How much is Dick Cheney paying the media to somehow portray him as Barack Obama's debating partner. Excuse me, but we already had the debate back in November and Cheney's team got crushed. Or was I just imagining all that?
Nevertheless, there was day-long panting about the Obama-Cheney face off. The only thing more absurd (and disgruntling) is the way Nobody Newt has also been so recently inflated.
Except for the part about not releasing the newest torture photos, I really thought Obama's speech was inspirational. Refreshing it was to hear a president give an entire, eloquent address dedicated to how practially and morally useless is the use of torture. Disgusting, also, that Obama had to make the effort he did to allay fears on shutting down Gitmo thanks to the rabid fear-mongering by the Republicans and the spineless pandering of all but six senate Dems who also voted to deny funds for the prison camp shutdown.
There was also some pretty spiffy iconography attached to today's dueling speeches. Obama delivered his at the National Archives standing in front of a faded document known as The Constituion.
Cheney, for his part, appeared in front of a cherry-picked audience a few blocks away in the right-wing ideological hothouse known, preposterously, as The American Enterprise Institute.
It might as well been delivered on the Starship Enterprise. As David Corn notes, The former Veep's spiel sounded like it was coming from Mars. An unabashed endorsement of torture, laced with the usual industrial-strength dose of fear, Cheney merely retreaded many of the same, hollow arguments that --in the final days-- he lost even inside his own administration.
The topper was Cheney's opening snarl. Forced to wait till Obama finished his speech so he could cadge screen time, he opened with a crack that Obama obviously had served in the Senate because in the House there's a 5 minute limit to speeches.
Obama's speech was ten pages long. Dick's was 16.
Pity the poor Republicans. Their primary spokesman is the sneering, snarling former V.P. who racks up an anemic 37% favorability rating (just about 1/2 that of Obama). Or is it the bobbing Boss Limbaugh? Or the crackpot Palin? Or, wait, maybe it's the guy whose name has become a national punchline, Michael Steele.
There are many stupid things I could write about tonight.
Like the nauseating NIMBY ploy by Congressional Democrats who -- pandering to irrational, xenophobic if not to say primeval fear-- are blocking funding to close Gitmo.
Or perhaps the way the media has shamefully decided to offer such a wide platform for the feverish rantings of a washed-up, tin-pot, discredited gas bag like Newt Gingrich.
But instead, let me say a few words about American Idol (yes, obviously it is a stupid show. But that's why I watch it). More precisely, a few words about the stupid, stupid way the vote went on the finale of this 8th season.
Holy Geez, these folks aren't stupid. They're idiots! The Dumbness Flu that broke out in California Tuesday is apparently spreading across country,
The talent gap between the two finalists, the white-bread, listless Kris Allen and the openly gay, semi-goth Adam Lambert was wider than the open space between Newt's ears. Allen is at best a mediocre, totally safe and completely forgettable lump of nothing. Lambert is a screaming, smoking ball of passion and fire who can take any song and set it ablaze. This wasn't even a close call. It was Lambert all the way.
And there is absolutely no question in my mind that he won strictly on a basis of cultural comfort. The audience wasn't ready to crown a queer kid with black nail polish.
Just a small fact to keep in mind when some of us get impatient and start kidding ourselves that --politically-- liberals would be stronger only if they were more liberal. A nice idea. But not necessarily in synch with reality.
A couple of small rattlers near LAX the last few days elicited more attention among Californians than did a key election today whose results could have deep devastating economic consequences.
Most of the Golden State's residents just shrugged at the half-dozen ballot measures served up before them on Tuesday and failed to show. A sound majority of those who did vote turned thumbs down on five of the measures designed, at least in a minimal way, to ease California's escalating economic catastrophe.
Mike Finnegan of the L.A. Times gets it mostly right, pointing to the election as a failure of the entire system: both parties, the pseudo-Republican Governor, his out-to-lunch party, a corrupt and feckless Democratic majority and...yes... the electorate.
Finnegan neatly summed up it like this:
Rightly or wrongly, voters in the special election refused either to extend new tax hikes or to cap state spending. They also declined to unlock funds that they had voted in better financial times to set aside for special purposes...Clogged freeways, the decline of public schools, an outdated water system and a battered economy are just a few of the challenges demanding action by state leaders. Instead, they are consumed by yet another budget crisis, one that voters worsened Tuesday... On Tuesday, Californians showed they were unwilling to scale back their demands in tight times: Voters turned down propositions that would have freed up money that they set aside years ago for mental-health and children's programs.
I think it fair to assign the bulk of the blame to one Arnold Schwarzenegger. He came into office in 2003, promising to break up the boxes of government and to make a clean sweep of business-as-usual. He prematurely drove out of office a pay-to-play, uninspiring Democrat who had let the state debt burdgeon to a staggering $38 billion. Nice work, Arnold. Today that debt tops $70 billion. Teachers are being laid off. Police forces are being shrunk. Health care is being slashed. And much more mayhem is right around the corner.
Arnold gets props for his enlightened energy policies and his willingness to buck California's shrinking, detached and paleo-Republican Party on social issues. He had no problem allying with the Democratic majority in the legislature (better said he had to because his own Republicans would give him few and often not a single vote).
But Schwarzenegger's tenure can now be declared nothing except an historic failure. He -- and the Democrats-- flinched from the one issue that would have made all the difference. Everyone with an IQ above room temp has known for a long time that there can be no long-term economic viability in California without a radical, that's right, radical retooling of our tax base. That means a scrapping of the onerous Prop 13 which, essentially, gives business and corporate interests a near free ride on already ridiculously low property taxes.
Arnold gave a lot of leeway on a lot of issues but he stubbornly stuck to his "no taxes" Republican mantra. At least until recently when, out of necessity, he began to approve a whole new tier of increased "fees."
