Update On Journalists Arrested At Republican Convention

Posted by on September 19, 2008 at 1:24 pm. NO Comments :

At the Republican National Convention in Minnesota this month, there was an unprecedented assault on freedom of the press as dozens of journalists were arrested along with the protesters they were covering. Those arrested included members of local broadcast media, the Associated Press, and mainstream newspapers, along with alternative media and Internet news sites.

The actions of law enforcement in St. Paul were thoroughly unjustifiable and smacked of police state suppression of free speech. It is a black mark on the city’s reputation, and the fact that it was done with the cooperation of the Republican Party doesn’t say much for their commitment to the First Amendment either.

Today Mayor Chris Coleman of St. Paul announced that the city will decline to prosecute all misdemeanor charges against journalists arrested during the convention. While dropping these charges is the only acceptable course of action, Coleman still believes that the arrests were proper and in the interests of the community. He asserts that “the police did their duty in protecting public safety.” (Exactly who in the public did Coleman think the journalists were threatening?) Nonetheless, he heaps praise on himself for reversing the police on their arrest authority.

“This decision reflects the values we have in Saint Paul to protect and promote our First Amendment rights to freedom of the press. A journalist plays a special role in our democracy and that role is just too important to ignore.”

If this is an example of how St. Paul protects and promotes the First Amendment, it is a sad commentary on their understanding of the Constitution. Dropping these charges is not a demonstration of principle. It is merely a correction of prior misbehavior. And it does nothing to undo the damage caused by the detentions in the first place.

If the reason for arresting the journalists was to limit the free distribution of information from the convention site, and there is no other plausible reason, then their mission was accomplished. Reporters cannot post stories from jail. By releasing them after the event was concluded they were effectively silenced. Whatever news these reporters might have gathered and supplied to the public is forever lost.

Another deficiency in Mayor Coleman’s statement is language that calls into question who will be cleared and what defines a journalist:

“The decision will only affect people identified as journalists who face the misdemeanor charge. Recognizing the growing media profession in print, broadcast and the Internet, the city attorney’s office will use a broad definition and verification to identify journalists who were caught up in mass arrests during the convention.”

What these means is that any person that doesn’t meet the city’s definition of a journalist, or any journalist the city chooses to indict on charges higher than a misdemeanor, is exempt from this absolution. This interpretation directs the power back to the government and away from the Constitution. It would be far too easy to apply these vague rules arbitrarily in order to harass selected individuals whom the government dislikes.

If the city of St. Paul faces no consequences for their repressive tactics, then they and other government bodies will have a green light for future clampdowns on lawful, Constitutionally protected activities. Hopefully one or more of these journalists will file suits for false arrest and violations of their Constitutional rights. At this point the courts are one of the few remaining paths left to affirm the principle of a press that is unshackled from government control.

Also on the path are the ACLU and Free Press. They are both in hot pursuit of truth and justice in this affair. Feel free to help them out.

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Jill Greenberg’s Extra-Real Photos Of John McCain

Posted by on September 18, 2008 at 12:42 pm. 5 Comments :

On assignment for Atlantic Monthly Magazine, photographer Jill Greenberg took a series of pictures of John McCain. In the course of the photo shoot she asked McCain to pose for a set that she had deliberately designed to light him in manner that produced a more sinister, some might say more realistic, appearance. She later delivered the commissioned pictures to the Atlantic and took the others back to her studio for some Photoshop fun. Here are few of the results (and here are the rest):

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Needless to say, this caused an uproar in conservative circles amongst a bunch of hypersensitive hypocrites who oppose freedom of expression.

First of all, Greenberg is a superlative artist with a unique and evocative voice. She has a long record of quality work and a portfolio brimming with inspired imagery. She is also an avowed liberal and has produced work in the past that has attacked Republicans, particularly George W. Bush. That’s not a crime. That’s a civic duty. I myself have quite a collection of political graphics that are sure to offend somebody. The photographs presented in this series are akin to the political cartoons and editorial graphics that have long been a part of our political culture.

However, she is now coming under assault by elements of the right wing media who fault her for “deceiving” the hapless Republican nominee for president of the United States. The fact that he can be so easily duped is perhaps another argument that he is unfit to serve in the White House. Fortunately, he does have the media machine of Rupert Murdoch to run interference for him.

