GREENBERG RANTS . . .

THE POLITICHICKS ARE BACK!

2012-01-21T14:05:00.005-06:00

The scene: Four radically conservative women get together for a political chatfest. They include a young black woman who says things like this, with a straight face: "The scripture tells us how to vote"; a non-descript librarian type who is, shall we say, not camera-ready; a blonde Heather Locklear-alike who is committed to her belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim; and, one-time, SNL not-ready-for-prime-time player Victoria Jackson, who inexplicably appears to be morphing into Shelley Winters. Today, the ladies tackle the all-important question, Can a Mormon vote for a Christian?

HALEY BARBOUR LEAVES MISSISSIPPI BURNING

2012-01-20T15:09:00.004-06:00

Way back in 1992 Joseph Ozment entered a convenience store with another man and committed a robbery. His cohort shot the clerk, Ricky Montgomery and disabled him long enough for the two to make their escape. Still, Ozment fired two shots into Montgomery’s head. He was caught, prosecuted and found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison. Today, Ozment is not only free, but he is missing.

One man who is not concerned about Ozment’s whereabouts is former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who issued Ozment a full pardon just as he was about to exit the governor’s office on his last day. Not only did he pardon Ozment, but he pardoned 202 others, including at least 20 more convicted murderers. Watch:

That report was on January 12. The next day, Barbour held a news conference. He defended his clemency decisions by saying 189 of those pardoned were already out of jail. He said 26 were in jail, but 13 were released strictly for medical reasons. About the murderers, Barbour said they had been found guilty of crimes of passion, and according to the former governor, “experts” say those who commit crimes of passion are the most unlikely to commit another crime. He also said he is an evangelical Christian who believes in second chances. He proclaimed he is “totally at peace” with his decisions about the pardons.

One wonders why Barbour does not show more concern for the people of Mississippi who are quite uncomfortable knowing the murderers are free. I was in Mississippi the night news broke of Barbour’s eleventh hour pardons. I can safely say that everybody I came in contact with that night and the next day was dumbfounded, somewhat frightened and outraged. They were blindsided by Barbour’s callous disregard of their trust. They wanted an explanation, and they wanted Barbour to be held accountable for what they considered the careless abuse of his last moments of power. That may be why he caved to public pressure and held the press conference, at which he only managed to dig himself in deeper. About the five murderers who had worked as trustees at the Governor’s mansion, Barbour said he trusted them so completely that he even allowed his grandchildren to play with them. That simply served to make him further appear as the old, out-of-touch Southern white guy that he really is. Here is how he tried to justify his inexcusable decisions to compromise public safety in Mississippi:

Haley Barbour has a history of questionable, if not unacceptable behavior while in power. Last year, for example, Barbour said the civil rights era “was not that bad in Mississippi,” and that he “had a great childhood” in the state. Also last year, he was way too slow to veto a proposal to issue a state vanity license plate honoring a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Barbour, in fact, has a history of somewhat muted racism in his rhetoric. He also has a questionable history regarding immigration. When he worked as a lobbyist, he actually represented Mexico and reportedly made rather covert efforts to enable Mexicans to enter the U.S. and not have to fully live up to immigration laws.

What matters now is that Barbour was elected Governor of Mississippi twice, and for the most part operated in the traditions of the old South. One who spends time in Mississippi and who did not grow up there is quick to see the state has its own self-contained, early American culture. Natchez, for example, is a place that seems never to have accepted that the South lost the Civil War.[Exhibit A: At right is Mammy's Cupboard restaurant] So Barbour is a product of his environment. It so happens he amassed a certain amount of power and respect among the citizenry, so that when his term as Governor ended, he felt autonomous enough to simply let convicted first degree murderers back into the streets. What about respect for their victims, one might ask. What about their victims’ relatives, friends and associates? Are they at risk of bodily harm now?

Haley Barbour is a piece of work who has probably held Mississippi back, single handedly, from advancing into the 21st century, but his latest clemency disaster may be his worst act yet. Only time will tell if those crimes of passion he speaks of were isolated incidents or if they truly were precursors of a pattern of life-threatening criminal acts.

IS THIS THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA?

2012-01-06T13:07:00.010-06:00

This week, in one of his first appearances in New Hampshire, before a group of college students, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum was confronted about his views against marriage equality. Reportedly, he asked the student what the difference would be between allowing two men to get married and allowing more than two men to marry. Essentially, he compared gay Americans getting married to polygamy. This is from a guy who has in the past compared gay people getting married to bestiality and sex between dogs.

Reports are showing up that bigger money is starting to bolster Santorum’s surprisingly emerging candidacy. Just yesterday, Foster Freiss, a megabucks-rich Wyoming financier, revealed that he dropped a half million dollars on Santorum’s Super PAC. This news comes right as it is revealed that Santorum, in a proactive sweep, is planning a major media blitz in South Carolina. While he preps for South Carolina, polls have him pulling up to third in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, he continues his unabashedly bigoted remarks about black Americans, gay Americans, pro-choice Americans, poor Americans, and even Mormons (who he says are members of a dangerous cult”). Rick Santorum is a bigot. Just reading those words right now on the page, I can’t help wondering why I haven’t read them anywhere else. Not only is he a bigot, but he tries mightily to convince you and me that he is not, even backtracking on his own words. Watch:

The ultimate danger is an exclusionary, closed-minded bigot gathering steam in the race to be the leader of the free world. What kind of a world would happen with a President Santorum? I envision a world under Santorum where America is at war with Iran. He has as much as said it. I envision a world in which girls raped by their fathers are forced to give birth; a world in which fully trained doctors in the best medical facilities in the country are legally compelled to allow a woman to die rather than abort the fetus that is killing her. Santorum would even like to legislate sexual behavior between men and women; he recently said contraceptives are “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” His views on contraception are nothing new; they’ve just gotten louder. Here is what he said as far back as 2006:

Those who still remain unconvinced of Santorum’s ignorance should take note of the fact that somehow he speaks of birth control only in terms of pre-marital sex. The truth is it is a multi-faceted, life and death issue. He makes no mention of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV infection, teen pregnancy rates or any other issue associated with a lack of birth control. Again, Santorum’s narrow view of the world ignores inevitable consequences and asks the citizenry to subscribe to his own lack of understanding of vital issues.

Santorum’s rhetoric is positively Bachmannesque in its ignorance, but there is quite a distinction between him and Michele Bachmann. She was a flake who fizzled out of the public’s consciousness faster than you can say “Iowa.” He, on the other hand is rising. By some estimates his support nationwide quintupled after Iowa. He is reported to have raised $2 million in the 48 hours following the caucus there. As the money pours in, Santorum is steadily elevating his rhetorical swagger. On Thursday he actually dissed Ronald Reagan in a speech about social security. Try to remember the last time you heard a GOP candidate who was bold (or stupid) enough to denigrate Reagan. Santorum’s getting perilously cocky.

The danger here is the precedent. If Santorum can rise in America, what ails this country, and what other fringe candidate could garner support? We Americans rarely rally behind extremists who run for president. But people are scared right now. After witnessing the Arab Spring, bloodshed worldwide, the Occupy movement coast to coast – Americans are ripe for a law and order guy. And if the only type of law and order that presents itself is moral law and order in the body of a Rick Santorum, it appears a lot of scared Americans are ready to jump on his highly determined and rigidly conceived bandwagon. He is a man whose rapid ascent is the clear result of national desperation.

That’s no way to elect a president. If I could get one message across to all of those rabid Santorum supporters it would be this: What you are witnessing is the candidacy of an angry man. Inside of his rhetoric is a true rage against freedom. It is the world according to Rick Santorum, and anyone who doesn’t fall in line is simply dismissed and categorized as a sinner.

If you want to witness a teachable moment, this is the big one. Here and now we can learn a lot about what moves people when they’re in trouble. Santorum’s message is resonating among citizens who feel disenfranchised and hopeless. He is playing the God card, and transforming his holier-than-thou attitude into a public rallying cry for his limited version of morality.

Will we buy what he’s selling in the long term? I think not. But plenty of damage can be done in the meantime. As the campaign goes on, attention will likely turn to Santorum’s cozy connections with big business, his uncomfortable alliance with lobbyists, his questionable past business dealings and his hawkish views on foreign policy. But right now, since he seems hell bent on imposing his moral views on America, it’s time for us to ask ourselves if we could truly abide a President who dismisses millions of us simply because we believe in something he does not comprehend – freedom of choice.

HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM THE BACHMANNS!

2011-12-22T09:04:00.000-06:00

The Bachmanns Wish You Merry Christmas - watch more funny videos

EULOGY FOR OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM

2011-12-16T12:11:00.009-06:00

By all accounts, 23-year-old David Hickman (below, left) from Greensboro, N.C. was pretty excited about coming home for Christmas. It is widely reported that he called his mother on November 13 to say so, but that would be their last conversation. On November 14, Hickman, an infantryman, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Critics of the Obama administration contend the president should never have announced in October that all U.S. troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by Christmas. According to some, Obama’s pronouncement only served to make the Iraqi insurgents step up their quest to knock off as many Americans as possible before the deadline. They may be right, and Hickman may be the unfortunate consequence of Obama’s grandstanding.

This week marked the official end of U.S. troop involvement in Iraq. It has been nine years since the U.S. involved itself in the ill-conceived “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Many Americans believe it was not this country’s responsibility to ensure democracy in Iraq. It is now well known that the U.S. entered the war with faulty intelligence and under less than noble circumstances. It is known that President George W. Bush's aggressive stance toward Iraq after 9/11 was a knee jerk reaction that proved ill-fated and fatal for many Americans.

As usual, the numbers tell the story. According to the government’s own figures, here is the human toll: U.S. Troop Casualties - 4,486 US troops; 98% male. 91% non-officers; 82% active duty, 11% National Guard; 74% Caucasian, 9% African-American, 11% Latino. 19% killed by non-hostile causes. 54% of US casualties were under 25 years old. 72% were from the US Army.

Here is the ongoing human toll: US Troops Wounded - 32,226, 20% of which are serious brain or spinal injuries. (Total excludes psychological injuries.) US Troops with Serious Mental Health Problems - 30% of US troops develop serious mental health problems within 3 to 4 months of returning home.

We learned from the Vietnam War that the human toll exacts consequences that transcend generations. Vets who are mentally or psychologically disabled try to re-acculturate and live somewhat normal lives, but their injuries and psychological wounds affect spouses, children, co-workers and most anyone with whom they interact. We know anecdotally that marriages crumble, domestic abuse skyrockets and child abuse intensifies among many vets.

And so there was little celebration this week, and there won’t be ticker tape parades or victory services at the National Cathedral or anything to truly mark the end of this war. That is because we know that people who were 20-something when they lost their eyes or their arms or legs or sanity will spend decades trying to right themselves. And we know that many of those 4,486 US troop casualties had children that will never know their parent(s). And we know that people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell who actively engaged the U.S. in this war will not be held legally accountable for their misguided decisions.

It is from the vets themselves that we learn the most about how bad decisions in Washington wreak havoc in lives from coast to coast. Watch and listen to vets recap their own experiences in a CNN report:
The war in Iraq was one of the most significant mistakes I've ever witnessed the American government make. With no weapons of mass destruction, and no evidentiary connection between Iraq and 9/11, 4,486 men and women were ordered to their deaths for absolutely no reason. That is how history will see the Iraq debacle.

It is critical that we recognize now the enormity of the error that was Iraq. I am hoping that our collective realization of the vulnerability and poor judgment of our government officials puts a kink in our blind trust of them. Every reasonable American knows now that we should never have gone to Iraq. If something similar happens in the future, we Americans are likely going to demand far more accountability from the president on down.

Like Vietnam, American history has nothing to be proud of with the Iraq war. Not a thing. And that, all by itself, should tell us Americans to become more engaged with the political process, to more carefully choose who will govern and to clearly convey to them what we expect.

DELUSIONS OF THE DONALD

2011-12-11T11:43:00.009-06:00

Some years ago when I first walked into Trump Tower in Manhattan I remember thinking, “This guy thinks big – and shiny.” Those were the days when real estate developer Donald Trump was married to Ivana Trump, and together they had turned the Plaza Hotel into the showplace it was always meant to be. Those were glamorous times for the Trumps. The unapologetically ostentatious 1980s. It was a moment when the name Trump was synonymous with the good life, especially when compared to their arch rivals in the hotel business, the Helmsleys. Remember wicked witch hotel baroness Leona Helmsley and her increasingly infirm and senile husband, Harry? They were certainly no match for the beautiful Trumps.

Today one would be hard pressed to associate the word “beautiful” with Donald Trump. The years have not been kind to the Donald. His ego inflated involuntarily to the point where he believes he can either become the next President of the United States, or mightily influence who ever ascends. Trump is a showman. He is a circus ringmaster. He says outrageous things and he often inaccurately insinuates himself into the upper echelons of every cultural stratum. For example, in his latest book, “Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again,” he writes of superstar Lady Gaga, “"Maybe she became a star because I put her on the Miss Universe Pageant. It’s very possible, who knows what would have happened without it, because she caused a sensation.” Further into the book, in an equally ungrammatical fashion, he claims he warned Jeff Zucker of NBC not to move Jay Leno to a different time slot; it was a moment one might think of the Donald not as a real estate magnate, but rather as instant network programming executive. Trump can’t get enough of Trump’s magnificence.

But…you know that. The big news today is Donald Trump, presidential debate moderator. As it turns out it would be a debate between GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich and GOP homophobe loser-in-residence Rick Santorum. Everybody else has declined the invitation to participate in the Dec. 27 debate produced by Newsmax and to air on the ION network. Let’s see if we can picture this: Newt can talk about the social merits of having first graders clean toilets in their schools while Santorum can talk about the evil gay agenda that threatens the fabric of our culture. And Trump can interrupt frequently and talk about Trump.

By the weekend, Trump was reportedly considering canceling the debate. One can only hope. Of course we know it would be cancelled because of lack of participation among the candidates. But Trump put the spin on the potential cancellation by saying it may be necessary because he is still considering running as an independent candidate, and it may be a conflict of interest for him to host a debate.

The political process is sullied by Trump’s Barnum and Bailey sideshow. We are talking about determining who may be the next leader of the free world. Whether you like them or not, most of the GOP candidates have worked their way up through the system to take the giant hopeful leap towards the presidency. Most of them probably do not have the intellect, chutzpah and finances to go the distance, but they each had a steady trajectory. They climbed. Trump, on the other hand, took an express elevator of his own making. He is tailor made for the American pop culture, famous for being famous. Who else can you think of that develops real estate and ends up with his own network reality show, his own beauty pageant, A-list Hollywood connections and now, his own presidential debate?

Still, does the emperor have even a stitch of clothing? One wonders what on earth, other than ego, convinced Trump he has a place in presidential politics. Would he have the first clue what to do as commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces? Would he know even where to begin to navigate his way through a hostile legislative branch of our government? With absolutely no legal training, no legislative experience and no Washington cache, how could he remotely expect other world leaders to assign him a modicum of credibility? It is quite a fantasy leap from TV personality to Chief Executive of the United States of America.

About that ego; this week Trump told CNN host Piers Morgan that he believes he is the one American who should be sent to negotiate trade deals with foreign nations. He told Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that he was surprised Romney turned down the invitation to the debate because he claims Romney is clamoring for Trump’s endorsement. Rather than owning up to the fact that the candidates are not participating in his debate because it has no value, Trump told radio host Don Imus that they are not coming because "some of them don't have the courage to do it. A couple of them called me and told me, 'Donald, I'm just too nervous to do it.'"

Every election period has these short-lived sideshows. Last time it was Sarah Palin. Some years before that it was Ross Perot. Remember him? This time it’s Trump. Who’s lying in wait for 2016? Snooki, maybe? Justin Bieber? Listen, this too shall pass, or should I say, Trump, too, shall pass. We need to get laser-focused on the critical issues at hand – economy, poverty, social equality, employment, housing, global threats and regaining America’s traditional standing on the world stage. Trump is a blip on the radar screen, but one that is diverting attention from all that really matters. If he truly wants to serve his country, rather than himself, he will take a giant step back and allow the process to proceed as it should.

IT IS TIME FOR RICK PERRY TO DISAPPEAR

2011-12-09T10:04:00.009-06:00

If Rick Perry hadn’t already sealed his unfortunate political fate, his latest campaign ad should put a cap on his candidacy. Watch:

At this point, knowing as we do that Perry is not going to represent the Republican party in next year’s election, this ad has broader implications. Look to your left on this blog and you will see the story of Jonah Mowry, the young boy who is tortured by other children who belittle him because of his sexuality. If Jonah Mowry turns on the TV and watches the ad you just watched, how will that affect his own personal development? Here he sees the Governor of Texas, a GOP presidential hopeful, essentially telling him that he is worthless, and telling him that people of “faith” would never be able to validate him as a human being, because he’s gay. That’s what Rick Perry accomplishes with this video. Ostensibly he made the video to bolster his chances of being president, but its effect on the culture around him is anything but presidential. The ad will go down in this year’s campaign history on the same level as Herman Cain’s cigarette smoking ad and last year’s Christine O’Donnell “I’m Not a Witch ad.” The difference this time is that the damage from this ad is already done.

Someone should have told Rick Perry, in the lyrics of the Broadway play, “Into the Woods”… Careful the things you say; Children will listen. It was irresponsible and borderline cruel of Rick Perry to approve of the ad and to tape it and allow it to be distributed. Trusting in the general reasonableness of the American people, as I do, I believe this ad will backfire on Perry. Within hours of the ad’s release, video parodies had hit the web in force. Rick Perry impersonators appeared in settings similar to the one in the ad, starting their messages out with statements like, “I’m not afraid to admit I’m an atheist,” or “I’m not afraid to admit I’m an asshole.” Sophomoric humor to be sure, but remember humor is often just the stylized expression of rage. I think Perry’s ad elicits feelings of rage among many of us.

The number of gay children and young people who have taken their own lives in the past few years because society messaged them that they were inadequate human beings has skyrocketed. The Jonah Mowrys of the world are numerous and often desperate. Rick Perry’s actions fuel the fires of their discontent in a way that could invite further fatalities. If I could ask Perry one question now it would be this: How can you defend your contention that you want to strengthen the country when through your own words you marginalize and attempt to weaken entire segments of the U.S. population?

Perry’s blanket dismissal of the rights of gay American service men and women is arrogance personified. Perhaps he has forgotten about people like U.S. Army Major Alan Rogers,(left) a gay service member who died while on patrol in Iraq in January, 2008. Would Perry diminish the fact that Rogers sacrificed his life for a country that made him hide his homosexuality in order to fight for it? I wonder how his dismissive attitude would go over with the family of Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt, reportedly the first U.S. soldier to be killed in Afghanistan after President Obama’s repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Both Rogers and Wilfahrt were blown up by IED’s. Blown up, while serving their country. And somehow, in an ill-conceived 30-second campaign spot, Rick Perry equates the human rights of these young men with an issue of holiday celebrations in grade schools. It is disgusting.

The political process has gone awry, fixating on issues that are not germane to the public interest. The public is served by a focus on dignity, in the form of respect as citizens, the right to work for a living and the privilege of owning a home in America. The public is further served by presidential candidates who understand that one’s sexuality does not define him or her. Alan Rogers and the hundreds of other gay soldiers who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom were there with the same patriotic intentions of all other service men and women. When Andrew Wilfahrt’s (right) body exploded he felt the same terror and ripping apart of his flesh that any other soldier feels at the moment of impact. All who loved them felt the same flood of grief that befalls any other dead soldier’s survivors. Rick Perry is obviously not enough of an evolved human being to comprehend this.

It is time for Rick Perry and others in this GOP race who share his limited, bigoted mindset to step down from this race and quietly disappear into the masses. We don’t need them, and we most certainly do not need anyone to lead this country who cannot understand their responsibility to respect all American citizens, regardless of their biological makeup.

THE BAD, BAD BOYS OF 2011

2011-12-05T08:32:00.019-06:00

You have to hand it to a guy who resigns from his candidacy for President of the United States by quoting a Pokemon movie. Herman Cain appeared in front of his would-be new campaign headquarters on Saturday, to announce that he will “suspend” his campaign. Then he steps down from the stage with Motown music playing in the background. There was barbecued food and general revelry, as if it were Cain announcing his candidacy, rather than ending it amidst various allegations of sexual wrongdoing.

Cain’s timing is perfect: His hijinks become the closing bookend for a year when bad boys around the globe were hogging the headlines with their own sexual junior highisms. I mean come on: Congressman Anthony Weiner was sexting women from the gym, while considering a run for Mayor of New York City, just as his wife found out she’s pregnant. And his antics were tame compared to bad boys like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund who stands accused of forcing a New York hotel housekeeper to have sex with him.

Bad boys are just bad boys, no matter what they do for a living or how much power they crave in their professional lives. And their egos generally somehow enable them to maintain their high profile public personas, convincing themselves that nobody will ever know about their duplicitous lifestyles. It really is stunning how not one of them seems to understand that privacy in public life is now history. It does not exist. A half century ago, JFK and his brother Bobby Kennedy could each take their turns having sex with Marilyn Monroe, and even the reporters who knew about it wouldn’t dare reveal it. But that was then.

Fast forward to 2011 and we’re still waiting for justice to be served in the case of John Edwards (below, right), the sleazebag scandal monger from the last presidential campaign. Edwards, you will recall, allegedly funneled money from his campaign to one Rielle Hunter, his secret squeeze who actually bore their daughter. While the wheels of justice turn as slowly as possible, we’ve also had to live through the very public battle over the sex tape he and Rielle made during the campaign. Sex tape. Presidential candidate. Welcome to 21st century America.

But 2011’s main scandal players were not limited to the U.S. Silvio Berlusconi, the three-time prime minister of Italy finally resigned a few weeks ago. His departure follows various periods where his name was attached to words like mafia, prostitution, tax fraud, perjury and embezzlement. But our favorite Silvio charge has to do with his alleged sex for cash scandal with an underage Moroccan dancer named Ruby Rubicouri (you simply cannot make this stuff up). Miss Ruby met the Prime Minister when she was working as a dental hygienist and he was being treated after being attacked with a marble statue by a disgruntled citizen.

All of it begs the obvious question: Are men innately pigs? Edwards was married to a woman who was fighting stage four breast cancer when he got Rielle Hunter pregnant. One of Cain’s accusers claims they were in a car headed for his corporate headquarters, when he pulled over and ran his hand up her skirt – kind of like a junior high boy might do to live out his masturbatory fantasy. I guess it depends on your definition of “pig.” Was John Edwards simply a pig disguised in matinee idol’s good looks and great suits? Was Silvio Berlusconi (below, left) an Italian pig whose reported multi-billions caused him to believe he was invincible? The Italian version of Teflon Don, you might say.

There are those who say both politics and sex are all about power. Nothing more. Nothing less. Maybe rich and powerful men simply cheat more richly and powerfully than their average Joe counterparts. But interestingly, they only get away with it until they don’t get away with it. The other day a female comic on TV said, “When was the last time we heard rumors like the ones we’re hearing about Herman Cain that did not turn out to be true?” Where there’s smoke and all that, you know. She’s right. There isn’t much you could say to me that would convince me that Herman Cain is not a pig. A more respectable pig would come forward and say, “I did it and I’m bowing out of the race.” Instead, Cain came forward and said ‘I didn’t do it, but I’m bowing out of the race for my family’s sake.’ And he said all this just as people who are close to his family have come forward to reveal the Cains are not exactly the Cleavers.

Cain, Edwards, Weiner (below, right), Berlusconi and their Hollywood counterparts such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ashton Kutcher are simply high profile examples of arrogance personified. Memo to all of the above: We citizens out here are not going to get real involved in your behind-closed-door dalliances unless you throw it in our face. And every time you start to feel a bit cocky about how much you are getting away with, you need to remember that you’re not getting away with it. We may as well be seated theatre style in your bedroom. Why is it that we get that but you don’t? And why is it that you can’t simply study the legacy of people like David Vitter, Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer to truly know that it’s only a matter of time until things come tumbling down? Way down.

Listen, combine one part predatory mass media with one part puritanical American consciousness with one part “Gotcha” and you’re nothing more than Herman Cain – powerless, jobless and without the adulation you crave so mightily. It’s a predictable recipe for public humiliation and ultimate dreaded anonymity. It is more about arrogance than ignorance. And it repeatedly leads to men who are in the prime of their careers predictably and rapidly disappearing. Just ask John Edwards who these days kicks around his South Carolina mansion worrying about whether he will go to jail. It’s a slippery slope boys.

UC DAVIS: A PORTRAIT IN OVER-REACTION

2011-11-23T10:37:00.007-06:00

By now the photos of the campus cop at UC Davis pepper spraying passive, seated students has made its way around the world. Most people agree (with the exception of predictably obstinate cable talking head Bill O’Reilly) that the incident was uncalled for and unduly aggressive on the part of the campus police. Rational humans know not to spray chemicals in the faces of students seated in an outdoor area on their own campus. And those same rational people wonder now why the campus police showed up in full riot gear when there was clearly no indication of violence or anything but peaceful protest.

