What could be worst than an actress with nothing left to offer submitting herself to cheesy TV in a bad role? How about Democracy Now! offering up fabulists?
Two showed up last week to spin like there was no tomorrow.
The most offensive was the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vincent Warren, who disgraced not only himself but also the organization. It was so embarrassing that he reminded us of another Vincent: Vincent Brooks offering those propaganda briefings to the press in Iraq back in 2003.
A bit of background, the Center is not a centrist organization. It is not a center-left organization. Nor is it a merely a liberal organization. It is a radical organization created to be part of the movement. It has a long history for an organization with so brief a lifespan (in two months, it turns forty-three) and has accomplished many things. It can point with pride to so much because it has never been a mouthpiece for the powerful. Jailhouse lawyer? Absolutely. State propagandist? Never.
Until the election of Barack. There's a huge split within the organization that's only growing more pronounced in recent months and will only continue to harm the Center as the board refuses to address it. The split is between those who believe that no governmental figure is beyond accountability and between mental midgets like Vinnie Warren who believe that bi-racial Barack ("Black," according to Vinnie) gets a pass because of race.
Amy Goodman an Juan Gonzalez wasted air time Friday featuring Vincent. There was no reason to have him as a guest unless you were going to press him. Vinnie made clear long, long ago, that he loved the Barack Kool-Aid and his favorite flavor was "urine." (Elaine kindly credited us Friday for a version of this joke -- the original actually comes from a board member of the Center and enlarges a popular joke a professor told on Philip Maldari.) So you don't book Vinnie expecting the truth.
That means you book him to hold his feet to the fire or you book him because you want to air propaganda. Since Goody and Gonzalez didn't hold his feet to the fire, we'll surmise they wanted to air propaganda and, boy, did they.
Here's Vinnie: "The President said -- you know, let's focus on some of the good things. President Obama said that he was going to close Guantanamo in a year, and he should be applauded for that. But, of course, Congress is messing with that timeline fairly severely by not providing the funding for him to do that and by saying no one will be able to release to American soil, whether they're in -- they come as prisoners or detainees or they come as free people, which, of course, holds up the timeline for any types of trials that the administration wants to do."
It is exactly those type of comments that have turned the ACLU into the brave organization and the Center into the cowardly one this year. It wasn't supposed to work that way. Despite attempts to smear the ACLU as "liberal," it truly does attempt to be both non-partisan and not right or left in its fight for freedom and open government. It is a centrist organization in every way. And it's been a shock to see the ACLU consistently be the leader in addressing the government's ongoing abuses while CCR had little to offer except tired re-runs about Bush-Cheney.
Vinnie wants Barry O to get praised for Guantanamo and says that "Congress is messing with that timeline" -- what timeline? Barack's not proposed any plan. He's said it'll be closed in a year. Congress has said (rightly), "Show us the plan."
Congress isn't funding it without seeing the plan.
Now that shouldn't be a left or right position. The plan will be funded by the US tax payers. It's our money that will be spent. Congress controls the purse and they are supposed to spend the public's money carefully. So Congress refusing (for a change) to sign a blank check should be seen as a good thing on those merits alone -- before we even get into what the check itself would be for.
But Vinnie's all bent out of shape because his Dream Lover's not getting his way, and apparently, at night, in bed, Vinnie's Dream Lover always gets his way. How dare Congress infringe upon Vinnie's masturbation fantasies!
Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez refused to infringe upon Vinnie's right to be a hypocrite or to whore out the Center. As revealed on the broadcast, Vinnie had a private meeting with Barry O. What was discussed between this representative for the Center and Barry O?
As the candy commercial used to say, the world may never know.
Vinnie declared, "I gave my word that I would keep the meeting confidential. And I take those things seriously." Really? Do you take the Center seriously because the Center for Constitutional Rights is about exposing governmental secrecy not about advocating for it?
That meeting, that off-the-record meeting, was a violation of everything the Center for Constitutional Rights is supposed to stand for. The Center is not about angling for jobs in an administration, it is not about providing comfort to those in power, the Center is about agitating and fighting, and knowing that you may not win in one instance, but in the larger movement, your work matters.
In that off-the-record meeting Vinnie couldn't stop bragging about (and that Amy and Juan refused to press him on), Vinnie betrayed and whored out the Center and he needs to go. (And there appears to be a growing consensus on that move by board members.)
Speaking to Huff & Puff, Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights president, declared "I always believe that democracy dies behind closed doors". He was referring to Barack's refusal to release the torture photos but his statement is in keeping with the Center's long held position and, to be really clear, democracy died a little when CCR's executive director glad handed with Barry O in private.
Co-founder William Kunstler never gave aid and comfort to presidents and if the occupant of the White House right now were a Martian with Vietnamese citizenship, you can be sure Kunstler still wouldn't give aid and comfort. The Center's role has never been to shield the White House from criticisms. CCR has always led the charge in criticizing every administration.