Murdoch’s New York Post (which endorsed McCain) published an article on the photos with a headline that declared Greenberg a “Mac Hater” and criticized her for not airbrushing McCain’s weathered skin and reddened eyes enough. Since when is it a photographer’s responsibility to sweeten a subject’s image, particularly when used as photo-journalism? Ironically, the Post is complaining that Greenberg failed to manipulate the photo in a column where they are chastising her for manipulating photos.

The Atlantic’s editor, James Bennet, appeared on Murdoch’s Fox News to disassociate himself from Greenberg, to threaten that he may sue her, and to announce that he has drafted a letter of apology to McCain. The FoxNews.com article on Bennet’s TV segment took a similar approach to the Post’s, but with an even more tortured spin on what constitutes photo manipulation:

“Greenberg said that the cover shot for The Atlantic article was manipulated to leave McCain’s eyes red and skin looking bad.”

It seems to me that “…manipulated to leave…” alone is another way of saying “not manipulated.” It’s a little like saying, “The appendectomy was performed to leave the appendix where it was.” In other words, there was no appendectomy.

This rhetorical device is a staple of conservative thinking. The notion that something can be altered in order to keep it the same can be observed by anyone following the 2008 presidential election. You hear it every time McCain says “Vote for me if you want change.” Translation: Vote for me if you want another four years of Bush – if you want more of the same.

The hypocrisy of the Murdochites is glaringly present in their selective outrage. Just two months ago Fox News was itself embroiled in a Photoshop controversy. During a segment of Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade mocked Jacques Steinberg and Steven Reddicliffe of the New York Times, and featured photos of them that had been digitally altered to create humiliating caricatures. What makes this far worse than the Atlantic incident is that Fox News broadcast their mockery on national television, while Greenberg reserved her pieces for her personal website. None of the Murdoch items, in print or on air, mentioned their own history of photo manipulation.

The big, unmanipulated picture here is that Greenberg is a courageously outspoken artist who is yet another victim of the Dark Agists who seek to stifle free speech. For her trouble she has been dropped by her agency (she says she quit), and is facing litigation. In my view she should be admired for her talent and applauded for her efforts on behalf of creative freedom for all artists and those who love art and, of course, freedom. Remember freedom?

Update: Jill Greenberg has some new photos of Glenn Beck.


Hollywood Celebrities vs. Washington Lobbyists

Posted by on September 17, 2008 at 2:07 pm. 1 Comments :

Last night I attended the Barack Obama fundraiser at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. No, I did not pay $2,500 to see Barbra Streisand serenade the candidate and 800 of his closest Hollywood friends. But I did mingle with these elitists outside of the lobby as the overflow crowd waited to enter the ballroom. I spent much of the two hours handing out my McCain – NOPE stickers to amused guests who didn’t seem too perturbed by the long delay.

From my perspective as an outsider, it was like a big party. The enthusiasm and the turnout surprised even the hosts, who had to deal with a crowd that was 50% bigger than anyone anticipated. And at these prices, that kind of demand is startling. Everyone was excited and festive and more than gracious to this lowly artist who obviously was not in their social strata. It was gratifying to personally put my artwork into the hands of folks like Magic Johnson, Sarah Silverman, and Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod.

The distinction between this crowd and the one for John McCain that I encountered a few weeks ago at the Beverly Hilton Hotel (yep, McCain came to Beverly Hills too), was pronounced. McCain’s event, which reportedly earned about $3 million (1/3 of Obama’s take), was subdued and sparsely populated by dour looking people in dark suits. Although Hollywood was represented by actor-elitists Robert Duvall and Jon Voight.

News reports of the Obama/Streisand event have predictably focused on the glamor and the locale. There is a built in presumption on the part of the press that this sort of program is somehow disrespectful to those Americans who are undergoing hardships brought on by the economy or natural disaster. However, Obama’s remarks touched on these matters and he reminded his well-to-do audience that “This is not a reality show.”