But it was all too little too late. Californians long ago grew bored by the annual budget deadlock in Sacramento. With new taxes needing a 2/3 super majority, the Repubs have just enough votes to gum up the works. If Arnold had wanted to be remembered as an historic figure, instead of one more failed Governor, he would have shown the same courage on tax reform that he did on the environment he would have led the charge for change.
Instead, it was business as usual.
What the voters did today made no sense. Or, shall we say, it made a little sense. Offered no leadership from the state Capitol, presented with no inspiring or confident leadership, they voted with their thumbs and basically said "bring it on." They'd rather risk the coming economic butchery than approve the strung-together, near incomprehensible jumble of patch-work, quick-fix initiatives served up by the Arnold/Democratic alliance.
In fairness to the voters, these measures were never coherently explained or presented to them. And the notion of borrowing money from funds earmarked for education while expanding and borrowing from the state lottery just didn't compute. One could certainly argue that passage of these half-arsed measures might have offered some minor relief. But you could also argue that even if they had passed we would wake up Wednesday morning with the underlying affliction untouched: a completely dysfunctional state government and an electorate driven half-mad by the same.
P.S. I had forgot to mention the unseemly sight I encountered last Friday. It was commencement day at USC (where I work) and as I drove across L.A. and toward the campus in the morning I passed several intersections clogged with public school teachers holding signs and banners protesting the wave of layoffs shuddering through our school district. I pulled into USC at the same moment that Arnold's entourage made its entrance in a caravan of black SUV's. The Governor, as commencement speaker, was his usual, charming, charismatic self ( I am told. I skipped his speech and went only to our Annenberg grad ceremony that was graced by a talk by veteran journalist and good friend Warren Olney). But I have to say, with a certain sense of conflict of interest, that there was something grotesque about the Governor speaking at the city's most prosperous of privately funded universites while the his public school and state university system was being buffeted by budget cuts. The USC audience was polite and generous to Arnold. I wonder if he would have gotten the same gentle treatment if he had, instead, shown up at UCLA or Berkeley. Or better, Crenshaw High School -- ust a stone's throw from the home of the Trojans.
And, frankly, good riddance. I agree with Jay Rosen on this one. I'm no gravedancer...but... what a sour, nasty, petty self-absorbed, off-the-wall. pathetic editorial did the Citizen choose for its close-out editorial. A straight-on fug-you to the New Media at which it openly sneers with contempt.
I'm not going to waste any brain cells citing any part of it. You can read it for yourself.
But I want to make three points on this issue:
1) Of course I extend my sympathy to those workers and their families that will now lose their income. They will feel the same pain as the other more than 6 million currently unemployed.
2) I have a LONG relationship with Tucson and many, many personal and professional connections. I know some fabulous journalists --of my gray-haired generation-- who made their chops at the Tucson Citizen. And everyone one of them got the hell out of Dodge as soon as they could.
3) Over the last decade I have also come to know a disproportionate number of younger reporters who toiled at the Citizen. And everyone of them agreed the place was a veritable hellhole. Mind you, these were all top notch, ambitious reporters and for all its posthumous chest-beating about its dedication to hard news, the Citizen consistently snubbed the relentless digging of these younger reporters. And everyone of them also fled as soon as they could -- just like those of the prior generation. Indeed, the place was SO toxic that one very talented young reporter I know chose to work for an out of state alt-weekly rather than continue to be humiliated by the brain-dead management at his metro daily.
These reporters were discouraged by the obsessive dedication that the Citizen had to shaping its news by consumer focus group. Its editors hammered away at the reporters, insisting that the "news" always relate to what supposedly mattered to the readership's immediate daily lives. In other words, hard-hitting news and investigative pieces were subordinated to cheery and upbeat service pieces.
As the immigration and border crisis reached its fever point over the last decade right in the Citizen's own back yard, it became increasingly difficult for the reporters at the paper to adequately cover the human drama taking place a mere 45 minute drive from the newsroom. No matter that the border crossing death rate had zoomed 1000% in a decade, this sort of story was deemed to not be of sufficient interest to the hallowed readers of the hallowed Citizen. As dozens of dead bodies were stacked up in the Pima County morgue, Tucson Citizen reporters were told that this was all old news. Been there. Done that. Move on.
When one reporter wrote a great series about environmental abuses in the fishing industry just across the border in Baja, for example, it had to be reshaped to emphasize how this could impact or endanger the seafood consumed by Citizen readers. Otherwise, how could they possibly be interested, in such remote and boring matters such as massive pollution of the seas?
Before anyone gets too pissed off at what I just wrote, please go back and read points one and two above. In principle, there is nothing to celebrate in the demise of any long-standing news organization. But there is just as much reason to resist muddle-headed nostalgia for what became an embarrassingly degraded product. The shallowness of the Tucson Citizen's flip-off to the future is absolutely consistent with the general cluelessness that accelerated its folding.
This other auto-obit by the Citizen's Jeff Smith is much more to the point. The folding of the Tucson Citizen had a lot more to do with the small-mindedness of the Gannett corporation than it did with those despised citizen journalists and bloggers. I hope the laid off reporters from the Citizen find a new employer who appreciates their work and talent.
P.S. I'm going back on my word and now will quote this laugh-line from the Citizen's fug-you note:
It would be bad enough if we were just any company. But a newspaper is the type of high-salary, knowledge industry, “smart” business that any of the city’s TREOish, economic-development types would love to recruit.
Well, yeah "a newspaper" might be a "high-salary company." I know what the Citizen paid its reporters. Peanuts. On a good day.
Nancy Pelosi offered her own twisting, tortured account of what she did and did not know about waterboarding torture. There was a lot of needle-threading during the Speaker's 19 minute attempt at explanation but the headline is that she was lied to by the CIA.
Lied to because she claims her staff was "briefed" by the CIA in September 2002 and that she was "informed" at the time that waterboarding had been approved but was not being employed. All factual evidence indicates that waterboaring torture had begun a month before and therefore had lied to Pelosi's staff.
