In Defense Of The Pre-9/11 Mindset: Reprise II

Posted by on September 11, 2010 at 11:02 am. 3 Comments :

On September 11, 2006, I wrote an essay about how the American perception of its place in the world supposedly shifted after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I reprinted it in 2008 because it seemed that so little had changed.

I am reprinting it again today because it addresses some recent occurrences that I could not have anticipated, but apparently did. Most notable the creation of Glenn Beck’s ludicrous 9/12 Project. It’s purpose, according to Beck, was to remind us all of how we felt on the day after the World Trade Center attack. He describes his recollection as one that was full of unity and hope. Was he still on drugs?

My recollection is below. Suffice it to say that it is infused with more fear, confusion, and disgust, at what just occurred. If Beck had named his project after 9/22 or 10/3, after we had some time to compose ourselves and shape a forward vision, it might have made more sense. But on 9/12 most Americans were shocked, trembling, and seeking answers. It is not a day to which they would want to return.

And so…my defense of the Pre-9/11 mindset:

In September of 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney, in a sinister demonization of Democrats, warned that…

“if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and it will fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact, these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we’re not really at war.”

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is much maligned as mindsets go. Disdain is heaped upon it as if it were a discarded hypothesis. There is now a stigma associated with a worldview that was perfectly acceptable 24 hours prior. And a cadre of power hungry fear merchants is restlessly hawking the notion that everything we thought we knew has withered into irrelevance. The Post-9/11ers propose that an imaginary line has been drawn that illuminates the moral and intellectual differences between those who stand on one side or the other. So what exactly does it mean to be 9/10ish?

I remember clearly what was on my mind. I was still upset that a pretend cowboy, whose intellectual marbles rattled around vacantly in his 2 gallon hat, had gotten away with stealing an election. I was recalling, with renewed appreciation, an era of domestic surplus and international cooperation. Or as The Onion headline put it when Bush was first elected, “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.”

9/11 was undoubtedly an unwelcome milestone in American history. But the idea that everything changed on that day is shallow and puerile. The history of human civilization reveals that we simply do not change that much from one century to the next. And the events that actually do precipitate change are rarely the ones we presume them to be. There was terrorism before 9/11. There were birthdays and funerals and parking tickets and snow cones and life’s everyday extraordinary spectrum of pleasure no matter how painful.

What changed was that a nation that was once perceived to be inviolable and courageous was now seen as vulnerable and afraid. Like a child lost in a crowd, America was searching for a guardian, but what we got was no angel. As President Bush took to the mound of rubble for his megaphone moment, he was not alone. He was accompanied by a media that sought to construct a hero where none stood. I must admit that it was an ambitious undertaking considering the weakness of the raw material. They took an inarticulate, persistently mediocre, dynastic runt, who on September tenth was considered by many to be Crawford’s lost idiot, and transformed him into a statesman overnight. The enormity of this achievement underscores the power of the media.

My Pre-9/11 Mindset was thrust into fear on that transitory day because I knew that the imbecile we were stuck with in the White House was incapable of reacting appropriately to the threat. I remember vainly trying to persuade previously reasonable people that if they thought Bush was a moron the day before, there was nothing in his breakfast that infused him with wisdom on that sad morning.

What transpired since has, regrettably, proven me right. We toppled the Taliban but let the 9/11 commander escape. Now the remnants of the Taliban are rising again and creating havoc in an unprepared and unstable Afghanistan. We were misled into an unrelated conflagration in Iraq via fear and deception. Now tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been liberated – liberated from the confines of their physical bodies. It’s too bad that these liberated corpses will be unable to march in the parades celebrating their liberation. A world that had nothing but sympathy for us after 9/11, is now repulsed by our arrogance. At home we are paying for our adventures by burdening the next few generations with a record debt. And we pay a much greater price in the cost of lost liberties, courtesy of a despotic cabal in Washington that has more trust in fear than it does in our Constitution.