“This should be a celebratory evening. We’ve got 48 days to go in a campaign, a campaign that started 19 months ago, at a time when a lot of folks thought we might not get here [but] I’m not in a celebratory mood,”

~~~

“[This campaign] is about those who will never see the inside of a building like this and don’t resent the success that’s represented in this room, but just want the simple chance to be able to find a job that pays a living wage.”

Clearly Obama has the American people on his mind. Nevertheless, the media is still portraying the event as a gathering of elitists and allowing McCain to mock the affair and paint Obama as out of touch for having a party while he (McCain) was visiting workers in Ohio. What the press is leaving out is that McCain held his own fundraiser on Monday at the exclusive InterContinental Hotel in Miami. This was the same day that the stock market crashed 500 points. Tickets for his event were $50,000 a piece (twice what Obama’s campaign was charging), and it was attended by a small group of Washington and Florida insiders and lobbyists. Why is there no outrage at this demonstration of McCain’s insensitivity to regular, hard-working Americans? Is it the “liberal” media?

The hypocrisy is veritably dripping from McCain’s wrinkled brow. He criticizes Obama for having Hollywood friends while ignoring his own Tinseltown pals (see Friends of Abe). He blasts Obama for holding a gala just one day after his own ritzy and twice as costly affair in Miami. He promotes his visit with workers despite having voted against their interests (i.e. unions, minimum wage, healthcare, etc.) for 26 years.

When it comes to assessing politicians based on their associations, voters need to ask themselves who has better comprehension of their lives, their aspirations, their ordeals, their hopes. Is it…

Lobbyists, who have devoted their privileged existences to enriching themselves and their multinational corporate clients?
Or is it artists, many of whom started with nothing and achieved success through their creative ability to produce work that regular people can relate to and find inspiration in?

Lobbyists, who are successful when their selfishness and greed produce a transfer of billions of dollars of America’s wealth into the private accounts of profiteers?
Or artists, who are successful when their talent and insight produce empathy, understanding, and, at the very least, entertainment?

Lobbyists, who serve a narrow and powerful clique of clandestine country clubbers?
Or artists, who serve millions of average Americans who feel a personal affinity for them and their work?

For the record, this is not the first time McCain has taken swipes at Streisand. On October 19, 2002, McCain appeared on Saturday Night Live to do a spoof wherein he tortured a selection of Streisand numbers. It was actually pretty funny, but the message was repugnant. At the climax he says…

“Do I know how to sing? About as well as she [Streisand] knows how to govern America!”

If the last 26 years is an example of how well he governs, frankly, I’d rather listen to him sing. The obvious extension of his joke is that anyone who does any job other than serving in Congress is unqualified to have an opinion about what our government does in our name. So McCain has exempted this singer and businesswoman from participation in our democracy. Would he also exempt farmers and teachers, and welders? This is the real elitist bullshit. If we’re qualified to vote them into office, then we’re qualified to comment on the job they are doing. Even if we’re merely artists. (See my essay on Creativism And The Rise Of The Art Insurgency).

Hollywood Celebrities vs. Washington Lobbyists? It’s not even close!


Shill Baby Shill: Fox News Pumps Up Big Oil

Posted by on September 16, 2008 at 12:50 pm. NO Comments :

William La Jeunesse is rapidly becoming the most promising contender for the Excrements in Journalism award. Last week he did a report on congressional earmarking in which his primary source was a McCain front group that he identified as nonpartisan. This week his report on offshore oil drilling is just as slanted as he becomes an outright advocate of Big Oil and their agenda.

In this story, La Jeunesse excitedly related news that the Santa Barbara County Supervisors had voted 3 to 2 to allow offshore drilling 100 miles off the coast. He veritably reveled at the notion that this coastal community was considering opening their beaches up to potentially devastating environmental disaster. In an earlier report he implied that the people’s wishes were going to be disregarded because California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were opposed to offshore drilling. How he concludes that the people are more represented by three county supervisors than they are by the majority of their state and congressional representatives and their governor, he never quite explains.

The report itself soft peddles the inherent dangers associated with offshore drilling. La Jeunesse cites a study that claims that one in every 156,000 barrels of oil is ever lost to a spill. He editorializes that that is “literally a drop in the bucket.” What he fails to say is that this number calculates out to over 70 million barrels of spilt oil. That’s a lot of dead of fish and seagulls, and a lot of lost revenue for a state that is highly leveraged in tourism.

If La Jeunesse wasn’t bad enough, Fox anchor Martha McCallum chimes in at the end to congratulate him on his report:

“This is the kind of debate and people say we need to drill off of our shores and I think a lot of people think that is a good idea but then you get into this Congressional debate and things get stymied.”

The problem with her comment, aside from her taking a position on what she thinks people want, is that there was absolutely no debate presented in the report. It was thoroughly one-sided and she even progressed the argument further to blame Congress as obstructionist. But she didn’t end it there. She still felt it necessary to praise Big Oil for their track record on spills:

“There is all of this pressure about the oil companies and oh they make so much money. Oil companies have spent a tremendous amount of money researching and making this process as clean as possible and they have done a pretty good job of it when you look at the numbers of what actually gets spilled out there, it’s extremely minimal. So, something everyone needs to know to get the full picture.”

To which her co-anchor Trace Gallagher responded:

“And that was pretty much the full picture.”

There you have it. Courtesy of Fox News, you now have no need to engage in any further research. The “full picture” has been revealed and it is one of clear waters, blue skies, and endless rainbows. All thanks to America’s oil companies.

Someone might still want to check with these corporations and ask them why gas prices have not dropped commensurate with the 37% drop in the price of crude oil since July. An equivalent decrease in gas prices would have us paying about $2.65 today. Is that what you’re paying?

You may also want to inquire of John McCain why the “Drill Baby Drill” mantra is still being chanted at his rallies. With Crude prices having dropped from nearly $150.00 a barrel to about $92.00, it apparently wasn’t necessary to expand domestic production in order to get the price down. So what Barack Obama and the Democrats have been arguing for weeks was correct. Yet I haven’t seen them get any credit in the press for being right. I haven’t even seen any analysis of what has transpired in the oil markets over the last couple of months.

Unfortunately for consumers, gas prices are still near record levels. Since it is not a problem at the wholesale level, it seems that the friends of McCain and his lobbyists are now indisputably at fault for the gouging we are experiencing at the pump. Unfortunately for voters, Republicans intend to press the case for more drilling regardless of the facts as they exist today. And the Democrats in Congress aren’t much better. They are expected to go along with Republican proposals to permit offshore drilling, albeit in compromised legislation. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) explains:

“The American people are very conscious that we need an alternative energy policy and the they’re not too distant from the memory of the $4 dollar-a-gallon gas. They know we need an investment in alternative energy and we can’t keep doing what we’re doing […] I think there’s still an urgency to get this done and get it done now.”

The argument appears to be that the momentum for a knee-jerk response is too swift to resist. That would make this a good time to contact your representatives and let them know that you’re paying attention; that you know that crude oil prices have fallen 37% but that gas prices have remained inordinately high; that you know that drilling for more domestic oil, particularly offshore, will not resolve our energy problems, in fact, it will exacerbate them and preserve our dependency on fossil fuels. Tell them not to accept the Republican arguments that have been proven false, and not to vote for their agenda that is designed to help their benefactors in the oil industry.

Don’t let the chanting cultists at McCain rallies win this debate when the truth is the opposite of their zombie anthem. And don’t let lying, corrupt Republicans and Fox News dictate our nation’s energy policies.


No One Wants To Play With John McCain

Posted by on September 15, 2008 at 3:35 pm. 1 Comments :

As an illustration of how shallow the media analysis is of the so-called “Palin Effect.” a picture is indeed worth a thousand words:

Here are 68 words from the Washington Post:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain held his first rally without running mate Sarah Palin today, and let’s just say there were seats available.

The McCain “Road to Victory” rally was originally scheduled to be a pancake breakfast, but the campaign said there was such an outpouring of enthusiasm the event was shifted to the 15,000-seat Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena.

That might not have been the best idea.

Obviously the “outpouring of enthusiasm” didn’t pour out as advertised. We’ll see how many appearances McCain makes without his lucky charm from here on out.


The John McCain Experience

Posted by on September 13, 2008 at 11:01 am. 2 Comments :

Much of the focus of John McCain’s campaign for president has been on his reputed experience (and just as often, the alleged lack of same for his opponent). But there has been sparse actual examination of how that argument should be measured. Is spending five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp 40 years ago preparation to run the largest governmental bureaucracy in the world? If so, then, as Jon Stewart said, “Guantanamo Bay isn’t a prison, it’s a leadership academy.”

Is 36 years in Congress the yardstick for executive readiness? Or is it two years as governor of the third smallest state in the nation, preceded by the mayoralty of a frosty township of 6,000? McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, appear to disagree on this issue:

For the record:

Palin: “[W]e’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody’s big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment.”

McCain: “I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”

So Palin doesn’t think that McCain is qualified to be president, and McCain doesn’t think that Palin is either. This Mutual Unappreciation Society makes for a bizarre and foreboding ticket. And it has to raise the question: Why did he pick her to be a 72 year old heartbeat from succeeding him in the first place?

The paramount cause for concern stemming from this has less to do with Palin’s supreme inadequacy, than it does with McCain’s dangerously deficient judgment. Whether he selected her for her extra X chromosome, her missionary zeal, or her appeal to his base of Neoconderthals, it is clear that his determinative criteria was harvesting votes. He obviously considers winning the election more important than the well being of the country. For that alone he must be rejected.

As always, the media is about 26 miles behind the curve, and it doesn’t seem fit enough to run a marathon. There is a persistently ignorant thread running through the coverage of this race. There is an obsession with trivialities like “who is the pig?” and “what does lipstick represent?” Yet very little inquiry into how the so-called candidate of experience would put the fate of the country into the hands of someone who knows almost nothing about it; who has only crossed it’s borders once or twice; who only met with the top of the ticket once before being crowned. She had a more rigorous competition to become Miss Wasilla.

John McCain’s cynical and desperate ambition to be president borders on the treasonous. He confessed his intention following his first bid for the White House:

“I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president”

You know, if everyone just took McCain at his word, no one would vote for him.

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

Posted by on September 11, 2008 at 8:55 am. 2 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 reprint it here today because, sadly, it’s still true.]

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.


Palin Boots McCain From Top Of The Ticket

Posted by on September 11, 2008 at 2:07 am. 4 Comments :

Judging by the treatment Sarah Palin is receiving from the media, a casual observer could be forgiven for assuming that she is the candidate for president and John McCain is her running mate. Wednesday evening she arrived back in her home state of Alaska and all three cable news networks interrupted their programming to air her remarks to an adoring crowd. That’s funny, because I don’t recall the media dropping everything and rushing to Wilmington, Delaware to capture the live broadcast of Joe Biden’s homecoming.

Virtually every report from the Republican campaign trail is about Palin. McCain has become an appendage to whom little attention is paid except to inquire as to how awesome it is to be with Sarah. All anybody is talking about is pigs, lipstick, and mooseburgers. There is very little public discussion of … um, what do you call them … oh yeah, “issues.” This is no accident. The McCain team has finally figured out a way to avoid substance entirely and keep their elderly candidate from getting fatigued. Just give the spotlight to Palin and let her tap dance around the country while McCain catches forty winks in the wings.

A lot has been made (by me) of Palin’s stonewalling of the press. It has been 13 days since she was selected to join McCain and she has still not had a press conference or sat for an interview with a reporter. My Palin Watch widget is documenting how long she is dodging the media. She is scheduled to end that streak with an interview by Charlie Gibson this week. But lost in the shuffle is that McCain himself is nearly as evasive as Palin. Since July 27 (45 days), McCain has appeared only twice on a national news program. That’s a remarkable turnaround for a man who has set records for media whoring.

Palin’s new status as a celebrity pol is confirmed by the attention she is getting from inside the campaign Wurlitzer. She is now attended to by a high-level crew of former Bush, and current McCain, cronies. The cast includes:

  • Taylor Griffin – Bush campaign aide.
  • Tracey Schmitt – Bush campaign aide.
  • Tucker Eskew – Bush campaign aide.
  • Steve Biegun – Bush National Security Council.
  • Mark Wallace – Bush deputy campaign manager.
  • Nicolle Wallace – Bush/McCain communications director.
  • Douglas Holtz-Eakin – McCain economic adviser.
  • Randy Scheunemann – McCain senior foreign-policy adviser.
  • Joe Donoghue – McCain Senate aide.

Talk about “just more of the same…” This contingent of familiar handlers is busily preparing Palin for her get together with Gibson. They traveled to Fairbanks with her this evening and are expected to be drilling her non-stop (get your minds out of the gutter) for her debut encounter with the national media. It seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a not particularly ominous interrogator like Gibson. Either she aces this test or the speculation that she is a lightweight, insufficiently vetted, politically convenient, ideologically eccentric character from Bizarro World, will be forever burned into the public mind – if it’s not too late already.


Fox News Uses McCain Front Group To Blast Obama

Posted by on September 10, 2008 at 1:33 pm. 1 Comments :

