad"), children's voices and devices such as cash registers and foghorns. At the time of his "Daisy ad," he was with the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency. Since then, he has had several teaching gigs and written two books.

The "Daisy ad" was really his 15 minutes of fame, though. As Dick Polman noted, Schwartz created the attack ad prototype. It was only a short matter of time before Republicans, too, mastered the art and put such ads to even more effective use than their Democratic foes. Up until his death on June 15, Schwartz was proud of his 60-second masterpiece. Indeed, the world of politics would never be the same after his Frankenstein's monster was unleashed on America's airwaves.

How a Little Puppet Might Help America Come to Terms With its Past

2008-06-16T10:54:00.019-04:00

Just in case you missed the uproar: A small company based in West Jordan, Utah, recently announced its newest addition: A stuffed monkey sock puppet that is supposed to be Senator Barack Obama. As the advertisement proclaimed: "TheSockObama™ is made with high quality knit materials to capture the nostalgic look of the Sock Monkey that we all know and love. Staying true to his root, he is hand stuffed with just enough filling to give him a firm, but huggable feel. The removable suit jacket offers two looks for this future President - All Business or Hands On."

The Sock Obama (pictured above), as it is called, caused such an uproar on the Internet (especially in the Blogosphere) that the company immediately halted sales of the puppet and issued an apology on its Website: "AN APOLOGY: We are very apologetic to all who were upset by our toy idea. We will not be proceeding with the manufacturing of this toy. Thank you."

The controversy over the puppet illustrated the clear dividing line between anti-racist progressive Bloggers who cried foul and conservative, anti-political correctness Bloggers who accused the former group of being intolerant and excessive.

Not surprisingly, the two sides aren't listening to each other. It's what happens in so many debates these days: Emotions run high. Opponents talk around one another instead of to each other. It's as if they know they can't win their foes over, so they preach to the choir and -- maybe in a best case scenario -- hope to reach out to a few undecideds out there.

The makers of Sock Obama -- a couple named David and Elizabeth Lawson -- seemed genuinely shocked that their toy provoked such an intense reaction. They issued an apology in which they claimed they meant for the toy to be an affectionate celebration of Obama (indeed, they seem to think he's going to be the next president of the United States). Their response to the uproar has made some observers scratch their heads and wonder if these people are really racist or just plain naive. As the apologetic couple wrote, "It is not, nor has it ever been our objective to hurt, dismay or anger anyone. We guess there is an element of naivete on our part. We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little. We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases."

It's an eloquent apology, hardly the words of hardened racists. Part of the problem is that America finally has an African American presidential candidate for a major party, but millions of people across the country are going out of their way to avoid a meaningful dialogue about racial issues and race relations. Then something like Sock Obama appears and becomes the spark that ignites the tinderbox. You hear charges of racism and counter-charges of excessive political correctness. And all of it happens in an ahistorical void.

What gets lost is the long and bitter history of racism and the repression of African Americans. Don't think for a minute that we have somehow escaped the shadow of that tragic legacy. Depictions of African Americans as monkey-like creatures (like the one on the right) have been around as long as black people have lived on American soil. And they have served a very deliberate function: To dehumanize African Americans so that when they are subjugated, their oppressors don't feel any anguish or guilt over their actions.

I have no doubt that the Lawsons are sincere in their apology. And I think Sock Obama is the product of a lack of awareness of this tragic history. Had the Lawsons been fully aware of it, and had they been able to internalize it at a deeper level, they wouldn't have made Sock Obama in the first place.

The first step is to educate ourselves. If you get a chance, visit a Website like Without Sanctuary or The Jim Crow Museum and you'll come face to face with the tragedy of American racism in all of its shame and sadness.

Regrettably, public debates and dialogue in post-9/11 America have become too emotional, too heated. There is too much screaming, too little listening, too little genuine compassion. Instead of condemning the Lawsons, who have shown remorse for their actions and taken concrete steps to correct the problem, it is crucial to draw attention to the long history of racism in America. It is not enough that the country finally has a black presidential candidate. Building bridges between different races, ethnic groups, religions, and nations means understanding and coming to terms with history -- the noble as well as the tragic.

Let the Boxing Match Begin!

2008-06-15T10:46:00.016-04:00

DING DING DING! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO CAMPAIGN TRAIL BOXING! In this corner, weighing in with all the baggage from two disastrous terms of Dubya in the White House, from Arizona, it's John "the Marauder" McCain! (Cheers from the right side of the stadium.) In this corner, weighing in with Republican smear accusations of being a "tax-and-spend liberal," from Illinois, it's Barack "the Gentleman" Obama! (Cheers from the left side of the stadium.)

REF (to the two fighters): Now men, I want a clean fight. No hitting below the belt. No stompin' on each other's feet. No blows to the back. Now, go back to your corners and let the fight begin. DING DING DING!

Announcer: The audience goes nuts! Both candidates step out of the corners sparring.

RIGHT JAB FROM MCCAIN: "There will be change in Washington. The question is what kind of change? Will we enact the single largest tax increase since the Second World War, as my opponent proposes?" (Speaking to small business owners in Washington, Tuesday, June 10, 2008.)

Announcer: Ouch! That stings!

LEFT JAB FROM OBAMA: "I've said that McCain is running to serve out a third Bush term. But the truth is, when it comes to taxes, that's not being fair to George Bush. McCain wants to add $300 billion more in tax breaks and loopholes for big corporations and the wealthy and he hasn't even explained how to pay for it." (Speaking at a campaign stop in St. Louis, Tuesday, June 10, 2008.)

Announcer: That caught McCain off guard! The Marauder is dazed, but not down. He's leaps in on Obama.

LEFT HOOK FROM MCCAIN: "Under Sen. Obama's tax plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise -- seniors, parents, small-business owners and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market."

Announcer: It stings, but I've seen worse. Obama collects himself and moves in for a deadly hook.

COUNTER HOOK FROM OBAMA: "The way that he's characterizing what I'm prescribing is just wrong. My tax reform plan would cut taxes for 95 percent of workers."

Announcer: Oh man! Didn't even connect! Didn't even bruise McCain! What was he thinking? McCain darts to the center of the ring, fists of fury swinging....

RIGHT UPPERCUT FROM MCCAIN: "I think there are a lot of Senator Clinton’s supporters who will support me because of their belief that Senator Obama does not have the experience or the knowledge or the judgment to address this nation’s national security challenges given we are in two wars." (Speaking in Louisiana, Wednesday, June 11, 2008.)

Announcer: Whoa, that's gotta hurt! Obama clearly didn't see that one coming. The "lack of experience" uppercut nails Obama every time. He's gotta think of an effective move to counter it, folks!

LEFT HOOK FROM OBAMA: "'My opponent in this general election, John McCain – his idea of Social Security amounts to four more years of what was attempted and failed under George W. Bush,' Mr. Obama said, referring to Mr. McCain’s previous support of private accounts within Social Security. 'Yesterday, he tried to deny that he ever took that position, which leads us to wonder if he had a change of heart or a change of politics.'" (From the New York Times, June 13, 2008.)

Announcer: I've seen better. Let's just say: The damage isn't permanent. Now McCain -- the Arizona Marauder -- moves in with a fierce uppercut.

UPPERCUT FROM MCCAIN (IN RESPONSE TO OBAMA'S CLAIM THAT MCCAIN IS RUNNING FOR BUSH'S THIRD TERM): McCain says Obama is running for "Jimmy Carter's second term."