The historical revisionists that cast the Pre-9/11 Mindset as a pejorative are blind to its inherent virtue. The Pre-9/11 Mindset honors civil liberties and human rights. It recognizes real threats and inspires the courage to face them. It demands responsibility and accountability from those who manage our public affairs. It condemns preemptive warfare and torture. The Pre-9/11 Mindset is not consumed with fear, division, and domination. It is rooted in reality with its branches facing the sunrise.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset is superior in every aspect to the Post-9/11 apocalyptic nightmare that has been thrust upon us. Its adoption is, in fact, our best hope for crawling out from under the shroud that drapes our national psyche. Vice President Cheney also said that…

“Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength. They are invited by the perception of weakness.”

If that’s true, then the terrorists must have perceived the weakness of the Bush administration and considered it an invitation to launch their attack. How do you suppose they perceive us now? They’ve seen the passage of the Patriot Act that limits long-held freedoms. They’ve seen our government listening in on our phone calls and monitoring our financial transactions. They see us lining up at airport terminals shoeless and forced to surrender our shampoo and Evian water. They see us mourning the loss of our sons and daughters who are not even engaged in battle with the 9/11 perpetrators. They see us as fearful and submissive. Is this not emboldening the terrorists for whom this perception of weakness will be seen as yet another invitation to attack?

Yes, I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset and it is not a yearning for a simpler bygone era of harmony. You could hardly call the maiden year of this century simple or harmonious. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I’ve had it all along; all through the Post-9/11 defeatism and scare-mongering; through the war posturing and false bravado; through the sordid attempts to divide Americans and vilify dissenters; through the bigotry and arrogance of those who believe that their way is the right way and the world will concur as soon as we’re done beating it into them. I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have not let the Post-9/11 Mindset infect my spirit with its yearning for a bygone era that more closely resembles the Dark Ages than the Renaissance.

Pre-9/11 Mindset Post-9/11 Mindset
Enduring Peace Perpetual War
Prosperity Poverty and Debt
Civil Rights The Patriot Act
Human rights Torture
Accountability Corruption
Reality Fear

I have a Pre-9/11 Mindset because I have a mind, and I use it.

Nine years later there is still a scar on our nation – both literally in the form of a vacant lot where the World Trade Center towers used to stand, and figuratively in the still smoldering biases of those who seek to divide.

The sad fact that there is a deranged preacher in Florida who can command the attention of the media and the government with an idiotic prank involving burning Qur’ans ought to make us think long and hard about whether those institutions are serving us. And the protracted debate over whether a non-mosque can be built two blocks from ground zero is just another reminder of how deeply some of our citizens are consumed by prejudice and hate. Not to mention how little regard they have for our traditional values and our Constitution.

Nine years later there is still a scar on our nation. And we still have a long way to go.

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RIGHTNETWORK: All That’s Right With The Media

Posted by on September 9, 2010 at 4:03 pm. 5 Comments :

Yesterday marked the launch of an avowedly conservative media platform for all the Tea Baggers, Birchers, Oathkeepers, and fans of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Ayn Rand. Now you may have thought that there was already such a network in Fox News. You may have noticed that most of the rest of the media is already catering to the right-wing as well.


Featured programming on RIGHTNETWORK includes the comedy show Right2Laugh with guest Jon Lovitz. Lovitz is best known for his pathological liar, a character that should feel right at home amongst the conservative set.

Nevertheless, founders of RIGHTNETWORK have determined that there is a burning need for another right-wing network and they are providing one that went live yesterday. The network is financed by a group including Ed Snider, the CEO of Comcast Spectacor, and actor Kelsey Grammer. As it is a private enterprise, the remaining investors have not been disclosed.

The significance of someone like Snider participating in this network is that he will have some influence over the network’s carriage on the nation’s biggest cable system operator, Comcast. Comcast is presently in the process of acquiring NBC which, of course, includes NBC News and MSNBC. What impact that would have on NBC’s content remains to be seen. But it is a legitimate matter of concern with regard to the possibility that Comcast has an interest in shifting its other news outlets farther to the right.

Grammer has been busy promoting the network, including an appearance today on Fox News with Neil Cavuto. I wonder why the right is so accommodating to Grammer when they ordinarily lambaste any celebrity who deigns to venture into politics or social commentary. And Grammer, a well known conservative, is doing far more than offering his opinion, an act that, by itself, would stir an avalanche of disdain were he Sean Penn or Jennifer Aniston.