A report was broadcast on Fox News today (and published on FoxNews.com) that purported to be an examination of the congressional earmarks of the presidential candidates. As one might expect, the report fell something short of what a reasonable person would call “fair and balanced.”

Correspondent William La Jeunesse’s report only went into detail on earmarks requested by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The story came complete with on-screen graphics to illustrate his points. But no numbers or graphics were provided for John McCain or Sarah Palin. This deliberately one-sided hit piece would be bad enough all by itself. Unfortunately, the worst part is revealed with a little further investigation. And it gets much, much worse.

The source Fox News used for the research in the story was Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), an organization that Fox described as a “nonpartisan, nonprofit group.” In fact, the group is far from nonpartisan. It has publicly endorsed McCain for president and donated $11,000.00 to him or to PACs he controls. CGAW has also worked as a shill to attack McCain opponents in a manner that may have violated election law. It has also been connected to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

On the board of CAGW is long-time McCain associate, Orson Swindle. They met as cell mates in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp where Swindle says that he and McCain “slept side-by-side for almost two years.” Swindle is now the McCain campaign’s veterans liaison and was appointed to his campaign Truth Squad a couple of months ago. He spoke last week at the Republican National Convention. He is also a senior policy advisor at the big DC lobbying firm of Hunton & Williams whose clients include American Express, Eli Lilly, GE, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart.. These duties violate McCain’s own policy of not allowing people working for “independent entities” to serve on his campaign staff.

Taking these facts into account, it should come as no surprise that CAGW awarded McCain a 100% rating, while giving Obama 10% and Biden 0%. The group claimed that Sarah Palin was not included because the ratings evaluate only members of Congress. But they did rate Alaska’s performance in their 2008 Congressional Pig Book (Uh oh, they’re calling Palin a pig) where they said that “Alaska led the nation with $556 per capita ($380 million).” In the 2007 edition they reported that Alaska and Hawaii “have been the top two states in pork per capita every year but one since 2000.” None of that was included in Fox’s report on television or online.

I’m not sure why it still shocks me to hear that Fox News broadcasts fiercely biased reports that abandon every tenet of journalistic ethics. But citing an organization that is known to be supporting McCain, identifying it as nonpartisan, and using it to pummel Obama, is such a blatantly dishonest and disreputable act that in a just world their press credentials would be immediately revoked. It is just infuriating to know that Fox will get away with this time after time without paying a price for their unscrupulous and unprofessional conduct.

The only demonstrated way to effectively punish Fox is to deny them access to Democratic lawmakers, candidates, and officials. When we are united in embargoing the network they have been noticeably distraught. They may puff up their chest and threaten us, as Bill O’Reilly did when he said that “If you dodge us, it is at your peril.” Or they may invoke juvenile tactics like Chris Wallace’s Obama Watch to bully us into compliance. But that behavior just affirms the effectiveness of staying away. They were obviously troubled and desperate, and they can’t maintain a pretense of balance if Democrats refuse to certify their bias by appearing on their tainted air.

Starve The Beast!


Rachel Maddow Debut Delivers

Posted by on September 9, 2008 at 4:30 pm. 7 Comments :

Last night’s debut of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” was a rousing success in terms of the strategic goals the network set for the program. The premiere broadcast drew 483,000 viewers in the advertiser-friendly 25-54 demographic. That was good enough for a second place finish versus the competition, beating the veteran Larry King. She also was the second highest rated program on the MSNBC prime time lineup, following Keith Olbermann’s Countdown.

Most importantly, however, was the impact Maddow had on the schedule. One of MSNBC’s weak points is that their programs provide little encouragement to viewers to stay tuned for very long. The mix of content offered by Olbermann, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, and the now canceled Dan Abrams and Tucker Carlson, was disjointed and incongruous.

Abrams’ Verdict, which Maddow replaced, failed to retain even 50% of Olbermann’s lead-in (averaged for July 2008). Maddow, on the other hand, managed to hold 80% of Countdown’s audience. That sort of retention can go a long way toward building a programming block that competitors will find challenging to confront.

This is, of course, the results of just one day. Time will tell if the strategy works over the long run. But it is a promising debut and a foundation on which to build. Plus, just having Maddow’s sharp insight and reasoned analysis injected into the whirlwind of cable talkathons for the next few weeks leading up to the presidential election in November, is a positive development for those interested in an engaged and informed electorate.