Close up photos of the still unidentified cop show an average looking guy, probably in his 40s. He’s not old enough to have the images burned into his memory of cops in the 1960s South spraying civil rights demonstrators with fire hoses.
He probably wasn’t around when students at Kent State were fired upon with live ammunition by the National Guard. It is likely he has no knowledge of dioxon-contaminated herbicide Agent Orange being routinely sprayed during the Vietnam War, reportedly resulting in hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese suffering health issues, not to mention American veterans who have suffered lifelong effects from the chemical. Would it have made any difference to the unidentified campus cop if he had these frames of reference? Hard to say. But did we as a society learn nothing from the above-mentioned incidents? It is inhumane for one human to spray another human with anything, when the intention is humiliation or bodily harm.

What is clear is the absolute violation of the students’ constitutional rights. As a gentle reminder, here is the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Were not free speech and free assembly rights abridged here? It’s tough to validate the campus police actions when you watch carefully what really happened here. Watch for yourself:

Notice the campus cop hold the canister up and present it to the crowd before he sprays the protestors. One might say he was showboating, exercising a level of power he does not really have. Now, after the fact, one wonders why it took the university administration fully three days to suspend him from his duties. And why is it that the Chancellor, who reportedly directed the campus police to disperse the protesting crowd, did not address the student body until Monday, when the spraying occurred on Friday. Further, since the students were not exercising aggression or violence, why are none of them or their parents speaking up about the violation of their civil rights?

Throughout the U.S. in recent weeks there have been reports of police brutality, unjustifiable arrests, unreasonable use of force on the part of law enforcement and poorly executed crowd control. The job of police in urban areas is not to function as physical or ideological adversaries to the citizenry. Yet that is what we are seeing coast to coast. On college campuses, for the first time in decades there are signs of true student activism. Where better to protest governmental missteps and ill-advised decisions than on campuses where ideas are the foundation of the institutions? Yet at UC Davis it appears ideas are being challenged, rather than welcomed, and administrators somehow feel threatened by a few kids seated on a sidewalk.

The still unidentified cop should be fired, and with him should go his superiors. If Chancellor Linda Katehi (below, left) ordered or approved of the use of force she overstepped her authority. The message all of them sent to their students is simply that in America one cannot peacefully protest that which he or she deems unacceptable.
Somebody forgot to tell Katehi and her police force that if there is one place in America where the free exchange and expression of ideas should be encouraged – popular or not – it should be our universities. Have UC’s administrators become so caught up in the business end of education that they have lost sight of the importance of student’s questioning the status quo?

It appears the pepper-spraying campus cop did not break any laws by using chemical dispersants. Still, how many unwritten moral laws were ignored in that one momentary act? Did the university administration not have an ethical obligation to allow or even encourage its student population to exercise their first amendment rights? Rights. Plural. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

In fairness, and to her credit, Katehi addressed the students on Monday and apologized on behalf of the university. She spoke of not wanting to be a chancellor in a university that conducts itself as UC did on Friday. She said she wants to get to know the students. Her short address seemed heartfelt, but at this writing, the cops involved in this injustice are still on the payroll, although suspended. And why is it that it took this heinous act on the part of an over-zealous campus cop to cause the chancellor to finally want to get to know her students? Was there no reason to get to know them when all was calm and orderly?

The higher ups at UC Davis have a lot of explaining and apologizing to do. And the students who participated in the demonstration must learn to continually stand up – or sit down – for their beliefs. It is about passion, commitment and justice. One wonders how the adults at UC Davis forgot that last Friday afternoon.

A VERY VICKY MOMENT

2011-11-16T18:13:00.004-06:00

You may recall a couple of weeks back I posted a video of sort-of comedienne Victoria Jackson visiting Occupy Wall Street in NYC. Jackson, much better known these days as a neo-conservative talking head often struggling to be heard, has come up with a whole new way of pontificating. Jackson and three other women now have a new web-only show called "PolitiChicks," which you might do well to think of as "The Anti-View." Her three co-talkers are pro-life activist Jannique Stewart, The Patriot Update's Ann-Marie Murrell and editor and activist Jennie Jones. This is episode one -- today's topics -- the evils of Islam and the very evil evils of gay marriage. Oy. Watch:

THE LONG HELD SECRETS OF HAPPY VALLEY, PA

2011-11-14T11:00:00.012-06:00

I had a brief back and forth with a guy from State College, PA, home of Joe Paterno. He said in State College, Paterno is thought of “as a king.” It was the idolatry that I found so stunning. I doubt that many of us outside of that Central Pennsylvania borough can relate to living in a town that is often referred to as “Happy Valley.” And most of us knew little about it or its small town America, football-dominated culture. After all, just the name of the place conjures Frank Capra movies. One expects Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson to come dancing down Main Street.

But no one is dancing in Happy Valley today. The king has been dethroned and his minions have been cuffed and booked. Former minion Jerry Sandusky is charged with 40 counts of child abuse. Coach Mike McQueary has been sidelined indefinitely after receiving threats for his part in the cover up of Sandusky’s multiple rapes of children. University President Graham Spanier has been fired, and as the holiday season approaches there is no peace in the Valley.

The guy I communicated with on Facebook said this: “Growing up there, Penn State football was everything and Joe Paterno (left) was our king.” He talked about how “heartbreaking” it is to see his idol destroyed. And he referred me to an article called “Growing Up Penn State,” by Michael Weinreb. Weinreb writes, “Sometimes we were guilty of regarding him as more deity than man, as if he presided over us in mythological stand-up form."

It is the worshipping of Paterno – affectionately called Joe Pa in Happy Valley – that so astounds those of us out here in the real world. At 84, after coaching Penn State for 46 seasons, Paterno broke his silence last week, saying “I should have done more.” Some might hear remorse in that statement, but I hear between the lines Paterno really saying, ‘I never thought anyone would find out.’ To many of us who do not have the emotional ties (read “obsession”) with Joe Pa or the Penn State over-the-top football culture, Paterno’s laissez-faire approach to Sandusky’s (above, right) crimes seem quite ominous. It appears State College, PA was a town built almost exclusively on college football, and it seems Paterno was intent on protecting the institution and the game. And it seems clear he intended to protect the school to the detriment of 10-year-old boys who were raped by one of his coaches.

We are a nation built on paternalism and egalitarianism. Those kids who Sandusky raped were supposed to be protected by somebody. If not Sandusky, then McQueary,(below, left) who witnessed Sandusky actually having anal intercourse with a 10-year-old boy in the locker room showers. Since McQueary was reportedly so distraught he ran out of the room and called his father, then perhaps his father could have immediately called the police, but he did not. His father reported the incident to Paterno, who reported the incident to university officials, but he and they chose not to call the police. All the grownups, including Joe Pa, chose to put a lid on it -- for 13 years.

Talk radio is fully abuzz with this story, and from the radio I learned of something called The Clery Act. It is this piece of federal legislation that may be the ultimate undoing of Penn State. The Clery Act requires universities that receive federal financial aid to fully report and disclose crimes that occur on or near their campuses. With regard to crimes of a sexual nature, the Clery Act clearly states that incidences reported to campus security of “sex offenses, forcible or nonforcible” must be disclosed. If morality were not an issue with Penn State, perhaps their ties with governmental financial aid should have been. If Penn State is found in clear violation of The Clery Act, they may lose all access to student financial aid.

On Nov. 9, the U.S. Department of Education notified Penn State that an investigation has been initiated into Penn State’s alleged coverup of Jerry Sandusky’ s sexual crimes. If found in clear violation of the Act, Penn State will at a minimum be fined $27,500 per violation, but due to the heinous nature of what happened in Happy Valley, one might expect the Department of Education to impose much stiffer penalties.

Having worked many years in the corporate system and then many more years in higher education, I have observed that these types of things do not escape the rumor mill. My guess is that many, many people knew what happened in that shower and beyond. So it was with great interest that I read the words of former Oklahoma University and Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer (above, left), who said in an interview with the Daily Oklahoman newspaper, “Having been in this profession a long time and knowing how close coaching staffs are, I knew that this was a secret that was kept secret. Everyone on that had to have known, the ones that had been around a long time.” Switzer should know of what he speaks. His own team had its share of clandestine, illegal secrets, although none were sexual in nature.

The judicial system will accommodate some of the justice that needs to be done here. But just some. Others, who have not been charged with a crime will serve their own inevitable sentences. When night falls in Happy Valley, and Joe Pa and McQueary and every other person who knew of Sandusky’s rapes of children close their eyes, they have to live inside themselves knowing what they did. They enabled Sandusky to permanently scar children – chances run high that we’ll never really know how many men are out there who were overpowered mentally and physically by Sandusky. Those who knew can never really escape what they let happen – over and over again. I’d call that imprisonment – wouldn’t you?

WHAT I WOULD ASK HERMAN CAIN

2011-11-08T16:46:00.015-06:00

What could finally do Herman Cain in is the fact that none of his accusers have tried to sell their stories or profit in any way with their information. Today, Cain held a press conference to make all the predictable denials: “I don’t remember that woman”; “I’ve been married 43 years”; “My wife said ‘that doesn’t even sound like something you’d do”; “The accusations are just plain not true;” Yada, yada, yada.

Cain’s denials are beginning to take on a more desperate tone, particularly since the second of four women accusers of sexual misconduct has now been identified and quoted, alleging behavior on his part that made women uncomfortable. Watching the press conference today, I was waiting for somebody – anybody – to ask these questions, but nobody did:
• Of the leading candidates for the 2012 GOP nomination, you are the only one who has had sexual harassment charges leveled against you. If these accusations were the work of Democratic operatives or clandestine actions of opposing campaigns, why wouldn’t they try to similarly discredit Mitt Romney, since he has consistently been in the lead?
• Regarding the most recent accuser, Sharon Bialek has come under intense media scrutiny since coming forward. It has been revealed that she has filed for bankruptcy twice, had multiple liens brought against her and was involved in a nasty child custody case. She is not asking for any money or trying to parlay her appearances into anything more than an opportunity to tell her story. If there were no truth to her accusations, what would motivate her to put herself under such a harsh spotlight?
• Four women have now come forward with some allegations of sexual misconduct. Is it your opinion that all four women are lying? If so, why did you wait until Sharon Bialek came forward to hold a press conference to deny all of the accusations?
• Why do you always refer to yourself in the third person?
NOTE: If you missed Cain's press conference you can watch it here.

WHO IS (or isn't) READY FOR THEIR CLOSEUP?

2011-11-07T09:45:00.008-06:00

Have you ever wondered what campaign season would have been like back in the 1950s if the candidates had their P.R. gurus producing TV commercials? How would the public have perceived the not-so-television-ready Harry Truman in candid shots from the campaign trail mixed with slickly produced sound bites from his speeches? Truman was the guy who once said, “All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.” You can just see the campaign marketing team going pale and starting to sweat.

If there is one thing that the creative team on a campaign doesn’t want the public to see it is anything authentic to the candidate’s persona. Come on. Do you think even one person on the Rick Perry campaign would have authorized release of the video of his recent dinner speech? You know, the one where he was evidently either drunk or high. One could posit that in that video we voters saw the real Rick Perry for the first time. Reality can be so humiliating sometimes, right? Oh…you didn’t see it? Watch:

We are in the early stages of a year long, fully-produced deluge of campaign propaganda films and sharply-edited television ads. All are aimed at convincing us of the integrity, ethical stability and approachable gravitas of the presidential hopefuls. Couple that with some scripted, coached charisma and some hyper-patriotic background music and there you have it – the U.S. version of political campaigning. It is the political version of musical theatre – it has all the elements – except maybe dancing. But think about it: political campaign TV ads and musical theatre compel you to pay attention by appealing to your emotions, your passion and your love of a happy ending. Is a Herman Cain campaign ad really all that different than your typical Broadway protagonist – the age-old story of an unknown everyman who comes from behind and steps into the spotlight? Remember Ruby Keeler in “42nd Street?” Get the parallels? And yes, I just went there – I compared Herman Cain to Ruby Keeler.

Well, maybe not. I mean that last web-only ad with the campaign manager smoking the cigarette and Cain smiling that sort of shit eating grin for a few seconds too long at the end? If ever somebody needed a Mike Nichols – or even a Mel Brooks – it’s poor Herman Cain. Cain may be the one candidate most in need of producing and directing assistance of any candidate in recent history. When confronted by aggressive media reporters about his alleged sexual harassment struggles in the late 1990s, Cain scolded the reporters and told them he was not going to discuss it. Watch:

Oh Herman. Don’t you know? Hasn’t the guy with the cigarette told you? The more you piss off the press the more predatory it becomes. And the next thing you know, Herman, the stories of your peccadillos trump policies in your media coverage.

Somebody seriously forgot to tell people like Cain and Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum that running for president in the 21st century is all about packaging. Anything you try to hide behind the package -- like a husband of questionable sexuality who runs a clinic that tries to pray the gay away (Bachmann)—will find a headline somewhere, which will go viral in about two seconds, which can undo all the hard work you’ve done so far to put forth a squeaky clean image. And any history you have of spreading extreme rhetoric that runs counter to majority thinking – like Santorum’s crazy rantings about homosexuality being akin to adultery and incest – will find the wrong kind of headlines and fully unravel your meticulously crafted all-American, family man image.

This is the first presidential election in the history of the U.S. that has this much media and technology chronicling its every millisecond. This current crop of GOP would-be-chief execs appears to be trying to play the presidential campaign game by old media rules. What none of them seem to grasp is that these days if you say something truly stupid or ill-conceived or wildly inaccurate at dinner in Palm Beach, everybody in Palm Springs will know about it by dessert.

That leads to two trends that work directly against us voters: First, it means that the smartest image-makers among the campaigns will script everything so tightly that we will not ever have an opportunity to truly know who the candidate is or where he or she stands on the most divisive issues; and second, it will further cause the candidates to speak in made-for-TV/web sound bites intended for viral dissemination. In short, we get less reality than ever before because of the mass paranoia among the campaigners that their words will be mis-interpreted or worse – fully understood by the masses.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that extremists like Bachmann, Santorum and a couple of others will be voted off the island any minute now. Cain may linger for a while. After all, his antics are entertaining, if not exactly presidential material. Hard to say. And Perry? Maybe fewer cocktails before the next after-dinner speech may be
in order for him. The GOP hopeful who becomes the nominee this time is the one who understands the pervasiveness and power of traditional and new media. This time the one who Tweets right, Facebooks compellingly and who understands the real impact of inevitable and constant visibility will be the one who survives and takes center stage at the GOP convention August 27 in Tampa, FL. Along the way, the winning candidate will probably have to succumb to photo ops with the likes of Snooki, interviews with reporters with their own agendas and late night repartee with the Leno/Letterman/Fallon/Kimmel types.

Is it simple show biz or is it a race to see who will be the next leader of the free world? You be the judge.

REALITY BITES

2011-11-03T16:24:00.010-05:00

If you live long enough you come to find out that when things get really out of hand, the only thing that can get them back on track is one watershed event. You know, like Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries getting divorced after 72 days of marriage, even though they fashioned their union as the American version of the royal wedding. Listen, it matters. You want to know why? Because “reality" television is so far off track from what it could have been that something had to shake it back into true reality.

Ask yourself this and see what you come up with: Why do we even know there is such a thing as a Kim Kardashian? What has this person contributed to our culture, our social welfare, our society, our future? Yes, yes, I now, there’s always been a Kim Kardashian. In the 1950s it was called Zsa Zsa (left). In the early 2000s it was called Paris Hilton. It is a concept, as much as it is a single human being. There’s nothing particularly real about it, but it plays itself out as an American story of privilege, wealth, glamour and creature comfort. It’s usually a story that happens on the West coast, and it usually has some sort of hyper-sexual component. It’s captivating, if just for its moment in time.

But back in the 1990s, along came reality TV. That amped up the uber-wealthy California sun princess syndrome to the enth degree. Reality TV relies on two common elements: Extremes and humiliation. Think about it: Every reality TV show that hits the bigtime features extreme personalities and situations, and usually ends up in someone being roundly humiliated. But like anything else extreme in life, there are plateaus. So, for example, in the 1960s surfing might have been considered an extreme sport. Fast forward a few years later and extreme sports are activities more like sky surfing, in which the participants skydives, surfs on a board attached to his feet before he opens the chute. It’s just that whenever somebody gets to a mountaintop in life, we’re looking for them to find a bigger mountaintop.

Such is the case with reality television. Watching somebody on “Survivor” eat worms in a jungle doesn’t capture much of an audience share anymore. Likewise, watching our modern day Zsa Zsas go through one man after another and rake in more and more money for doing nothing doesn’t compel us the way it might have in the mid-20th century. So, comes Kim Kardashian, who realizes the value of televised extremes, and who finds herself a Minnesota boy who was the big (6’9” tall, 235 lbs) man on campus in Minnetonka, MN (population a whopping 51,000). Realizing that reality TV shows about people who do not much in life have limited shelf lives, Kim marries her NBA big boy in a lavish ceremony that costs somewhere between $10 and 20 million, depending on who’s counting. Then, still considering her looming expiration date as a TV star, she divorces him in a media-lavish fashion that garners headlines globally. Kim’s extreme act garners a huge audience, and the reportedly “blindsided” basketballer groom is publicly humiliated. Wah-lah. Reality gold.

Until Kim and her similarly unaccomplished sisters hit TV bigtime, she was generally known for three things: dating good looking athletes, making money, and a sex tape she made with moderately successful singer Ray-J. That tape was “leaked” somehow, which led to a lawsuit in which Kim reportedly walked off with $5 million. Like I said, the girl knows how to cash in. But it was really her reality show that made her a figure on the world stage, which she remains today. In fact, just hours after she filed for divorce she jetted off to Australia to promote her line of handbags. Reached for comment there by Australian media, Kim said simply, “I married for love.”

Look, we can criticize Ms. K and her seemingly endless array of siblings as much as we please, but the truth is that we made her what she is. We needed a Zsa Zsa for our times and she filled the bill. We thought for a while that Paris Hilton could be our Zsa Zsa, but she just wasn’t quite savvy enough to stretch her 15 minutes into something bigger. Kim somehow knows the critical importance of perfect hair and makeup even when dashing through the L.A. airport in the throes of post-divorce despair. Kim knows the value of having her step daddy, former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner (left), photographed by TMZ leaving her home after a visit to console her. She knows the importance of letting her momager, Kris Jenner, do the media interview circuit and saying just the right things like, “Who am I to judge Kim?” But I must remind you again – we made the Kardashians. Just like we made Anna Nicole Smith, and Snooki, and Lindsay Lohan, and all the others who maybe would have been better off in the long term if we had paid a little less attention to them.

Consider our American priorities: On the same day that Occupy Oakland citizens are hurling beer bottles at cops and cops are tossing tear gas cannisters back at them, we’re asking if Kim is going to return her wedding gifts. Just weeks after Gadaffi is killed following a bloody uprising and revolt in Libya, we’re asking if Kim is going to give the 20.5 carat ring back. Right in the heat of the GOP foodfight for the presidential nomination, we’re more interested in whether Kris Humphries is going to get his share of the profits from the highly televised wedding to Kim.

I would suggest that the less real reality TV became, and the more its fully contrived plotlines unfolded, the more we bought into it. When something truly real happens in reality tv – such as one of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” husbands hanging himself – we move on from it pretty quickly. But when something fully produced, such as the entire Kardashian family comes along, we’re all up in it. The real issue is what that says about us, the television audience. The Kardashians are said to have grossed $65 million last year from their handbags and Hollywood hijinks. God bless ‘em, huh? They did that by artfully manipulating us into believing something about them was authentic. Most of us did not earn a fraction of what they made last year, so I ask you: What’s wrong with this picture?

THE IMAGINARY BULLYING OF RICK SANTORUM

2011-10-18T15:09:00.019-05:00

Who knew? GOP presidential candidate and arbiter of all things pure and holy Rick Santorum watches NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” How do we know this? Because this week, Santorum said this about an October 16, 2011 SNL sketch spoofing a GOP debate, in which Santorum was portrayed in a San Francisco gay bar: "The left, unfortunately, participates in bullying more than the right does. They say that they’re tolerant, and they’re anything but tolerant of people who disagree with them and support traditional values." He said this in response to a question from New Hampshire radio station WGIR.

The headline here is that Santorum evidently feels bullied. Somebody forgot to tell him that cutting political satire is part of the ‘running for president package.’ On television it goes all the way back to the 1960s and a show called “That Was the Week that Was.” The show only ran for two seasons, but it managed to skewer everybody from Nikita Kruschev to Richard Nixon. But SNL? Well, SNL is now in its 36th season and making fun of politicians is its stock in trade. But you knew that, Rick, now didn’t you?

Santorum claiming he is bullied is akin to Pamela Anderson complaining about men looking at her breasts. The former Pennsylvania senator (1995-2007) and flailing, yet naive 2012 presidential hopeful needs to get a grip. Politics is tough territory and many of Santorum’s actions, causes he supports, judgmental statements he makes and socio/political stances have invited raw satire. Santorum is, after all, the man who once said, “The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don’t have enough workers to support the retirees. Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies ends in abortion." Let me see; I think Santorum is trying to tell us that our social security fund would be more socially secure if we would outlaw abortion. Is it me, or is this twisted thinking?

Santorum needs to stop whining and sink slowly back into the private sector. He should do that because he is muddying the national conversation about issues that truly matter – issues like jobs, home foreclosures, poverty, hunger, equal pay for equal work, underfunded public school systems and healthcare. His issues are what he considers moral causes. He is unabashedly anti-abortion, anti-marriage equality, anti-pre-marital sex, anti-birth control (or “artificial” birth control, as he calls it), and most vehemently anti-homosexuality. Santorum has been in the game long enough to know that politics is dirty – real dirty. It is not a moralistic endeavor. It’s a power enterprise. Santorum has been in the public eye long enough to know that majority public opinion does not favor his stance on most of his causes. He has also been around long enough to know that in this country we’re really not allowing legislators in our private bedrooms any longer. We’re just not.

And we’re tired of hearing his declarative statements about large population groups. Example: After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Santorum decried the masses of New Orleans citizens who did not leave the city after being warned of the impending storm. “I mean people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings [...] There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving," he said. Santorum’s frequent ignorance was never so blatant. The truth is that thousands of people in the city had no transportation options to get them out of the city. They didn’t stay by choice. Essentially, Santorum was suggesting punishing people who were trapped.

About women who have abortions, Santorum declared: “This was tried once before in America, when the liberty and happiness rights of the slaveholder were put over the life and liberty rights of the slave. But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have unlimited right to kill his slave.” This was just before he said that any doctor who performs an abortion (even legally) should be criminally charged.

The term “neo-con” doesn’t begin to describe Rick Santorum. The term “extremist” does. America does not elect extremists to the presidency. We just don’t. And we most certainly do not knowlingly elect bigots, which Santorum has clearly shown that he is. This most obvious in his comments regarding gay Americans. And we do not elect hypocrites. Santorum repeatedly behaves in contrast to his rhetoric. When his buddy, former Republican Senator John Ensign (left, shown resigning) was involved in a sex scandal, the husband of the woman Ensign was seeing alerted Santorum that he was about to inform the media about Ensign’s assignation. Instead of encouraging Ensign to do the right thing and resign, what did Santorum do? He gave Ensign a heads up so that Ensign could proactively neutralize the situation. A couple of years later when Democrat Anthony Weiner had his own sex scandal, Santorum was quick to go on television and encourage him to “do the right thing” and resign.

And there’s more. Santorum, who has seven children, lived most of the year in Virginia during his Senate years, although he represented Pennsylvania. Many of his kids were old enough to be in school, so what did Santorum do? He enrolled them in a cyber charter school in Pennsylvania, which was paid for the by public school district in the state, even though he and the children did not reside in the state. The school district demanded to be reimbursed when it was revealed the children did not live in the district. Santorum refused. (The children withdrew from the school and are reportedly now home-schooled.)

One would think a man of reasonable intelligence, like Santorum, would know that his over-the-top takes on contemporary culture will not play well in America. He is not taken seriously any longer if he ever was. Since 2003, writer/activist Dan Savage has waged a campaign against Santorum, resulting in a high traffic website, "Spreading Santorum" that has turned the candidate's last name into a profane sex term. Another site, Santorum Exposed is dedicated to publicizing Santorum's failed policies and inane public statements. And now, SNL has turned him into something of a cartoon character. Rick Santorum has become a national punchline.

Santorum’s efforts to legislate morality (his version of morality) and to decide for the masses what contemporary society will deem ethically acceptable are old news. But his attempt to parlay his biases into the American presidency is dangerously unacceptable. What I know for sure is that the American voter is smart, and not susceptible to rantings like Santorum’s. Best evidence? The latest CNN Poll of Polls, which reflected surveys taken between Oct. 3-10, showed a mere 2 percent of Republican voters backing Santorum. Now…Rick…head on back to your gated community, your lily white suburban life, your mansion next door to your wife’s parents, your comfy corporate law job—and surround yourself with those who believe in your exclusionary vision of America. We, the majority of Americans do not believe as you do and we are speaking en masse with our lack of political support for your candidacy.