Well, we don't know the ins and outs -- yet. But I don't think there's any question that CIA had lied brazenly during the entire run-up to the war in Iraq, and continued to lie. So that Pelosi's staff might have been "misled" by the company seems perfectly possible, if not almost a certainty.
None of this helps explain away Pelosi (and the rest of the Dems relative complacency when within a few months it seemed rather obvious to anyone not in a coma that prisoner abuse had become official U.S. policy.
We also learned today, once again, that the torture ordered by Bush-Cheney was aimed specifically at forcing confessions of a non-existent link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Nauseating.
Pelosi (and many other congressional Dems) might, indeed, by willing or tacit accomplices in this barbarity. But the architects, initiators and implementers of a policy of torture and war crimes was Bush-Cheney. Period.
Now, more than ever, we need to end this silly kabuki of he said/ she said and get down to business. Let's get that Truth Comission empaneled and let's get them ALL under oath: the Bushies, the CIA and the congressional leadership. Now, it's an imperative.
I've just donated $100 to the ACLU. I hope you will join me and give what you can. I think this is the proper response to the inexcusable decision by President Obama to reverse course and try to block the release of dozens of photos of U.S. troops abusing prisoners and detainees.
The administration is gong back on its agreement with the ACLU to make the torture photos public claiming their release at this time would only "inflame" public opinion. Damn right. As well it should be. I stand with ACLU director Anthony Romero who says:
It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact and document gets known – whether now or years from now. And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration's complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them. Only by looking squarely in the mirror, acknowledging the crimes of the past and achieving accountability can we move forward and ensure that these atrocities are not repeated.
I agree with every single word and concept herein. These pictures WILL be seen. Everybody knows it, including Obama. And his decision to capitulate to the understandably nervous Nellies in the CIA and inside the Armed Forces -- worried that their crimes will be further exposed-- makes absolutely no political or moral sense. All he accomplishes is to immerse himself in the muck dumped on us by the Bushies.
This latest move by the White House is particularly disturbing when linked to the ongoing and I might say mind-boggling campaign by Dick Cheney to publicly boast of his role (and that of George W. Bush) in approving and directing and official program of torture.
I have no doubt that in the end, Cheney & Company will not successfully elude the moral (and perhaps criminal) taint of their legacy. But in the short run, the very short run, they have succeeded in actually making us debate whether or not America favors torture. As a good friend who lived through the Chilean experience with me has pointed out, the usual practice of dictatorial regimes -- like those that ruled Chile and Argentina with mass torture-- always vehemently denied they employed torture. Or at most, they blamed "excesses" on underlings.
But here we are in 2009 with a former VP appearing on a Sunday show openly trumpeting his role as supervisor of waterboard torture. That's quite an extraordinary and VERY disturbing notion. I also want to mention that Cheney gets way with this sort of public propaganda campaign thanks to the acquiesence of such Jurrasic creatures as Bob Schieffer of CBS Face The Nation who last Sunday almost disappeared up Dick's rectum. What would have it cost Schieffer to ask the simple, huffing, puffing 800lb question sitting right in front of us: "Mr. Vice-President, please explain to us why the use of waterboarding during World War Two was considered a war crime consistent with the death penallty but you insist it is only enhanced interrogation techniques."
Hell, you know you're in a swamp of trouble when former adviser to Condi Rice,Philip Zelikow, has more courage to confront the question of "coldly calculated use of dehumanizing torment" than the so-called defenders of the public interest who occupy the commanding heights of the media. (So much for all the blathering about who is going to keep an eye on Washington if newspapers and networks collapse? Imagine a world without the bulldogs like Bob Schieffer!).
Meanwhile, precisely as I have predicted over the past few years, this whole torture thing ain't goin' away. No way no how. The stain is ominously spreading. From Abu Ghraib to Gitmo, from the DOJ to the Office of Legal Counsel, from Cheney to Bush, from the old CIA to the new CIA. And, tangentially, from Pelosi to Obama.
I just got so mad writing this that I kicked in an extra $50 to the ACLU.
Posted by Marc Cooper on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 10:12PM |Permalink|63 Comments
The Brilliant Daughter is back and writitng away furiously, having abandoned the dramatic life of a union organizer for that of an Official Writer. And, frankly, she's pretty darn good (says her Dad).
Natasha comes out swinging on Alex Balk's new high-brow blog, The Awl, with a zesty dive into the innards of Soderbergh's latest, The Girlfriend Experience.
Might we all be whores? Ask yourself tonight before falling asleep.
Posted by Marc Cooper on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 09:56AM |Permalink|4 Comments
Sorry. Been real busty and sorta absent from blogging this past week.
I'm back.
And I'm tired. Sick and tired of Arlen Specter. And he's only been with "us " a week. He's the 60th vote like I'm Pee Wee Herman. Let us count the ways. Specter doesn't support a number of Obama's appointees. He doesn't support a national health care plan that would ruffle insurance monopolies. He doesn't support the Employee Free Choice Act. And now he's going out of his way to vow he won't be a loyal Democrat.
That's fine by me. I also find no reason for Democrats to be loyal to him. Obama, Reid, and Rendell have promised the contrary. They're pretty much on record saying they will stand for him and try to tamp down any Democratic primary challenge tp Specter's 2010 re-election bid.
But, you know, it's sorta hard to carry Pennsylvania if you don't have Big Labor behind you. And right now Big Labor is Big-time P.O.'ed that Specter is rejecting card check proposals -- only THE most important issue to American unions at this moment. AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka is now on the record saying the labor just might back an opponent to Specter. And if you think quasi-Repub Specter doesn't give a hoot about what unions think, you are wrong. I remember the '97 AFL convention in Steel Town where Specter, the only Republican invited, was introduced by....Trumka.
Just as importantly, Andy Stern, leader of America's largest and richest union -- SEIU-- went out of his way today to meet with Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak, the most likely of any possible challenger to Specter. And Sestak, who is sitting on a $3million campaign treasury, is NOT ruling out a run. And Stern warns: "I cannot see the unions across the board supporting Specter if he cannot support EFCA." That's the acronym for the card check bill.