On Thursday, the Center released a statement which quoted Ratner ("The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would send people before irredeemably flawed military commissions and seek to create a preventive detention scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new location and give it a new name.") and Managing Attorney for the organization's Guantanamo project Shayana Kadidal ("Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. We have courts and laws in place that we respect and rely on because we have been a nation of laws for hundreds of years; we should not simply discard them when they are inconvenient. The new president is looking a lot like the old.") responding to the speech Barack had given that day. The next day, Vinnie Warren is yacking it up on Democracy Now! and handing Barry O a blank check. While allegedly representing CCR. It was disgusting.
If Warren was an affront to civil liberties and a huge gob of spit hurled at CCR, Robert Draper was, by contrast, an unemployable comedian toying in another field.
Draper was just the clown Goody wanted you to meet. And she was all over his 'report' on Monday when she included it in headlines, declaring that, "GQ Magazine has revealed former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly placed Biblical quotes on President Bush’s top-secret briefings during the early days of the invasion of Iraq." Really? No, as pointed out Monday, that is not what GQ's fluff article stated. In what may be the only concrete detail in his report, Robert Draper wrote of the Biblical quotes appearing on cover sheets, "These cover sheets were the brainchild of Major General Glen Shaffer, a director for intelligence serving both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense." On Tuesday, the 'expert' was going one-on-one with Amy as they both attempted to spin furiously. Is Rumsfeld involved in this as an active participant? Draper never could say. He did offer that, "Now, Secretary Rumsfeld is, himself, not the kind of person who wears his religion on his sleeve, but he seemed to appreciate these."
Really? And what's the basis for that claim, Draper? "The general who created them told other people that he would continue to produce these, because his seniors, meaning Secretary Rumsfeld, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Myers and President Bush, appreciated them," declared Draper. "And Secretary Rumsfeld would indeed bring this intelligence briefing paper with that cover sheet over to the Oval Office every morning during the time of the invasion and subsequent to it."
So the person who put the Biblical quotes on the reports claims "his seniors" liked them. Based on feedback, based on what? Based on his having a job? Based on what?
Based on nothing. Draper's got nothing. The lefty side of insanity could be found all last week whenever anyone was yammering away about this non-story. It sure cut into any real discussion about the war or Steven D. Green being sentenced to life in prison for gang-raping and murdering 14-year-old Iraqi Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, murdering her parents and murdering her five-year-old sister.
There was no level of sewer Draper and Goody wouldn't crawl into for that segment as became undeniably obvious during this bit of royal clowning:
AMY GOODMAN: Hurricane Katrina, Robert Draper, a very damning segment of your article about Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush. What happened in those days leading up to and right after Hurricane Katrina?
ROBERT DRAPER: Yeah, this is sort of a little-known fact, that Secretary Rumsfeld played an obstructive force in the response to Hurricane Katrina. In the days following landfall, there was great concern that lawlessness was prevailing over New Orleans. To some degree, that was a perception that was unfounded, or at least it was hyperbolized by the media. Nonetheless, the perception was important, because it prevented relief workers and bus drivers from coming into a city that they believed was in a state of anarchy. So, President Bush and the people around him wanted very much for there to be control, a show of control in the city. And there were already 50,000 National Guard members being dispersed throughout the area, but they weren't where they needed to be and, in any event, were overtaxed. And so, the belief was, held by many, that active-duty troops needed to be there to supplement the National Guard. The Secretary Rumsfeld was adamant in his belief that active-duty troops should not be used for this domestic crisis. And he didn't explicitly say that to the President; instead, he would make arguments about how there were unity of command issues or there was an insurrection issue. These, according to attorneys involved in the response to Katrina, were really sort of sideshows and that, in fact, if active-duty troops had come in to lend logistical support to the National Guard, that the Guard then could focus on law enforcement duties. But Secretary Rumsfeld, in any event, day after day, refused to supply those active-duty troops, and finally it required a direct order from the President on a Saturday, several days after landfall, basically saying to the Secretary, "Don, do it." And it was only at that point that he finally did put boots on the ground.
Rumsfeld was adamantly opposed to it? Considering the source (Draper), we can't say for sure.
What we can say is: Good for anyone who was.
For those who've forgotten, a number of people protested the use of the military in Katrina. Some of whom write for The Nation. Why would anyone oppose it? For a number of reasons including the Posse Comitatus Act. That's not a minor point and, if Rumsfeld opposed the use of the military due to Posse Comitatus, good for him. But the segment wasn't about information or informing. It was clowning and that's very clear by Amy's breathless intro to Draper to get him to bring up this issue so all the viewers can cluck, "Bad, bad Rumsfeld."
September 28, 2005, Goodman had William Arkin on the program stating ". . . I, for one, am extremely uncomfortable with the notion that we're going to supplant civilian authority by using the military to deal with disasters in the United States, and also as an American, I'm just incredibly ticked off with the notion that we spend $100 billion a year for a new Department of Homeland Security, and we're letting it get off the hook in terms of its responsibility for this basic function."