Whether or not there is an audience for the network is debatable. Fox News previously tried to produced a comedy newscast that was laughed off the air. In a statement from the new network’s president, Kevin McFeeley, the network is seeking to corral the same conservative couch-potatoes as Fox News:

“Investors hope that the support of a conservative audience that has made Fox News Channel and radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh successful could also work for entertainment programming.”

At least McFeeley acknowledges that Fox News is a right-wing network with a conservative audience. Cavuto didn’t have any problem with that characterization either when he interviewed Grammer. Maybe they are getting closer to abandoning the “fair and balanced” slogan that was never a realistic description of their reporting.


Fox News Reporter Charles Leaf’s History of Abuse, Violence

Posted by on September 8, 2010 at 4:12 pm. 15 Comments :

Yesterday I profiled Charles Leaf, a reporter for the New York Fox affiliate WNYW, whose investigation of figures related to the non-mosque that is not at ground zero (Cordoba House) was the subject of controversy.

As I noted in the profile, Leaf’s reporting was saturated with innuendo and unsupported allegations. He engaged in almost comical ambush escapades that produced nothing newsworthy, yet he still surmised that the reluctance of his targets to talk to him was evidence of some fantasy wrongdoing. His behavior demonstrated that he has a complete absence of journalistic ethics.

Today Leaf was featured again on Fox News’ America Live with Megyn Kelly. Kelly is no stranger to sleazy, dishonest practices herself. But now a News Corpse commenter has provided information about Leaf’s past that sheds light on his despicable and unprofessional tactics. Here is what Denver’s Westword reported about Leaf back in 2005:

“During a stint at a station in Mobile, Alabama, he was the focus of a 1999 lawsuit that impugned him for a ‘willful physical attack’ against a local councilwoman; the case was eventually settled. Two years later, while working in Detroit, a man told police that Leaf spewed homophobic obscenities and tried to attack him after the reporter was pelted with eggs while covering a story. And Bobbi Barrow, spokeswoman for Denver Health Medical Center, believes Leaf misrepresented himself to get an interview with her boss, Dr. Patricia Gabow, at an event last November. ‘What he did was unprofessional,’ Barrow says.”

The behavior described above seems consistent with the obnoxious bullying Leaf resorted to in his confrontation with the Cordoba House developers. While Leaf aggressively slanders the targets of his investigations without any substantive basis for doing so, it turns out that he is the one who ought to be under investigation. Most reputable news organizations would never have anything to do with someone that had Leaf’s history of malfeasance. That’s why he works for Fox.


Dishonoring 9/11: Fox Nation’s Calendar For Obama, Palin And Beck

Posted by on September 7, 2010 at 7:39 pm. 4 Comments :

Over at the Fox Nation, where every news item is a right-wing attack piece, they have been alerted to the fact that President Obama will be spending September 11 at the Pentagon, one of the sites targeted by the terrorists ten years ago. But rather than publishing a story with the headline, “Obama to Mark September 11 at the Pentagon,” the Fox Nationalists posted this:

Pres. Obama Not Attending 9/11 Ceremony at Ground Zero

As might be expected, Fox clearly went out of their way to come up with that negative slant on the story They could easily have used the more neutral headline I proposed above, which happens to be the actual headline of the article to which Fox Nation linked.

What Fox News did not report is that Obama is not the only prominent public person who isn’t going to ground zero on 9/11. In fact, the two most prominent employees of Fox News, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, aren’t going to ground zero either. They also won’t be at the Pentagon. And they aren’t going to be at the Pennsylvania crash site with Michelle Obama and Laura Bush either. (For the record, Vice-President Joe Biden will be at ground zero).

Palin and Beck care so much about this memorial that they have scheduled an appearance together more than 3,000 miles away from any of these sites, in Anchorage, Alaska, at an event that will cost the public between $73.00 and $130.00 each to attend. Oh yeah, there is also a $225.00 ticket that includes a meet-and-greet with Beck. What a wonderful way to honor the memory of the citizens and responders whose lives were lost on 9/11.

Perhaps Beck decided to visit Palin in Alaska on this anniversary so that the two of them could keep an eye on Russia. More likely, Beck is repaying Palin for her appearance at his Washington BeckFest last week. And it is quite a rich repayment that could bring in half a million dollars. That oughta restore some honor.