Announcer: The damage is minimal, folks, because most of the people in the arena suffer from historical amnesia and don't know what the hell McCain is talking about. Jimmy Carter? Who's that mofo? Wasn't that the cat who got KO'ed in the fourth round by Larry Holmes at Caesars Palace back in '80?

DING DING DING! End of Round One.

Announcer: So far, it has been a clean fight -- nothing below the belt. Stay tuned, boxing fans! This is just getting good!

From the Nixon Files: Richard Nixon, Champion of Racial Equality

2008-06-14T13:56:00.006-04:00

From the Nixon White House Tapes (May 13, 1971): Richard Nixon discussing welfare and racial issues with John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman.

NIXON: I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

EHRLICHMAN: The Mexican American is not as good as the Mexican. You go down to Mexico--they're clean, they're honest, they're moral.

NIXON: Mexico is a much more moral country.

EHRLICHMAN: Monterrey, Cuernavaca. Go into slum areas, and by God they come out with clean shirts on a Sunday morning.

NIXON: The church. You find a helluva lot less marijuana use in Mexico than the United States.

Above: Nixon trying his hand at badminton.

From the Nixon White House Tapes (July 11, 1971): Richard Nixon discussing race issues with Assistant to the President Donald Rumsfeld.

NIXON: The second point is that coming out--coming back and saying that black Americans aren't as good as black Africans--most of them , basically, are just out of the trees. Now, let's face it, they are.

Happy 50th Birthday, Jello!

2008-06-13T20:13:00.009-04:00

Happy 50th Birthday, Jello! No, I'm not talking about the delightful Kraft Foods' gelatin dessert. I'm talking about Jello Biafra, former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys. For the past thirty years, Jello has been a great innovator: a singer, a songwriter, a spoken-word orator, co-founder and head of Alternative Tentacles Records, and frequent collaborator with the band The Melvins. Jello (real name Eric Boucher) was born June 17, 1958, in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in middle-class suburbia. As a teenager, he saw the Ramones in concert in Denver and the concert changed him. He formed his own punk band, the legendary Dead Kennedys (DK's). I have fond memories of seeing the DK's play at the Indian Walk-In Center in Salt Lake City back in the 1980s. They blew my mind! Jello sang all the DK's classics -- "Holiday in Cambodia," "Moral Majority," "Nazi Punks, Fuck Off" and "Too Drunk to Fuck" -- and they left the audience absolutely ecstatic. Most of us were confused, young kids growing up in suburbia, right smack in the middle of Reagan's America. We were angry. We were full of rage and teen angst. We slam danced, ramming into each other, butting heads, pushing one another while the DK's performed full throttle. A few years later, I interviewed Jello while the band was on trial in 1986 for violating the California Penal Code. Inside of the Dead Kennedys' album Frankenchrist was a poster by artist H.R. Giger called "Work 219: Landscape XX" or "Penis Landscape" for short. It was a surreal painting showing numerous penises entering numerous vaginas. It was deemed obscene and the DK's were put on trial. The trial ended in a hung jury, and Frankenchrist was banned from a number of record stores for being "unwholesome." During my interview with Jello, I found him to be blunt and full of irony and great wit and passion. He was also friendly and loaded with energy -- good, positive energy.

In the years since then, Jello (right) has been a fearless voice of dissent. His "spoken word" performances are incredibly insightful and he just keeps getting angrier and edgier with age. His anarchism and righteous rage are admirable. Even more laudable is his sense of humor, which is still evident in all his work. Next week, Jello will be performing a 50th Birthday concert in the Bay Area, and his fans are really looking forward. Recently, Jello told the San Jose Mercury about his inspiration: "When I saw Iggy Pop and the Stooges on Iggy's 60th birthday, they were so awesome. I made a vow to myself that I better do something on my birthday. If it's just a tenth as good as Iggy, I'll feel triumphant."

Something tells me Iggy would be proud.

Dispatches from the Teddy Bear Front

2008-06-12T15:37:00.004-04:00

Priced to Clear: This just in, Blog Pals: The Vermont Teddy Bear Company (based in Shelburne, Vermont), which makes Teddy Bears that resemble presidential candidates, is knocking down the price of the Hillary Clinton Teddy Bear (right) from $99.95 to $74.95 because Senator Clinton dropped out of the race. Said Vermont Teddy Bear spokeswoman Meg Terrien: "She's no longer part of that trio of candidates, so we put her on sale." According to the Associated Press story (June 11), The Clinton Bear "comes wearing her signature yellow blazer, black slacks, string of pearls and blue 'Hillary for President' button. It's 'a fun solution to finding the perfect gift for any Hillary supporter,' according to the Vermont Teddy Bear Company Website." No word on what the company plans to do with its discontinued John Kerry, Bob Dole and Mike Dukakis bears.

Frontiers of Free Enterprise: A Japanese robotics company called iXs Research Corporation has created a cute, cuddly Teddy Bear with a built-in GPS system (right) that sits on the dashboard of your car and provides you with directions. As Motor Trend magazine points out, "The teddy bear...has six joints in his arms and neck he uses to motion while giving directions." The bear also critiques your driving style (if you hit the brakes too hard, it says, "Be careful, please!"). BUT WAIT -- THERE'S MORE! The high-tech online magazine Gear Live adds, "The teddy also has an alcohol detection sensor in its neck and will admonish you if it smells that last margarita with 'You haven't been drinking, have you?'"

The Teddy Bear That Ate Wichita: Dana Warren of Wichita, Kansas, wants to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the category of "World's Tallest Teddy Bear." She spent days unloading two semi trucks full of stuffing, then inserted it inside a 55 and a half foot tall Teddy Bear. The bear weights a whopping 3,000 pounds and requires 500 yards of material. Warren cut the fabric in her house, assembled the bear with her sewing machine, and stuffed it in her driveway. Warren first set the Giant Teddy Bear record in 2001 when she built a 51-foot high stuffed bear. Sadly, not too long after that, a competitor built a bigger, longer Teddy Bear, leaving Warren with a non-record setting giant bear. So this time, it's personal.

Next she'll be saying, "I am not a crook!"

2008-06-11T16:25:00.010-04:00

Oh my God! Hillary is changing! See for yourself! Her jowls are getting bigger. Her eyes are darting back and forth. She's growing a ski-jump nose on her face. Here comes the five o'clock shadow. She's holding her fingers up into two peace signs. She's becoming... (cue the dramatic sci-fi movie music: "duh duh duh!!!") NIXON!!!

You heard right, Blog Pals. In the tradition of President Richard Nixon, Hillary and Bill Clinton have come up with their own "Enemies List."

Back in the early 1970s, Nixon kept a list of people he considered to be his most outspoken political opponents. The list included members of Congress such as Senator Teddy Kennedy and Representative John Conyers; celebrities like Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand and Gregory Peck; and for good measure, Nixon's Enemies List even included New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath and a comedian who did bad Nixon impersonations (!!!).

Now, in 2008, Hillary and Old Bubba are now keeping their own list of "traitors" who "betrayed" them in the primaries. "Those Loyal to the Clintons Take Note of Who Was Not," announced a headline in the New York Times. As the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph noted: "Top of the list is thought to be Bill Richardson, now Governor of New Mexico and former energy secretary and United Nations ambassador, who gave Mr Obama a glowing endorsement after dropping out of the race himself, and only weeks after being pictured watching the Super Bowl with Mr Clinton. Other A-List betrayers include James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, Gregory Craig, Mr Clinton's lawyer in his impeachment trial, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and various members of the Kennedy political clan."