VICKI DOES WALL STREET

2011-10-13T12:02:00.005-05:00

Remember Victoria Jackson? No? Jackson was a "Not Ready for Prime Time Player" on NBC's Saturday Night Live way back in 1986. Since then, Jackson has become not-so-widely known as a Bible-thumping, tea partying, arguably crazy conservative. Since completing her six-year stint on SNL, Jackson has done interviews in which she says things like FOX's "GLEE" is trying to recruit gay people, that Obama reminds her of "Castro in Cuba or that guy in China," and that she has learned the most in her life from Glen Beck. Jackson has also recorded songs like "There's a Communist Living in the White House." But this week, Jackson was smack dab in the middle of Occupy Wall Street. Oh boy. Watch:

MAD AS HELL...

2011-10-07T13:44:00.002-05:00

Occupy Wall Street has rapidly become Occupy America, with demonstrations spreading from Sacramento to Portland to St. Louis to Chicago to New Orleans to Philadelphia and beyond. Although the goals of the protestors are still unclear, the issues about which they are concerned are universal. Joblessness, foreclosures, corporate greed and power and legislators out of touch with the average citizen - these are frontline reasons for the largely non-violent protests. Listen to the voices of Occupy Wall Street (from CBS News):

TAKIN' IT TO THE STREETS

2011-10-04T14:52:00.021-05:00

Raise your hand if you’re over 50 and remember peaceful protests in the 1960s and 70s? Ah, I thought so – lots of you (okay,"us") skipped class and paraded around carrying signs that said things like, “Hell No, We Won’t Go,” and “America- Fix it or Fuck It!” or “We Shall Overcome.” In some instances, we sincerely had worthy causes worth fighting for, or demonstrating for. In other cases, we were just mad at something our universities or our government had done and we wanted to vent our anger. Either way – we know a little something about civil disobedience, don’t we? And that’s why as we watch the Occupy Wall Street protests, in some ways it’s “déjà vu all over again.”

As recently as last week many of us did not understand what Occupy Wall Street was about. Media wasn’t really picking up on it much, and outside of NYC the buzz was pretty quiet. What a difference a week can make. This week cities across the U.S. are starting to heed the “Occupy” call to reject corporate greed, to call on wealthy Americans to spread the wealth and to neutralize the influence that corporate lobbyists have on legislators. On its face, the basic tenets of the Occupy Wall Street movement seem valid to many Americans. However, much like some of those above mentioned protests from the absolute era of protest, Occupy Wall Street does not seem to have clear proposals for social or economic change. What the demonstrators do have is massive frustration with the American capitalist system.

Buoyed by participation from activist luminaries like Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore, the demonstrators have held steadfast to their own activism for about two weeks now. Here’s a report from ABC News:
video platform video management video solutions video player
The one thing we learned from our anti-everything protests from the 1960s and 70s is that anger may be a powerful catalyst, but until it is coupled with achievable goals, demonstrations are hollow. I am not an expert on social movements, but I’m an interested observer who learned the following over time:

1. Organize, organize, organize. The Occupy movement is certainly a grass roots effort, but even the most basic protests must have order. Anarchy only builds anarchy. Having a plan and some way to structure the movement often yields greater results. Best evidence? The Civil Rights movement
of the 1960s.

2. Have clear objectives. Nobody seems to have stated any goals with the Occupy Wall Street movement. What is the purpose of thousands of people showing up for a street demonstration if there aren’t any clear objectives? So far, what we know is that these people are dissatisfied with the current state of our economic system, our taxation laws and what they see as undue influence of corporate entities on legislation that affects all Americans. All valid, but if you ask them what they want instead of the current system, so far no one has come forward to outline the goals.

3. Who’s calling the shots? The best social change movements had great leaders – Dr. Martin Luther King, Gloria Steinem (below, left), Mario Savio, Susan B. Anthony.
This morning a New Orleans man, age 27, called in to a local talk radio show to talk about the Occupy New Orleans demonstration to be held Thursday. When asked who was in charge of the rally, he said, “Well, we don’t have a leader or anything like that. Everybody will just get together.” When asked what the objective of the demonstration will be, he said, “We’re protesting the inequality between classes in this country.” He never said what the group wants, or what alternative to the class system they would like to see. They need a leader.

So, about those “clear objectives” in number two above: The anti-war movement of the 1960s and 70s clearly wanted out of Vietnam. The women’s movement of the 1970s clearly wanted gender equality and to pass the Equal Rights Amendment.
The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s clearly wanted an end to racial discrimination. Unfortunately, there is nothing clear about what the Occupy movement wants.

The frustration and anger expressed by the many young people on Wall Street these past couple of weeks is step one. It is that emotional fire that galvanizes large groups of people. But the recent media comparisons to Egypt’s Tahir Square (below, right) are a stretch. The Tahir Square demonstrators wanted democracy. So far, the Occupy movement demonstrators just seem to want to get something off their chest. I applaud their tenacity and their passion.That’s what we’re made of here in America, as opposed to say, Bahrain, where this week it was revealed that 26 anti government protestors are to be imprisoned, with sentences ranging from five to 15 years each. Here we can speak up, be heard and affect change. But looking into the faces of the young Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, I just wonder: What do you want to do about the issues that motivate you? We know you’re unemployed; we know you don’t have any health insurance and we know your college degree is not serving you as well as you hoped. Reminding us of all of that doesn’t really accomplish much. What do you want?

BLOCKIN' OUT THE SCENERY, BREAKIN' MY MIND...

2011-09-29T14:37:00.016-05:00

There is a quiet residential neighborhood in Uptown New Orleans that exploded into an in-your-face demonstration on Thursday night, all because of a sign showing President Obama in a diaper. For months, Timothy Reily, a homeowner with a corner lot and a self-described Tea Party member, has expressed his dissatisfaction in big, bold signs that he displays on the main street side of his property.

The diaper sign is not Reily's first display, but the current sign (above) pretty much tells Reily’s story. The visuals are important because until this week, Reily has refused all interview requests and has remained verbally silent, allowing his periodically changing signs to speak for him. I began to notice Reily’s signs several months ago because I often park on his block when I go to work closeby. Although the signs are irritating to me, for reasons I will explain later, finally I began to ignore them. Not so with this week's demonstrators. Some of them claim the sign is racist, while others are just upset that this quiet neighborhood has been upended by all the media attention. By the morning after the demonstration, national media had picked up the story.

New Orleans City Councilwoman Susan Guidry believes the signs are disruptive and perhaps not even legal. She went public with her disdain for Reily’s “art” earlier this week, and what followed were small gatherings of protestors in the street surrounding Reily’s corner lot, which ultimately led to the more chaotic scene describe above. Local TV news stations picked up on the controversy and what follows is a report from WWL-TV, New Orleans:

Racism? On some level, probably. First amendment issue? Yes, without a doubt. Guidry, a Democrat, met with Reiley in his home. Reportedly, it did not go very well. Reily claims she got in his face and threatened to find zoning laws that will force him to take the sign down. But then, guess who else shows up? Ray Nagin. Oy. Nagin, who thankfully hasn't been heard from much since he put out his crazy memoir that sold about three copies, also met with Reily. He tried to persuade Reily to take the sign down, and by all accounts the meeting was gentlemanly. The sign did not come down.

But for my money, Reily’s stunt is more telling than that. I look at his signs the same way I look at vanity license plates – you know the ones that have little messages on them. To me, these are the acts of individuals who somehow cannot seem to be otherwise heard. Why doesn’t Reily simply write op-ed pieces, or call in to talk radio, or organize community political meetings or galvanize his neighbors to support his cause? My guess is that one who takes the time to create signs with sarcastic, derogatory messages does so because he simply does not know how to become part of a healthier public discourse on the state of the nation. Unfortunately, these acts usually bring out the absolute worst in our American citizenry. And let’s face it, politics brings out the worst in Americans anyway, so once we get into “word art” – well it gets rough.

I’m not here to debate the relative merits or lack thereof of the Obama presidency. I would, however, really like to see the public’s mix of ideas elevated to a higher level of discussion. I’d like to hear from some true thinkers, rather than masses of reactionaries. Do we really need to see people carrying signs at rallies depicting the president of the United States as an aborigine, or a monkey, or a Nazi? I think not. Does it add anything at all to advance anybody’s cause to carry a sign that says “If Obama is president, do we still call it the ‘WHITE’ House?” How, I wonder, does this message contribute anything – “American taxpayers are Jews for Obama’s ovens”?

Nothing gets Americans hotter under the collar than the months leading up to an election, especially when unemployment is at record highs, home foreclosures are off the map and the stock market is tanking. Understood. But taking to the streets – or in Reily’s case to the walls of his property – simply to vent one’s frustrations does not really affect change. It serves only to invite company into one’s misery, and to turn otherwise picturesque city streets into personal billboards. It also serves to further divide an already extremely divided electorate among racial, social and political lines. The morning after the above-mentioned street protest, local talk radio played a recording of a demonstrator telling a reporter that her aim was to find out what business Tim Reily is in and then organize a movement to put him out of business. I, for one, do not recognize that particular America. That's not what we're about.

I fully support Reily’s constitutional right to say what’s on his mind. If he wants to put it on a sign on his property, that’s his prerogative. I would, however, prefer he’d take the sign down. What if his neighbor decides to put up a sign that says “Tim Reily’s a racist pig”? What if somebody down the street erects her own sign that says “John Boehner’s a dickhead”? And then maybe her neighbor puts up a bigger sign that says, “Nancy Pelosi can kiss my ass”. Is this really how we Americans want to weigh in on our nation’s political structure? And what about the beauty of the neighborhoods? That matters, too.

To paraphrase one of my least favorite American presidents, I just want to say, “Tear down that sign, Mr. Reily.” Do it now. And then -- speak up. Every voice counts.

DIDN'T ASK...DIDN'T TELL...NOW WHAT?

2011-09-23T14:07:00.023-05:00

Morning talk radio can be such white noise most of the time. But one recent morning as I drove to work, my ears perked up while I listened to an interview with Elaine Donnelly, founder and President of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR). CMR presents itself as an “organization formed to take a leadership role in promoting sound military personnel policies in the armed forces.” Sounds very patriotic and progressive, right? It’s not. CMR exists primarily for one purpose – to keep gay Americans out of the armed forces. The day I heard Donnelly pontificating on the radio was the first day that the old Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy no longer existed. Gay Americans could openly and proudly serve their country. Donnelly wasn’t having it.

When asked if she saw possibilities for positive contributions from gay service members, Donnelly (below, left) said she could not think of any. When asked what her main objection to gays in the military was, (other than the fact that they were gay), she said all it accomplishes is adding stress to all of the other military personnel. Donnelly calls the new military structure, post DADT, a “San Francisco military,” and “the president owns it from this day forward.” About the new laws supporting gays in the military, Donnelly says, “This is a political payoff on the part of the president to LGBT activist groups.” Donnelly’s take on the new military world? “There is nothing beneficial for the military here.”

Donnelly, who in the recent past has also suggested that gay men and women should not be allowed to teach in public schools, peppers her statements with terms like “gay agenda,” and “gay separatists.” To his credit, the interviewer speaking with Donnelly this week asked her repeatedly how military readiness would be affected by the inclusion of openly gay service members in the U.S. military. To Donnelly’s discredit, she never answered the question. Donnelly’s limited thinking is not confined to gays in the military. She has also suggested that the horrors of Abu Ghraib had much to do with allowing women in the military. Donnelly, whether she knows it or not, has fashioned herself into the 21st century Anita Bryant.

How odd that Donnelly, a woman of reasonable intelligence, does not realize that extremists with exclusionary causes like hers, do nothing more than galvanize the majority of fair, forward-thinking Americans to defeat discrimination. One has to wonder how Donnelly can establish an organization called “Center for Military Readiness” and not truly address the real issues threatening military readiness:

• In March, Congressman John Olver (D-MASS) expressed his own military readiness concerns. He pointed out that in 2010, in Afghanistan “one-third of deaths and casualties could have been avoided if proper body armor and vehicle armor had been provided from the start of the war.” Troops are still in danger and the current armor solutions are not adequately protecting them, Olver said. (Note to Elaine: Perhaps CMR needs to focus some of its attention and funding on properly outfitting our service members in war zones – including those who are gay).

• Sexual assault runs rampant in the U.S. military, overseas, according to the Pentagon’s own statistics. The numbers show there were more than 3,000 women sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2009, up 11 percent from the year before; among women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number rose 25%. When you look at the entire universe of female veterans, close to a third say they were victims of rape or assault while they were serving — twice the rate in the civilian population.” (Note to Elaine: These are heterosexual assaults mostly by male military personnel against female military personnel. Perhaps the CMR needs to work toward protecting victims of these assaults and look into the reasons the Code of Military Justice is not being routinely enforced). In its March 10, 2010 issue, TIME Magazine reports anecdotally, that many women overseas stop drinking water after 7PM, so they will not have to go to the bathroom after dark and run the risk of being raped.

• A 2010 U.S. Army report reveals 160 suicides by active-duty soldiers in 2009 and an additional 146 deaths resulted from risky behavior such as drug or prescription medication abuse. Seventy-four of those deaths were overdoses. There were 1,713 attempted suicides last year. Even more recent numbers: In July of this year, the U.S. Army reported a record 32 suspected suicides, the highest number in one month since the Army started keeping suicide records two years ago. (Note to Elaine: What are the deficiencies in the U.S. military that would create a higher suicide rate among military personnel than in the general population? Don’t depression, drug abuse, medication abuse and alcohol abuse threaten our military readiness? CMR might want to focus some efforts here).

• At Fort Hood, TX, the nation’s largest military post, in 2010 one in four service members sought mental health counseling for combat stress, substance abuse, broken marriages or other emotional problems, according to Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli. If we’re really going to concentrate on military readiness, shouldn’t our efforts be put here, rather than on who’s sexually attracted to whom? Elaine? Are you listening?

• By now, it is common knowledge that the U.S. Army has employed questionable, if not downright unauthorized tactics in recruiting new service members. Improprieties include recruiting high school students under the age of 17, promising potential recruits job training that does not exist, promising educational benefits that far exceed what the military covers, recruiting in commercial areas or high school campuses where recruitment is not allowed and more. Elaine, I’m wondering: If the military is recruiting individuals who are not qualified to serve, and if recruiters’ superiors are turning a blind eye to fraudulent recruiting techniques, wouldn’t that somehow knock our military readiness down a notch or two? I’m just sayin.’

Military readiness is not about sex or sexuality. Let’s call this what it is – a non-issue. Gay service members have quietly been sharing quarters with straight service members forever. Everyone has co-existed relatively peacefully. Military readiness has more to do with how recruiters are persuading people to sign up, how military personnel are being treated once they’re in, what types of protection (or lack of such) is being afforded combat personnel, and how the military justice system is or is not dealing with clear violations of military law. Fringe group extremists like Donnelly accomplish nothing more than taking the necessary focus off of real issues that affect national security. Elaine, we’ve heard your rhetoric over and over again. It is meaningless, and to most of us it sounds like the rantings of a bitter person who has a personal anti-gay agenda. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is history and your attempts to spread paranoia were ineffective. If you truly want to serve your country as a private citizen, start using your resources and your energy to strengthen the existing military and to improve its reputation among other world powers (especially the 25 countries that already allow gays to serve openly in their military) who have come to view the current “gays in the military” debate as nothing more than tired, old American provincialism. Elaine, we Americans are bigger and better than that. If you are not, then you need to step out of the public spotlight, permanently.

HIDE THE KIDS! CHAZ BONO'S READY TO DANCE!

2011-09-15T13:06:00.007-05:00

Here is a name to keep out of your rolodex, not to mention your psyche. He is Keith Ablow. Ablow may not be a household name in your neck of the woods, but he has made great strides in becoming a media personality. Ablow is a Johns-Hopkins-trained psychiatrist, who discovered during his college years that he had a talent for writing and reporting. Broadcasting discovered him, slowly but surely, and over the years he has become a sought-after commentator on big name shows. It is, however, his unfortunate take on the Chaz Bono/ “Dancing With The Stars” 2011 story that will probably follow him for the rest of his career. One wonders how he could be so lacking in foresight as to come forward with some of the preposterous things he has said about the recently transgendered Bono.

I could tell you all about his incessant ramblings, but listen for yourself to an interview Ablow did this week with FOX news reporter Megyn Kelly:

Gosh…somebody forgot to tell the doc that kids are not real keen on watching shows about ballroom dancing. Oh, and somebody neglected to inform Ablow that most kids in America wouldn’t know a Chaz Bono if it fell on them. And really, how much of the DWTS show time is going to be devoted to discussion of changing one’s gender or delving into one’s sexual identity? Hey..Ablow, have you ever even watched this program? I’m thinking probably not.

But that’s not even the issue here. The real issue here is Ablow’s motivation to spout off his highly unscientific b.s. about Bono’s influence on children. Is it his deeply caring spirit that just moves him to save the world’s children, or is it his incessant, borderline phobia about gender identity once again rearing its ugly head? Perhaps this is a good time to remind the reader that it was just a year and a half ago that Ablow wrote a column skewering the J.Crew catalog for featuring a picture of designer Jenna Lyons painting her son’s toenails hot pink. According to Ablow, “This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such “psychological sterilization’ is not known.” Ablow, it seems has no room for grey areas in gender identity. He goes on to say, “These folks are hostile to the gender distinctions that actually are part of the magnificent synergy that creates and sustains the human race. They respect their own creative notions a whole lot more than any creative Force in the universe.”

Huh?

So, let me see if I, an average reader/viewer, understand all of this hifalutin hyperbole: If a transgender person appears on a TV dancing competition whose audience demographic skews older and female, kids will suddenly want to remove their genitalia. If a mother paints her kid’s toenails the wrong color and has a picture taken of that, the boy will probably end up gay. How’m I doing Ablow?

The explosion of mass media over the past couple of decades has created pathways for extremists like Ablow to come forward to claim airtime in prime time. If you are of a certain age, you grew up with three or four TV stations. By the 1980s you had a couple hundred cable channels from which to choose. Broadcasters had to find ways to fill up all of that air time. That is the downside of the rapid and ongoing expansion of traditional and digital media. Does anyone believe the likes of Jerry Springer (above, right) or Ann Coulter or Dr. Laura Schlesinger would ever have found themselves in front of a TV camera before cable? Absolutely not. Ablow is simply another in a long line of on-air personalities with extreme behavior or politics or prejudices that have managed to claim some of our time and attention.

But here is the upshot of this whole disturbing trend. We, the viewers, are smarter – much smarter – than they give us credit for. I know and you know that nobody makes a major life decision by watching Chaz do the cha-cha. And we know that pink paint does not a gay boy make. We are smart, thinking individuals and we also know that these crackpots who espouse their attention-getting rhetoric are nothing more than entertainers. Dr. Keith Ablow, with his enviable education and experience is really nothing more or less than a thinking man’s Jerry Springer. He underestimated us, and that may be his fatal flaw.

Now, if there is one thing that may deter me from this season’s DWTS, it won’t be Chaz Bono – it will be another contestant – one Nancy Grace (right), yet another crackpot whose 15 minutes have been stretched way too far. Honestly, if I have to watch Nancy Grace do a quick step on national television, I may have to be sedated. And Dr. Ablow, on Sept. 19 when ABC offers its season premiere of DWTS, you need to change your channel to something safe and calm – may I suggest C-span and a glass of nice, warm milk?

FIRE UP THE TV -- FALL SEASON IS HERE!

2011-09-13T20:39:00.012-05:00

My name is Paul, and I’m a TV addict. There I said it. There are no 12-step programs, meditation gurus or publicly funded initiatives to help me. The only thing that helps is TV. Lots of it. More of it. TV in every room. I watch everything from C-Span to The Real Housewives of Wherever. I recently bought something called a “Smart TV.” I can’t explain myself—I saw it in a store and the edge-to-edge, high definition picture engulfed me until I felt like I was sitting on Oprah’s couch with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. This TV is so advanced that I believe if I stare at I hard enough it might cook dinner for me. And who cares? Who has time for dinner when “Dancing with the Stars” is on, or “Mad Men,” or “The Daily Show?”

So it should come as no surprise that every year at this time I’m downright giddy waiting for the new Fall TV season to begin. This year there are several things happening that could shake things up in the industry. Here are a few shows I’m waiting on the edge of my seat to see:

THE PLAYBOY CLUB (NBC): When in doubt, the major networks seem to revert to 1960s drama. And that might be because there was plenty of it in the 60s. Hugh Hefner’s empire was at full throttle during the post-Kennedy/Camelot era, and nothing has really ever matched its allure since. In this NBC prime time version, Eddie Cibrian is Nick Dalton, a suave Chicago lawyer who, of course, has his own key to The Playboy Club. CNN said Cibrian is doing his best Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”) impression. True, but then Jon Hamm has been doing his best Robert Vaughn (“The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) or Mike Connors (“Mannix”) since “Mad Men debuted in 2007. Whether Cibrian has the dramatic cache to pull this off remains to be seen. The show has already generated controversy; Without even seeing one episode of the show, the Parents Television Council (PTC) already lobbied NBC to cancel it before it even airs, because of “salacious content.” In June, The National Enquirer reported that KLS-TV in Salt Lake City, a Mormon-owned company, has decided not to air the show on its station. So far, it seems KLS is alone in its discontent. The real test of “The Playboy Club” won’t be who bans it, but how authentically the creators are able to paint a real portrait of a singular era. Many series have failed to do so and put forth a canned version of the 1960s that is almost cartoonish in its recreation. The 1960s were “devil may care” years. It was a time when the birth control pill had just hit the mass market, and Frank Sinatra used the term “ring-a-ding-ding” with a straight face and looked cool saying it. We’ll know after the first episode whether this one works. Here’s NBC’s official preview:

Looks pretty juicy to me. But then, I watch everything.

THE ROSIE O’DONNELL SHOW (OWN): When last we saw Rosie O’Donnell on daytime TV, she was the moderator of ABC’s “The View,” and we all know how that ended. Then she helmed a daily radio show that was not half bad, actually. Then our holy St. Oprah of Chicago came calling, offering Rosie a daily talk show, but more amazingly, Oprah gave her the entire HARPO studios facility in Chicago from which to create and broadcast the show. Who could say no to that, right? O’Donnell’s reign as the Queen of Nice (“Newsweek” dubbed her that in its July 14, 1996 cover story), ended nine years ago. This time she says her show will be more topical, less celebrity-focused and now, at 49, she’s a different Rosie. She’s not as nice, but she’s not as angry as she was on “The View.” Will it work? Not sure yet. OWN has failed to live up to the hype, and Oprah recently took over as CEO to try to steer her network in a more productive direction.

ANDERSON COOPER: CNN’s snow-capped, engaging news host has decided to pick up where Oprah left off. This past week he debuted his daytime talk show. He’ll still do “Anderson Cooper 360” in the evening, but the daytime show promises to feature his lighter side. Cooper’s edge is that he can probably attract the biggest names in the news. On his debut hour he featured the parents of the late Amy Winehouse, for example. But the next day, Snooki and Kathy Griffin shared the stage. Reportedly, Cooper will begin the second week of his talk show with a full hour interview with his fascinating mother, Amy Vanderbilt, 87. The daytime talk genre is a tough animal. Those who seem like sure bets often fall flat – think Jane Pauley and Roseanne Barr. Broadcasting from the elegant Manhattan event venue Jazz at Lincoln Center, Cooper has some advantages in this genre: First, he’s a man, in a format that has largely been dominated by women; second, the venue is breathtaking and the cameras have done a stellar job in capturing its vistas; and most importantly, he comes to the show with an established audience from his CNN show. The odds seem to be in his favor, but then, I once said the same thing about Megan Mullally, so don’t listen to me.

TWO AND A HALF MEN (CBS): If they had replaced Charlie Sheen with one of the rumored actors like Hugh Grant or John Stamos, we’d probably have said, “Well, Hugh Grant is no Charlie Sheen,” or “John Stamos doesn’t have that bad boy thing that Charlie Sheen has.” But Ashton Kutcher is a different story. He’s younger, he’s hotter and his past television outings have been largely successful. I’m writing this post before the debut episode, but I feel confident it will probably draw its biggest audience in years. The curiosity factor has caused many of us to already set our DVRs. The show was a classic ensemble piece from day one; it wasn’t the Charlie Sheen show. He was a big draw, he mattered and he reportedly worked very hard to keep the show viable in the marketplace, but the rest of the characters were so well formed and developed that the show can likely carry on. The network is clearly feeling confident: Kutcher’s reported per episode salary is $750,000. To give you some frame of reference, Angust T. Jones, who plays young Jake Harper reportedly pockets $250,000 per episode and he has been a cast member since day one. Jon Cryer, according to TV Guide, takes home $550,000 per episode.