So while Obama is honoring the fallen, the Fox all-stars, Palin and Beck, will be hustling their followers. And the only news that Fox sees in all of this is that Obama won’t be at ground zero. Fair and balanced.

Update, 9/10/10: It only took three days for Glenn Beck to buckle under pressure and claim that he “had always intended to donate the speaking fee from the event on Saturday.” Even so, his statement just raises further questions. Since the event stands to raise about half a million dollars, and Palin reportedly is not getting any fee at all, then how much is Beck’s fee? And if it isn’t half a million dollars, where is the rest of the money going? Beck and Palin have received in the area of a hundred thousand dollars for such events. After expenses this would still leave more than a quarter of a million dollars that is unaccounted for. It’s hard to believe that that money isn’t going to end up in the pockets of Beck and/or Palin.


Charles Leaf: The New Most Repulsive Fox News Reporter

Posted by on September 7, 2010 at 3:19 pm. 22 Comments :

Fox News has launched the careers of some of the most ignorant, unethical, anti-journalists, ever to fondle a microphone. Some have had great success like Glenn Beck. Others have disappeared into media black holes likes Jesse Watters.

Following in the footsteps of Watters is a reporter for the Fox affiliate in New York (WNYW), Charles Leaf. With an obnoxious bearing and a devotion to dishonesty, Leaf has been falling all over himself to fabricate a story where none exists. It’s no wonder that he has found himself promoted to numerous segments on the Fox News Channel. He has been featured with Fox & Friends and Greta Van Susteren. And Megyn Kelly has virtually adopted him and moved him into her den.

The story Leaf has been investigating is related to the controversial non-mosque that is not at ground zero. His premise is that persons associated with the project are either corrupt or connected to terrorists. However, his reports haven’t even provided enough evidence to start a rumor.

First Leaf conducted an ambush interview on real estate developer, Sharif El-Gamal, that yielded nothing to support his contention that El-Gamal was corrupt. Leaf merely insinuated that something must be wrong because El-Gamal was a waiter eight years prior to investing in the Park51 project. The implication being that anyone who starts a small business, works hard for nearly a decade, and achieves success, is deserving of suspicion.

Then Leaf turned his focus to investor Hisham Elzanaty. Again, Leaf ambushed Elzanaty without acquiring any usable information. The only purpose for Leaf’s ambushes is to suggest something sinister when the target declines to talk to him. To that end Leaf made wild accusations about Elzanaty’s contribution to a Muslim charity. As it turns out, the charity, the Holy Land Foundation, was later investigated for ties to Hamas. But that wasn’t until two years after Elzanaty’s donation, and the feds acknowledged that contributors would not have known about the organization’s relationship with Hamas as it was deliberately concealed.

Both of these reports failed completely to produce evidence of any wrongdoing. They were exercises in insipidness and their only purpose was to insinuate and intimidate. They were utterly unprofessional and potentially libelous. Yet Leaf exalted himself as if he had exposed Watergate. And Fox News (particularly Megyn Kelly) went along by broadcasting Leaf’s empty innuendos and affirming the unsupported conclusions.

The most recent edition of this phony story shows Leaf continuing to ambush unsuspecting figures with highly-charged questions that have no basis in fact. In a new segment broadcast on Fox News by Megyn Kelly, Leaf approached both New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at separate events and asked a loaded question to the effect of: Do you still support the right to build the mosque now that you know it’s developer contributed to a terrorist organization?

What a dishonest piece of tabloid excrement Leaf is. First of all, neither Bloomberg nor Gillibrand “knew” of the allegations prior to Leaf making them. And there was certainly no reason to take his word for it based on his shoddy reputation. Secondly, Leaf outright lied by asserting that Elzanaty contributed to a terrorist organization. The HLF was a credentialed charity at the time of the donation and there is no evidence that he had any knowledge of any untoward activities. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary.

Charles Leaf is on the fast track to Fox News stardom. He is demonstrating the skill set so admired by Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, its executive masters: dishonesty, partisanship, sensationalism, and aggression. He has a gift for innuendo and for advancing false premises. He expertly exploits the ignorance of his audience who are not likely to research the subject matter themselves. And he will barge into any affair and assert his bogus inquisitions without embarrassment.