It's not surprising that Hillary Clinton is becoming more and more like Nixon. When Old Bubba was in the White House back in the Nineties, he exhibited similar behavioral traits. On the campaign trail this year, Hillary's key campaign staff -- especially Sidney Blumenthal -- began to eerily resemble Tricky Dick's old crew: H.R. "Pufnstuf" Haldeman, John "Trench Coat" Ehrlichman and good old Chuck "Blag Bag Op" Colson.

Terry McAufliffe, chairman of Senator Clinton's campaign, assured the media that Hillary keeps an Enemies List for purely practical purposes. "The Clintons get hundreds of requests for favours every week. Clearly, the people you're going to do stuff for in the future are the people who have been there for you."

Sounds like a load of B.S. to me. An "Enemies List" fits in perfectly with Senator Clinton's Nixon-like obsession with gaining power and keeping it. It's only a matter of time before her jowls start flapping, her fingers form peace signs above her head, and we hear her saying, "I AM NOT A CROOK!"

Bill Clinton sez: "YOU WON'T HAVE OL' BUBBA TO KICK AROUND ANY LONGER!"

Mudslingers of 1828

2008-06-09T19:48:00.017-04:00

Some Americans think that dirty political campaigns are a relatively recent phenomenon. But that is not the case. Actually, mudslinging is as old as the Republic itself. And many historians have described the Presidential Elections of 1828 as the "dirtiest" in American History. The election pitted incumbent John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), son of president John Adams and the candidate of the National Republican Party, against Andrew Jackson (1867-1845, pictured above), commander of the American forces in the Battle of New Orleans (1815) and a prominent Tennessee frontiersman, land speculator and slave owner. This was the second presidential race that featured Adams going up against Jackson. Four years earlier, Jackson lost to Adams in what many of Jackson's followers considered to be a corrupt election. In a four-way contest, Jackson had by far the most votes. But the House of Representatives decided the outcome of the election because none of the candidates received an actual majority of the popular vote, and they selected Adams to be president. Needless to say, the decision infuriated Jackson's followers.

Flash forward four years: Followers of Adams and Jackson believed the 1828 presidential election would be the most important race in the history of the Republic. Adams (left), a staunch elitist, believed it was his destiny to silence "the howl of raving Democracy" by defeating the "egalitarian" Jackson. Meantime, Jackson's supporters established their own political party, the "Friends of Jackson," which eventually morphed into the Democratic Party. Jackson was a lean (6 feet, 1 inch, 140 lbs.) and charismatic man with boundless energy. He journeyed on horseback and spoke to cheering crowds in towns and rural areas, repeatedly boasting, "I am not a politician."

Hatred between the Adamsites and the Jacksonians was intense. Jackson's supporters claimed Adams lived in "kingly pomp and splendor" in a "presidential palace." They insisted he was a monarchist "like his father." In reference to Adams, one Jacksonian noted, "His habits and principles are not congenial with the spirit of our institutions and the notions of a democratic people."

Much of the ugly smear campaigning came from the Adams camp. His followers unleashed a torrent of hateful charges against candidate Jackson. One pro-Adams faction published a pamphlet titled Reminiscences; or, an Extract from the Catalogue of General Jackson's Youthful Indiscretions Between the Age of Twenty-three and Sixty, which -- as the titled suggested -- documented Jackson's alleged duels, brawls and fights. Other Adams backers attacked Jackson from the gutter. As one pro-Adams newspaper announced, "General Jackson's mother was a COMMON PROSTITUTE, brought into this country by the British soldiers. She afterward married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which number General JACKSON IS ONE!!!" It was all lies, but Jackson took it in stride. What he couldn't stand, however, were the numerous attacks against his beloved wife, Rachel (below). Jackson took part in no fewer than 13 duels to uphold his wife's honor. During the 1828 campaign, Adams' followers found out that years earlier, Rachel married Jackson while still married to her first husband, Captain Lewis Robards. It was due to a mix-up: Rachel and Lewis separated in 1790. Soon thereafter Lewis told Rachel the divorce had been finalized. After that, she became romantically involved with Jackson and the two were soon married. Turns out that the divorce had not been finalized, and Robards used Rachel's involvement with Jackson to claim she lived in "sin." When the divorce was finally granted in 1794, Jackson and Rachel had already been married a few years and the couple remarried.

Adams' followers found out about this and went absolutely apeshit. Karl Rove would've been proud. They claimed Rachel was an "adulteress" and a "whore." Pro-Adams newspapers were filled with stories about torrid trysts between Jackson and his married "lover." An anti-Jackson newspaper posed the question, "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?" The smear campaign against Rachel was so intense that she soon became physically ill and complained of heart pains.

By early December, newspapers announced that Jackson triumphed in the 1828 elections. "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad," Rachel said. But, she added, "for my own part, I never wished it." Rachel suddenly died just days later.

Jackson mourned her loss for the rest of his life and never remarried. He loathed Adams for not making an effort to stop the dirty campaigning. "May God Almighty forgive her murderers, as I know she forgave them," Jackson said at her funeral. "I never can."

So ended the 1828 campaign, a low point for mudslinging in American history. It's pretty much impossible to say that things have gotten worse.

There's an interesting postscript: Jackson was raised in a Presbyterian household. But by the time of the 1828 election, he hadn't been a churchgoer in years. During the '28 campaign, Rachel urged him to attend church on Sundays with her, but Jackson refused. He told her, "My dear, if I were to do that now, it would be said, all over the country, that I had done it for the sake of political effect. My enemies would all say so. I can not do it now, but I promise you that when once more I am clear of politics I will join the church." Sure enough, after leaving office in 1837, Jackson immediately joined the Presbyterian Church. He attended services every Sunday until his death in 1845.

As Sean Connery's character Malone said in The Untouchables (1987): "Here endeth the lesson."

Bruce "Utah" Phillips, 1935-2008: An American Original

2008-06-08T16:35:00.012-04:00

When newspapers across America noted the passing of Bruce "Utah" Phillips on May 23 of congestive heart failure, they used plenty of words to describe the man, including raconteur, activist, itinerant folk singer, unionist, peacenik, agitator, hobo and even "poet of the railroad." I recall Utah Phillips as a Santa Claus-like, guitar-strumming hell raiser who journeyed from place to place, playing his music free of charge (or for a tiny fee). I heard him twice -- once at a peace demonstration in the 1980s and then at an event for the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) in Salt Lake City in the mid-1990s.

He sang folk songs about down-and-out people -- men and women living on the edge -- and he sang old labor songs and ballads about the railroads and hard-traveling people. He was the real deal, as authentic as they come. Born in 1935 in Cleveland to labor activist parents, Utah Phillips worked in a number of different jobs growing up. He was also a Korean War veteran. Along the way through life, he learned the art of folksinging from other hard living people. As Phillips told the Boston Globe back in 1999: "I worked with lots of old drunks only fit to shovel gravel. But, they all knew songs, and they showed me how to play them. The reason I wound up doing what I do now, I guess, was that the songs these guys sang were so close to their lives, to what they were experiencing in their work and loves and afflictions."

Utah Phillips' debut album appeared in 1973. Over the years, he recorded numerous songs and several records. He collaborated in the late 1990s with Ani DiFranco and the two of them were nominated for an Emmy for their work together. He was a singer in the tradition of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He possessed a purity -- not a self-righteous purity, but a purity of authentic decency -- that showed in the songs he sang. When I saw him, he played for small crowds on outdoor stages, but he performed with the same enthusiasm you'd expect from someone singing their heart out at Woodstock.