There is much more to report about the Fall season – the “Charlie’s Angels” redux, the return of Simon Cowell to evening TV, the Steven Spielberg backed time travel extravaganza on Fox, “Terra Nova,” Ted Danson replacing Laurence Fishburne on “CSI,” ABC’s own 1960s drama, “Pan Am,” to name a few. And whose big idea was it to put “The Good Wife” up against “Desperate Housewives” on Sunday nights? I wish I could give you something to live for for mid-season, but so far the biggest story is TNT’s remake of “Dallas.” Really?

Stay tuned, and look for me in the audience. I'm always there.

THE VIEW FROM 50-SOMETHING

2011-09-09T22:18:00.009-05:00

Yesterday I turned 50-something. Okay, okay, it’s 58. What the hell. You know, around the mid-50s, people start making “old jokes.” I never pay much attention to the old jokes because I do not feel any different than I felt at 40 something, except now I sort of get it. “It” in this case refers to life. Listen, it takes a good 50 years to get it, at least for some of us. The morning of my birthday there was a bomb threat at the university where I work, and somebody said to me, “I guess you’ve seen it all by now, huh?” Seen all what, I wondered. Not only have I not seen it all, but I believe in that old adage, “The older I get, the less I know.” Oh it’s not that I haven’t been paying attention, or that I have a hard time learning things. It’s just that every time I think I have things really figured out, there’s a bomb threat, or the truly wrong person gets elected, or somebody tries to make cigarettes cool again or telephones become computers or somebody like Kim Kardashian becomes famous without doing anything. It’s those curve balls they throw at us that really confound us. Kim Kardashian? Really? Come on.

I’d like to tell you the view from 50-something is clear and delightful, but the truth is it’s complex. I’m in the most interesting generation I can think of. We grew up in the 1960s when it became de rigueur for revered religious and political leaders to be shot dead on pavements coast to coast. We were raised on calamity. Then came Vietnam. Then Richard Nixon. Watergate. And horror upon horrors…disco. My generation does not wallow in the “good old days,” because the old days were not so good. We got out of college when the national unemployment rate was at about 10 percent. Cars weren’t air conditioned. Oy. Manual typewriters, lots of drugs (and not the good ones), polyester everything and canned peas. What’s to get all nostalgic about?

The view from 50-something is one of assimilation. We take all of the events and people to whom we were exposed, and we try to see where it brought us. But then, along comes Michele Bachmann or some other whack job that causes us to wonder how we got there. Surely we didn’t go through all of those tumultuous decades to arrive at a moment when inept people who lack sound judgment and reason actually believe they could be world leaders. It cannot be possible that we had all of the advances in digital communication and media so that somebody like, say, Chris Matthews could just yell and rail at his guests in the name of journalistic interviewing. Could all of the human ingenuity and foresight that it took to invent and advance the radio industry simply have been such so that somebody like Rush Limbaugh could become the highest paid radio broadcaster in history? Surely not. Something must have gone wrong in the universe to bring us through the entire civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, just to arrive at a moment a half century later when statistics tell us more black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.

It seems impossible that here in the post-feminist age, after all of the Gloria Steinems, Simone de Beauvoirs and Betty Friedans of the world, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that women still earn about 79 cents on the dollar compared with men in the same occupations (That number drops to 68% for African-American women and 58% for Hispanics). Did you know of our 100 U.S. senators, only 17 are women? Wait…it gets worse – There have only been 39 women who have ever served in the U.S. Senate, since it was established in 1789.

At 50-something, many people in my generation are somewhat shocked at the lack of cultural change and social progress in our lifetimes. We have a lot of technology, plenty of luxury items and lots more free time than our grandparents, but real progress? Not so much. That’s discouraging for a population group that came of age in an activistic, idealistic moment and mindset. We truly believed we could change the world. It was the 1960s mentality. You may call it idealism. I think we thought of it as a formidable mix of personal power and hope.

So, with all of this said, how would I characterize the view from 50-something? Here are the keywords: Humble, hopeful, skeptical, sobering, exasperating, unpredictable, dynamic, fascinating and grateful. Listen, here is what I know for sure: Every moment has been and will continue to be a gift. That’s what life is, and isn’t a birthday the perfect time to say that out loud? Think about it. 58? Well, I’m a tweener. I’m not young, but I’m not old. It’s not all ahead of me, but it’s certainly not even nearly completed. The view from 50-something is just one of absolute amazement. After all, who among us could have known when we were 20-something that by the time we were 50-something, sex could kill you, marijuana could cure you and cars could talk? Like I said…amazing.

THE BATTERED CHILD: SIDE EFFECT OF ECONOMIC DOLDRUMS?

2011-09-07T12:08:00.012-05:00

On June 21, when the NYC medical examiner completed his report on Jamar Johnson, 5, it was revealed he had died as a result of “blunt force trauma causing him to suffer a laceration to his intestine and pancreas," according to court documents. Even a body as small as young Jamar’s would have to be bashed pretty hard to cause those injuries, but then Jamar’s murderer was quite angry. That would be Kim Crawford, 21, single, unemployed mother of two, with a history of drug abuse. Oh, and it should be noted…Kim is Jamar’s mother. You may be wondering what drove Kim Crawford her filicidal act. It seems Jamar had broken the television set while using his Nintendo Wii. And it seems Crawford says she was “punishing” him for his act. In the weeks that followed, despite Crawford’s contention of innocence, it was revealed that she has an arrest record for assault and drug charges, and that police had been called to her subsidized apartment on East 227th St. at least nine times since 2006 for domestic disturbances. And yet – Jamar and his sister remained in the home with little hope of ever seeing adulthood, or at least of ever reaching adulthood with any degree of peace.

Crawford (below, left) has since been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter. There are no excuses for Crawford’s act, but maybe it should be a wakeup call for the bloody side dish that seems to be served up during economic recession. Kids are being brutalized coast to coast, and often nobody knows about it because the parents are clever enough to cover it up, or deceitful enough to lie about it, like Crawford did. Is there a link between the national economy and child abuse? The evidence would suggest there is.

By now you’ve heard that national unemployment is holding steady at 9.1%. In August the U.S. added no new jobs. You are so accustomed to hearing these gloomy reports that it has become little more than white noise, right? And you have heard all about how clinical depression is up, consumer spending is down, and economic indicators are stagnant. But who talks about the children of the jobless? Did you know that during times of economic recession, studies show that child abuse and neglect increase? Probably not. Nobody writes much about that.

As usual, the numbers tell the story: At Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, last year doctors studied 512 patients between the ages of six and nine, from 2007 to 2009. Here’s what they found: The number of cases of shaken baby syndrome rose from six per month before Dec. 1, 2007, to 9.3 per month after that date. Some 63 percent of the children studied had injuries severe enough that they had to be admitted to pediatric intensive care units, and 16 percent died.

According to the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome,(which often leads to abusive head trauma), the long term consequences of just this one act can include learning disabilities, hearing and speech impairment, blindness, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairment and in about 300 cases a year, death. Jamar, of course was not a victim of shaken baby syndrome (as far as we know), but he was nonetheless a victim of parental violence. A 2009 report from The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tells us that more mothers than fathers kill their kids. The majority of victims are under three years old, followed closely by those up to seven years old. Astonishingly, 75.8% of perpetrators in cases of child fatality were the parents. Gender of the child doesn’t matter – fatalities are almost evenly split between boys and girls. Not surprisingly, children in low socio-economic status households were far more likely to be battered or killed than those in other environments. Still, way too many kids in middle-class homes are still being abused, as well.

In Boston, Dr. Robert Sege of Boston Medical Center found that child abuse definitely increased in conjunction with the rise in unemployment. Here is what his team found: Starting in 2008, following the beginning of economic distress nationwide, their research recorded a 30% increase in child maltreatment cases, most of which involved neglect, and since 2009, the hospital has already recorded a steady increase. Sege’s study looked at all 50 states from 1990 through 2009 and found that for every 1% increase in unemployment, they found an increase in child abuse reports of at least 0.50 per 1000 children one year later.

It causes one to wonder if recent high profile child abuse reports could be a result of economic doldrums. Not all of these kids come from homes where parents are unemployed, but most American families are feeling the pinch of a lifeless economy. And, as you will see, it is not always the child’s parent who is the abuser:
• Take the recent case of Gary Johnson, Jr., 35, who beat up a 16-year-old in his own back yard. Watch:

• Then there is the case of the Alaska mom who couldn’t’ get her adopted son to behave, so she routinely poured hot sauce down his throat and forced him to take ice cold showers. Watch:

Jessica Beagley was given three years of probation, a 180-day suspended jail sentence and a $2,500 fine — also suspended — after she was convicted last week of misdemeanor child abuse. In easy terms, the judge slapped her hand. The message from the courts seems to be that so long as the child has not endured sexual abuse or actual bodily harm, there will really be no punishment. A suspended sentence and a suspended fine would not seem to be a great determent toward future abuse. And make no mistake – what Beagley did is abusive. Any child who was ever subjected to this type of abuse can tell you that such incidents are emotionally cumulative. They never really go away.

• Just wait a few years and ask the three grandsons of Christopher Carlson, 45 of Indianapolis. Carlson took the boys on grueling hikes through the Grand Canyon. Any or all of them could easily have died under the watchful eye of their grandfather, who said there were “tough people in the world” and his grandchildren needed to toughen up. Watch:

The facts are clear: Children are probably the most powerless citizens in our society, or any society. They have no decision-making power in the family, and they usually have no way out when they’re being battered, bloodied and kicked in the gut. Everybody knows abusers were usually abused when they were kids, so we are perpetuating the cycle of abuse by allowing the abusers to receive suspended sentences, or judicial mercy. If an abuser is found by a judge to be mentally incompetent to stand trial, and later found competent enough by doctors to rejoin society, chances are he or she will never stand trial and be let out to do it again. Cases of verbal or emotional abuse often never see the light of day in a courtroom, and if they do, the burden of proof is too high, and again, the abusers walk.

What can you do? The experts are in agreement: SPEAK UP if you know of or even suspect a child is being abused. Call anyone who will listen. Call the school, the church, the police. To find the appropriate agency or entity to call in any of the 50 states, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services operates the Child Welfare Information Gateway.

Somebody needed to call somebody before Jamar Johnson turned on his Wii game on June 21. Nobody did. He’s dead, his sister is without parents and his mother’s life, at age 21, is essentially over. Neighbors, friends or relatives who may have witnessed previous abuse were effectively enabling Crawford’s behavior when they failed to speak up. I, for one, wonder who Jamar Johnson may have become had he been able to grow up and escape East 227th St. He did not. And we will never know.

BIG ENOUGH FOR THE MOVIES

2011-08-31T13:31:00.003-05:00

It is unfortunate that every time someone mentions the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, it conjures treacherous, deadly images in each of us. The truth is that long before 9/11/2001 the Towers played a huge role in American culture. Where better to view that role than in American movies? In anticipation of the 10-year-anniversary of 9/11, Dan Meth, a cartoonist and director from New York put together a montage of most of the movies in which the Towers appeared. Here’s what Meth says about this effort: “From 1969 to 2001, the Twin Towers made countless cameos in Hollywood films. Sometimes featured prominently in the foreground, sometimes lurking in the distance. This montage celebrates the towers’ all-too-short film career with songs that capture the passing decades. Man, I miss them.”

So do we, Dan. But here you have given us a reason to celebrate all those years the Towers stood tallest in New York City. Thanks. [Best viewed full screen]

Twin Tower Cameos from Dan Meth on Vimeo.

CAN YOU BE ARRESTED FOR VIDEOTAPING THIS?

2011-08-25T12:58:00.011-05:00

Consider this scenario: You stumble upon a situation on the street in which you see what appears to be someone being harassed by the police. The subject of the harassment is in compliance with the police officers’ orders, but he or she is still being physically and/or verbally tormented. You know there is not much you can do to intervene, but it occurs to you that you can use your own smart phone to videotape the scene, so you do. Are you within your legal rights to do so? Is there any difference between videotaping police business in public, and videotaping anything else in public?

The answer to those questions appears fuzzy at this time. Just ask Emily good, a 28-year-old Rochester, NY woman who was arrested earlier this summer for videotaping police conducting a traffic stop in front of her house. She used her video camera while standing in her own front yard. She was charged with a misdemeanor for “obstructing governmental administration.” In truth, she was not obstructing anything. Obstruct means to prevent or hinder. She did neither. The charges were later dismissed. Watch what happened:

If Good’s experience were an isolated incident, perhaps we could chalk it up to just one cop exerting power over one citizen in an inappropriate fashion. But it is not isolated. It seems to be happening rather routinely coast to coast. Last year, Hartford County, MD resident Anthony Graber operated his motorcycle on the interstate highway at a high speed. He was pulled over for speeding by a man who identified himself as a state police officer. The officer was not in uniform and was driving an unmarked car. He approached Graber inexplicably holding a gun in his right hand. Graber was wearing a helmet with a camera in it and caught the incident on tape. When he posted the tape online a few days later, he was arrested for a felony charge of violating the state’s wiretapping law. Graber was jailed for 26 hours, not for speeding, but for videotaping the officer. The charges were later dismissed. Here is a report from CBS affiliate WJZ:

If you still question how common these types of arrests are, go to YouTube and put in the search term, “Arrested for videotaping police.” You may be surprised. These incidents beg the question: Does the Constitution protect your right to use cameras or video equipment as you see fit? Many argue the First Amendment protects us in that regard. Does the law vary from state to state or is there federal blanket protection of your rights? In the Maryland incident, Graber was arrested for wiretapping. Wiretapping is by its very nature a clandestine procedure. One does not allow the subject of a wiretap to know he or she is being listened to. Graber’s helmet camera was visible. Nothing was being hidden from the officer. That may have contributed to the charges being dropped.

And what about all the possible variables? What if you are filming your kids in the park, and in the background your camera picks up a cop physically assaulting someone? If your intention was to simply video your kids, but you later take the tape to law enforcement to report the cop’s illegal behavior, are you guilty of something? And what about a law enforcement officer’s illegal activity directed at you? If a cop asks or insists that you do something that is clearly illegal, strictly for his or her own gain or pleasure, and you tape it without the cop’s knowledge, have you somehow violated the law?

And it is not just law enforcement that is pushing the limits of your freedoms. Consider the town hall meeting that was held in Cincinnati this week. Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) issued a directive that attendees could not videotape any of the proceedings. Two television stations, however, were allowed to tape the whole meeting. When questioned by attendees who wanted to videotape the town hall, Chabot’s spokesperson said cameras were not allowed to “protect the privacy of constituents.” Watch what happened when two attendees (who were not together) each objected to having their cameras confiscated by a police officer charged with enforcing Chabot’s directive:

This makes one wonder what else the Congressman could insist upon in his town hall meeting. It should be noted that what appeared to be an open forum between him and his constituents actually was quite staged. Instead of allowing a free-flowing conversation, Chabot insisted that all questions had to be submitted to him and his staff before the town hall, and he chose to answer just those that suited him. If I were attending the meeting and my phone was confiscated, what if someone in my family had been trying to reach me to inform me of an emergency? I would not get the message until after the meeting. Chabot’s actions, which made national headlines the next day, appear to smack of First Amendment violations and censorship.

In short, here is what this is really about: Technology is advancing much faster than our ability to accommodate it legally and ethically. Suddenly we are all videographers, and we are relying on centuries-old laws and traditions to deal with our use of our modern equipment. Even if Chabot’s directive against video is somehow legal, is it ethical? Is there a difference between what I see through my own eyes and what I see through the lens of my video camera? Not really, but Chabot’s self-centered approach was to prevent widespread distribution of his comments via the Internet. He would deny it, but that was obviously his intention. By controlling his environment he restricts the flow of information. And again, doesn’t that imply his denial of the First Amendment?

Law enforcement employees (and they are indeed employees) and elected officials are clearly abusing their positions in the cases described herein and in many others. Until recently, the courts were not terribly sympathetic to citizen complaints regarding videotaping arrests. That seems to be slowly changing. The case some consider a watershed moment in this issue is that of Mitchell Crooks, a Las Vegas videographer who was beat up by Officer Derek Colling. Watch:

Colling, who has also been involved in the killings of two private citizens in the past five years, was put on paid suspension after this incident. That was in the first week of April. In July, a Vegas police internal investigation sustained Crooks’ complaint against Colling, which means Crooks’ case can go forward. That’s progress. Still, since Colling was found in violation of department policies, why is he still employed? It is clear from the video and from the department’s own findings that Colling physically assaulted Crooks, and that he purposely tried to destroy Crooks’ camera. If I did that, wouldn’t I be locked up? And how will the Vegas police make a case that their officer’s job performance was in any way obstructed by Crooks and his camera?

Here’s a thought: All that energy that cops and politicians are extending to cause videographers like you and me to stop using our equipment? Why not use that energy to combat another technological advancement that truly is a threat to all of us? Why not start arresting people for texting while driving? Texting behind the wheel is going to cause a lot more death and destruction than anybody’s video camera ever could. Just a thought. Are you listening officers? And how about you Congressmen and women…if you want to save your jobs and some lives all at the same time, consider it.

DEATH BY TELEVISION

2011-08-17T22:02:00.011-05:00

Under other circumstances, when Russell Armstrong was found hanging by an electrical cord in his room this week, it may not have been newsworthy to anyone other than his family and close friends. But Armstrong’s death made national news, largely because he is the husband of Taylor Armstrong (above, with Russell and their daughter), one of the featured players on the Bravo network’s “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” a (sort-of) reality program that builds on the franchise previously established in cities including Atlanta, Orange County, New York and New Jersey. These programs focus on the day-to-day lives of a group of upper middle-class women who are either friends or related. For some of us, the “Housewives” productions are mere guilty pleasures. For Armstrong, one might say it was a death sentence.

The husbands in these programs are usually relegated to sub plots or background stories. Armstrong’s place in the Beverly Hills edition was never quite clear. He agreed to be seen on camera, often in a most unflattering light. His rigid, rather lifeless persona served mostly to highlight the troubled marriage he shared with Taylor. To say he was an ancillary character in the show would be an overstatement of his role. So, Armstrong’s death would be just a quirky TV meets real life human interest story if it were not for the fact that he is just the latest in a growing list of reality TV casualties. Beset by his marital woes, accusations of physical spousal abuse and reported mounting financial difficulties, Russell checked out in a way that Bravo may build into this season’s show.

Armstrong’s death, while not predictable, is problematic in that it showcases how supposed entertainment media and real life are crashing into one another in a lethal fashion. It began with Jenny Jones – remember her? The vacuous television talk show host presented an hour in 1995 about “secret crushes.” The premise was that someone would come on the show to find out who had a secret crush on them. In this case, a young man named Johnathan Schmitz found out that his admirer was none other than another man, named Scott Amedure. It made for a mildly entertaining hour of embarrassment, blushing and awkwardness when the apparently heterosexual Schmitz had to react in front of a studio audience. To make a long, sordid story too short, later that night, a humiliated Schmitz murdered Amedure.

Amedure's death is not an isolated incident. In 2000, Ralf Panitz was convicted of murdering his ex-wife, Nancy Campbell-Panitz after the two had a particularly ugly confrontation on “The Jerry Springer Show.” In 2003 MTV’s “The Real World” was rocked by a rape charge from one housemate made against another. In 2009, the UK version of “Big Brother” included a house resident named Sree Dasari, who slashed his wrists after being mocked and cast out of the Big Brother House. In two separate incidents, participants in Chef Gordon Ramsey’s “Kitchen Nightmares” committed suicide, each within a year after appearing on the show.

The list of reality TV tragedies goes on and continues to grow. The important social question is, how far is too far in commercial entertainment, and should someone be regulating the reality TV genre? And if the answer to the latter question is “yes,” who should be assigned that responsibility other than the production companies and networks whose primary goal is commercial gain? Further, why is it that the exploitation of personal interaction on these shows always seems to be based on humiliating someone? Dating shows (e.g. “The Bachelor,” etc.) create their drama by “eliminating” potential suitors. Physical competition shows (e.g. “Survivor”) rely on exploitation of individual physical and mental weakness. Cohabitation shows (e.g. “Big Brother,” “The Real World”) draw viewers in by highlighting character and personality flaws, such as addictions, sexuality issues and cultural naivete. Contestants or participants in many of these shows are clearly selected based on their inabilities, rather than their strengths.

Does commercial television have an ethical responsibility to not do this? You could make an argument either way, but when people are dying because of media’s misuse of the free enterprise system, then it would seem only logical that ethics should kick in. Remember way back in the 1990s when Oprah Winfrey decided to turn her back on the Jenny Jones/Geraldo Rivera/Jerry Springer trash talk show genre and focus on entertainment and personal growth programming? It worked – she made a LOT of money and kept her audience for a quarter century. She proved one can do good and do well all at the same time.

Could a stronger ethical construct on the part of Bravo have saved Russell Armstrong? Perhaps. In an interview with PEOPLE Magazine just weeks before his death, Armstrong said, "It got really overwhelming. When you get a TV show involved and all the pressure, it just takes it to a whole new level. … We were pushed to extremes.” After learning of her son's suicide, Armstrong's mother, John Ann Hotchikiss told HLN's Jane Velez Mitchell, “Before the new season even started, before he took his life, he said, ‘Mom, they’re just going to crucify me this season.' He said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’ll never survive it.’”

Does any of this make Bravo culpable in Armstrong’s death? Legally, probably not. Back in 1999 a jury awarded Scott Amedure’s family $25 million, after they sued the Jenny Jones show for negligence. But the verdict was later overturned on appeal. But ethically? Bravo would be hard pressed to argue the network did not play a role. When people leading private lives are suddenly thrust into the public spotlight in the most unflattering way possible by manipulative media organizations that know exactly what they’re doing – well, you be the judge.

If the reality TV trend is now socially out of control, it may be that same free enterprise system that neutralizes it. For years the word has been that producing a reality show is so much less expensive than producing a regular television scripted drama. In some cases it was reported that reality TV shows were produced for as little as $300,000 an episode, while a nighttime drama can cost upwards of $2 -3 million. That’s changing. Now that reality stars are becoming celebrities in their own right, they are demanding higher and higher salaries. Think “The Situation” on “Jersey Shore, now reportedly earning $100,000 per episode. As their asking prices skyrocket, the industry may realize reality TV shows and their stars are not worth the bad publicity generated by, say, one Russell Armstrong suicide. Stay tuned.

AL GORE IS PISSED

2011-08-09T18:20:00.001-05:00

Former Vice-President and global warming communicator Al Gore addressed the Aspen Institute last week. He talked about many issues, but when he got to those who dispute the existence of global warming, he let loose. Clearly frustrated by what he sees as pure ignorance, Gore’s real concern is that while people are debating the reality of global warming, more and more damage is happening to the earth. Gore is one of the most activistic former VPs in the country’s modern history, but advocating for the environment can be tough, particularly when the arguments for and against are always along partisan lines. Listen to what 35 years of an uphill battle will do to a guy – even a former Vice-President of the U.S. You can fast forward to 22:46 to hear for yourself, or listen to the entire highlights of Gore's speech: Al Gore highlights by aspenjournalism

HERE COME THE TEAVANGELICALS

2011-08-07T20:21:00.014-05:00

Here’s a disturbing image: On Saturday, the governor of the second largest state in America stood on a stage with a group of ministers at an event sponsored by the American Family Association. If you are not familiar with this group, just know it is a Miss.-based organization that claims the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion only applies to Christians. The AFA is currently sponsoring a boycott of Home Depot, a company it has deemed too gay friendly. The group also opposes abortion and routinely releases rhetoric that makes it a borderline hate group. It is with this group that Texas Governor Rick Perry stood in solidarity at an event called “The Response” on Saturday.

The rally at which Perry spoke is one of the most high profile examples of what is becoming known as the “Teavangelical” movement. The inevitable collision of the religious right and neo-conservative politics is now a full-fledged movement. That it excludes so many segments of the population does not seem to bother potential presidential candidates like Rick Perry and candidate Michele Bachmann, and that should hotly bother the rest of us on so many levels. Chief among them is the American tradition separating church and state, a principle that dates back to the beginning of our nation. Here, for example is what President Thomas Jefferson said in 1808: “Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”

Conversely, Rick Perry (left) has now aligned himself with a group that is unashamed of its commitment to white, ultra-conservative Christians, and to its belief that God alone should be guiding the political process. Nobody mentions free will. Nobody mentions civil rights. Nobody ever utters the word “democracy.” It has become clear that in Rick Perry’s world, if you are gay, Muslim, black, Jewish, a believer in freedom of choice or an atheist, you don’t really have a place in modern America.