Yes, Charles Leaf will go far in that environment. And we need to be aware of him as he climbs the Fox ladder of propaganda. We need to watch as this slimeball advances to the mothership and spreads his brand of sophistry and deceit. He is the embodiment of the Fox ethic and the quintessential Fox blowhard. Remember his name.

Update: Megyn Kelly hosted Charles Leaf again today, even though he had nothing new to add. He just repeated his slanderous accusation that Elzanaty had contributed to a terrorist organization. Leaf is an irredeemable liar, and Kelly is his enabler.


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Chris Wallace’s Heart Isn’t Really Into Journalism

Posted by on September 5, 2010 at 11:52 am. 3 Comments :

This morning on Fox News Sunday, the lowest rated of all the network Sunday morning news programs, host Chris Wallace once again demonstrated his lack of commitment to fairness and balance when he asked the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes an absurdly framed question about Obama’s speech on the Iraq troop withdrawal last week:

Wallace: In that speech, to say “my central mission is to restore the economy,” is it unfair to say that this is a president whose heart doesn’t seem to be into winning the war on terror, no matter what it costs?
Hayes: No, I don’t think that’s at all unfair

Hayes deftly picked up the cue from Wallace who was obviously presenting Hayes with a gift-wrapped opening to disparage the President. For either of these notorious hacks to suggest that Obama’s attention to this nation’s serious economic difficulties translates into disinterest in battling Al Qaeda is borderline psychotic.

The President’s focus is pretty squarely aligned with that of the American people who are most concerned about the economy and jobs. That doesn’t preclude anyone from being concerned about national security as well. However, most serious analysts recognize that without a stable domestic economy we cannot expect to have much success in achieving our international security goals.

The ridiculous framing of Wallace’s question is not a fluke. He has long been a source of overt bias even as Fox News touts him as an example of their “real” news personalities, distinct from blatherers like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, and the cast of Fox & Friends. Some of Wallace’s great moments in partisanship include:

  • Asking Rush Limbaugh what Obama has done TO the country.
  • Awarding ACORN pimp, James O’Keefe, the Power Player of the Week.
  • Calling Democrats “damn fools” for declining to appear on Fox News.
  • Admitting that he “generally agrees” with Sean Hannity.
  • Jumping to the defense of George W. Bush after director Ron Howard suggested comparisons to Richard Nixon.
  • Declaring Sarah Palin to be a “new star in the political galaxy.”
  • Asked George Bush if he was “puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting [the] rights of people who want to kill us.”
  • In a criticism of Democratic health care plans, making the hilarious observation that “people don’t even contemplate end of life until they’re in an irreversible coma.”

Chris Wallace long ago cemented his reputation as a partisan phony in the field of journalism. He was fortunate to find his home on Fox News because few other news organizations would tolerate his level of unprofessionalism. But I suppose we should appreciate his willingness to serve up new examples of deceit and bias with each of his weekly outings. It makes it just that much easier to dismiss him and to prove that he and Fox News are not actually news and are wholly unworthy of our trust.


An Open Letter To Rachel Maddow Re: Jan Brewer

Posted by on September 3, 2010 at 4:56 pm. 1 Comments :

Rachel Maddow has been reporting on a wide-ranging scandal in the Arizona statehouse. The local CBS affiliate in Phoenix has been investigating Governor Jan Brewer and her staff for alleged improprieties surrounding the passage of SB1070, the anti-immigrant bill. The investigation has shown that members of Brewer’s advisors and staff are also lobbyists for private prison enterprises who stand to gain from the bill’s passage:

“As CBS station KPHO-TV has revealed, two of Governor Brewers advisers, Paul Senseman and Chuck Coughlin, have extensive ties to a private prison company called the Corrections Corporation of America, CCA. As a prison operator in Arizona, that company stands to benefit from every person detained under SB1070.”

Since the story broke the Brewer campaign has removed all campaign advertising from KPHO-TV. Maddow followed up and learned that the decision was Brewer’s and that the reasons were specifically due to the station’s investigation.

What this amounts to is a sort of blackmail on the part of the Governor. It is considered inappropriate and unethical for a public servant to seek to punish members of the press for doing their jobs. This is very different than declining to grant interviews to an adversarial reporter. This attacks the news enterprise financially by refusing to purchase advertising.