Phillips was also a radical. He was a lifelong member of the I.W.W. He was an anarchist and a humanist. He'd be the first to agree with the old bumper sticker that said, "Capitalism is Organized Crime." He knew that the only way that poor and working-class people would see any improvements in their lives would be if they fought like hell to change society for the better. Utah Phillips was colorful, creative, outspoken and fearless. He worked hard his entire life. He made the people in his audiences -- young and old, male and female -- laugh, cry, hope and, perhaps most importantly, he emboldened them. He was one of those remarkable people who wasn't afraid to live on the fringes of society and yet, ironically, there was also something so quintessentially American about him.

Bruce "Utah" Phillips (1935-2008)

Is it time to say, "Adios, Hillary"?

2008-06-06T14:32:00.015-04:00

Now that Senator Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination, there is the predictable media frenzy over the question, "What about Hillary?"

"Obama, Clinton Hold Talks in Feinstein's Living Room," cried a CNN website headline about the "secret talks" underway between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton in Senator Diane Feinstein's Washington, D.C. home. Secret talks? What the hell? Since when did this thing become the Manhattan Project? Now the pressure is on Obama to select Clinton as his running mate. The New York Times announced, "Clinton Says VP is Obama's Choice." A poll taken by CNN found that most Democrats want Obama to choose Clinton to be his vice president.

Is this a wise idea? Aside from political guru David Gergen's famous quip that if Obama selects Clinton to be his vice president he's also going to need a food taster, a lot of pundits, campaigners, political junkies and Democratic bigwigs think Hillary would make an ideal veep.

To be honest, this Blogger has mixed feelings about whether Hillary Clinton would make a suitable running mate. True, she would bring a lot to the campaign: A wealth of connections, a base of support, cunning political sensibilities and an air of experience. She did a lot of things right on her campaign, especially her efforts to reach out to working-class voters. Plus Clinton is a dirty fighter -- and the Democrats need to dish it out a little more effectively to counter the army of Republican Orcs in the GOP Attack Machine who are already crawling out of the woodwork with their eyes on the prize of destroying Obama's momentum. Now that she's on our side, we can use her toughness. In these respects, Clinton would make an ideal vice-presidential candidate.

The negatives of making such a choice are obvious. Clinton is a polarizing figure. Poll after poll shows that a substantial number of ordinary Americans don't trust her, and that distrust cuts across party lines. Half of the voters on the right side of the political spectrum think she's still a flaming Sixties liberal, while many on the liberal/left/progressive side tend to view her as a reactionary warmonger. David Frum, by far my favorite conservative columnist (I read him religiously) weighed in in the pages of the National Post: "Clinton must surely rank close to the bottom of his vice-presidential preferences: too divisive, too 90s, too female, too untrustworthy and too prone to scandal. (Just last week, Vanity Fair magazine published a long story packed with lurid hints about Bill Clinton’s post-presidential sexual and financial adventures: 'No former president of the United States has ever traveled with such a fast crowd …')"

Frum continues: "So if Obama does choose Clinton, it will be obvious to all that he yielded to pressure and threat. That would put a humiliating mark on his candidacy — and offer an ominous clue about his hypothetical future presidency."

Old Bubba (above): Is there any way Hillary can keep a leash on that sucka?

Obviously, I have mixed feelings about Obama selecting Clinton as the Veep. Despite some brilliant moments on the campaign trail, Clinton showed a dark side of herself as a political figure possessing a Nixonian obsession with achieving and holding on to power at any cost. In many respects, she is a classic Machiavellian. How well will it serve Obama in conservative stronghold "Red States" to have a running mate widely considered by voters in those states to be a northeastern elitist who is out of touch with the people? And let's not forget Bubba (Bill Clinton). Man alive, Hillary is gonna have to put a leash on that sucka. Talk about leaving a foul taste in people's mouths. (And to think, I was actually getting nostalgic for Bubba after so many years of Old Dubya running the show.)

Obama ought to consider all the options carefully. But once he has, if he thinks Clinton is the way to go VP-wise, then Democrats will circle the wagons. Democrats are still stinging from the divisions of the primary season. So if Obama chooses Clinton, this Blogger will pick on her a little less (at least until November 5, the day after Election Day).

Robert F. Kennedy, 1925-1968

2008-06-04T23:59:00.009-04:00

First, a confession: For years, I had doubts when it came to Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968). Strong doubts. To me, the ambitious younger brother of President John F. Kennedy seemed to be too cunning, too hawkish, too much of hardened cold warrior, too vicious of a political animal. I was not swept away by Bobby Kennedy-mania like so many people I knew. In graduate school, I shared an office with a fellow doctoral student who kept a photograph of RFK above his desk. At the time, I did not understand his love of Kennedy.

As I grow older, though, I've found that my attitude toward Robert Kennedy has changed. Maybe it's because I've lost the self-righteous edge I had my youth -- the black-and-white sense of right and wrong, the inability to come to terms with ambiguities in people. I've also become better informed, having read such gripping accounts of Kennedy's final years as Thurston Clarke's The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America and David Talbot's Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. I have come to appreciate the complexities, ambiguities and multiple facets of Kennedy.

And the more I read about Bobby, the more I'm struck by what a truly remarkable man he was. In the final months of his life, he was undergoing a transformation. He became a deeper thinker, a more compassionate visionary, and an advocate for the forgotten men and women of American society. His was a voice of peace and reconciliation in a relentlessly trying time of American history. When riots erupted in more than 100 cities following the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis on April 4, 1968, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy urged calmness, compassion and unity.

Speaking in Cleveland the day after King's death, Kennedy said, "Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. We must admit that our children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge."

Two months later, the assassin's bullet ended Kennedy's life, too. And a nation plunged into despair.

His life was much too short. Toward the end of it, a new Robert Kennedy was born. This Kennedy was a humanistic visionary poised to lead America toward something better. He courageously -- fearlessly -- reevaluated his most fundamental beliefs. And along the way, he challenged a generation to live up to America's highest ideals. "One person can make a difference," he insisted, "and all of us ought to try."

Moments before his assassination (which occurred shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968), Kennedy told a cheering audience at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (pictured right), "We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. We can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can."

Forty years later, those words still resonate.

Watching History

2008-06-04T06:53:00.005-04:00

Victory belonged to Senator Barack Obama (left) last night. As he has done throughout this race, he projected confidence and calmness in his triumph. He is the first African American to head the ticket of a major political party. Son of a white American woman and a black Kenyan, Obama has preached the most compelling message of unity of any Democratic candidate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and -- in the process -- he has repeatedly challenged the dominant race relations paradigm. Standing before a cheering crowd in St. Paul, Minnesota, Obama said, "Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another -- a journey that will bring a new and better day to America."

Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, entered the race at the beginning of 2007. At that time, most observers were betting that Senator Hillary Clinton would emerge the Democratic candidate for president. For the next year and a half, Obama and Clinton crisscrossed the nation, rallying supporters, debating each other on over 20 occasions and drawing 35 million backers out to the polls. They both stumbled -- Clinton's Bosnia boner, Obama's endless headaches with the outspoken Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And there were moments on the campaign trail when Obama looked discouraged, morose and just plain tired, like he just wanted to crawl into bed and forget the whole thing.

But Obama, the third African American to serve in the United States Senate since Reconstruction, refused to surrender. And he showed remarkable resilience. Last night, in St. Paul, his message resonated with the audience. "This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past."