In an increasingly crowded list of Republican presidential candidates, Perry is not alone in his assertion that the solution to our nation’s woes is a return to God. On the same day Perry stood alongside the AFA, former Minnesota Governor and current presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty said this to a gathering in Iowa: “…we need to be a nation that turns toward God, not away from God.” Pawlenty also paraphrased the Old Testament: “If my people, who are called by name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I’ll hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land.” Pawlenty even has a website called PawlentyFaith.com, where the lead video is only about his Christian faith. In it, he says, “My faith is very important to me; it influences everything I do.” Watch:

Pawlenty and others who are blurring the line between religion and politics often refer to the founding fathers and emphasize their stated faith in God. No one disputes that they were men of faith. In fact, many of us respect that. But the founding fathers never made a move to emphasize one faith or one belief as that which should guide the American government. In 1823, James Madison wrote, “The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both.” The point is that just as Mrs. Pawlenty harkens to the founding fathers to support her narrow belief system, others can point to the founding fathers to support opposing views. Let’s instead rely on our collective intelligence and our ability to make strong decisions based on our intellect. Wouldn’t that put us all on more even ground? Wouldn’t that really reaffirm our belief in the democracy?

Saturday was a big day in conservative circles. In addition to Perry’s questionable decision to stand firm with the AFA, and Pawlenty’s teavangelistic rant in Iowa, Michele Bachman (right) found herself endorsed by 100 pastors and Christian leaders. Of course, each of them was careful to note that they were personally endorsing the tea party queen bee, and not endorsing her on behalf of their church. That’s because they don’t want to lose their tax-exempt status, which hangs in the balance whenever their church dives too deeply into the political arena. Since 1954, the IRS has prohibited churches from endorsing political candidates.

So what drives this burgeoning religiosity across the nation? Is it some sort of spiritual awakening? And if it is, what sort of spirituality would accommodate such exclusivity? Or is it possible the increasingly assertive religious right is due to the prolonged economic distress in the U.S.? Perry and others are making statements that seem to imply our economic and political future are in the hands of God. I, for one am not ready to concede that much of my free will, are you? When voting day comes, I’ll most respect the candidate who presents the clearest platform for progress – economic, social and political –and who respects everyone’s right to worship or not worship. I’m Jewish. In the Teavangelical’s version of America, there really isn’t a space for me, and my only reaction to that is that I’m not having it.

I don’t think Americans in majority are having it either. History shows we Americans rarely vote en masse for extremism of any kind. The teavangelical view of America is a closed set. The movement is discriminatory. That’s not who we are. If you want to know what I have faith in, it is the collective reasonableness of the American people not to allow us to be beamed back to the 1950s.

GLENN BECK, PLEASE GO AWAY

2011-07-27T15:46:00.021-05:00

Three years ago, when I started this blog, I made a conscious decision that I was not going to provide Glenn Beck any more ink than the mass media already had. It had already become, by 2008, journalistically trendy to stir the pot by writing defamatory words about Beck. I tried to honor my commitment to myself not to write about him, no matter how objectionable his rhetoric or disgusting his persona. But casting caution to the wind, here it is – a full lead story on Glenn Beck. Sigh.

He is, after all, the most extreme broadcast character America has seen or heard since Dr. Laura Schlesinger (below, left). Schlesinger, you will recall, unceremoniously ended her own career by indulging in her now infamous “nigger, nigger, nigger” rant, live on air in 2010. Schlesinger resigned soon after. But Beck has been hanging on for quite some time now. It was way back in 2009 when he called President Obama a racist who had “exposed himself as a guy” with a “deep seated hatred of white people.”

This happened on July 28, 2009. By the first week in August, Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble and Progressive Insurance, three of Beck’s major advertisers had pulled out of his show. What followed was the snowballing of cancelled advertisers, which ultimately numbered just under 300. Yet Fox saw fit to retain Beck’s services until this past month, when they finally, and mercifully, deleted him from the airwaves. However, even if his face is no longer visible every afternoon on television, his voice is heard daily on radio. And since losing his television show, the vitriol he espouses on his radio show has hit new lows, even for him.

This week, after the tragic shootings at the youth camp in Norway, Beck saw fit to compare the victims to “Nazi youth.” Listen:

Aside from the obvious poor taste he exhibits here, his unseemly comments are an affront to the families of all of those young people who were assassinated. And that was, without any doubt, Beck’s mission. Now that he no longer has access to millions of viewers every time the little red light blinks on the camera, Beck is desperately amping up his rhetoric on the radio. Essentially, he is begging people to listen to him by saying the most outrageous words he can muster.

What we see when we watch or listen to Beck is a man who craves attention in an almost sociopathic fashion. In February of this year Beck called reformed Judaism “radicalized Islam.” This was also the year that Beck feigned vomiting, on the air, when he saw a public service spot about skin cancer in which Megan McCain was supposedly nude (right). That was just after he encouraged people to leave their churches if the clergyman mentioned the words “social justice.” Just last month Beck warned his audience that Obama is out to “de-develop” America and cut average income to $14,000/year. That was the same program in which he said Obama is more corrupt than Richard Nixon and might kill 10 percent of the U.S. population.

Aside from the obvious extremism and lack of factual material, Beck’s on-air persona has certainly cheapened broadcasting in a way no one else has in recent memory. His audience seems to eat it up. But statistics show he is preaching to the choir. According to Quantcast, a company that measures audience traffic and characteristics, Beck’s audience on Clear Channel Radio is 95 percent white, with the largest contingent over the age of 50. Sixty percent of his listeners are male. Beck’s TV audience had actually been cut in half over the past three years, according to Nielsen, from a high of about 2.8 million viewers to a closing audience of 1.6 million.

As usual, one could surmise the numbers tell the story. But do they? One and a half million people is still a lot of people, and how many more do they influence or represent who were not home in the afternoon to listen to Beck’s inane ranting? The history of the broadcast industries in this country suggests that audiences perceive on-air personalities as powerful. (Remember Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America?”)
Entertainers are seen as powerful in that the audience looks up to them in a socio/cultural fashion. But people like Beck, who present themselves as more journalist than entertainer (although he is clearly not a journalist) are often perceived as knowledgeable, wise and authoritative. That above-mentioned choir that Beck amassed over the years showed up in the thousands last year when Beck summoned them to Washington for his “Restore Honor” rally (above, left). He has followers. And we all know how dangerous it can be when a true extremist has followers. They drink the damn Kool-Aid.

At a minimum, Beck is second only to Ann Coulter in his disrespect for Americans. After all, it is he who said, “You know it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims’ families…When I see the families on television, I’m like, oh shut up…I’m so sick of them because they’re always complaining.” But at an extreme, Beck’s rhetoric is incendiary at a time in America when masses of unemployed and marginalized citizens are easy prey for a preacher of paranoia and doom. He is an absolute case study in abuse of the First Amendment, and use of the airwaves to promote a personal agenda. His agenda is attention. He lives for it.

Beck’s self- described American hero, Orson Welles (below, right) was in his own way an extremist, but he made it clear he was not political and his mission was drama. Beck, on the other hand, would have you believe his mission is saving America from itself. In the end, Beck is a fraud who needs a spotlight more than he needs clean air to breathe, who craves financial and material wealth to an extreme, who says whatever it takes to force the public to focus on him, rather than the issues, and whose own megalomania will most likely be his undoing. But on the road to that end, he remains inordinately influential in an oversize segment of middle America. It is that audience that seems vulnerable to uninformed rhetoric that assaults the imperfect system that nonetheless offers them the most freedom of any country on earth.

Glenn Beck’s shtick is the stuff of great performance art. Webster’s defines performance art: “A nontraditional art form often with political or topical themes that typically features a live presentation to an audience or onlookers.” Cambridge says this: “A type of theatrical entertainment in which the artist's personality and the way in which they create and develop their ideas form part of the show.” Sounds harmless enough, right? That is, until it becomes propaganda, and until it works to the detriment of those who view it. Glenn Beck’s curtain needs to come down, the sooner the better.

JUSTICE DENIED: YOU CAN HELP

2011-07-26T08:47:00.005-05:00

There are those who say our justice system does not work more often than it does. Exhibit A: Raquel Nelson, of Marietta,GA, whose 3-year-old son was killed as she and her three children tried to cross a four-lane thoroughfare after disembarking from a city bus. The hit and run driver, blind in one eye, who admitted he had been drinking, and who has two prior convictions for hit and run, served six months and is now on probation. Nelson faces a possible three-year prison sentence for jaywalking. Please watch this video for details, and sign a petition here in support of Nelson:

MUSINGS ON OUR 'ANYTHING GOES' SOCIETY

2011-07-25T09:43:00.012-05:00

When I saw that guy try to throw a cream pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face at the Parliament hearings, I was disgusted. I’m not a Murdoch fan, but if we’re going to get to the bottom of the hacking scandal and any other corporate/journalistic transgressions on the part of his company, pies in faces do not advance the cause. The guy who threw the pie, Jonathan May-Bowles, or “Johnnie Marbles” as he calls himself on Twitter, took an already unseemly situation and simply threw it into the gutter. Why is it that the gutter is so popular?

On the same day that Johnnie Marbles reached out for his 15 minutes, an ABC news reporter, Brian Ross, was allegedly shoved by Michele Bachman’s security detail, when he tried to simply do his job. Ross was reportedly attempting to ask candidate Bachman about her recently revealed migraine headaches. The man tries to do his job, pursue a story that could be relevant to Bachman’s candidacy, and her staff responds by pushing him out of the way. Civility, gentlemen – please.

Am I the only one who misses civility? Public figures are routinely uncivil to one another in politics, entertainment, sports, business and even religion. Their overly-publicized bad behavior seems to set the tone for the common man. Just a couple of weeks ago in Waveland, MS, a Hammond, a LA priest was shot to death with his own pistol, by a guy named Jeremy Wayne Manieri. The killer stole the priest’s money and his Chevy, then picked up his ex-wife and kids and headed to Disney World. He didn’t make it – he got caught, but it is the nature of the crime and the sociopathic personality that would perpetrate it that is so stunning. It is the ultimate act of uncivility. What is it in our culture that breeds people who kill priests so they can go to Disney World? And while we’re at it, why did the priest have a handgun at a retreat facility?

Some might say that some uncivil behavior is harmless. Take the report from this week’s Smoking Gun,” titled “We’re going to need a cleanup in lane three.” It seems a young couple decided to have sex in a public swimming pool, in broad daylight, with many children and their parents present. Even when told by the pool manager to stop, they continued. I love this line in the story: “While it is unclear what drove the couple to allegedly engage in public fornication, the heat wave gripping the country’s mid-section has forced many sweltering Americans to seek a cool, watery respite.” Oh please. You can only imagine the cracks people will make in the Smoking Gun comments section about this one.

But then there are the uncivilized acts that do not invite humor. Consider Walter Bagdasarian (below, right), a California resident who posted an apparent death threat to President Obama in 2008. Here is exactly what he posted: "Shoot the nigger. Country fucked for another 4+ years, what nigger has done ANYTHING right???? Long Term???? Never in history, except sambos." As well as, "Fuck the nigger; he will have a 50 cal in the head soon." Days after Bagdasarian indulged in this online rant, the Secret Service raided his home and found six firearms and a total of 500 rounds of ammunition in each caliber. He was arrested, and freed on $100,000 bail. (That means if he put up 10%, or $10,000, he could just go home). Bagdasarian was convicted in U.S. District Court of making death threats against a presidential candidate. That’s pretty uncivil, wouldn’t you say? He faced up to a decade in prison.

End of story, right? Wrong. This week, the 9th District U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, stating that while his statements were “repugnant,” they were not criminal. The court also stated that no reasonable person would have taken the threats seriously. Gosh, really? All I can think of right now, is WWGGS? (What would Gabrielle Giffords say?)

The current cultural lack of civility is endemic. For example, as hard as those of us from the 1960s and70s tried to evolve the word “`nigger” out of the language, young black men and the entire hip hop industry refuses to cooperate and perpetuate the use of the word and its negative connotation.
Where once the word “fuck” was actually considered profane, it is now routinely used in all of its many forms – fuck you, fuck me, fucking idiot, motherfucker – well, you know the rest, and I’m as guilty as anybody else. Young men in our society, even after decades of the feminist movement’s efforts, still reduce young women to little more than their genitalia, routinely referring to women as “bitches” and terms I choose not to repeat here. Straight people still denigrate gay people by characterizing them as somehow ‘less than’ and by discriminating against them in law, in employment, in marriage and in so many other ways. Corporate America still somehow sees fit to maintain the good old boys club of white men in power, at the expense of women and minorities.

I have found that after one lives long enough to really observe the culture in the long term, it can be pretty discouraging. It’s not something you can think about all the time, because it would tend to sully your overall view of humanity – or the lack thereof. But it is worth considering that culturally, we are often closer to the gutter than perhaps we should allow ourselves to be. What is the danger in this? Simply that as our societal standards become lower, so do our expectations. If we expect less out of life, out of our fellow citizens, out of our government and educational system and out of our cultural heroes, that is what we will likely get.

Listen, not that it’s the main event here, but does anybody besides me worry that this summer’s most popular tour for the young teen audience is Ke$sha’s “Get Sleazy” tour? Your know, the one where Ke$ha sings these sweet, lilting lyrics to her barely pubescent fans: “Just grab a bottle, some boys & let's take it back to my basement and get sleazy.” And this: “The beat so phat, gonna make me cum, um, um, um.”

Oy. We’ve sunk. So. Low. Gotta run. “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” is on in five.

DANGER – DANGER! MICHELE BACHMANN IS TALKING CRAZY TALK

2011-07-14T16:06:00.011-05:00

Have you noticed that nobody seems to argue that a woman can’t be President of the U.S. anymore? As recently as the 2008 presidential election, many people debated Hillary Clinton’s viability as a candidate, simply because “the country is not ready for a woman President.” I have not heard one person say that this year about the two women who have made noises about becoming Chief Exec, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. From my vantage point, the reason we aren’t hearing the sexist argument we heard in ’08 is simply that there are so many bigger and more substantive arguments against either of these women holding a high office in the U.S. government. Palin, through her behavior and misguided statements has made it clear to the public that she is not really prepared to be a national legislator or leader. Bachmann, however, while similarly ill prepared to lead the country, is soldiering on, and right now, polls show her gaining ground.

Polls this far out from the election don’t mean a whole lot. Everybody knows that. Still, there are a lot of reasons to reject her as a candidate. Radical liberals will talk about her neo-conservative views. But a lot of us out here are really more centrists than liberals, and we’re doing our best to be open to all possible candidates – as long as they cut the crazy talk. Come on: Can somebody tell me why a significant part of the electorate is taking someone serious who thinks the founding fathers in 1776 were “working tirelessly to abolish slavery?”; someone who thinks homosexuality is a disease and whose own husband counsels homosexuals to simply read the Bible and become celibate as the antidote to their apparent affliction?; someone who said out loud that the Obama administration is “afraid” of her?; who stretches the truth and exaggerates, time after time, like the time she said President Obama’s trip to India last year cost the taxpayers $200 million a day?; or the time she … well, you get the picture, right?

Panels of talking heads on Fox News will argue that media is overstating Michele Bachmann’s crazy talk. They will tell use the sexism card, arguing that were Bachmann a man, she would be given a free pass on some of her frequent public gaffes. You know, gaffes, like the time she said John Quincy Adams was one of the founding fathers of our country, when in truth, in 1776 Adams was nine years old. Or like the time she got American hero actor John Wayne confused with serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Woops, there I go overstating Michele’s “misstatements.”

Listen, she is out there every single day facing cameras and microphones and throngs of voters. I get it. It’s hard to not say the wrong thing now and then. Keywords: NOW AND THEN. But Bachmann routinely makes mistaken historical references, and exaggerated statements about social issues that she clearly has not truly studied. Way back in 2004 she said this about gay people: “Any of you who have members of your family that are in the lifestyle-we have a member of our family that is. This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay. It's anything but gay." Her tune has remained constant on this particular ditty.
That reminds me of the story about Bachmann, when she was state senator. She went to the ladies room during a gay rights rally and a lesbian ex-nun approached her to ask her her views on one of the issues being discussed. Bachmann bolted from the restroom, reportedly screaming, “Help, I’m being held against my will,” and ran to a waiting SUV in tears. It begs the question: What will would-be “President” Bachmann do when a gay American tries to talk to her, say, at a press conference, or at a State dinner? Will she scream bloody murder and report it to the police as she did after the incident with the former nun?

There are more weighty issues to consider regarding Bachmann’s attitude toward gay people. First, the issue of gay marriage is not going away anytime soon. Whether she likes it or not (and she clearly does not), gay Americans are gaining ground in their quest for equal civil rights. She would not be able to simply avoid the issue. Further, the U.S. provides hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding to prevent and fight the spread of AIDS in underdeveloped countries. People of Bachman’s mindset often still see HIV/AIDS as a “gay” disease. Will she fight to cut off this funding?

And then there’s that pesky little issue of Marcus Bachmann, her husband. It is widely reported now that Marcus Bachmann (right, with Michele) has a clinic that dedicates itself to “reparative” therapy designed to turn gay people straight. He denies this, but former clients have come forward to reveal what happened when Bachmann got ahold of them and tried to “cure” them. If you really want to know who Michele Bachmann has been married to for the past umpteen years, you need to hear what John M. Becker, a happily married (to a man) gay man who went undercover recently to investigate Bachmann’s clinic. You can read about his experience here, but just know that he was assured his “lifestyle” was not legitimate and that he had to do everything possible to change his sexuality. Did I mention the Bachmann clinic is state and federally funded? Watch this CNN report about the Marcus Bachmann clinic controversy:

Then, just days ago, it was revealed that in 2006 Michele Bachmann said, ““The Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.” So, let’s do the math. Michele Bachmann wants to be President, while she submits to her husband, who believes gay people are sick and need to be cured. An undefined percentage of the American population is gay. Since the Bachmanns are in concert in their belief that Satan is dancing around inside gay people’s heads, will she simply choose to fully marginalize the entire homosexual population of this country, including her own lesbian sister? And if she can see herself doing that to gay people, who else will she exclude from the American dream? What other population segments do not fit neatly into the narrow Bachmann acceptance category? Let’s see: We know Democrats are not allowed in. We know that many Republicans are not running parallel with the Bachmann philosophies. We know people who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, which Bachmann did at 16, are not in favor. We know that strong, assertive women who do not adhere to wifely submission are on the outs. Let’s add it all up now. Who remains? Just the Tea Party.

There is not, and never has been a presidential candidate who would spread the legislative and socio/economic love to all segments of the American population. But there has rarely been one whose political and societal scope has been as limited as that of Michele Bachmann. The danger in remotely considering her as a serious candidate is the precedent that it sets. Few people truly believe she will be the leader of the free world. It is inconceivable. But the more steam her quest gains on the campaign trail, the more our electoral system is trivialized. And the more personal power her narrow band of supporters begins to feel, the more the rest of Americans have to fear about their politics, their personal choices and their human independence. You know what? Right now in America, Michele Bachmann is dangerous.

NANCY GRACE: JUDGE, JURY & EXECUTIONER

2011-07-12T20:28:00.008-05:00

While reciting my daily “all hail the digital communication revolution,” I can’t help wondering how we might work out some of the quirks. Early on, one of them was named Martin Downey, Jr., a bombastic, chain smoking talk show host who liked to call women pigs, who once beat up a gay guest on his show and who thought nothing of getting in to verbally abusive screaming matches with audience members who disagreed with him. He opened doors for people like Jerry Springer. We media consumers knew all along that personalities of this ilk were really just entertainers. The problem these days has more to do with broadcasters who take themselves very seriously and who somehow engender the respect and loyalty of big audience segments. Think Nancy Grace.

Grace, a former prosecuting attorney whose focus is victims’ rights, came into the public consciousness as a commentator for Court TV, but really emerged in TV as a frequent guest on CNN’s Larry King show. These days, she hosts her own show on HLN. A onetime English major, Grace changed her major to law after her fiancée was murdered when she was just 19 years old. Sounds impressive, huh? Well, some things look so much better on paper than they do in real life.

Nancy Grace, it appears, has a problem with boundaries – in law, on television and in conversation. Grace’s bully pulpit is her nightly HLN show, where she makes no attempt to hide her feelings about the court cases she covers. In 2006, Grace interviewed Melinda Duckett (left), the mother of a two-year-old child who was reported missing. The interview was brutal. Grace stopped just short of accusing Duckett of murder, but her questioning was relentless and highly accusatory in tone. The next morning Duckett shot herself in the head. Her family filed a wrongful death suit against Grace and CNN (parent company of HLN). The case was later settled out of court. For her part, Grace was unapologetic about her treatment of Duckett, telling ABC news, “"If anything, I would suggest that guilt made Melinda Duckett commit suicide." At the time of her suicide, there was no real evidence to suggest Duckett had harmed or killed her child.

That same year a young woman accused three Duke University lacrosse players of raping her at a party. Grace took the case on as her case of the moment and at one point stated, “I’m so glad they didn’t miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like a gang rape.” After some intense courtroom drama and a protracted trial, all charges were dropped against the three male students and it was revealed the young woman had lied. Somehow, Nancy Grace had rushed to the judgment that the young woman was a victim. She was not.

These instances are more the rule than the exception in Grace’s television career. It makes for compelling TV, and it certainly amasses HLN some unprecedented ratings. During the recent Casey Anthony child murder trial, Grace’s ratings increased steadily throughout. By July 5, when the not guilty verdict was read, Grace delivered the highest ratings in HLN’s 29-year history. Anthony, who Grace inexplicably nicknamed “Tot Mom” throughout her coverage of the trial, was found guilty by Grace way before she was found not guilty by the judicial system. Here is a typical segment of Grace’s show during the Anthony trial:

Grace’s over-the-top, judgmental coverage of this trial has firmly secured her position in broadcasting as a rogue anti-journalist whose apparent motive is indeed viewership, rather than victims’ rights. Broadcasters from all corners of the television industry have roundly criticized her approach to this case. On a recent Bill O’Reilly show, she defended herself this way:

So, why is any of this relevant? Simply because the average media consumer does not necessarily distinguish between, say, Brian Williams and Nancy Grace, or Christine Amanpour and Nancy Grace. Those whose faces are nicely framed on camera and whose words are delivered to millions of viewers/listeners are all looked upon as in the know about whatever it is they talk about. That Grace is trained as a lawyer and Diane Sawyer is trained as a journalist has little or no impact on the media consumer. In the eyes of many viewers there is little difference in the credibility of entertainer Glen Beck and reporter Wolf Blitzer. They are both on television, they’re both delivering information and each is widely known. Therein lies the danger. We consumers would not trust our legal troubles to a reporter, but somehow many people trust a lawyer to function as a reporter.

What the digital communication revolution has wrought is Nancy Grace, an angry, judgmental, sometimes ill-informed attorney who often speaks out of turn and before she thinks through what she has to say. She presents herself as a person who has answers, rather than a person who asks intelligent, appropriate questions of those who might truly have answers. She uses the guests on her show to either validate her pre-conceived opinions, or as whipping posts for her disdain of those she judges. Through it all, Grace, who purports to revere the American judicial system, trivializes it by making exaggerated claims that enrage the public, and by pre-judging defendants on television, rather than allowing the court to do its job. It is similar to what she did as a prosecuting attorney. The record shows twice in the 1990s she was called out by the Georgia Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct. The first time the Court called her behavior "inexcusable." The next time the Court said she showed "a disregard for due process and fairness."

As a journalist, I can’t say I’ve seen a more dangerous time in the industry. Individuals like Grace, who do not know how to present information and allow interview subjects to move a story along, are altering the system in a way that makes them the focus, rather than the story itself. And as all good journalists know, once the reporter becomes the story, the value of his or her reporting is nullified. Once the conveyer of information (on television, in print or online) shapes the national conversation, rather than simply facilitating it, the public dialogue is irreversibly sullied. And that is exactly what Nancy Grace does, every night, in prime time, on HLN. Grace clearly does not understand the negative impact she now has on broadcasting, and on those victims she so vehemently wants to support and defend. Sadly, those victims will be the biggest losers of all, inextricably lost in the shuffle of bad information, biased reporting and a TV show that values big numbers over true justice.

THE MAN WHO ALMOST GOT AWAY WITH KILLING JOURNALISM

2011-07-11T11:45:00.011-05:00

On the News of the World website, announcing its final edition on Sunday, July 10, the UK paper patted itself on the back with these words: “After 168 years, we finally say a sad but very proud farewell.”

Proud. Proud of what? Proud of the phone hacking scandal that killed your newspaper, the one that went so far as to hack the cell phone of missing 13-year-old Milly Dowler, even taking the liberty of erasing some of the voicemail messages on her phone when the mailbox became full? One might call that destroying evidence. Is NoTW proud of hacking phone conversations of the royal family? How proud are they of bribing police officers for information? Is it a source of real pride that their amoral billionaire owner Rupert Murdoch bought the century-plus old paper in 1969 and reduced it to a tabloid rag that blatantly mixed photos of topless women with salacious gossip about B-list entertainers and low life criminals?

(If you’re not up on the whole News of the World debacle, click here for a quick timeline update of events from CNN and here for the Daily Beast’s photographic who’s who of the major players).