I don't know about you, but I think Sestak should announce NOW that he's going to run. Scare the sludge out of Specter. See where his rank opportunism will lead him. Maybe even in the right direction.
I know it's a gamble to oppose Specter and possibily give the "60th" seat to the GOP. Then again, re-electing him might just guarantee that Dems won't really have that seat anyway. (In any case, who can as much as stand the pompous Specter, chief water-carrier for the most retrograde of right-wing judicial nominations?). Ugh.
Posted by Marc Cooper on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 06:34PM |Permalink|86 Comments
Had a good dinner tonite with two very wise friends. One is a veteran journo and author who did a good stint in Vietnam (as a reporter and wrote a fab book about it). And the other is a former CIA agent turned author and reporter. The meal was great (as one would expect at the Hollywood classic, Musso's).
The conversation was even better.
Bottom line: We all agreed that the torture issue is NOT going away anytime soon. We had some minor disagreements over how it is currently being handled. I have the suspicion that Obama has, as I said last week, fortunately lost control of this issue which he considers a possible destructive distraction. My two compadres, however, are convinced that Obama is playing this like a virtuoso, that he remains two steps ahead of the rest of us, and that he is masterfully engineering this to wind up in the hands of a klieg-lit congressional drama (I hope they're right).
We also agreed that this would be the best solution and that the worst way to go would be appointing a special counsel from DOJ. Such an investigation would actually be the best way to keep much of this atrocity shrouded in secrecy as the investigation itself would take precedence over public disclosure.
Much better to see Cheney and Company under oath on national TV sweating like he's got a bad case of the Swine Flu (pun intended).
Also agreeing on the inevitability of this scenario is my colleague at the Annenberg School, Jonathan Taplin writing on TPM Cafe.
Taplin argues that Cheney, forged in the heat of Watergate, is taking such an aggressive current position defending his torture policies because he's convinced the best defene is a strong offense:
What Dick Cheney is truly afraid of is that he might find himself in front of a Congressional committee raising his right hand and swearing to tell "the truth, the whole truth" about America's descent into the torture chamber. Because if Pat Leahy is this era's Sam Ervin, Cheney won't arrive in the dock until Jay Bybee and John Yoo have shown that David Addington (Cheney's Counsel) was calling the tune (you know the secret email chain requesting revisions in the torture memos is devastating). And then Addington will have to put the responsibility at the foot of the Vice President. Even though Cheney is out of office, he still has the lesson of Watergate in his head. If Nixon had pushed back harder at the outset, he never would have had to leave office...
So Dick Cheney is on a mission to cut the investigations off before they ever get started. But it's a mission that will fail and within a year we will see Mr. Cheney reluctantly raising his right hand and swearing to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." That will be healthy for our democracy.
I had a good pal call me this afternoon and as soon as I answered he said: "Apocalyspe? Or just end of the world?"
Took me a few seconds to catch the uptake as I had been locke up in meetings all day and had fortunately missed the non-stop hype over the Swine Flu Pandemic.
At least, I hope it's hype as, in principle, I mostly oppose mass death.
In principle, I also support vigorous pubic health preventive measures.
Which is more than I can say about a certain "moderate" Republican senator -- Susan Collins of Maine.
Turns out she is, in fact, for public funding to prepare for flu outbreaks...but only after she oppsed it.
One of the conditions that Collins imposed in return for her voting for the Obama stimulus package was the stripping out of nearly $1 billion in funding for.... flu prevention!
Collins, you see, is against "pork" but at the cost of ignoring pork flu.
“Sen. Collins supports increased funding for pandemic flu preparedness, but she felt it belonged in the regular appropriations bill, not the stimulus package,” said Kevin Kelley, Collins' spokesman. “That's something she made a point of saying during negotiations.”
Got it? (Cough).
The truth, of course, is much simpler. Collins didn't really care what got cut from the stimulus package as long as it got cut and she could publicly posture as a fiscal hawk. It could have just easily been a billion chopped from roads, schools, farm projects or cheese research. It just happened to be for preparedness against THE FLU.
Sick.
Posted by Marc Cooper on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 10:51PM |Permalink|29 Comments
Gonna save all my money and buy a GTO
Get a helmet and a roll bar and I’ll be ready to go
Take it out to Pomona and let ’em know, yeah-yeah
That I’m the coolest thing around
Little buddy, gonna shut you down
When I turn it on, wind it up, blow it out, GTO
Yeah-yeah, Little GTO —Ronnie & the Daytonas, 1964
The Goat is dead. In its memory I now solemnly lift a glass of 98 Octane Ethyl and mix it with a chaser of STP.
Technically, the GTO died in 2006 when Pontiac dumped its 3 year-long revival of the classic American Muscle car. But now it's really over. GM is expected to announce any moment that its 82-year old Pontiac division will be forever shuttered.
I take this personally. I have owned three, count'em three GTO's in my life and frankly there's just nothing like the roar, shake, rattle and rumble of a gassed-up Goat (except maybe for the nasty purr of a hungry 'Vette).
The Vette predated the GTO by a full decade, but it was really the latter -- the 1964 Tempest Le Mans GTO-- that defined itself as the first of all American Muscle cars. Here was a machine with 389 cubic inch V-8, tri-power carbs, 4 on the floor Hurst tranny and pipes that roared.
Something was clearly wrong with my parents, as the first car I got when I was 16 in 1967 was a brand new silver and black Goat. It was a bit more refined than its 1964 prototype. This was a sleeker, less boxy bullet with a one four barrel carb and an automatic transmission. It still cranked out over 300 horses and who could forget those signature General Tires with a thin red circular line instead of a white wall? Throw in a reverb on the rear radio speaker and an after-market 8 track player and it was quite literally heaven on wheels.