And what about Hillary Clinton? Will Clinton and Obama form a "dream team" (a term that dates back decades that means having equally strong presidential and vice-presidential candidates on the ticket)? Will Hillary take the VP slot? Last night would have been the perfect moment for her to step out of the race, yet she still refuses to budge. Rumors aplenty have been circulating. The Associated Press wrongly announced the other day that she was ready to concede. "And I hereby announce," she said, "I'm hanging around a little longer." She certainly didn't sound like she was ready to give up. The closest Clinton came to hinting that she might end her campaign was when she told her backers, "In the coming days, I'll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding my way." A headline in the Globe and Mail (Toronto) said it best, "The Cost of Clinton's Narcissism." Unless Clinton changes her course, the toll may turn out to be awfully high.

It appears that Clinton wants to take this battle to the Democratic National Convention August 25-28 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. Such a move would only weaken Obama and strengthen Republican candidate Senator John McCain. At long last, Senator Clinton should take a long, hard look at what is at stake and ask herself if that is, indeed what she really wants. Because whoever the winner turns out to be in such a bitter contest, theirs will be a Phyrric Victory. And America simply cannot afford four more years of reactionary and destructive Bushite Republican policies.

She's a Little Bit Country, He's a Little Bit Rock 'n' Roll

2008-06-03T17:53:00.013-04:00

This just in, Blog Pals: Donny and Marie Fever is apparently sweeping across England! Remember Donny and Marie Osmond, the syrupy sweet, squeaky clean, toothy dynamic duo from Utah who stole everyone's hearts in the 1970s? Recently, they attracted huge, screaming crowds of fans all over Britain. It's true. Look it up if you don't believe me. Donny and Marie (both entering their 50s), along with their less famous siblings -- Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay and Jimmy (didn't there used to be a Larry?) -- were mobbed everywhere in the U.K. by crazed admirers. A headline in Hello Magazine said it all: "Osmond-fever hits London with the return of the Seventies stars." Wherever the Osmonds went, enthusiastic crowds turned out to greet them. The Guardian described one scene at the packed London concert: "A matronly type in an 'I Love Donny' T-shirt cannot stop screaming the name of the purportedly cutest member of the group. The emotion is heightened by a video of the group's arrival in London in 1972 when they were mobbed by bawling girls, some of whom are undoubtedly here right now." Before sellout crowds, they sang such unforgettable favorites as "Love Me For a Reason," "Crazy Horses," "Puppy Love" and "Paper Roses."

The highly successful British tour is but one sign of the Osmond Family's (pictured left) comeback. Last month, Marie hosted a wholesome reality show on NBC called America's Favorite Mother. Now the brother and sister are conducting nationwide auditions for dancers to be part of their upcoming, six-month gig in Las Vegas. But wait, there's more! A Fiftieth Anniversary DVD (yes, the Osmond Family began entertaining audiences way back in 1958!) featuring the very best of the Osmonds is coming soon to a video store near you. And if you happen to be in Utah on Pioneer Day (July 24), you can catch the Osmonds playing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Sure, America is beset by war overseas, recession at home and global warming, but at least the Osmonds aren't going anywhere. Utah's hottest export is here to stay! Well, actually, Utah's hottest export is the double pastrami cheeseburger with secret sauce with four scoops of Leatherby's Old-Fashioned Strawberry Ice Cream on the side. But by golly, the Osmonds are a mighty close second!

The Unbearable Lightness of Dick

2008-06-03T08:47:00.011-04:00

When Vice President Dick Cheney (left) isn't blasting away his hunting buddies, he actually shows some promise as a stand-up comedian. As a keynote speaker at the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards luncheon yesterday, the Veep talked about his distant cousin, Senator Barack Obama, and he revealed interesting details about his family tree. Turns out the vice president has Cheneys among his maternal and paternal ancestors dating back to the 1600s. Then the Vice President got in a dig at the Mountain State (West Virginia): "So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia."

CUE THE PUNCHLINE DRUM STING: Ba-dum-bum-TSSS!
While you're at it, cue the chirping crickets.

Folks in West Virginia aren't laughing. They've been on the bad end of one too many crass hillbilly jokes. In fact, Governor Joe Manchin was fit to be tied: "I truly cannot believe that any vice president of the United States, regardless of their political affiliation, would make such a derogatory statement about my state or any state for that matter. West Virginia is home to some of the most patriotic people in the nation and our sons and daughters have answered the call to duty every time a president has needed their service. They deserve better from the vice president, and so I would simply ask for his apology."

Added Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.): "West Virginians are the hardest working, most decent people I know. Anyone who spends time with them gets it. The Vice President should be more careful about cheap shots aimed at the very people who elected him."

Even the Republicans weren't laughing. As Representative Shirley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) put it: "This is exactly the type of stereotyping that we don't need from our elected officials."

The Vice President apologized through his spokesperson, but his follow-up line at the luncheon on the heels of his West Virginia crack pretty much said it all: "You can say those things when you're not running for re-election."

Dick Cheney's inbreeding joke isn't as offensive as it is informative. Now we have a better understanding of this genetic time bomb who holds the second-highest office in the land. And all this time, I accepted the Weekly World News version of what makes Dick tick (see below). Now I know better...

Nothing Like a Good "No Rules Knife Fight" Between Republicans

2008-06-02T11:29:00.016-04:00

From the "Damn Fun Senate Races to Watch" File: In New Mexico, voters are gearing up for the state primaries tomorrow, where Republicans and Democrats will determine their party's candidates to run for Congress. Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) announced last fall that he's retiring from the United States Senate, which means that there is no incumbent in the Senate race. Now, two Republican members of Congress, Representatives Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce, are duking it out with one another to see who will be nominated at tomorrow's state convention to run as a Republican for the United States Senate. Pearce is farther to the right than Wilson, but they're both quite conservative (Wilson, in fact, calls herself a "common-sense conservative" -- as opposed to the troglodyte variety). Pearce insists Wilson isn't right wing enough. He says she doesn't want to cut taxes as aggressively as he does. In fact, Pearce got a big boost from the Club for Growth, which has spent close to $400,000 on attack ads saying that Wilson leaves something to be desired as a tax cutter. Apparently, Domenici was so troubled by the ads that he after straddling the fence as long as possible, he finally endorsed Wilson.

There have been lots of ugly moments in this race -- too many to count. In recent days, the attacks between the two camps have gotten downright dirty. Wilson is trying to turn Pearce into Snidely Whiplash (right) by accusing him of cutting Social Security benefits to "widows and orphans." A Wilson attack ad against Pearce said, "Cut Social Security for widows and orphans? Unbelievable! But Steve Pearce said he'd do it. Pearce said cut them off - no benefits." Pearce says Wilson is weak on foreign policy because she has voiced doubts about the current strategy in Iraq. Pearce insists that America had better be ready to stay in Iraq a mighty long time. As he put it, "I can tell you that after 50 years we're still in Germany and Japan and after 40 years we're still in Korea." One Pearce attack ad insists Wilson is actually a liberal, along with New Mexico's Democratic congressman, Representative Tom Udall. The ad says, ""Heather Wilson - Tom Udall - liberal values - liberal votes! Both voted to waste taxpayer dollars on a lobster institute and a ballet theater in New York City!"

Wilson says Pearce has not been supportive of poor, rural hospitals in New Mexico. Pearce attacks Wilson for supporting embryonic stem cell research. He insists he's "pro-life" and she is not. Wilson contends that Pearce is into "dirty politics." "He has a tendency to make false statements and hope no one calls him on it," she said. Wilson ripped into Pearce because he voted for the $290 billion Farm Subsidy Bill passed last month in Congress. She insisted the bill subsidizes only dairy producers in the Midwest and Northeast who are competing against New Mexico's decidedly weaker dairy producers.