Any journalist with a modicum of a moral compass would agree NoTW was the definition of sloppy reporting and opportunistic, intrusive journalism. Owner Rupert Murdoch also owns the New York Post and Fox News, neither of which will ever be held as bastions of ethical reportage. So this month when the phone hacking scandal broke wide open and spelled death for the newspaper, it was not a shock. Neither is it surprising to hear that the closing of this newspaper was actually in the works for months, in an effort to trim expenses and absorb only the most valuable staffers into other Murdoch properties. Murdoch, with his usual flare for fantasy, would have us believe he closed the paper to retain the dignity of parent company News Corp after NoTW brought shame to the company.

Tabloid trash journalism is legendary in the UK, but it is certainly NoTW that invented it in its contemporary genre. And if it’s way over on the other side of the pond, you may wonder what this all has to do with you and why it is dominating headlines in this country. It has everything to do with you. The modern media world may be international in scope, but industrially speaking, it is strictly a local enterprise. More simply put, what happens in the halls of the biggest media companies in the world trickles down to your own six o’clock news. As NoTW goes, so goes journalism? God, let’s hope not. Still, it is stunning to know that even in our high tech, gotcha world, an organization as large and powerful as NoTW would have the unmitigated arrogance to tap the phones of British royalty, politicians, celebrities and crime victims. Evidently, the higher ups did not fear being caught. To hear some of the former staffers talk since the scandal erupted, it seems phone hacking was de rigueur.

One can safely conclude the free enterprise system in the media world has gone awry. NoTW may serve as the window that allows media consumers like you and me to see what is happening behind newsroom doors. The competition among media organizations to be first and fastest with information has sullied the final product. No one is guiltier than Murdoch for lowering the bar when it comes to standards and ethics in the news business. That he has fallen prey to his own hubris is a little something we call karma. And the company’s over-anxious reporting shows no signs of slowing. It was Murdoch’s New York Post that earlier this month ran a story about the hotel maid who accused IMF chief Dominick Strauss-Kahn of rape, with this headline: “Maid Cleaning Up As Hooker.” The article uses only one unnamed source to allege that the accuser has a history of charging hotel guests for sex. The maid has now sued the Post for libel
.
This is not to say that your local paper or your favorite local news station is hacking into your phones. But it is representative of an unfortunate downturn in the ethical construct of journalism. You see it in subtle ways. For example, if in your town there is a bloody murder with video footage of family members screaming in shock at the sight of their loved one laying in the street, and on the same day a story breaks about an economic windfall from state government that will significantly improve your children’s local schools, which story do you believe will lead the 10 p.m. newscast? My guess is the bloody victim in the street wins. By placing the shooting story first, the news station accomplishes two things: First, it keeps you from changing the channel, which is their ultimate goal. Second, their own editorial judgment and ordering of news stories serves to persuade you that a story about school funding is not “sexy” enough to be considered a lead story. Blood and guts wins over your children’s future.

Did you know that on June 6, the same day former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner revealed that indeed he did send inappropriate photos of himself to women, five U.S. soldiers were killed in a rocket attack in Baghdad? The New York Post, among others, gave little or no ink to the deaths. It was the largest single day loss of American lives in Iraq in two years. Were Weiner’s sexual exploits really of more national importance than the deaths of five young men in a war in which we are supposedly no longer participating? The youngest was 20, the oldest 27. One of them, PFC Michael Olivieri, 26, was one week away from returning home to Homer Glen, IL to celebrate his one year wedding anniversary and to attend the wedding of his sister. Seems newsworthy, but current journalistic mores dictate that sex trumps dead soldiers.

The true job of a journalist is to convey information in its purest and most unbiased fashion to you. If you truly want to know what happened to the profession, look no further than Rupert Murdoch. He, and several others in the industry who have forgotten the critical importance of ethics are shaping the discipline of reporting to meet their economic objectives, rather than to keep you properly informed. To paraphrase a popular idiom, Money talks, truth walks. So, what can you do to keep yourself current on world, national and local events?
Get your news from a variety of sources, rather than simply those that validate your own socio/political bias. Listen with a skeptical ear and use your own wisdom to cut through obvious b.s. When instances of journalistic dishonesty or or shoddy reporting happen in your town, speak up. Let the powers that be know that you are watching them with a keen eye and that your support of their product relies on the validity of the information they provide.

If you firmly plant yourself in the consumer driver’s seat, and if you hold media accountable for its misstatements, untruths and misleading material, chances are you can help weed out the bad guys and lift up the more reputable media companies. Truth is a powerful thing. Just ask those nine News of the World journalists and three cops who are now facing prison because of their participation in the NoTW phone hacking debacle. Everybody lost here because of a lack of truth – you and I, the perpetrators, the media industries, and even the all powerful wizard of anti-journalistic Oz, the man Forbes Magazine named as 13th most powerful person in the world in 2010, Rupert Murdoch.

MURDERER OR MEDIA STAR? YOU BE THE JUDGE

2011-07-07T14:26:00.011-05:00

There have been two trials that fully captured my attention: The first, of course was O.J., who I personally found guilty on the first day of court. The other was Scott Peterson back in 2004, who I found guilty before the trial started. I guess it would be wise to not select me for jury duty, huh? I am, however, baffled by the intense attention that the Casey Anthony case garnered nationwide. Why did so many people invest so much of their emotional life into a case about a mother allegedly murdering her child?

What Anthony was accused of doing is not as unusual as you might think. According to the American Anthropological Association, about 200 mothers kill their children every year in this country. Two hundred. For children under the age of five who are murdered in the U.S., a parent is almost always the killer. Further, right now there are 53 women on death row in the U.S., and 11 of them are there because they killed their own children.

Consider Rachel Summers. At 19, the Tennessee mother had an argument with the father of her child, and subsequently beat the child with a table leg, forced rat poison down his throat and smothered him. A couple of years ago, Michelle Kehoe,(left) an Iowa woman, slashed the throats of her two sons, aged 2 and 7. Then there is Migdalia Vera, a Queens, NY mother accused of stabbing her cerebral-palsy afflicted son to death just a few months ago. The list goes on, but have you ever heard of Summers, Kehoe or Vera? Neither had I. That’s my point. Were their crimes less heinous than Anthony’s, or just less interesting? Or was it simply that media failed to give them the inappropriate hype that was granted to the Anthony debacle?

I vote for the latter. We media consumers respond heavily to extreme situations. Let’s face it – without extremes like Casey Anthony, unlikely pundits like Nancy Grace (below, right) would not have careers. Grace, in her usual overtly biased speak-before-you-think broadcast style, said this after the Anthony verdict was revealed: “The devil is dancing tonight.” Grace, who has made no bones about her disdain for Anthony and her confidence in the defendant’s guilt, has dedicated most of her nightly HLN program to the Anthony trial for weeks. She even gave Anthony a nickname – “Tot Mom.” In fact, the entire HLN network has dedicated itself so fully to the Anthony trial, that one wonders how it will sustain its viewership now that its flagship topic has reached its stunning conclusion.

So convinced was HLN that the Anthony trial was ratings gold, that it evidently assigned each of its TV hosts to cover almost nothing other than the case. Dr. Drew Pinsky, addiction specialist, turned his whole program over to the case. Even Joy Behar, the likeable, affable stand-up comic and “The View” co-host, was apparently directed to forgo her engaging panels of humorists in favor of non-stop blabber about Casey Anthony. It is almost surreal: Suddenly we have an internist playing psychologist, a former prosecutor (Grace) playing judge – and jury, and a stand-up comedienne playing legal analyst. If it’s that easy to alter your persona, I think I’ve decided to become Brad Pitt.

If you’re wondering why media is so trial-obsessed, you can chalk it up to two things: cable television’s incessant and unrelenting competition to shock you, and the mega-coverage precedent set in the 1990s by people like Larry King and Geraldo Rivera during the O.J. trial. At least that trial attracted our attention because it decided the fate of a former national football hero and TV pitchman who may have slashed his wife to death. Pretty juicy. Like the Anthony trial, the endless O.J. trial made new careers for media people like Greta Van Susteren. Van Susteren was a criminal defense attorney who got lucky enough to be hired by CNN as a legal analyst during the trial coverage, and has been on TV every night since.

We are trial-obsessed because the media has struck gold with its coverage. Do you truly believe that all of those people standing outside waiting for the Anthony verdict to be read seriously cared about Caylee Anthony’s death? Media is so powerful that it can sometimes cause us to believe things about ourselves that may or may not be real. Would those same people who stood outside the courthouse do the same for the seven-year-old boy in New Orleans who took the witness stand last week to detail alleged rapes he endured at the hands of his teenage neighbor, Daryl Scott? And gosh, how disappointed they all would have been when the jury finally revealed it could not reach agreement, even though the child said “It hurt and it burned” when asked what it felt like to be raped. Media ignored the case. The same can be said for the Daniel Kelly (above, right) case in Philadelphia. Kelly is on trial for the 2006 starvation death of his 14-year-old daughter who weighed 42 pounds when she died. Ever heard of it? Apparently neither has Nancy Grace – or Dr. Drew. Or Joy Behar. Or People Magazine.

Is media deciding what should matter to you? Is a seven-year-old rape victim less ratings-worthy than a three-year-old murder victim? Is there a racial component here? It is not very often that we become trial-obsessed with black people, or Hispanic people, or Asian people. The frenzy more often surrounds pretty white girls. Why is that? And finally, where do the cameras really belong and not belong? Now that we have watched people become media figures by fully humiliating themselves on witness stands coast to coast, what’s next? Cameras in the death chamber? How much is too much and who will decide? Lots of questions…very few answers. Stay tuned, and remember – Just because Dr. Drew says of the Anthony jury, "It almost becomes a Stockholm syndrome where you develop a relationship at a distance with the person who is accused of committing the crime," doesn’t necessarily mean he knows anything more than you or I know. He just has the microphone and we don’t.

THE DIRTY SECRETS OF THE DANZIGER BRIDGE

2011-06-28T10:03:00.011-05:00

Headlines coast to coast screamed “Blagojevich Guilty” after a Chicago jury deliberated for nine days and found former Governor Rod Blagojevich guilty on 17 corruption counts. In Florida, the seemingly endless Casey Anthony child murder trial also made headlines after the defendant’s mother tried to explain away her computer searches for “chloroform,” with a straight face. But in New Orleans, all eyes were on the Federal courthouse as a jury was seated for the Danziger Bridge trial. What, no Nancy Grace, Joy Behar, Wolf Blitzer or even Dr. Drew Pinsky reports? Nothing. A quick search of the NY Times turns up nada. The Washington Post? Well, if by chance you clicked on “National” news at the top of the home page, and the once you got there, scrolled way down and clicked on “More National News,” and then once you got to that page, scrolled down to the 27th headline, you’d find an AP wire story about the Danziger Bridge story.

You get the idea. Danziger is not a term in the national consciousness. But here in New Orleans, the courthouse was packed on day one of the trial that has become so iconic to the Hurricane Katrina event, that people actually drive to the bridge just to see where it all happened. So, if you’re reading this from Salt Lake City, or Poughkeepsie, or Greensboro, maybe I should briefly recount for you what happened. At least as much as we know. What is known is that on Sept. 4, 2005, just days after the storm, two men were killed by gunfire on the bridge and four others were wounded. One of the dead was a 40-year-old disabled man who was shot in the back. To hear the accused cops (above, left) tell it, there was a distress call from the bridge area suggesting cops were fired upon. Nine other cops piled in a rented truck and rushed to the scene. What happened after that is unclear, except we know the two men were killed and four others wounded.

Now five police officers are on trial for civil rights violations, unjustified shootings and for covering up their activities. Five former cops have already entered guilty pleas to the cover up and will testify against their one-time colleagues. A detective goes on trial later in the summer. Anybody who lives in New Orleans knows something very bad happened on the bridge that day, and just about everybody believes the cops are guilty – except other cops, who never believe their brethren are guilty. Federal prosecutors allege the attacks on the bridge were unprovoked. In fact, this case may have simply faded away had the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI not become involved in the investigation. But they did. It’s a complex series of events that led to this trial. Listen to two Times-Picayune crime reporters explain the order of what happened:

New Orleans is often aptly referred to as “The city that care forgot.” So true. The story just isn’t as “sexy” as say a Rodney King police abuse case out of L.A. back in 1991. It doesn’t have the staying power of the 1997 NYC case of citizen Abner Louima, who was sexually brutalized with a plunger handle by two cops. This is New Orleans. We made it on the media map in 2005 because of the largest natural disaster in the history of the United States. But attention spans are short and news has very little longevity in our new tech world culture. So Katrina is over. Way over. And stories like the Danziger Bridge case don’t really get much CNN/MSNBC/Huffington Post/CBS/NBC/ABC/FOX attention. Almost none, you might say.

It’s tough to compete with Blagojevich, who’s still rocking those 1970’s junior high school bangs. And Casey Anthony, the innocent-looking white girl who may have killed her baby and then gone out partying? Well, that’s ratings gold for networks like HLN. They’ve even got Dr. Drew Pinsky covering it – he’s an addiction specialist and nobody in this case is claiming addiction problems. Go figure. In his new book about Katrina, former Mayor Ray Nagin (above, right) is all hot and bothered about police corruption during and after the storm. But oddly enough, while he was mayor, the words “Danziger Bridge” scarcely crossed his lips. Although the cops in question are both black and white, the victims were all black. Where is Jesse Jackson? Where is Al Sharpton? Where’s the NAACP? Where is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? The ACLU?

Where is the public outrage? I believe it is stuck back in 2005. “Katrina fatigue” is not just an expression. In New Orleans we can barely look back. Around the rest of the country, Katrina is a historical term now. In some ways we in New Orleans still see the storm in present tense, although certainly it fades as time moves on. But really, if you are in New Mexico, or Connecticut, or Maine or Montana, do you care about Katrina now? No. To you, the Danziger Bridge could just as easily be a place in a fiction novel as it could a real blood-soaked crossing in Louisiana. I do not anticipate a high profile for the trial outside of Louisiana, but at the same time, I know that if the accused cops walk free, the racial implications for the whole country could be dire. Stay tuned.

THE VERY SINGLE - AND SINGULAR - HUGH HEFNER

2011-06-21T14:18:00.012-05:00

It is always astounding to me how a cultural icon’s most important works are overshadowed by fluff. Exhibit A: Hugh Hefner. Hefner, 85, has been a part of the American consciousness since the mid-20th century, when he quit his job at Esquire Magazine, scraped up a few hundred bucks from anybody who would help him, and quietly plotted the debut of “Stag Party,” a new world men’s magazine. Stag Party ran into licensing problems since there was already a magazine called “Stag,” and ended up being renamed “Playboy.” The very first issue featured a totally nude Marilyn Monroe (see cover below, left). The rest, as they say...

If you don’t dig too deep, all you find in Hefner is the above-mentioned fluff. Top heavy young girls, extravagant living, seemingly non-stop parties and lots of debauchery. That is why last week’s sudden exit of his would be 25-year-old bride made headlines worldwide. The China Economic Net proclaimed Hefner “dumped at the altar.” In the UK, the Independent declared, “Bad Luck, Hef – the Bunny’s Hopped it.” The New Zealand Herald ran a picture of the couple with the simple headline, “Cancelled.” Whatever Hefner does or does not do is big news in all corners of the earth, even a doomed marriage.

Who cares, right? Right. There is, however, so much more to care about when it comes to Hugh Hefner. What many people may not know is that Hefner has been what I would call a human rights and civil rights activist as long as he has been a publisher. His good works and good words have often been lost to his socially questionable lifestyle. That’s too bad, because those good works and words have changed the world.

Did you know (or remember) he used to have a TV show called “Playboy's Penthouse?” It ran for three years from 1959 – 1961. The camera would get a tight shot of elevator buttons lighting up one by one until it reached the penthouse apartment. Then the doors would open and viewers would see a party going on, people dancing, laughing, drinking, smoking. But here’s the rub: Some of the people were black, at a time when it was virtually unheard of for a TV show to feature anybody black, unless they were Amos and Andy. Bigger still was the fact that the show featured black performers, doing their thing with white performers. Unheard of. Sounds pretty tame now, but be aware that some of those black performers and party guests would probably not have even been allowed into buildings like the one portrayed in “Playboy Penthouse” in 1959. A white female folk singer performing with two black guys? Outrageous for its time.

Hefner’s “girlie” magazine and cool TV show (that could be considered the world’s first reality show) were really his vehicle to advance his agenda. The agenda had everything to do with freedom of speech and basic American liberty. Listen as he welcomes controversial comedian Lenny Bruce to “Playboy’s Penthouse.” Looks like fun, smooth and easy, but the conversation takes decidedly issues-oriented turns to censorship, racial integration and more:

This is one of only six network TV appearances Bruce ever made. American media was afraid of the Bruce’s often acerbic and envelope-pushing humor. So afraid was America of Bruce’s stretching the limits of the First Amendment that he was arrested multiple times, banned from many performance venues and even barred from certain U.S. cities. But Hefner, recognizing the underlying theme of freedom of expression, never wavered in his support of Bruce’s career. You don’t necessarily have to approve of Bruce’s material, nor of Hefner’s, for that matter, but the indisputable fact is that Hefner advanced the cause of freedom in America.

In 1973, when the movie Carnal Knowledge was deemed obscene by several state Supreme Courts, Hefner was interviewed in his own magazine on the 20th anniversary of Playboy. His fervent dedication to free speech was never more clearly evident: “What it amounts to is that the Nixon Court, which is supposed to be loaded with what he calls “strict constructionists” of the Constitution, has ruled that the First Amendment’s absolute protection of free speech and press doesn’t really mean what it says, that certain kinds of speech and writing aren’t necessarily free at all—speech and writing that has to do with sex. The Court has decreed that the ruling elite of every local community has the power to determine what everyone else in town may read or see.”

Anyone who doubts Hefner’s dedication to the absolute nature of freedom of expression should read “The Playboy Philosophy,” a 25-part Hefner-penned series that appeared in the magazine from 1962 – 1966. In it, Hefner clearly explained his beliefs about social and moral issues, right on the cusp of the American sexual revolution that took off in the late 1960s. Having just returned from London where he opened a Playboy Club, Hefner had witnessed the European sexual revolution firsthand, and saw it as much as an issue of human freedom as he did a sexual/cultural shift. The philosophy extended itself to issues like freedom of (and from) religion, as well as the critical importance of the separation of church and state.

In the 1960s Hefner befriended Jesse Jackson (below, left) and Dr. Martin Luther King. In fact, MLK was interviewed for the magazine by none other than Alex Haley (who later wrote “Roots”), who happened to be the writer who did the first interview the magazine ever featured. Hefner was passionate about civil rights and racial equality and integration. It has been a theme of his life, throughout his life. That’s where the fluff can really get in the way of the substance. The substance of Hugh Hefner is all about fairness, freedom and individual rights. It may be couched in lush photos of bare breasts and salacious cartoons, but if you really take time to study the history of his publication, it’s about you and me and what we deserve in a country that was built on a foundation of personal liberty. One could say that Hefner also advanced a culture that was steeped in puritanical repression to the next level of honest sexual expression. What’s not to like about that?

And so that brings us full circle back to one Crystal Harris, the 25-year-old would-be bride whose cold feet sparked headlines from sea to shining sea. Here’s the truth: Crystal Harris doesn’t matter. She may matter to her mom and dad or somebody, but she does not matter in the larger scheme of things. What matters about Hefner is his undying, lifelong commitment to your human and civil rights. He has long been someone I admired, if only for his unwavering efforts to open minds and hearts. I mean you have to love a guy whose left brain says, “Playboy was founded on the notion that nice girls like sex too,” while the other side says, “I urge one and all to live this life as if there is no reward in the afterlife, and do it in a moral way that makes it better for you and for those around you and leaves this world a little better place than when you found it."

WHY TRACY MORGAN NEEDS A ONE WAY TICKET TO CAMBODIA

2011-06-16T12:03:00.012-05:00

How interesting that suddenly, Tracy Morgan, a sort of second-string comedian, is all over the headlines. Oh no, it’s not because of his middling performance as alter-ego Tracy Jordan on the NBC sitcom “30 Rock.” It’s all about his throwback standup comedy act, which hit a wall in Nashville recently after he reportedly “joked” that he would “pull out a knife and stab that little nigger” if he found out his son was gay. It turns out an audience member was so taken aback by Morgan’s inane rant that he posted a piece about the Morgan show on Facebook. As is our cultural way here in 2011, the piece went viral, got picked up by national media and a firestorm ensued, causing Morgan to come forward to say how much he loves everybody. Right. Then comes news that Morgan is going to do some kind of something with GLAAD to show how much he really, really loves everybody. Right.

The upshot of all of this is a national discussion that is flooding the blogosphere, the airwaves and even good old print journalism about the extent of comedic license available to standup comedians. How much is too much? Is too much an oxymoron when you talk of standup routines? Is this a first amendment issue or rather a common decency issue? If you talk about your own son as a “little nigger,” is it hate speech or is it your divine right as a parent? When Morgan rants about stabbing his own son, is it funny or is it a desperate reach for a laugh when his audience has paid $86 a seat to laughs? And in a culture that decides to delete an Anthony Weiner from the public stage, why is it that a man who insults the gay population and the black population in one fell swoop is still front and center on one of the most highly-praised television shows on the air?

Whew! That’s a lot of questions, right? But doesn’t something like this merit a lot of questions? Didn’t we learn anything from the Michael Richards debacle back in 2006 at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood? That was the night Richards (below) got mad at some black hecklers in the audience and threw a temper tantrum in which he used the word “nigger” six times. Here’s how stuff like this works in our culture today: Richards, despite his very public apologies and mea culpa appearances on shows like Letterman, has had exactly four professional entertainment jobs since 2006, according to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Nobody is denying Richards his first amendment rights. But the American public has made it clear they can’t find much to laugh about when he speaks anymore. Once you do what Richards did, maybe you have to turn in your funny card and do exactly what he did next – retire from show business and take an extended trip to Cambodia. Really.

The issue here is not comedy. It is not Tracy Morgan. It is not how many people are offended. The issue here is respect. Comedians are divided on how to react to Morgan’s behavior. Some, like Louis C.K., came forward to say that Morgan was just “fucking around” and didn’t mean what he said. Said Louis, "Tracey Morgan said something wrong, evil, cruel, ignorant and hilarious. He was on a comedy stage, not at a pulpit.” Implicit in his remarks is the thought that since Morgan was on a comedy stage, respect for his fellow human beings is not required. Others, like Chris Rock (above, right), who initially defended Morgan’s right to say whatever he wants to say on stage, later came back with, “Wow, I get that shit wasn’t called for and I don’t support it at all.” And then there was Joan Rivers: “He’s lost his gay fan.” And, “I’ll tell you, the biggest crime of all is that Tracy Morgan isn’t funny. You know what he should be apologizing for? For charging $86 to see him.”

Indeed. But what no one seems to be addressing is the assumption among comedians that no matter what they say, who they hurt, how grotesque the images they put forth, they get a pass because it’s “comedy.” Here’s the thing: Comedy is cultural commentary. That’s really all it is. Comedians basically do the same thing that Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olberman, Glen Beck and all the other talking cableheads do. They offer their take on the current state of our culture. As I see it, Morgan’s take on the current state of our culture is that gay people are somehow “less than,” and that probably they should be eliminated. And as I see it, Morgan somehow still believes there is a place in our national conversation for the word “nigger,” a stupid, throwback, throwaway word that we have been trying for decades to evolve out of the English language.

You know, besides the fact that Morgan appears to be somehow surviving this ridiculous tirade, with even his “30 Rock” boss, Tina Fey still somewhat reluctantly embracing him, (below, left) here’s what bugs me: The historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville (which used to be the home of the Grand Ole Opry), where Morgan had his comedic tantrum, seats 2400 people. Let’s do the math: 2400 x $86.00 = $206,400. After paying the venue, the promoters, the tour expenses and his agent, manager, etc., let’s say Morgan gets 40% of the gross. That means that for denigrating millions of Americans in the name of comedy, Morgan earned upwards of $80 grand that night. And it gets worse: For those Americans who vaguely knew who Morgan was prior to the Nashville performance, now every American who has been conscious the last week or so knows who he is. You know the old, “I don’t care what they say about me, as long as they spell my name right” routine? My biggest concern here is that now Morgan is a household word whose ignorant cultural trespasses may imprint him on the American psyche as a “bad boy comic” who just said some stupid stuff once in Nashville. All that, and here I was hoping he'd go be Michael Richards' roommate in Cambodia.

So, in the end, does it all simply mean that in America, saying you will cut up your “little nigger” kid with a knife if he says he’s gay is worth $80,000 and an ongoing national television career. How did we get here?