A certain penchant for burning rubber wore out the tires after a mere 10k and shortly after that my tranny dropped out in the Disneyland on the night of my 17th birthday. When gas started to nudge over 20 cents a gallon, the 8-10mpg I was clocking seemed obscene even to a teenager and without a prompt and in a rather saintly move, I surrendered that GTO back to my Dad and we bought, instead, a six year old Alfa Romeo spyder for $750 (and then poured about a billion lira into unanticipated repairs until, six months later, it threw a rod right through the aluminum block on the Santa Monica Freeway).
I went two more decades pining for another Goat and in 1984 I bought a fire engine red 1968 automatic (as pictured above) and drive it as a daily car for 5-6 until it was a rattling bucket of bolts and I had to sell it off.
When it late 2003 Pontiac announced it was reviving the mighty GTO (repurposed from its Australian Holden models) I knew another purchase was inevitable. Waiting lists and bidding wars budded. I convinced a local dealer to sell me the first one off the truck on New Year's Day 2004 for one dollar more than sticker price. It's a 350 hp 5.7 liter black beauty with anthracite interior and right now, 79,000 miles later, it's sitting in my driveway. It's been mostly a second car now though the arrival of my daughter from NYC this week means it will probably pass into her hands. It certainly isn't leaving this family. Nev-uh!
It's actually one of the finest cars that GM ever produced. Extremely powerful, all torqued-up, understated in its design, its interior with a tad too much American plastic but refined and detailed enough to pass itself off as Euro-import. And, hey, if you keep it throttled under a 100 mph, it might even get 20 mpg on the road and 18 in the city.
But you don't buy a GTO for fuel efficiency. You don't buy one for driving but rather, as Mort Sahl used to like to say, you buy it for motoring. With it you don't save the world. You challenge it.
The last, great thing about the L.A. Times is happening again this weekend. More than 100,000 people will come to UCLA for the Times-sponsored Festival of Books.
It's always great and this year should be no different.
I'll be appearing Sunday at 2 p.m. in Broad Hall 2160 on the following panel: Media: Where Do We Go From Here?
Moderator Mr. James Rainey
Mr. Marc Cooper
Mr. Andrew Donohue
Ms. Arianna Huffington
Ms. Sharon Waxman
Hope to see you there. (If you're dissuaded by cost of airfare, this might be one of the many panels that will be carried live or with slight delay on C-SPAN).
Posted by Marc Cooper on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 10:22PM |Permalink|4 Comments
The Obama administration, fortunately, has lost control of the torture issue. The presisdent, for obvious political reasons, tried to walk the fine line between holding the Bush admin publicly accountable for its institutionalization of torture and going as far as polarizing prosecutions.
Obama did the right thing in releasing the so-called "torture memos." But he was naive to believe that would put the issue to rest. On the contrary, the pressure is continuing to build for some sort of pro-active action to be taken against those responsible for deploying a strategy of torture -- at a minimum some sort of Truth Commission. Or perhaps prosecution of former Bush admin officials. Things are certainly slowly sliding in that direction.
The bombshell report just released by the Senate Armed Forces Committee now confirms (for the enth time) that TOP Bush White House officials were directly responsible for the use of torture that spread through American-run detention facilities.
I predicted many, many times (too many times to link back to myself) that this issue woud be impossible to suppress.
The reason: Torture DOES work. It works to nauseate and repel any civilized population. I've seen it too many times before in my life -- in Chile and Argentina-- to think any differently.
I am convinced, then, whatever the momentary waffling might be of the Obama admin on this issue, things are going to continue to get stickier for the torturers among us.
Meanwhile, I want to express my COMPLETE DISGUST with media outlets from CNN to the L.A. Times to The New York Times and other media outlets who continue to weakly pussyfoot around this matter by insisting on using the term of either "harsh interrorgation methods" or "alleged torture."
Bull.
Waterboarding, depriving people of sleep for more than a week, and methodically slamming prisoners against a wall (while doctors stood by on hand to monitor against death) are, uncategorically, ACTS OF TORTURE.
I expect Dick Cheney to be running around justifying these barbarities. There's no need for the media to join indirectly in collusion. There's nothing alleged about this. And there's nothing harsh. Torture is Torture is Torture.
Posted by Marc Cooper on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 09:39PM |Permalink|93 Comments
About that big web hub-bub over the handcuffing and expulsion of sometimes Talk Radio shouter John Ziegler from the USC campus the other day... I was there and have my own reaction. But, first, here's the video:
Okay, okay I know this abuse is on the scale of a new Darfur. And the place I work, the USC Annenberg School for Communication (and Journalism) is taking a lot of web-fueled heat for allegedly ordering the arrest of a fellow journalist.
I've also been bombarded with challenges to respond, hey, hey you...how can you condone this outrage?
Here's some details and then I will unveil my response. The incident took place on teabaggin' Wednesday. Annenberg's Norman Lear Center hosted an event to honor this year's recipients of its Walter Cronkite awards for excellence in journalism. Among the more than half-dozen recipients was George Stephanopoulos and Katie Couric (the latter honored for her impactful interview with Sara Palin).
I went to the panel discussion at 10 in the morning and to the luncheon at noon. As far as I could determine, the panel was open to the public. The luncheon was by invitation but there was nobody checking anything, no real security and open seats were given to students. It was a very low key event in a modest conference/banquet room featuring a one course salad entree.
While we were inside, former L.A.-based right-wing talk radio hist John Ziegler showed up with some cameras in tow. He was there because he was upset that Couric was being rewarded for so unfair to Governor Palin, something he termed "not journalism but advocacy."
I honestly do not know the precise circumstances of whether he asked to get in to the event and was turned down or if he was merely there to ask sharp questions of those of us attending (You can learn oodles about Ziegler reading this brilliant profile written of him in 2005 by the late David Foster Wallace).
As you saw in the video, after Ziegler (who in no way commits journalism) was turned away, rightly or wrongly, he refused to leave the campus. The USC cops cuffed him and, as they, say escorted him back to the sidewalk. I don't believe any charges were filed.