Who knows which one of these candidates will win? Ugly attack ads seem to work like a charm in American politics, and Pearce's attack-ad arsenal is more heavily stockpiled than Wilson's. The attack ads are having the desired effect, as the polls show. But the race will be close. Both candidates stayed away from President George "Dubya" Bush during the President's visit to Albuquerque last week, which was probably a wise move. Dubya helped raise funds for New Mexico's uber-right-wing congressional candidate Darren White, a man who insisted that New Mexico Democrats are controlled by "radical left-wing special interest groups."

(Above: Old Dubya leaving the White House, May 27, on his way to Albuquerque. He's thinking, "Maybe I shoulda taken that left toin at Albu-koy-kee.")

Can it get any nuttier? Sadly, we only have one more day to watch these two Republicans tear each other limb from limb. As Blogger Joe Monahan put it, "What I make of this is there's no rules in a knife fight and we have a knife fight to the finish here for this U.S. Senate nomination!" One wishes certain knife fights might drag on a bit longer.

From the Nixon Files: Tricky Dick on the Greek Philosophers

2008-06-01T12:26:00.007-04:00

May 13, 1971: While discussing a recent CBS documentary that was sympathetic to homosexuality, President Richard Nixon weighed in on the great Greek philosophers Socrates (right) and Aristotle (left):

"I don't mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless, goddamn, I don't think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates."

(From the May 13, 1971 White House Tapes.)

Some Thoughts on America's Longest-Held Political Prisoner

2008-05-31T10:56:00.010-04:00

In the next few months, Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald (above), the longest held political prisoner in American history, will have another parole hearing. Fitzgerald has been in prison since 1969. Some background: In early 1969, Fitzgerald, an 18-year-old resident of Compton, joined the local Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panthers, an African-American activist organization that is wrongly described as a "terrorist" group by its right-wing critics. Like so many young African Americans living in the inner cities, Fitzgerald was angered by the rampant police abuse and lack of opportunities in L.A. in the late 1960s. Joining the Panthers offered countless black teenagers and twentysomethings a productive outlet for their simmering frustrations.

In October '69, Fitzgerald was arrested -- along with some other friends -- following an altercation with a California Highway Patrol officer (who was under orders to "shoot to kill" all known Panthers). In the affray, the officer was shot and Fitzgerald fled the scene. The officer survived, the Los Angeles police arrested Fitzgerald, and he was not only convicted of shooting and wounding the Highway Patrol officer, he was also charged with a murder of a security guard at a Vons supermarket in Los Angeles. The evidence was flimsy, but Fitzgerald was locked away in the California prison system for almost forty years. Fitzgerald vehemently denies any involvement in the murder of the security guard.

With the passage of time, we have developed a deeper understanding of the turbulent years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Keep in mind the backdrop of events surrounding Fitzgerald's arrest and conviction. Charles Dickens' words about "the best of times, the worst of times" certainly apply here. This period was characterized by war, polarization, crises at home, racial discord and a "law-and-order" crackdowns against all dissenting groups. Now, forty years later, we are able to put this difficult period in context. Many historians agree that the federal government -- in cooperation with local law enforcement agencies -- waged a systematic and unjust war against the Black Panthers across the country.

Chip Fitzgerald was but one of many people sucked into this chaotic maelstrom. In recent years, we have learned that other political prisoners who shared his same fate were innocent. Geronimo Pratt (right), a Vietnam Veteran and Black Panther, spent 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was eventually freed in 1997. In Louisiana, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox -- two Black Panthers from New Orleans -- were serving time for armed robbery when they were charged with the 1972 stabbing of prison guard Brent Miller. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times ran a powerful story (May 3) that raised serious questions about their guilt. In fact, Miller's widow, Leontine Verrett, told the L.A. Times: "If I were on that jury, I don't think I would have convicted them."

There are countless other Panthers who were the innocent victims of brutal repression. Add Chip Fitzgerald to that list. Having served almost forty years in prison and now approaching 60, his health is deteriorating and he is growing weaker and weaker. Last year, Fitzgerald issued a statement that accurately described the sorry state of America's prisons: "The prison system has mutated into a complex dysfunctional resource-wasting parasite of social control, political repression and revenge! Human beings are warehoused in these concrete and steel bunkers that destroy human sensibilities and the human spirit. Then following years of continuous antagonism and frustration at the hands of sadistic prison guards tortured souls are released on to an unsuspecting public to offend. There in is the cause and effect of an 80% recidivism rate."

The time is long overdue to Free Chip Fitzgerald. There are some things you can do: 1. Find out more about Chip by clicking here; you can also read a helpful Blog (from the Unapologetic Mexican) here on Fitzgerald. 2. Sign the petition to free Chip Fitzgerald by clicking here. 3. Write a letter to the parole board showing your support. The snail-mail address is:

Board of Parole Hearings
Post Office Box 4036
Sacramento, CA 95812-4036

Let's get Chip Fitzgerald out of prison. He does not belong in there. And let's end the brutal and costly war against the Black Panthers, waged by the federal government and local law enforcement authorities, once and for all. It has dragged on much too long.

The Swiftboating of Scott McClellan

2008-05-30T07:49:00.017-04:00

I admit, I have yet to read Scott McClellan's scathing memoir What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, which is highly critical of President George W. Bush's administration -- especially its handling of the Iraq War. As former White House Press Secretary McClellan (right) put it: "This was a presidency that veered badly off course. It was something that all of us would have preferred didn't happen." I've only read selected snippets published in newspapers across America. But I'm rushing out to buy my copy today (I promise I'll weigh in on it as soon as I read it). It's clear that McClellan has stirred up a hornets' nest and already the neocons are doing their best to swiftboat him.

Bush Loyalists launched a counter-attack while the printing press that churned out McClellan's book was still hot. Some asked why McClellan didn't voice criticisms while he was still the White House press secretary. Others insisted he's just trying to sell books and all he cares about is the almighty buck. And there are certain Bushites -- like Karl Rove -- who believe liberal book editors in New York hijacked his manuscript and ghost wrote it for him. Finally, some of McClellan's critics, such as Newt Gingrich, questioned the veracity of his claims. As Gingrich told FoxNews' Hannity and Colmes, "I don't have a great deal of faith that he is telling you and me the truth tonight any more than he apparently was telling us the truth back when he was saying things that he now says weren't true." Notice that Gingrich cannot pinpoint any lies or distortions or even half-truths in the book (who knows if he has even read it?). It's loads of fun to watch the Bushites squirming. Failing to locate any skeletons in McClellan's closet (other than serving in the Bush administration), they're now scrambling to find whatever damning little tidbit they can in a pathetic effort to discredit the book.

Easily the most ludicrous dismissal of McClellan came from the Wall Street Journal, which -- instead of countering McClellan's claims (like the White House, it can't) -- ripped into the book's publisher, PublicAffairs: "You can tell the Democratic presidential race is all but over. Cable television has returned to 24/7 coverage of whether President Bush lied us into war in Iraq. The latest peg is the Texan-bites-Bush story of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's memoir. ... We'd merely note that the book's publisher is PublicAffairs, an imprint founded by left-wing editor Peter Osnos and which has published six books by George Soros. PublicAffairs is owned by Perseus Books, which is owned by Perseus LLC, a merchant bank whose board includes Democrats Richard Holbrooke and Jim Johnson, who is now doing Barack Obama's vice presidential vetting. One of Perseus's investment funds, Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical, is co-managed with Mr. Soros."