THE CONGRESSMAN'S FATAL FLAW

2011-06-14T11:39:00.008-05:00

Some people ask me why I haven’t said or written much about the Anthony Weiner story. After all, in the past couple of years I have been all over the John Edwards debacle (which many liken to Weiner’s current situation), Spitzer, Clinton, et al. As anyone who reads my words knows, I’m not a fan of John Edwards. He’s the definition of political sleaze. The fact is, I don’t see Weiner’s downfall – and it is a downfall – in the same category as the other boys. The others, as well as John Ensign, Chris Lee (the NY Congresssman who resigned after shirtless Craigslist ads surfaced), Larry Craig, David Vitter, are somehow easily grouped together under the heading of “Washington sex scandals.” Weiner’s political and personal demise are somehow different – I won’t go so far as to use the word “pathetic,” but certainly pitiful.

So, why do I pity Anthony Weiner? To really get a grasp on what drove the guy to take pictures of himself nude and semi-nude, I think you need a mental picture of who he is – or was. Raised in Brooklyn as part of a Jewish family, Weiner’s early life reads conventional. Middle class, hockey player, good student, B.A. in poli-sci and a first job working for Congressman Chuck Schumer. It was probably during the stint with Schumer that Weiner, who reportedly had earlier aspirations to be a TV weatherman, found his activist voice. Based on his geography and environment, it is not surprising that voice became almost radically liberal. Over the years, Weiner ascended the political ranks steadily and some might say quickly. Now a Congressman, Weiner says mayor of New York is the only job that looks better to him than the one he currently holds. Up until this month, many believed he was a shoe-in for the job. He is often described in terms like brash, abrasive, aggressive, loud and demanding. And his constituents like the fact that he gets things done. Things that matter to them. By all outward appearances, Anthony Weiner was an up and comer, who at 46 probably had decades of political life left in him, and likely would have channeled some of his boundless energy and respectable work ethic into real progress for New York.

So many people do not understand the internal pressure that men in their 40s often feel. My take on the Weiner drama is that the pressure to produce and succeed got the best of him. And I do not in any way apologize for his Twitter idiocies, but I do get it. There is a window of opportunity in America for men to “make it.” In parallel, there is a window of opportunity for men to feel hot and attractive. The windows on both often begin slowly to close after the late 40s. Weiner is 46 years old. And then there is that old favorite, testosterone. So let’s do the math. Career aspirations/expectations + age + sexual drive = what? I would say in the case of a rather arrogant, ambitious public figure the equation can equal disaster. Personal disaster that rapidly becomes public.

I have watched many men fall to their own fatal flaw of self absorption. If the whole world continually tells you how exceptional you are and what a wunderkind you are, maybe you might start believing it. I had a smart grad school professor who once said, “People are often what you invite them to be.” Did New York invite Anthony Weiner to be full of Anthony Weiner? Was he powerless to fight the allure of self-absorption? I think so.

Here’s the sidebar to all of this: What Weiner did is the same thing that millions of men – and women – do every day. Did you think somehow that all of the visual technology we now have at our fingertips was not going to become part of the sexual landscape? We’re an increasingly visual culture that was already an off-the-map sexual culture. Smart phones and Twitter just gave us the necessary tools. If you are one of those people who read this and think, “I would never do that,” more power to you. But if you think a lot of people you know aren’t doing it, you may be deluding yourself. And if you think Anthony Weiner is the only legislator doing it, I beg to differ.

So, why then are we passing such puritanical judgment on the guy for being sexual and visual? It is because our traditional American moral code tells us what he did was bad. But for my part, I don’t think suggestive pictures sent to young women are going to kill his career. Lying will do that all by itself. Here is Weiner speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on June 1:

And here he is on ABC’s Good Morning America:

Step one in Weiner’s political demise was arrogance and his belief that manipulating words would be all that was needed to cover his ass (think Bill Clinton - “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”). But his ultimate fall from the mountaintop had everything to do with his lies. America may have forgiven him his sexual trespasses, his self-absorption, his need to be seen by young women, his well-known brash behavior. America will not forgive the lies.
I believe we will see Anthony Weiner resign by the end of this week. Call it a hunch. Stay tuned.

WHO SAYS TWITTER MAKES ME STUPID?

2011-05-23T15:24:00.020-05:00

In case the name Bill Keller doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the executive editor of the New York Times. Keller, somewhere in his early 60s, has been a print journalist his entire adult life, and has worked for the Times in one capacity or another for most of his career. So, it is not surprising that he is evidently feeling somewhat intimidated by the emergence of new media, particularly Twitter. Last week, Keller wrote a piece called “The Twitter Trap,” in which he seems to be agonizing over up and coming technology that enables citizens to learn of events in an immediate way. Said Keller, “Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.”

Oh Bill (pictured below, left). Bill, Bill, Bill. Do you know how typical you sound of journalists of your generation? And guess what Bill. I’m not much younger than you, and still I can see that you are feeling threatened by pathways of information that do not require your lifelong accumulation of skills. Let me spell it out: It was via Twitter that the world first learned of the unpredictably safe landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in 2010 by Captain Chesley Sullenberger. Remember the great earthquake of 2008 in China? Twitter. Oh, and Michael Jackson’s death? First reported by TMZ.com when major news organizations were unsure whether it was a hoax or not, the story went worldwide via Twitter minutes later. And then, of course, there was the big daddy tweet of them all: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsefeld's chief of staff Keith Urbahn first let the world know about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound - via Twitter. I could go on, but you get my drift – print journalism is not dead, but it’s not keeping up with consumer demand.

In the above-mentioned column, Keller wrote:

“My father, who was trained in engineering at M.I.T. in the slide-rule era, often lamented the way the pocket calculator, for all its convenience, diminished my generation’s math skills. Many of us have discovered that navigating by G.P.S. has undermined our mastery of city streets and perhaps even impaired our innate sense of direction. Typing pretty much killed penmanship. Twitter and YouTube are nibbling away at our attention spans. And what little memory we had not already surrendered to Gutenberg we have relinquished to Google. Why remember what you can look up in seconds?”

I’d like to answer that: Now that the calculator eased our way to solving math dilemmas, maybe our brains have more room for other endeavors. Do you really believe your “innate sense of direction” is hampered by a G.P.S.? Come on, Bill. Typing killed penmanship? Here’s all I have to say about that…R.I.P. penmanship. The culture evolves in a way that streamlines life. That is what is happening now.

And don’t just take it from me, Bill. Listen to what Gizmodo’s Mat Honan has to say about your ramblings:

So, Bill, I’m just wondering: Should we also worry about digital cameras that may have killed the lost “art” of the darkroom? Or, what about birth control devices that now allow us to have as much sex as we want to for pleasure instead of simple procreation? And how about Rachel Ray and her ilk who taught us how to make a full dinner in a half hour? Did Miss Ray effectively kill the all-day cook-a-thons that were once a part of our culture? I could go on, but you get my drift. It is called innovation and progress, Bill. Did you also badmouth that first computer they put on your desk at the Times? Are you similarly reluctant to embrace dating web sites because they eliminate the need for endless small talk, smoke and alcohol in a bar you didn’t want to be in in the first place? Bill, catch up. It is, contrary to your apparent preference, 2011. You do not have to wear a dark suit to work every day and you do not have to even go to work every day if you have yourself properly outfitted elsewhere with the necessary technology.

Oh, and Bill...guess who agrees with me about social media -- your own CEO, Janet Robinson, who told the graduates at NYU's Stern School of Business: “The New York Times has more than 3 million Twitter followers on its main account.That is nearly 2 million more than any other newspaper. We’re proud of that….For some people, all the news that’s fit to print means all the news that fits in 140 characters or less in real time.”

She also said this:

“We used to wonder: If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Now we ask: If a tree falls in the woods and your smartphone doesn’t buzz, did it happen?” Janet rocks. And briefly.

I am so discouraged by men and women of my age and older who simply are not ambitious enough to learn the advantages that technology affords us. Keller says Twitter and YouTube are “nibbling away at our attention spans.” No Bill, that is not the case. Our attention spans have become shorter because the amount of stimuli around us has increased exponentially, and the sheer volume of information that confronts us requires greater mental time management. We have more to see, hear, learn and discuss because we have allowed ourselves to live outside the 1950s box. The brevity of Twitter and YouTube are simply the current day results of 1980s MTV fast videos, which were that era’s result of mid-century TV sitcoms that told a story with a full conclusion in 24 or 25 minutes. Those sitcoms were really the result of earlier 20th century radio programs that lasted 15 minutes. Those 15 minute shows were the result of an industrial revolution that shortened the waiting time for various types of societal gratification.

With all of that said, I will add that social media has not yet firmly found its place in our culture. It is still used more for entertainment than for business, education, finance, government, and other essentials. We still have the Facebook user who posts, “I am at the grocery store buying peaches.” Who cares? We still have Twitter users whose real goal is only to see how many other Twitter users they can persuade to follow them. We have pop culture celebrities like Ashton Kutcher (above, left) who somehow feel validated because his Twitterverse followers number in the millions. And there is the dark underbelly of it all, such as individuals who lure people with false promises on Craigslist, simply so they can commit crimes including rape and murder. Bill, nobody said we are there yet. But we are making progress.

Down the road, I fully anticipate mainstream media’s acceptance of social media as an equal. We must bear in mind it is in its infancy. Besides Twitter and Facebook, most social media companies have not yet found their footing or their patrons. I envision a social media world in which the free enterprise system exercises its considerable gravitas and earns itself a new and more efficient way of doing business. In the meantime, it matters that we continue to teach people how to write a decent sentence, how to appreciate literature that relied on more than 140 characters to get its point across and how to look at one another eye to eye and tell the truth.

But Bill…listen….about those 2,000-word stories you are still allowing in the Sunday Times? I suggest you let your reporters and writers in on what I tell my journalism students – learn how to say more using fewer words. It’s what I call the Greenberg Rule. There is no turning back, and blame it on Twitter if that makes you feel better, but it really is more about information supply and demand.

YET ANOTHER REASON NOT TO LIVE IN INDIANA

2011-05-18T14:48:00.015-05:00

Picture this: It is 3 a.m. and you are sound asleep. The house is dark. Your kids are asleep down the hall. Suddenly and without any warning, the front door of your home is kicked in and several men enter the house. You can’t see them because the house is dark. What would you do?

If you own a gun and you can get your hands on it quickly, you’d probably use it, right? You would do whatever it takes to resist the intruders and protect your home and your family, right? Instinctively, you switch on a light to see who you’re dealing with. It turns out your unwelcome intruders are cops. What are they doing there and what can you do about it? Well, as it turns out, if you’re in Indiana, there is absolutely nothing you can legally do about it. This week, the Indiana Supreme Court sent down two outrageous rulings: First, last Monday the court ruled police serving a warrant may enter a home without knocking if officers decide circumstances justify it. (Previously, police serving a warrant had to obtain a judge's permission to enter without knocking). Then, three days later the court said this:

"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."

In simple terms, your home in Indiana is no longer a sanctuary. It is fair game for law enforcement officers to simply barge in and do what they wish. If you put up a fight, you are viewed as potentially violent and therefore in violation of the law. Oh, and that Fourth Amendment they mentioned? Just as a refresher: The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ensures this legal right -- “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Indiana evidently feels secure in its imaginary power to defy the U.S. Constitution. I can’t help wondering: Since when is the U.S. Constitution negotiable? So, you may wonder why this came about. It seems that recently in Vanderbergh County (the county seat of Evansville), police were called about a domestic disturbance. When they arrived at the home, the male resident resisted their entry and shoved a cop. He was subsequently neutralized with a stun gun. Indiana apparently doesn’t take kindly to cop shoving, so a brouhaha ensued that went all the way to the Indiana Supremes, who issued the aforementioned rulings.

So here’s the problem (besides the Constitutional fuzziness here): What if, for example, you are a single woman in the house by yourself and suddenly the cops burst into your house? What if it turns out they actually had the wrong address and they were supposed to be investigating the house next door? Do you have a right to resist or are you suddenly a criminal if you do? Or, consider this: What if an intruder who is not a cop bursts into your house and announces he is a police officer? Suppose his goal is rape and/or robbery and he accomplishes one or both of his aims?

How is Indiana Supreme Court (left) going to justify that? Here’s how: The prevailing wisdom of the Indiana Supremes is that you have a legal right to file a civil suit against the above-mentioned cop with the wrong address or the robber/rapist who defiles you and your property. Seriously, that is what Indiana says you can do about it. First, how far do you think you’re going to get by suing a cop who entered your home with the full blessing of the highest court in the state? And if you sue the robber/rapist, hasn’t the harm already been done? What good will a law suit do?

The bigger implication here is even scarier. We have already lost almost our last shred of privacy in this country. Whether you know it or not, you are on camera almost every time you go anywhere in public. Security cameras on private properties and businesses share intrusion of privacy rights with city-owned cameras used in the name of public safety and security. So, the last bastion of privacy you had was your home. Indiana has now taken that away from you with the full blessing of the judicial system. What if their actions are emulated by other states and ultimately sanctioned by the highest court in the land?

Make some noise, America. Speak up now. If you don’t, you’re about to be reduced to a caged animal in your own space, and the only ones with the keys will be the men and women in blue. Is it just me or is there something distinctly un-American about this? Oh, by the way: In Evansville, IN, you can join the police department at age 21 with a GED. You don’t even have to have really gone to high school. This might be who knocks down your door in the middle of the night. I don’t know about you, but it makes me just a little bit uneasy.

THE JOURNEY OF RECONCILIATION

2011-05-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders, a group of young men and women who bravely boarded interstate busses en route to Southern states, in an effort to challenge racial discrimination laws. The activists would be seated interracially on public transportation, and blacks would even sit up front, which was strictly outlawed at the time. Predictably, the Freedom Riders met with mob violence in various Southern cities, with the most vicious attack culminating in a bus being set on fire and the door blocked so riders could not disembark. Somehow they did manage to exit the bus, only to be brutally beaten. Efforts to lynch some of the riders failed, but mob violence would follow the group city to city. Whites who tried to help the battered blacks were roundly ostracized by their communities. I could describe the subsequent bloody beatings with iron pipes and wooden planks, the inhumane treatment of those who ended up in the Mississippi State penitentiary and the law enforcement officers who stood by and allowed the riders to be battered into unconsciousness. But it’s all in the history books and archives of the civil rights movement.

Instead, it seems appropriate to mention something that happened many years before the 1961 Freedom Rides. It was called the Journey of Reconciliation, a bus trip by 16 men, (above, right) blacks and whites, out to accomplish what their 1960s counterparts would replicate. It was led by Bayard Rustin,(left) a 37-year-old black man with a long history of battling against the widespread racial discrimination of the early to mid-20th century. Today, the late Rustin is not a household name like other civil rights activists, but it was he who really stood up to the white establishment and fought racial inequality. Later in his life, he tried to do much the same thing for the civil rights of gay Americans. Rustin was a man who truly walked the walk.

Here is what Rustin and his Journey of Reconciliation companions (eight blacks and eight whites) were up against in 1947. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that racial discrimination in interstate travel defied the U.S. Constitution. Rustin and company were out to see how that was playing in the deeply racist Southern states. Much like Dr. Martin Luther King, with whom Rustin (right, pictured with Dr. King) would later ally himself, the 16 men planned on non-violent, civil disobedience. As we later saw in the 1960s urban riots, non-violence is tough to maintain, but Rustin and his cohorts did it. But here is what happened: Along the way, five blacks and five whites were arrested at various times. Rustin himself ended up on a chain gang in North Carolina, where the treatment was reportedly so brutal and inhumane that the chain gang system was ultimately outlawed.

It has been widely reported that after Rustin was arrested in North Carolina, the presiding judge said this to the white members of the Journey: "It's about time you Jews from New York learned that you can't come down here bringing your niggers with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your black boys thirty days on the chain gang and I give you ninety."

Such was life in the deep South (even in the judicial system) in the 1940s. Remember, this was way before Rosa Parks (below, left) took her seat at the front of the bus. It was also long before the landmark ruling Brown vs. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court said segregating schools was unconstitutional. It wasn’t until 1967 that blacks and whites could even legally marry in this country, and that too had to be dictated by the Supreme Court. It was, to understate it…a different time in America.

By 1961, when the Freedom Riders boarded busses to push the segregation envelope to its extreme, the U.S. was still deeply rooted in its post-slavery mentality. Blacks were begrudgingly tolerated as long as they shut their mouths and didn’t cross any societally-dictated lines. But often forgotten is the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. Rustin and his group were pioneers. The Freedom Riders were soldiers in the seemingly never-ending war on racism.

Having lived through those tumultuous 1960s, when the Civil Rights movement reached its bloody zenith, I still say that racism today is far more pervasive and divisive than it was then. Back then, society was unfortunately organized around racism. Today it is not. Today racism is more deceptive. You see it in the offices you work in, when equally qualified individuals are up for the same job, but the white male establishment chooses one of its own for the promotion. You see it in school, where the black kids all sit together in the classroom across from the white kids. You see it on television, where it is rare for a lead role in a fictional drama to be played by a black actor. You see it in the movies, where romantic stories are generally built around white characters.

So, nobody’s using separate drinking fountains anymore, or banning entire population segments from lunch counters, or giving whites preferential treatment on public transportation. Instead, racism rears its aged head in more institutional ways. How many fingers do you have left when you try to count the number of black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies? What’s the percentage of black elected officials in the 112th U.S. Congress? I’ll help you on that one – it’s 9.66%, far below the percentage of black Americans, according to the U.S. government’s own stats. How many blacks make it in to med school in America? According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, in 2010 there were almost 50,000 active white enrollees in the nation’s medical schools, vs. just over 5,500 blacks.

Unfortunately, activism is not the main event in America anymore. Where are the Bayard Rustins of the world now? Twenty-five years from now will Congress, corporate America, television, movies and med schools still be lily white? I’m an optimist, but I’m also a realist. Twenty-five years ago was 1986 – do you sense a major shift in the arduous climb toward racial equality since 1986? Neither do I. But still, I can’t help thanking Bayard Rustin and his associates, and the many courageous Freedom Riders of 1961 for all that they did. I’m waiting for that same new day in America that I was waiting for back in the 1960s, but no matter what happens next, what happened back then was nothing short of exceptional.

SHAKIN' IT WITH THE FIRST LADY

2011-05-04T08:34:00.002-05:00

STAGE PRESENCE

2011-05-01T10:21:00.002-05:00

At the recent White House Correspondents Dinner, President Obama took almost 19 minutes to address any number of recent critics. Oh yes, Donald Trump was there. By the way, what was Donald Trump even doing there? One has to wonder if he regretted RSVPing to this one. If you want to see the intersection of smart humor and real class, watch this guy. Possible future Letterman replacement? Hmmm. I'm just sayin'.

NOT QUITE PRESIDENTIAL

2011-04-29T08:34:00.002-05:00

It took would-be presidential candidate Donald Trump only about 25 seconds to prove how non-presidential he really is. Listen to what he said to a group in Las Vegas last night:

JAILED FOR SENDING HER SON TO SCHOOL

2011-04-26T09:38:00.008-05:00

If you’re homeless in America, and you have kids, what do you do about putting them in school? Most of us never thought about that until last week when news reports told Tonya McDowell’s story. McDowell is a homeless mother who enrolled her son in a good elementary school, using the address of a friend who lived in government subsidized housing. Once it was discovered that McDowell had perpetrated this ethically confounding offense, she was arrested on charges of grand larceny and conspiracy to commit first degree larceny after enrolling her son in Brookside Elementary, in Norwalk, CT. McDowell and her son reportedly live alternately in her van and in a homeless shelter. And get this: The school in which she enrolled her 6-year-old, wants her to pay them $15,000 for stealing their services.

To add insult to injury, Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia (below, right) issued this statement about the McDowell issue: “This now sends a message to other parents that may have been living in other towns and registering their kids with phony addresses.”

Indeed it does, Mr. Mayor. It sends this message: ‘If you’re homeless in America, don’t bring your kids to our schools. You’re not wanted here. And if your children are uneducated because you are homeless, that’s not our problem.’ Mr. Mayor, does that about sum up your message?

Here’s my message: Where is the compassion? Are we really prepared to marginalize children whose parents are homeless? I don’t think so. Shame on you, Norwalk, CT. Are we truly going to write off the Tonya McDowells of the world simply because they live in a van? And before you get too high and mighty, how many of you out there are one paycheck away from being Tonya McDowell? Fess up. What’s that they say at times like this? Oh, yes…”There but for the grace of God go I.”

We could fixate on all of the usual arguments – you know the ones – racism, welfare, responsibility – but let’s not. Instead, once again, I’d just like to ask, “Where is the compassion?” At six, most of us remember how exciting it was to be starting school. At six, if you’re homeless, what are you allowed to get excited about? Or, maybe by six you, too are excited about going to school, because your homeless mother has always been determined you were going to go to school – somewhere. And someday you will understand why she did it – because education is your ticket out of life in a van.

This story has already gone national. It’s all over everything online and off. I’m anxious to see how America reacts to what Tonya McDowell did. I think she’s a wakeup call for all of us. Instead of viewing the American homeless as a deviant population segment, let’s look at why they’re homeless. The buzzwords: Divorce, unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, addiction, mental illness, domestic violence. Do I need to go on? Contrary to the worn out stereotype of homeless people being degenerates, they are you, and they are me.

The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that the U.S. is experiencing a steady increase in the number of homeless families. Families with kids who need to get an education. In 2007, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that 23 percent of homeless people in America are families with children. Single mothers with children make up a significant number of these families. In a 2009 Coalition report, it was estimated that 600,000 families a year will experience homelessness in America. Right here. In your America.

Let’s break this down: If you are a child whose homeless family has already been disenfranchised by the rest of society; and, if you can’t go to school because you don’t have an address; and if the statistics are true that at least once a month you may have to go without food – what happens to you? If you are exceptional, you rise above it, eventually. It is more likely that you grow up navigating poverty. And what do we get when we add poverty and lack of education together? We get homelessness. We get a never-ending cycle.

So, take that, Mayor Moccia, and Brookside Elementary and Norwalk, CT police department. By not giving Tonya McDowell and her young son a leg up, you are probably contributing to the continuing upsurge of homeless families, even in toney Connecticut suburbs. On the other hand, if your city would get behind job training programs for women like McDowell, and provide decent, temporary housing and universal public education for the children, it seems likely that some of the disenfranchised would smartly work their way back into productive society. It is a no brainer.

It is sickening that in America in 2011, any parent has to sneak their child into school. McDowell’s child was dismissed from the school as soon as her transgression was discovered. Try to explain that to a six year old. And keep in mind the child now has to live with the humiliation of being kicked out of school because he is poor, for the rest of his life. It is a memory that will not fade and one that should never have been inflicted on Tonya McDowell’s son.

NOTE: VISIT CHANGE.ORG TO SIGN A PETITION TO STOP DISCRIMINATION AGAINST HOMELESS FAMILIES IN NORWALK, CT.

POLITICAL BAD BOYS UPDATE

2011-04-23T11:10:00.014-05:00

If you have followed the John Ensign story over the past couple of years, you can now chalk him up as one more elected official who has walked away in disgrace. Ensign (right), the Republican Senator from Nevada, resigned as he was under heavy investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. Allegedly, Ensign had an affair with a campaign worker, and steered big contracts of some sort in her husband’s direction. Sleazy and convoluted as it was, Ensign had managed to hold on to his Senate seat, until this week. After Ensign announced the resignation, the two Senators who head up the Ethics Committee, Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) issued a terse statement which said only this: “Senator Ensign has made the appropriate decision.”

Here is how you can read those words – “has made the appropriate decision” – with some X-ray vision. The Ethics committee was probably about to unload some real dirt on John Ensign. He was informed of this and decided to bow out. By doing that, the Ethics Committee is not required to release the information about him. Whatever the case, Nevada is sick of the John Ensign story, as evidenced by a recent column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal in which writer Jane Ann Morrison says of Ensign’s announcement, "This is all about his ego, his arrogance and saving his reputation. It's about the threat of more embarrassing publicity and his inability to raise money.”

Unlike other politicians, Ensign can wipe his brow and breathe a sigh of relief. He may have dodged an embarrassing bullet. (The Ethics Committee still has the right to release its findings, but most likely will not). Here’s the question, though: Why do so many politicians and government officials put themselves in the line of fire? Why do they continually believe they can get away with it, whatever “it” is in their individual cases. Sometimes (okay, most times) it’s sex. Other times it’s political shenanigans. And sometimes it’s greed. But every time it is about power. There is something about D.C. style power that seems to overwhelm some men. Men who otherwise seem like they’ve got a level head on their shoulders just lose their sense of order and right and wrong.

Since we’re talking about once-powerful bad boys, here’s the update on John Edwards (left), the 2008 would-be Democratic candidate for President, who allegedly steered campaign funds in the direction of his mistress, who later became the mother of his fourth child. Misuse of campaign funds is a Federal offense, so he is being investigated on that level right now. Edwards, who carried on the affair as his wife was dealing with terminal cancer, was later outed by the National Enquirer and that was the end of his political career. Edwards, now a widower raising his and Elizabeth Edwards’ children, faces possible jail time if convicted. Recent reports indicate Edwards is terrified of going to prison, to the point of being suicidal. Hell of a guy, that John Edwards. He has two small children who only months ago lost their mother, and he considers taking his own life, so that the kids will have lost both parents.