However, there is a bigger question here. While KPHO-TV is to be commended for their integrity in pursuing this story in the face of these repercussions, I have to wonder where the rest of the Arizona media is. I have not heard any reports that Brewer’s campaign has halted advertising on any other Arizona television station. Maybe that’s because I have also been able to find any stories on this subject by any other station. This is clearly a matter of importance to residents of the state. So why haven’t the other stations covered it? Are they now afraid of losing ad dollars? Are they deliberately suppressing the news to facilitate the Governor?

These would be great questions for Maddow to raise when following up further on this story. If the media in Arizona has been either biased in favor of Brewer, or intimidated by her or her staff, it needs to be revealed and reported to the citizens who have an important election coming up in a couple of months. Are you listening Rachel?


On Letterman: Donald Trump Declares War On Islam

Posted by on September 3, 2010 at 10:31 am. 10 Comments :

Joining many ignorant and intolerant right-wingers, Donald Trump has taken the position that all Muslims were responsible for the World Trade Center terrorist attack. Appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman, Trump responded to a question about the non-mosque that is not at ground zero:

Letterman: Does this suggest that we are in fact officially at war with Muslims?
Trump: Well, somebody knocked down the World Trade Center. […] Somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.

Somebody knocked down the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma too. Are we therefore at war with all Christians? Somebody bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama killing four girls. Somebody shot and killed a doctor in Kansas. Somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff in the name of Christ, so no more churches should be built in America. Right, Donald?

The Fox Nation (via NewsBusters) carried this story with a headline that asserted that Trump had “schooled” Letterman. They noted twice that Trump received applause from the audience for his remarks on the mosque. What they left out was that Letterman was also applauded when he disagreed with Trump and stood up for religious freedom. Letterman received more applause later when he explicitly said that we are not at war with Muslims, but that segment was cut out of the NewsBusters video. (The video above is not from NewsBusters. It contains the full exchange).

Even worse, the Fox Nationalist’s completely deleted the exchange where Trump said that we should never have gone into Iraq. He called the Iraq war a “bad move” and “incompetent,” for which he received additional applause.

What this proves is that Fox News, Fox Nation, and their pals at NewsBusters, are no more credible than the notoriously dishonest Andrew Breitbart. They will deceptively edit their videos to produce whatever conclusion best fits their agenda. Anyone who continues to believe what they see there is simply ignorant by choice.


If You Still Think Glenn Beck Is Not Racist…

Posted by on September 2, 2010 at 12:14 pm. 17 Comments :

Glenn Beck and his defenders have fiercely denied allegations that he is a racist or has incited racial hostility on his radio and TV programs. But the evidence of his animosity toward people of color is abundant since the election of a black president.

Looking back on Beck’s crusades since the inauguration (which, coincidentally, was also the inauguration of his show on Fox News), Beck began with an attack on ACORN, a group of community organizers who advocated on behalf of poor and minority populations. Then he went after Van Jones, an African-America who sought to bring jobs and environmental justice to disenfranchised communities. Then it was Mark Lloyd, an African-America working to insure diversity in the media in his role at the FCC. Then it was Valerie Jarrett, the African-America aide to President Obama. The it was Shirley Sherrod, an African-American woman who was slandered by Beck and Andrew Breitbart in a phony attempt to cast her as a racist.

Now Beck is attacking Dolores Huerta, an Hispanic labor activist with a legendary resume. She co-founded the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez. She is presently working with the Department of Labor to insure that workers are not exploited by employers seeking to pay them less than they are entitled to under the law. Presumably Beck would like to bring back indentured servitude.

The real question is why are the targets of Beck’s attacks so often people of color? Even though there is the occasional Caucasian like Cass Sunstein (who is Jewish), the racial scale for Beck’s tirades is heavily weighted toward minorities. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the significance of that fact is dwelling in deep denial. With this assault on Huerta, Beck continues to prove that he is overtly discriminatory in his selection of enemies.

On a tangential point, the Obama administration has a pretty poor record of standing up for its people. They let Van Jones go. They forced Shirley Sherrod to resign (before apologizing). They never defended ACORN, even after they were absolved of any wrongdoing. If they permit Beck to railroad Huerta out of the Labor Department they are going to see the last remaining remnants of their support from progressives, and others on the left, drift away. So my message to the administration: Don’t be stupid.