If that's the best these sorry Bushites can come up with, then maybe they'd better set up a real-estate office down in Florida and start selling some of that prime Everglades land for new houses. It makes about as much sense to build luxury condos in the marshland as it does to perpetuate the horrific war that drags on day after day in Iraq. From where I'm sitting, this is yet another reason to hope for an Obama Victory come November.

A Salute to Ron Kovic: An American Hero

2008-05-29T12:50:00.005-04:00

Ever since I read Ron Kovic's unforgettable memoir Born on the Fourth of July back in the 1980s and watched Oliver Stone's brilliant 1989 film version of Born on the Fourth of July starring Tom Cruise, I've admired him as a hero and a patriot. Kovic, a former Marine who was wounded in Vietnam and came home a paraplegic, eventually became an antiwar activist and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Over the years, Kovic has been fearless in his resistance to all wars. My first book, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, was directly inspired by Kovic's heroic example. I've just watched a deeply moving video of Ron Kovic speaking about his personal experiences in Vietnam and he does a brilliant job linking his ordeal to the Iraq War. Do yourself a favor: Drag your little arrow down, tap on the video screen below and watch and listen. I can tell you one thing: By the time it was over, I couldn't keep my eyes dry. After all these years, Ron Kovic remains a true American hero.

Screw Politics! I'm Having a SEVENTIES FLASHBACK!!!

2008-05-28T13:06:00.029-04:00

I need a break from American politics. As the band Chicago sang in the early 1980s, “Even lovers need a holiday far away from each other.” And I need a holiday from Barack, Hillary and John – in the worst sort of way. Too much of a good thing makes Andy a dull boy. That’s why I’ve decided to take a much-needed stroll down Memory Lane.

Yes, ladies and gents, I’m feeling nostalgic for the 1970s. During the Sizzlin’ Seventies, I was a kid growing up in sunny southern California. Most people dismiss the 1970s as a time of malaise and decline, but – excuse my French –there was a lot about those times that kicked ass.

So, as a public service to highlight the positive aspects of the 1970s, I’ve formed a list of FIVE THINGS FROM THE 1970s THAT SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BRING BACK.

In no particular order, here are five things about the 1970s that ruled and deserve to be resurrected:

1. Sid and Marty Krofft Shows: You must remember Sid and Marty Krofft, the Montreal-born geniuses that gave us H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Land of the Lost and – my personal favorite, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (left). These killer dudes took big-headed puppets to the next level, infusing a combination of wry humor and psychedelic fashions into their TV shows. And who could forget the brilliant stop-motion animated dinosaurs in Land of the Lost? No wonder the Krofft Brothers are thought of as pioneers of children’s television. Please, somebody, bring back these TV giants.

2. Citizens’ Band (C.B.) Radios: “Breaker one-nine, I got a Smokey report. Looks like we got ourselves a Bear in the Air, a Kodiak with a Kodak. Smile and comb your hair and while you’re at it, move on down to the diesel digit, ‘cause the bearded buddy is in a lean and hungry mood. His 10-20 is double nickels past Bun Boy in Baker. Stack them eights all the way down the interstate to Texarkana and keep on truckin’, good buddy. This here's Gun Dog, over and out.” Need I say more? (Right: Forty channels of pure C.B. heaven!)

3. Monster cereals: Remember Frankenberry, the strawberry-flavored corn and marshmallow concoction with the non-threatening pink Frankenstein – brought to you by the good folks at General Mills? Remember Count Chocula (the brown Dracula)? Boo Berry (the Peter Lorre-esque blue ghost)? Fruit Brute (the fruity werewolf)? What about the unjustifiably forgotten Yummy Mummy (whose stint in the cereal world spanned the less glamorous yet still vital years ’88 to 94)? I’m telling you: Cereal didn’t get any better than this. The best thing about these cereals was how they transformed the milk into a refreshing fruity beverage. And I still have fond memories of that Ben Kenobi sticker I found at the bottom of my Frankenberry box in the fall of ’77. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

4. Sasquatch: The 1970s was really the Golden Age of Bigfoot. I’ll never forget watching the 1972 tour de force Bigfoot: Man or Beast on Saturday night Creature Features back in about ’77. After that, I had all the zeal of a new convert and I vowed to become a Bigfoot hunter extraordinaire. Bigfoot was the undisputed king of the cryptozoological world, and I spent many a Sunday afternoon huntin’ down strange footprints. I formed Bigfoot clubs with my cousins. We studied every single frame of the legendary 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film (shot in Bluff Creek in northern California, pictured right). We went hiking up to the woods where a Utah woman allegedly spotted one of the hairy humanoids. Sadly, we never found anything. But the fun was in the hunt itself. These days, you don’t hear much about Bigfoot anymore. But back then, Bigfoot was all the rage. He was in movies and on lunch boxes and he even turned up as a character on the Six Million Dollar Man. Does it get any cooler than that? A more important question: Where is Sasquatch now that we need him/her?

5. Kung-Fu Grip G.I. Joe: Finally, is there any way we can bring back the classic old G.I. Joe with the peach-fuzz hair and beard? When I was a kid, I admit I was pretty right wing. I thought that America could do no wrong, Gerald Ford was God, and G.I. Joe kicked commie ass (I still haven't changed my mind about Ford). At a certain point, they got rid of the peach-fuzz Kung-Fu Grip-style G.I. Joe and replaced him with some lame non-descript “action figure” that was interchangeable with every other lame “action figure” at Toys R Us. My personal theory is that classic G.I. Joe bore too strong a resemblance to the late, great Victor French who played Isaiah Edwards on Little House on the Prairie and Mark Gordon on Highway to Heaven. Hmm. I smell a conspiracy. And I have reason to believe that the same puppet masters behind Roswell and the JFK assassination are responsible. But please, whatever you do, don’t quote me on that.

Old-school G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip (left) and the late, great Victor French from Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven (right, pictured with co-star Michael Landon). Note the resemblance. Coincidence? Or conspiracy? You be the judge.

Sydney Pollack (1934-2008): Filmmaker, actor, humanitarian

2008-05-27T14:44:00.004-04:00

Sydney Pollack, who died yesterday at age 73, was a great director and actor. He broke into cinema with his 1969 drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They? and eventually emerged with that rebellious 1970s cohort of filmmakers who challenged so many age-old Hollywood conventions. He was also an unrepentant liberal and humanist in the best sense of those words. There were countless tributes to him in newspapers across America, but the best one -- IMHO -- was Ty Burr's Blog on Pollack in today's Boston Globe (click here). To remember this towering giant of modern cinema, I'm including an excerpt of an interview he did with The Progressive magazine back in 2005, at the time his film The Interpreter was released in theaters. Pollack's answer to the question is eloquent and thought-provoking. A man this great deserves the last word.

Q: What is your reaction when people assert that Hollywood is some great liberal establishment?

Pollack: The essence of acting is seeing the world from another point of view. That’s what acting is. I’m not going to be an interpreter at the U.N. I’m not going to live in Africa on a farm or whatever, but I am going to see the world through those eyes when I make those films. Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative. I have one life. I am a certain age. I’m married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won’t have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films. It’s a way for me to understand what it’s like to be a murderer, to confess, to be a beaten wife, to be a minority, to be a victor, to get the girl, to lose the girl. I can do all of that through the practice of an art form. So when you spend your life being other people, as opposed to being the one person that you are, you learn that life is gray sometimes, not black and white. That what you thought was true isn’t necessarily true if you switch sides. That doesn’t mean you should go around understanding Hitler. It does mean that there are all kinds of people and they look at life in different ways.