If some of these scandals seem to drag on forever, it may be that the alleged perpetrators of wrongdoing keep doing wrong. Take Jesse Jackson (right), for example. Ten years ago, married family man Jackson had an affair with a staffer that produced a child. Much like the Edwards affair, there were ongoing reports of money paid to the child’s mother for questionable services. Now, a decade later, a gay male staffer has filed a discrimination suit against Jackson, claiming, among other things, that he was ordered to bring women to Jackson’s hotel room, and then clean up the room after Jackson had sex. Oy. Sleazy, huh? The Windy City Times detailed the charges in an explosive article last week. The above-mentioned charge is tame in comparison with other charges in the discrimination complaint. In fairness, it should be said that Jackson has a history of supporting gay rights, but as mentioned several paragraphs ago, so often it’s about sex. And as we all have learned, where there’s smoke….well, you know the rest.

The old saying goes like this: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." That phrase has unknown origins, but it sure says a lot. What are these guys all about, really? Do they seek power positions to satisfy their other needs in life, or does power truly corrupt absolutely? I guess we’ll never know, but the evidence sure stacks up if you just keep your eye on politics, big religion and big business.

MEET MARILYN, THE RACIST

2011-04-21T14:51:00.015-05:00

By now you have no doubt heard about the California GOP official who sent out an email with a doctored photo that depicted President Obama and his parents as chimpanzees. The caption: "Now you know why no birth certificate." I could post the picture here, but I won’t. Why should I? For that matter, why should anybody post it anywhere? It’s disgusting and sophomoric. If anything, we should all post the picture of the idiot who sent the email. Okay, just did. It is the lead photo for this story. Marilyn Davenport is originally from Kansas, but is now a resident of Orange County, one of the whitest counties in California. The U.S. Census bureau puts the black population in O.C. at two percent. Davenport issued a half-assed apology after her transgression became public. Too little, too late, Marilyn.

Why should we allow the Marilyn Davenports of the world to denigrate an entire segment of the U.S. population? And if she does so in keeping with her Constitutional right to freedom of expression, why should her job as a public official remain intact? I don’t get it. Do you? There seems to be some disagreement about whether Davenport should be fired. That baffles me. As a society, we have collectively moved forward from the days of “anything goes,” as it refers to insulting each other based on religion, skin color, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. Oh, it still happens, but these days it can cost you. Hey, it cost Kobe Bryant $100,000 the other day when he called a referee a faggot. It cost acerbic radio host Don Imus (left) his job with CBS a couple years back when he referred to the women of Rutgers basketball team as “nappy headed hos.” Let’s not forget widely acclaimed fashion designer John Galliano of the House of Dior who was fired after a video surfaced that showed his anti-Semitic outbursts at a Paris bar. And in case you're wondering what ever happened to "Seinfeld" alum Michael Richards, you can see his racist swan song on Youtube.

What’s going on here? In two words – social change. Commonly heard today among those stuck in 1950: “I’m sick of everything having to be so politically correct. Who knows what you can and can’t say anymore?” Well, I do, and so do you, if you think about it. First we are working hard to evolve certain words out of the language. The word “nigger” is no longer passively overlooked. Still, the other day I found myself in a back and forth written tussle with a Facebook friend who is black. She said, “We call each other nigga and that has nothing to do with you.” I said, “Well, I think it does. So many of us are trying to get rid of that word once and for all, and we can’t do it as long as you say it’s okay as long as it is said between two black people. What makes it okay?” She said, “It doesn’t offend me at all.”

We’re stuck hard on cultural versus historical context. Historically, for example, “nigger” has never been used in any culture as a positive expression. Culturally, however, my Facebook friend seems to think it’s endearing if said among black people. You can’t really have it both ways. Just as we have to distinguish the relative weight of humor versus racism in the Marilyn Davenport debacle. Some people who would never consider themselves racist can see the humor in the photograph. But as soon as the brain cells all line up inside their heads they realize the real issue here is not how funny it looks, but the historical racism it represents. Equating black people with monkeys has long been understood to connote racial bigotry. It doesn’t matter if it looks funny. It matters that it perpetuates a stupid stereotype that contributes nothing to a civilized society. We are a civilized society, aren’t we? Aren’t we??

Let’s break this down: Calling a black person a “nigger” reduces him or her to nothing more than skin color, which suggests anything else that they are doesn’t count. Calling a woman a “cunt” reduces her to nothing more than her sex organs, which does much the same thing as calling a black person a nigger. Calling a gay man a “faggot” reduces him to nothing more than his sexual calling, which means that anything else he is or does will never really rise above his sexuality.

If you are one of those people who routinely uses words like these to categorize whole segments of humanity, what do you really get out of it? It is not elevating you or them. It only accomplishes holding both of you down in a place that prevents you from being bigger than what you are now. If you belong to one of those population groups that is routinely denigrated through language, and you start using the language among yourselves, all you have really done is re-appropriate the offensive terms, and thereby granted your oppressors license to use the same words. It’s a lose/lose situation.

I’m shaking my head in disbelief at those individuals who have come to Marilyn Davenport’s defense. “She didn’t mean anything by it,” they say. “It was never her intention to sound racist,” others contend. You know what? It doesn’t matter – at all – what her intention was. What matters is the result of her socially unacceptable, ignorant communication. That matters. Marilyn Davenport needs to turn in her GOP pass and go home.

WHY OPRAH WINFREY MATTERS

2011-04-20T11:15:00.009-05:00

The first time I ever became aware of the word “Oprah” I was in mid-flight in 1986, reading People Magazine. Someone was quoted, outrageously predicting that Oprah Winfrey, the dynamo Chicago talk show host who was about to go national, was going to give Phil Donahue a run for his money. I was a die hard Phil Donahue devotee, so the idea of anyone outdoing him in the talk show genre was unfathomable to me. Donahue had dominated the morning airwaves for 15 years by then, tackling subjects as edgy as white supremacy, the death penalty and gay rights -- way before there was anything remotely acceptable about that. Sisters, strippers and stars had chatted live with Phil, the likable prematurely gray, Irish Catholic everyman. We loved us some Phil here in America.

But the dynamo that is Oprah did indeed end up giving our Phil a run for his money. After 29 years, Phil (left) retired, but by this time Oprah was fully immersed in the viewing public’s consciousness. At first, she seemed to be carrying on the predictable “pregnant nuns who smoke and drink” variety of talk show topics. It was entertaining, if not groundbreaking, but there was something eminently watchable about Oprah. She was eternally smiling, strong of voice and highly relatable. She was very much her own person and compelling to watch. You must understand that talk shows in the mid to late 20th century were usually along the lines of Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin or Johnny Carson. Lots of laughs, highly entertaining and light chat. Donahue invented the topical, audience participation talk show format. Oprah carried it forward.

Donahue was a white man in a white guy’s America. But Oprah was an overweight, overdressed, over coiffed black woman, on national television in white America. If her early shows were sometimes mundane in topic, she never was. She broke new ground simply by being on daily television. It took her several years to truly understand the power that came with her position on TV, and how to use it to make some changes in the world.

When I was a kid, I was repeatedly told I had good “verbal skills.” I wondered what that would do for me in the world. By the time I found Donahue, I realized one could build a whole career using his voice to address issues that mattered. But Oprah built an entire empire using words as the foundation. She gave voice to people who needed to be heard for the greater good. Of all the voices she brought forth, the one that really mattered the most to me was that of Mattie Stepanek, a young boy with Muscular Dystrophy and wisdom way beyond his tender years. Mattie, even when his age was still in single digits, was a poet, a best-selling published author, a public speaker, an ambassador for Muscular Dystrophy Association and an inspiration to many people. Mattie and Oprah became fast friends – an inspirational power couple, if you will. When Mattie died at 13, Oprah spoke at his funeral, as did President Jimmy Carter. Oprah’s interviews are proprietary material, so I can’t show them here, but here is a short tribute video Oprah did after Mattie died:

Randy Plauch was another voice Oprah amplified for the masses. Plauch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Melon University. In his 40s, Plausch was stricken with pancreatic cancer. Told by his doctors that his medical options were exhausted, Plausch, the married father of two small children decided to live a lot until the end. He became widely known for “The Last Lecture.” The real title of the speech was “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” Plausch reinforced my belief in the true power of words. His speech is riveting. On Oprah’s show, he delivered a abbreviated version. Please watch:
Voices like Plausch’s need wide distribution. That is what Oprah did for us. If Plausch’s words have meaning for you, you can watch the entire speech by clicking here.

There were so many others whose own life experiences taught us how to appreciate or improve our individual lives. There was the mother who lost all of her limbs to a flesh-eating bacteria, and decided to rise above it and just keep on keeping on. There was a 17-year-old boy who spent his early childhood encased in wire and locked in a closet, who told us the important thing to remember is to do good for others every day. Sounds simplistic? Not from somebody who grew up in a closet. I remember a guest who survived a plane crash in which the other passengers died. He was trapped in his seat so he actually watched people burn and die. He said he watched their “auras” leave their bodies. Some, he said, were brighter than others. He said what he learned was to live a good life, so that when his aura left his body it was as bright as possible. Oprah gave all of them, and thousands of others, a chance to use their voice to teach and inspire us.

Everybody’s voice counts. But many times when Oprah spoke, I was compelled to really listen. Over the years she said things like, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” She told us, “Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.” And this: “Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.” And one of the most important things I learned from Oprah Winfrey: “"When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are."

We live in a cynical, skeptical culture. We often tend to resort to sarcasm rather than clearly communicate what we feel. So, many people would hear words from Oprah and dismiss them as just the ramblings of a talk show host. Their loss, I’d say. What makes Oprah valuable to the rest of us is her imperfections, her recognition of her own personal challenges, and the lessons she has taken away from all of it. Those lessons she has translated into teachings for us. You don’t have to agree with her when she says, “"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different," but you have to admit it sure makes you think. Oprah makes us think sometimes. Count the people who truly make you think – I bet you can do so on one hand and have fingers left over.

In the coming weeks, as we count down to the end of the Oprah Winfrey Show, you will read all kinds of tributes, reviews, editorial valentines, etc. They’ll tell you how much they are going to miss her on daytime TV. Not me. Instead I am acting on one of the lessons she offered. Over the years, Oprah encouraged us to live in the moment, be the best we could be, so that the next moment(s) would be even better. That is what she is doing. At 57, hopefully she still has many productive years to expand on what she started with the talk show. She redefined broadcasting, making it into something it had never been. The important thing is that she did it, not that she is ending it.

In Time Magazine’s 2010 Time 100,none other than Phil Donahue had this to say to Oprah Winfrey: “…you leave a legacy of responsible TV stewardship, a program that brought light to dark places and made us laugh, often at ourselves.” He also called her a “once in a century woman.” I agree. Thank you, Oprah. You matter.

New Orleans: THE COLOR OF JUSTICE

2011-04-04T16:23:00.002-05:00

Three years ago when I started this blog, I asked myself what the ongoing themes/topics would probably be. The first item that came to mind was justice. If you look at the top of the page under the title, you will see “Justice” prominently mentioned. Maybe that has to do with the fact that I live in New Orleans and justice is often served cold here, rather than warm and fuzzy. Last week, we saw two instances in which the New Orleans brand of justice was ice cold.

The first story that jumped off the page is that of former death row inmate John Thompson (below with wife, Laverne Thompson), who was wrongfully convicted of the 1984 murder of a hotel executive. Thompson was released in 2007, after it was revealed that two former New Orleans prosecutors withheld blood evidence that may well have exonerated Thompson almost three decades ago. Thompson sued the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office and was awarded $14 million. The D.A.’s office objected to the award, on the grounds that it should not be held accountable for the two prosecutors who hid the evidence. To make a very long, drawn out legal story short, the D.A. won. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the current D.A., Leon Cannizzaro, cannot be held accountable for the actions of two prosecutors who worked for former D.A. Harry Connick.

Connick, for his part, went on the a New Orleans radio talk show and defended himself, contending that even if the blood evidence had been made available, it would not have cleared Thompson. How he knows that is a mystery. Connick (right) has a history of defending the D.A.’s office even when there is no clear defense. For example, back in 1991, Dino Cinel, a former Catholic priest admitted he videotaped and photographed sexual trysts with young boys in a church rectory. He also admitted that he and the boys smoked pot together. It’s all on tape. Connick declined to prosecute Cinel. Connick, a devout Catholic, later told Vanity Fair magazine that he did not bring charges against Cinel because he did not want to “embarrass the Mother Church.” Although wildly popular in New Orleans – he served as D.A. for 30 years – Connick nonetheless has a questionable track record when it comes to justice.

Current D.A. Cannizzaro claims the judgment against his office would have shuttered all current and near future legal work, because the money was not there to pay Thompson. In a news conference after the Supreme Court ruling was released, Thompson said, “I’m not worried about their money. I want them to be held accountable.”

As it stands, Thompson receives a measly, mandatory $150,000 from the state, and not one cent from the office that stole 23 years of his life. Essentially, the Supreme Court has implied in its ruling that prosecutors are independent agents, even though they report to the D.A. The two prosecutors who withheld evidence were not charged, and the office to which they reported was not held financially accountable. That is New Orleans justice. It bears mentioning that Thompson spent fourteen of his incarceration years on death row and was prepared for execution seven times. Further, there is precedent for this type of case. In Brady v. Maryland (1963), the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights.

It also bears mentioning that Justice Clarence Thomas – he of questionable integrity – wrote the decision on behalf of his fellow justices. Thomas wrote the decision knowing full well that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room.

In a second New Orleans case that made big headlines, two New Orleans cops were sentenced for the shooting of Henry Glover, 31, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Former police officer David Warren was sentenced to 25 years, while former officer Greg McRae got 17 years. (photo below: Warren is on the left; McRae, right) While Glover did the shooting, Warren is guilty of burning the car with Glover’s body in it. Supposedly, Warren shot Glover in the chest because he believed Glover was guilty of looting at a shopping mall. Clearly, the reason McRae burned the vehicle was simply to hide the evidence, while a third officer was found guilty of filing a false police report.

Observers in New Orleans are left to wonder why Warren was not sentenced to life in prison. Glover’s family is outraged. Under Louisiana sentencing guidelines, Warren could legally be sentenced to life, and McRae could legally be sentenced to 50 years. If those maximum guidelines do not apply to the two defendants in this case, to whom will they ever apply? Glover was unarmed and not the aggressor here. There is no justification for excessive force or murder in this case.

Recently, the Department of Justice severely dressed down the New Orleans Police Department, accusing the Department of racial profiling. Among the laundry list of items the NOPD has to answer to the DOJ for, is this:
"NOPD use of force data also shows a troubling racial disparity that warrants a searching inquiry into whether racial bias influenced the use of force at NOPD.”
"Of the 27 instances between January 2009 and May 2010 in which NOPD officers intentionally discharged their firearms at people, all 27 of the subjects of this deadly force were African-American," the report stated without specifying if any -- or how many -- were fatally wounded.
A review of "resisting arrest" reports documenting use of force over the same period found blacks were the subjects 81 out of 96 times.

We have a crisis of injustice in the city of New Orleans. Whether improvement comes as a result of the DOJ’s severe criticism of the NOPD remains to be seen. For John Thompson and Henry Glover, justice simply did not happen.

WATCHING CHARLIE DIE

2011-03-17T11:08:00.004-05:00

Back in January, when Charlie Sheen trashed the Eloise Suite at the Plaza Hotel in NYC, most of us shrugged it off. After all, for a couple of decades we’ve been in on Sheen’s anti-social behavior, drug addiction and penchant for hookers. Remember Heidi Fleiss? Sheen was one of her best clients. So to hear that he was in a hotel room with a porn star and behaving badly was not really news that jumped off the page. But then came February, and March. Massive cocaine parties, more hookers, police, ex-wives venting publicly about Sheen’s decline, 911 calls, rehab then no rehab – Charlie Sheen is in big trouble. We all know it, but he makes his trouble so entertaining that we forget that his life is at stake.

Talking heads on TV cable programs debated the relative danger Sheen is in. Cocaine addiction is nothing to scoff at. It is a disease that seems to never quite go away once one has it. And if the addict is outrageously wealthy like Sheen, it is one that can easily be fueled and re-fueled. Medical experts seem united in their belief that Sheen is in a state of hypomania. We non-medical types are told that hypomania is a state in which a person is overly-energetic, needs little sleep, has thoughts and expressions of grandeur and has a heightened sense of his own power and creativity. The person also seems to have racing thoughts. Understatement – have you heard Sheen’s rants? Listen:
I could use this space deriding talk show hosts like Alex Jones and Piers Morgan for their soft-peddling, fawning interviews with Sheen, but instead, it seems more relevant to talk about Sheen himself. He’s a smart guy. He understands drug addiction. He knows you do not cure an addiction by closing your eyes “I Dream of Jeannie” style and wishing it away. But he’s so deep into his self-destructive mode that it appears he is beginning to believe his own bullshit.

I like a good rant as much as the next guy – maybe more. Look at the title of my bog. But Sheen’s outbursts are particularly disturbing to me because like many others, I believe we may be watching Charlie die. That’s what addicts do. They die. And I believe he is so far into his disease that he has lost respect for his own life. Ranting about tiger blood, and being a rock star, etc., is really only fear trying to cover itself up in a nice warm blanket of invincibility. At 45, Charlie should know better, but as a 45-year-old drug addict, he has lost all perspective.

I am particularly pissed off about Sheen’s lack of regard for life, maybe because I watched my own mother die last week. I watched her struggle for air to even slightly fill her lungs. I watched her rail against impending death, flailing her arms, coughing unproductively and generally losing the last grasp on her 91-year-old life. So when I see people like Sheen so cavalier about their own lives, it does not sit well with me. And when I see millions of people buying in to his crack-addled rhetoric, I can’t help thinking it’s much like a death watch. It’s a lot like sitting around my mother’s deathbed waiting for her last breath, except Sheen makes it more entertaining. Death as entertainment. Now there’s a concept,right? Further, I’m pissed that I have more regard for Charlie Sheen’s life than he does. I look at the guy and see terminal illness, while he looks in the mirror and sees a guy who is “bi-winning.” It’s disgusting.

Oh well, stay tuned. Charlie will be right back after these messages. Or, maybe not.

AS DETROIT GOES…SO GOES THE NATION?

2011-02-22T11:13:00.010-06:00

Amidst all the headlines about Middle Eastern countries imploding, Federal budget debates in Washington and citizen vs. Governor demonstrations in Wisconsin, here’s one you may have overlooked:

STATE ORDERS DETROIT TO CLOSE HALF ITS SCHOOLS

I had to read the headline twice just to make sure I wasn’t misreading it. It seems Detroit has a huge public school budget deficit - $327 million. State officials in Michigan, in their lofty wisdom, have determined that this deficit must be wiped out by 2014, and the way to do that is to simply close half the schools. And get this: by closing the schools, the average class size in a Detroit high school will be 60 students.
Have you ever stood in front of a classroom full of high schoolers and tried to teach something? Those 20 or 25 faces that peer back at you are generally jaded and disinterested in education. Place 60 kids in a high school classroom and a good number of them will likely disappear. Best evidence? The dropout rate tells the story. In 2008, only 52 percent of high school students graduated after four years in America’s top 50 largest cities, according to Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

Guess which city has the highest dropout rate in the country – Detroit. The vast majority of high school dropouts in the U.S. are either black or Latino, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Detroit’s population is 81% black, according to Detroitareaconnect.com, a demographic tracking service. In 2009, the Washington Times newspaper did a story about poverty in Detroit.

Here are some of their findings: Between 2001 and 2009, the median household income in Detroit dropped 24 percent about $35,000, well below the $54,200 figure statewide. The literacy rate for adults in the city is just under 50 percent. Fifty percent of the city’s children live in poverty. The public school system received a D+ from the National Council on Teacher Quality in the group’s 2008 annual report.

So there you have it: Detroit on paper sounds much like a third world country. The city is always on the list of the 10 U.S. cities with the highest murder rates. And it is this city that the state of Michigan has decided should close half of its public schools. The other half will remain in their decaying, sub-standard facilities. Reportedly, in 2007 Detroit had 201 public schools. It now has 142. When the new cuts are made it will have 72. Oh, and worth mentioning – Detroit’s unemployment rate tends to hover around 10 percent. When the schools close, that figure is likely to spike, with hundreds of newly-unemployed teachers.

So, let’s review: Detroit is poverty stricken, racially unbalanced, inordinately illiterate, grossly under-employed and extremely dangerous. With all of that knowledge in their back pocket, the state government still decides the solution to the deficit problem in Detroit public schools is to close half the schools.
Detroit may be ground zero for the national public school crisis, but how many other cities will emulate its budget cutting, education slashing quick financial fix? Will New Orleans be next? East L.A.? Camden? Birmingham? Cleveland? South Chicago? East St. Louis? It is estimated by the American Association of School Administrators that 275,000 U.S. education jobs will be eliminated this year due to budget cuts. For each of those positions, how many students suffer dire consequences? One can only imagine the environment in a Detroit classroom where 60 students are crammed into a room meant for half that number, where lighting, textbooks, plumbing, desks and more are so old and decrepit as to inhibit the full impact of even the best teaching methods. Add to that a huge drug crisis among high school aged kids and federal budget cuts to drug education and rehab programs, and what you have is an academic Armageddon.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. is projected to spend more than $100 billion on the Afghanistan war this year. And for what? Meanwhile, public schools coast to coast are crumbling, losing teachers, over-populating classrooms and at an extreme – closing. In the near future, keep your eye on this: President Obama has proposed in his 2012 budget big increases in spending for public school education. But MN Rep. John Kline, head of the House Education and Workforce Committee told the New York times this: “Over the last 45 years we have increased our investment in education, but the return on that investment has failed to improve student achievement. Throwing more money at our nation’s broken education system ignores reality and does a disservice to students and taxpayers.” Stay tuned.

HELP--THEY'RE BEATING JOURNALISTS!

2011-02-17T10:52:00.016-06:00

If there is one country that would seem worth visiting in the Arab world, it is Bahrain. Less restrictive than other countries in the region, Bahrain is a sophisticated, upwardly mobile culture with a thriving economy . It is, by most accounts, an enviable place to live if you are in that part of the world. That is, until this week. Following the lead of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the citizens of Bahrain have now taken to the streets in protest of what they perceive as an oppressive government. The message is that they want democracy, a tighter focus on human rights and equal treatment under the law.

In 2004, flying back to the U.S. from Singapore, the plane stopped in Bahrain (below, left, in more peaceful times), on the way to London. Of course I had never been to that part of the world, and even now all I can say is that I was in the airport in Bahrain. But during the layover, I was astounded at the upscale quality of the airport. High end retailers lined the lower level, including a jewelry store featuring items one might find on Fifth Ave. in New York. The airport was spotless, full of nicely dressed travelers and residents and generally a surprising introduction to the Arab world. About a half hour into the four-hour layover, all of the electrical power went out in the airport. Pitch black. Scary, actually. But soon enough, from wherever, employees with flashlights and other illuminators made the place comfortable, and people were strolling the lower level with silver trays, offering tea. It was quite civilized, I must say.

While in Singapore, I met a couple from Bahrain. They were in their late 30s, very well dressed and really gregarious. We were attending some of the same functions at an international food expo, so we got to know each other. I found out from them that they loved living in their country, even though now and then little tidbits about sexism, racism and xenophobia would leak through their conversation. Upon further examination revelations came forth that if you are from Asia or Bangladesh, you probably do not want to be in Bahrain. If you are a woman, the glass ceiling is quite low. If you’re gay, well, best to keep that to yourself. (It is reported that recently about 200 gay men were arrested at a private party).

That brings us to ABC News correspondent Miguel Marquez, an openly gay reporter who was severely beaten by what he described as a group of “thugs” just as he was filing a report on the unrest in the streets of Bahrain. Listen:

Just days after CBS reporter Lara Logan was raped in Egypt, Marquez is just the latest in a string of violent attacks on western journalists. Truth be told, Marquez was probably attacked more because he is a journalist than because he is gay. But should ABC send an openly gay reporter to cover a story in a country that often imprisons or otherwise abuses gay people? Yesterday, my question was should CBS send a beautiful blonde reporter in to Egypt, where violence against women is commonplace? Last week, my question was should CBS send Katie Couric (below right), of all people, into the streets of Egypt to report from the center of the violence? I think not, but there she was.

At the risk of sounding redundant, it is time for media organizations to step back and take a hard look at who is being sent where to cover important news stories. This morning on a talk radio program, a commentator said he felt it was critical for news organizations to have “boots on the ground” in volatile countries. “Boots on the ground” is military slang. Reporters are not soldiers. They are communicators. Unless journalists are going to start “enlisting” in their profession and carrying the same arms that soldiers carry, the commentator’s remarks are unfounded and ill-conceived. We do need global reporting, even (or especially) in times of uprisings, but we also need to safeguard our journalists. From where I sit, it seems increasingly risky to be an international reporter.