When I awoke this morning there was a torrent of email accusing Annenberg of being akin to the new Auschwitz. Fine.
I DO NOT SPEAK FOR THE SCHOOL but on personal title I did respond to a direct query from conservative bloggerPatterico, a local Los Angeles prosecutor (who very well understands trespassing and other legal details).
I don't know what if anything he is going to post from our exchange but I thought I would go ahead and give you the full blast. When asked what I thought about it I first had a rather flip response saying the Ziegler thing was merely "a publicity stunt." After I saw the video here's the fuller response I I wrote to Patterico for the record:
" Talk show pro John Ziegler's stunt at USC was exactly that, a publicity stunt staged as a scene in a Michael Moore-like documentary he is apparently making. I am confident that if he had previously inquired or applied for press credentials or had even asked to be a guest in the audience, he would have been easily able to attend the Cronkite awards. I myself arrived late and walked in without a guest badge or any other sort of I.D and while I work at USC, the folks at the door had no idea who I was. I also chose to sit at the table I preferred even though there was assigned seating. Before the awards began, students --with no I.D. check-- were allowed to sit in seats left unfilled.
That said, I think the video clearly shows that the USC authorities clearly played into Ziegler's hands and guaranteed that his stunt would be successful. It's easy for me to say, but there must have been a more reasonable way for the Department of Public Safety to handle the situation other than to handcuff him. On the other hand -- for rightor for wrong-- when Ziegler was asked repeatedly to leave the site because at that point he was an uninvited guest, he repeatedly refused. His demeanor was comic and non-threatening (and why shouldn't it be as he realized the cops were so freely contributing to his film?) but my experience in the world is that, whatever your motivation, when you refuse a police order to move, you usually wind up getting cuffed, or worse.
Both sides could have handled this a whole lot better. That could have started without Ziegler deliberately trying to provoke a scene and could have ended with USC police doing something other than handcuffing a harmless clown."
Patterico then responds to me saying:
I received your replies. Let me ask a more focused question.
I'll grant you that Ziegler had no good argument to get in. I'll
concede for the sake of argument that he could be lawfully asked to
leave.
My question is: if you had been in charge, would you have let him ask
people questions in front of the communications school -- or asked him
to leave?
I.e. you say: "On the other hand -- for right or for wrong -- when
Ziegler was asked repeatedly to leave the site because at that point
he was an uninvited guest, he repeatedly refused." Well, that's what
I want to know. Was it right or wrong for them to ask him to leave?
Again, I'm not asking for a legal opinion, but how you would have
handled it if it had been up to you.
And would your answer be the same if he was there to ask questions
that were supportive of Couric?"
I answer Patterico with the following:
"I was inside the awards ceremony at the time of the incident, so without hedging, I honestly don't know the precise facts surrounding Ziegler's actions or his requests or anything else he was doing outside.
If the only thing Ziegler or anyone else, wanted to do was to stand outside of the Davidson Conference Center on the USC campus and ask people questions as they came and went, he should absolutely have been allowed to do so and I would absolutely defend his right to do so. I see no reason to obstruct him. As far as I know, USC is an open campus and the First Amendment still has sway inside campus boundaries.
You and I both know that under a change of circumstances, trespassing laws begin to apply but I want to be 100% clear that I don't have enough facts to make that determination.
In direct response to your direct question, if I were in charge of the event and all Ziegler was doing was trying to interview folks as they came and went from the conference I would have bought him a coffee and gave him a donut and wished him good luck in his endeavors. Further, if he was there to actually report on the event and NOT to provoke a partisan confrontation or to stage a provocative scene for a documentary, I would have made sure he was allowed inside the room with the rest of the media. There was virtually no security in the modest banquet room where the event was held and the press that was present was free to come and go as they pleased.
As to Couric, I couldn't care less what Ziegler or anyone else thinks of her work. I have written publicly of her several times and I don't believe it's ever been in a flattering context. This isn't a matter of ideology. It's a question of the tension between free exercise of first amendment rights and private property rights. This is hardly the first time that a journalist, or someone with journalistic pretensions (in the case of Ziegler) has run afoul of authorities in some murky legal area of access versus privacy.
One thing is absolutely for sure: from what I saw in the video, the USC police could have made a more strenuous effort to remove Ziegler without going through the drama of handcuffing him. You know as a prosecutor that once given an order to move by police, even if an unjust or unlawful order, you MUST comply or else face arrest and be willing to sort the matter out later in court. They may have felt they had no choice to cuff him. Maybe they were wrong. But by that point it was either cuff or grab him and walk him off campus.
The crux of the issue, to come full circle, is whether or not he was merely standing there trying to do interviews. If that's all it was, then USC is in the wrong. If it was more than that, there's a shared responsibility. "
We report. You decide. I haven't spent much time on this and don't intend to beyond this posting. My anecdotal understanding is that this was not a simple situation of Ziegler merely standing on campus trying to ask questions. And to repeat one final time, the USC police may or may not have been acting properly to order him off campus. But once they did and he refused, the cuffing or some other act of coercion was more or less inevitable.
***** UPDATE:
An official statement just came out from Annenberg Dean Ernest Wilson and it confirms what I suggested above...that this incident was more complex than simply tossing out Ziegler because he doesn't like Couric (Statement follows at bottom of the post).. He announced he was coming to protest and then showed up with cameras demanding to be let inside. Um, no. What I discern from yet another viewing of the video is that the police had wanted Ziegler to stay 7 feet away from the doors and if he did so there would have been no problem. He challenged the rule, refused to move and got gently cuffed and very politely escorted away though he was, in fact, mildly resisting. My conclusion stands that Ziegler was pulling off a publicity stunt. The demand that he stay seven feet distant seems a little rigid but reasonable. His refusal to comply was a direct provocation. The police responded poorly because he clearly represented no physical threat and was just being purposefully obstinate, hoping to goad the cops into action. I see no reason why the police could not have spent another 10 minutes persuading him to move before resorting to handcuffs. Though, my bet is that Ziegler would have held out as long as he needed to get himself detained.