I think that’s just one of the reasons why people that are in this profession tend to lean toward the liberal side rather than the conservative side.

A Cloud With a Silver Lining? Echoes of the G.I. Bill

2008-05-27T10:59:00.008-04:00

The United States Senate (right) has just approved a $165 billion funding bill (by a vote of 75-22) to finance the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq well into 2009. The bill was sponsored by Senator Jim Webb, a West Virginia Democrat and Vietnam War veteran. What made this funding package different from past huge cash infusions into the wars overseas was the inclusion of billions of dollars for a number of domestic programs, including education and benefits for veterans. For example, it provides $52 billion over 10 years to help veterans pay for university tuition. Many observers are likening the bill to the G.I. Bill, the ambitious omnibus bill passed late in World War II that similarly furnished billions of dollars for domestic programs to help veterans and their families.

Not surprisingly, antiwar activists immediately condemned the vote. Michael McPhearson, co-chair of the antiwar group United for Peace and Justice, noted that the Senate has "ensured the needless deaths of hundreds of soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis by voting to expand the war and occupation for another full year."

The funding bill in the Senate created strange bedfellows. Democrats and moderate Republicans united in their support for the bill. The 22 who voted against it consisted largely (but note entirely) of Republicans who support President George W. Bush's opposition to any sort of funding for humane veterans' programs. The bill has also caused a great deal of controversy on the campaign trail because Senator John McCain opposed it -- largely for the same reason why Bush is now threatening to veto it: Because of its ambitious domestic spending side. True, McCain -- as part of his damage control -- is calling for more modest sums to be spent on education for veterans (based on a sliding scale tied to their individual records of military service). But his plan is far less ambitious.

Historically, right-wing Republicans have been miserly when it comes to allocating any sort of funds to help ordinary American people. They'll flush billions -- trillions -- down the toilet of the Iraq War. They'll support mammoth foreign aid packages that include colossal sums of humanitarian and military spending. But when it comes to helping working-class and middle-class men and women and their families, these GOP zealots cling to a warped "pull yourself up by the bootstrap" mentality that is strangely absent in the rest of their designs to create a gargantuan bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Is there anybody out there who still believes that right-wing Republicans are advocates of small government? If you really want limited government, Libertarian presidential hopeful Bob Barr -- not John McCain -- is your candidate.

Although Senator McCain used to be a maverick on a host of issues, he has morphed into one of those "pull yourself up by the bootstrap" Republicans who advocates socialism for the rich and free enterprise for all the rest of us.

Meanwhile, those who want an end to the bloodbath in Iraq should keep two things in mind: 1) Congress is not going to suddenly pull the plug on support for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and beat a hasty retreat. Most members of Congress would regard such a move as political suicide. The $165 billion funding bill is a time-buying measure to keep the operations going until there is a new president in the White House. 2) The domestic spending contained in the funding bill represents a very real victory for veterans and their families, who -- up until now -- have been marginalized and ignored in the worst way imaginable. Michael McPhearson is quite correct to suggest that this bill -- supported by Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- will extend this horrific war for many more months. And this is a war that has caused profound destruction, dislocation and carnage. But if the Democrats play their cards carefully, they can tie McCain's opposition to humanitarian domestic spending to Bush's failed, disastrous policies over the past seven-plus years. Sadly, Democrats have often blundered such coups, and they may just blow this one, too.

Bottom line: You can be certain Congress would have voted to continue financing the Iraq War one way or the other. The G.I. Bill-like elements of this recent funding bill represent a brilliant maneuver by Democrats to move in a more liberal direction on the home front. If Bush vetoes the bill, he'll simply expose his true colors. And McCain's opposition to it has already undermined him. What's next? Somehow, Democrats must summon the courage to reorient foreign policy in a similarly humane direction by ending the war and creating a new Marshall Plan to help rebuild Iraq.

Franken Watch: One-way Ticket to Dullsville

2008-05-26T13:07:00.010-04:00

The current United States Senate race in Minnesota pitting lefty comedian, satirist, talk-show host and bestselling author Al Franken (right) against Republican incumbent Senator Norm Coleman has been incredibly dull so far. This is surprising because Franken is easily the most intriguing Senate candidate in the United States today. As Kathrine Skiba noted in U.S. News and World Report (May 16, 2008): "At first glance, Franken's Senate challenge seems hard to take seriously. A fixture on Saturday Night Live for 15 seasons, the actor-comedian, author, screenwriter, producer, and radio host has a fat resume: seven USO tours, six books, five Emmy Awards, two Grammys, and a degree from Harvard."

Franken's campaign has gotten off to a sluggish start. The latest polls showed Coleman up 7 points over Franken (the May 19 Minneapolis Star Tribune poll put Coleman at 51 percent to Franken's 44 percent). In late April, Senate candidate Franken admitted that he owed taxes in some 17 states amounting to $53,000. On June 7, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the Populist Era-sounding name of Minnesota's Democratic Party) will nominate its candidate at its state convention. Franken is expected to easily win the party's nomination, but he faces competition from a left-wing university professor, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. Both Franken and Nelson-Pallmeyer are claiming to be heirs to the legacy of beloved left-wing Senator Paul Wellstone. While most observers are predicting an easy Franken victory at next month's state convention, the comedian can't be too thrilled with a challenge from his left flank.

Now Minnesota Republicans are digging up all kinds of outrageous statements made by Franken in the past in an attempt to show that he's too "extreme" (whatever the hell that means) for the job. They've dug up an over-the-top satirical column he wrote in a 2000 issue of Playboy about his visit to a make-believe sex institute, which is full of references to sexual acts between Franken and other people and -- worse -- between Franken and various "machines." An open letter written to Franken by the Minnesota Republican Party stated:

"The words and descriptions you write about are beyond vulgar. They demean and degrade women as thoroughly and disrespectfully as any article we have ever seen, and we are horrified to believe that someone running for the U.S. Senate could have written them. This column shows flagrant disregard for women, and an extreme objectification of women as sex objects for your pleasure. While you may attempt to defend your writing as satire, we hardly find anything defensible about your finding humor in your desire to have sex with women or robots that look like women simply to give yourself a good time. Denounce this article and apologize immediately."

So far, no apologies have come from the Franken camp. I hope the leaders of the Minnesota Republican Party aren't holding their breaths. (On second thought...)

The political junkies, pundits and talking heads all seem to agree that Franken has been running a relatively lackluster campaign so far. Franken would do well to listen to the comments of Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. In reference to Franken's over-the-top Playboy column, Jacobs observed, "The Playboy story is one of many arrows to set the election as a referendum on the challenger rather than the incumbent. This is part of one strategy, which is to frame a particular question for voters: Does the challenger reflect Minnesota's values? This is a striking departure from usual re-election campaigns which are framed by the question: How has the incumbent done? Coleman loses if this question prevails."

Jacobs also warned: "Franken has done some things very well, but he has not yet created a consistent and effective strategy of making this a campaign about the incumbent. He has played into the Coleman campaign's strategy through inexperience and arrogance."

To complicate matters, pro-wrestler, politician and talk-show host Jesse Ventura (right) -- governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003 -- is now considering entering the race for the United States Senate against Franken and Coleman. So the race won't be dull much longer. Meantime, we can only hope Franken sits down with some capable advisers and maps out an effective strategy for victory.