***** RE-UPDATE
Here's a blog post from pne of the most prominent student Republican activists (and I'm happy to say thinkers) at USC in which he labels Ziegler an "idiot" who is "wildly exaggerating" what happened. Josh Sharp also provides us even more context surrounding Ziegler's stunt and totally discredits any notion that Ziegler was in some form victimized or discriminated against. Ziegler simply tried to game this situation for his own advantage he got busted...quite literally. An excerpt from Sharp's post:
In the days leading up to the event, Ziegler had announced his intention to protest the award. USC provided a gated space near the near the entrance of the event for demonstrators, but Ziegler and his film crew were the only ones to show up. So Ziegler started calling himself a journalist and demanding full access to the event.
Conveniently enough, a film crew is on hand to document Ziegler's plight, either brought by Ziegler or hired for the occasion. Ziegler, microphone in hand, repeatedly tries to get university officials to say something controversial, pouncing at every opportunity and offering slanted commentary to the camera.
Meanwhile, Ziegler still refuses to move to the area provided for visiting demonstrators, ten feet away. After putting up with Ziegler for nearly an hour, campus police tell Ziegler that he's made his point and is no longer welcome on campus. Of course, the university is well within its rights; Ziegler is standing on private property.
Ziegler cries foul and resists arrest, grunting, "You guys realize you're breaking all sorts of constitut-- I'm not gonna move!"
He's promptly escorted off campus...
Read Sharp's entire post.
Meanwhile, here's a more complete video of the incident than the one found at the top of this post. I think it quite revealing. Ziegler is told directly that he is out of bounds by all pre-established procedures and that he is intent on crashing the event anyway.
Here's the statement from Annenberg Dean Ernie Wilson:
"In the last 24 hours, the School has received a number of calls and messages related to an incident that took place on Wednesday at the Cronkite Awards ceremony involving an individual named John Ziegler. Understandably, there has been confusion, questions and concerns. I want you to know the background of the situation.
In the days before his appearance on our campus, Mr. Ziegler publicly stated an intention to “demonstrate” against the presentation of a journalism award to Katie Couric. USC was happy to accommodate Ziegler and provided him with a designated area where he could register his protest, be seen by attendees at the event, as well as students, and pass out whatever materials he wished.
On the day of the award ceremony, Mr. Ziegler arrived on campus with two cameramen, not as a demonstrator, but as a journalist, and demanded that he and his cameramen be allowed to enter the Davidson Center to cover the event. There was in fact, pool coverage set up because the room was not large enough to accommodate multiple camera crews. He was told he could have that feed, which he refused. After being told repeatedly that the event was by invitation only, he contended he had a right to range up and down the entryway with his cameramen, sticking a microphone in other people's faces, questioning them on camera. He persisted in refusing to comply with the University’s request that he stay within a designated area. After repeated requests for compliance, Mr. Ziegler was given the choice of either being arrested or leaving campus.
He chose to leave campus.
The University both respects and facilitates freedom of speech and expression on campus, but also reserves the right to set reasonable ground-rules to avoid disruption to its operations and protect the rights of others. We at the Annenberg School have a powerful and evident commitment to protecting and promoting freedom of expression and the rights of the press. We have spoken with Martha Harris, Senior Vice President, University Relations, to express our concern with how Annenberg has been associated with this incident, and to discuss as well as our general philosophy on how these situations can be handled in the future.
If you have further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact James Grant in University Communications. In addition, if you are not already doing so, please refer any media queries about this issue to James Grant at james.grant@usc.edu ..."
Who knew? The piece I published Wednesday in the L.A. Times bagging on the teabaggers hit a raw nerve and wound up being the most-emailed and most-viewed piece on the entire LATimes.com web site.
Full credit should go to a network of right-wing bloggers who turned their guns on me and provided a bouquet of inbound links and produced more than 1500 comments (most of them quite furious). If you've got nothing to do, you can paw through those comments here.
But I also thought I'd share with you a fair sampling of and excerpts from the hundreds of barbed mails that were sent to me directly. I think they reveal quite a bit and require no additional comment. Get ready:
Nick Gollubske<gollubske@sbcglobal.net> Working for the LA Times should be short, if you lived in the Midwest your life would be short, come visit, we would love to send your body down the Mississippi.....
f lopez<flopez5@verizon.net> ... the only tea bagging you’re probably familiar with is head bobbing (in and out of Obama’s ass, of course). Say, would you happen to know the brand of Obama’s smokes? Does he share?
Richard Harbaugh<reh.consilium@cox.net> Your article rambles and is confusing to us “common folk”, however I think you meant to say that you believe that the objective of the Tea Party is to protest taxation of the “rich”. This protest has little to do with protecting the rights of the “rich people” who drive our economy. This protest is about the new administration using the guise of “fixing the economy” to advance its socialistic agenda. Looking past the tip of your nose, you might see there are not enough millionaires to pay for optimizing the quality of life for everyone inside our borders, the cost of this can only be funded on the backs of the middle class. The recent and temporary tax cuts for we “common folk” will be obliterated by the new taxes and massive inflation that are to come. That is why people are protesting.
rosey1017@aol.com Today's tea party is about your ilk and your unwavering support for Obama's failed economic policies. The fact that the MSM will not report this historic event is testament to the fear that Liberals have of our Constitution. Your fear of our Constitution and our Country. Enjoy what time you have left at the Slimes. Just remember, it was their failed business model of leftwing journalism that caused its demise. As always with Liberals it's "uninteded consequences."
GStoffers@aol.com Your article in the L.A. Times today was the worst thing I have read. You are what we call a leftist all the way. You can not even see that the problem now days is "The Spending Stupid" and not the taxes. Everyone in this country has the right to express their opinion and therefore the "Tea Parties" As a far liberal that you are you apparently can't see any other way but to attack everyone that does not agree with you.
Kaczynski, Gary M<gkaczynski@alionscience.com> Cooper, you dolt! Tea party protests are not about being Anti-Obama. They are about too big government and wasteful spending. These are not single party issues. The government needs to learn that the taxpayers are not endless sources of revenue. Government needs to live within its means, just like we do.
Obviously, you spent your research time sniffing glue.
josh white<joshwhite6579@yahoo.com> First, the total amount spent on the Iraq War in the 6 years it has been going on is currently less than $1 trillion. Obama spent nearly that much money within his first 2 months of office on the stimulus bill. Therein, lies the difference. The "pointlessness" of the Iraq War can be debated all day long, but the fact remains that Obama is spending money at a rate more than triple what Bush did.
Colin Grabow<colingrabow@gmail.com> Speaking for myself, I am also outraged not so much by the level of taxation, but it's distribution. The rich pay a significantly greater percentage of the overall tax burden than a percentage of the national income while millions of Americans are left off the income tax rolls entirely. Mindful of Joe Biden's characterization of taxes as a patriotic duty I am concerned that too many of us are being deprived of this chance to demonstrate our patriotism.
Royal S Dellinger<royalsdell@aol.com> “What, exactly, are the protesters protesting? The marginal tax rate rising 3% for millionaires?”No Marc, they’re protesting the $163,00 per taxpayer burden that your heroes have laden on our future – on all of us, men, women, children and even illegal aliens.
Tol Bert<tolbert466@sbcglobal.net> The tea party folks are probably not insane or as stupid as you apparently think...They also may not be particularly keen on becoming `Europeanized'. They probably suspect that by the time Europe's welfare state collapses, it will be too late for us to avoid the same fate.
John Duncan<mrbceo@aol.com> You, my friend, are a moron. You have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about.
Wallace Thomas<wallymaze@roadrunner.com You called those affected by the new tax laws millionaires over and over again in your Biased...Huffington...Socialism...Looney...Lefty thought process, I have filed taxes on over $350,000 a year for many years and I have about $200,000 in the bank on average and other than mortgages have no debt, I paid cash for automobiles and for all other purchases besides my mortgages. I am NOT a MILLIONAIRE, I also give about 20% of my gross income to charity to help those who have not been blessed with the earning power I've had graciously placed in my stewardship.
Out of the approximately $30,000 a month I have coming in, with taxes and monthly expenses I might be able to save a few thousand a year if nothing out of the norm comes up, which of course it almost always does. I pay over a $1,000 a month on health insurance for my family and I and I haven't been to the dentist in over 10 years and may see a doctor every 5 or 6 years, I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes if the money was going to hard working LEGAL Americans who just can't keep up with inflation and do everything they can to pay their bills and provide for their families, but when you want to give the money to people who don't even pay taxes and in many cases aren't even in this country LEGALLY it really doesn't sit well with me. The good news is I obviously have knowledge your not privy to, none of this is really relevant because all that we gain and strive for here is going to burn and none of what you stored up for yourself here is going with you into eternity.
What is really pertinent is where your going to spend eternity, you could have all the money you and thousands of others couldn't spend in a thousand years and when your body dies you without all you've stored up here are going to spend eternity in heaven with a sovereign God and live forever in the glory of His grace where everyone walks in righteousness or your going to spend it seperated from Him with no second chances in a place of torment where there will be constant weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I'll pay whatever tax the governing authorities say I have to, It's God's money so if they aren't taxing appropriately they won't have to answer to me but to He who put them in authority in the first place.
Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
John 3:18 He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
Matthew 10:28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in HELL.
Proverbs 1:7 THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF KNOWLEDGE, BUT FOOLS DESPISE WISDOM AND INSTRUCTION.
How important are your left wing rants now?
Where will you spend eternity?
There are only two choices whether you choose to believe it or not, I can choose to ignore the clear evidence that trees exist but it won't change whether trees exist or not, nor will your disbelief regarding spiritual things change the reality of your eternal existence.
The scriptures tell us that you live, you die and you face judgement, doesn't leave any wiggle room.
If I and the scriptures are wrong then you have nothing to lose, if your wrong you have an eternity seperated from God in a place of torment where there will be constant weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I pray you make the right decision, I also pray you realize that all you seem so adamant about here in the world today is irrelevant and that eternity is where your focus ought to be.
Jeff Brown<jeffbrown789@yahoo.com>
I would like to preface my e-mail by saying it is an embarrassment that you are teaching the children of America. If you feel that people like me are sniffing glue, maybe you should get outside the walls of the hard left university you inhabit and talk to some people who are going to the protests. Regardless, you characterization amounts to hate speech and you owe me and the rest of us an apology.
In addition, you are a liar. You claim Obama is going to raise the marginal rate on millionaires by 3%. In truth, once the Bush tax cuts expire, the marginal rate will go up from 35% to 39.6%. That is 4.6% rise or about a 50% greater change than you write in your column. Again, are you really the person who should be educating the children? And of course, this does not take into account Obama calling for deductions to be lowered to 28% from the marginal rate. This will also effectively raise taxes. Too bad you could not even bother to tell the truth. And of course CA is raising its taxes too.
The tax protests are partially about the deficits the government is running. It is a protest against both Republicans and Democrats. Have you even seen the projection of the Obama deficits. For eight years his deficits will all be higher than the highest Bush deficit. I will translate the problem for you into leftist speak, so that you can understand....these deficits are not sustainable.
And of course the protests are about keeping government from becoming to powerful and large. We want smaller and less intrusive government. Of course you mock the protests because you are afraid of them. Likely because you are in favor of powerful, large and oppressive government.
PS It was not me who lauded and voted for someone whose first sermon in his church included the racist diddy, "White folks greed runs a world in need."
Meanwhile, Ziegler still refuses to move to the area provided for visiting demonstrators, ten feet away. After putting up with Ziegler for nearly an hour, campus police tell Ziegler that he's made his point and is no longer welcome on campus. Of course, the university is well within its rights; Ziegler is standing on private property.