Not even a year ago, October 7, 2008, the issue was being addressed:
AMY GOODMAN: Matt Rothschild?
MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well, you know, that doesn't really satisfy me, and I don't think it should satisfy your listeners and your audience, Amy, because, you know, our people in the field in Iraq, some of them have not behaved up to the highest standards, and a lot of police forces in the United States who have been using these tasers have used them inappropriately. The whole question here about what the Pentagon is doing patrolling in the United States gets to the real heart of the matter, which is, do we have a democracy here? I mean, there is a law on the books called the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act that says that the president of the United States, as commander-in-chief, cannot put the military on our streets. And this is a violation of that, it seems to me. President Bush tried to get around this act a couple years ago in the Defense Authorization Act that he signed that got rid of some of those restrictions, and then last year, in the new Defense Authorization Act, thanks to the work of Senator Patrick Leahy and Kit Bond of Missouri, that was stripped away. And so, the President isn't supposed to be using the military in this fashion, and though the President, true to form, appended a signing statement to that saying he's not going to be governed by that. So, here we have a situation where the President of United States has been aggrandizing his power, and this gives him a whole brigade unit to use against US citizens here at home.
There are many more examples (such as her interview with Gore Vidal in 2008 or her interview with Christopher Pyle in 2002) where the show is on the record that the Posse Comitatus Act is a law to be followed. But there was a chance to mock Donald Rumsfeld, to get a laugh at him and insult the audience's intelligence and she couldn't resist, now could she?
Janeane Garofalo's been insulting audiences' intelligence for some time. She's the 'smart actress,' that's the allegation anyway. She's the woman who had only one film that audiences flat out loved: The Truth About Cats & Dogs. Instead of being pleased with the film, a comedy which did make people laugh, Garofalo, who read the script before signing for the film, launched one non-stop attack on the film (disclosure, we know the director and we know co-star Uma Thurman, we also know Janeane) after another -- all about the 'sexist' storyline. Again, this would be the storyline to the script she read and agreed to make the film from.
Now if Janeane had a functioning brain, she'd quickly realize that all the slams she directs at Cats & Dogs are true . . . about her role in Bye, Bye Love which was a frightmare and that film is completely and totally sexist. She should be ashamed of taking part in that film. But she never brings that one up, she just attacks one of the few films she's been in that people can actually watch. And she attacks Drew and she attacks Charlie's Angeles and after awhile you get the feeling it's time to sit her down and explain, "Janeane, looking ugly is not a feminist requirement."
Neither is doing ugly but Janeane signed up for 24 long before it was well established that the show was pro-torture. The woman who has complained non-stop for thirteen years about Cats & Dogs and how she never should have made the film signs up to do a pro-torture TV series?
We couldn't figure that out. And all her rationalizations and lies to the press made no sense. Finally, we began to wonder if the part came with a twist that would provide her a major scene? Maybe Janeane's Janis was the bad guy? Maybe she was the mastermind? Someone on the inside appeared to be helping the terrorists, what if it was the FBI's Janis!
That might have provided a juicy scene for Janeane. But, alas, it was not meant to be. Janis was two rungs below supporting character. She added nothing and, in that, Janeane's performance was convincing because it added nothing either. Does she really think, at this late date, that reciting lines in the same manner in role after role qualifies as acting? It doesn't even make for a performance. In fact, we realized the only way to tell Janeane's characters apart is the hair styles. Reality Bites finds her with 90s hair, for example.
Mary Page Keller was on the last episode of 24 this year. With little to do, she held viewers attention. Janeane was aced out acting-wise by Mary Page Keller. While we don't deny MPK's talent, her role was hugely underwritten yet she gave a performance from the start which had you thinking, "This isn't some innocent woman just sitting around the airport lounge."
By contrast, Janeane offered Janeane. The reason she stood out originally, all that time ago, had to do with the fact that she seemed unique. What's apparent now is that she wasn't unique. She was wooden and what seemed interesting acting choices were in fact the only way someone with her limited abilities could go. If that's harsh, it's nothing compared to the hate she's hurled at Americans in recent months. And, thing is, Janeane, you could have used that time to work on your craft. Could have and should have. Instead, as always, Janeane wanted to be Debby Downer (yes, that SNL skit did come about as an inside joke on Janeane after she'd given yet another interview about how miserable she was when she was part of that cast). The woman is never satisfied. You get the eye their could be a public stoning of Bully Boy Bush and Janeane would show up whining that the stones weren't the right size and why didn't this take place years ago and who does anyone think they're tricking and . . .
Comedians are supposed to provide joy. They make you laugh. There are many humor genres they can work in but their work is supposed to make you laugh. Janeane is the ultimate applause getting comedian -- tossing out angry lines that pass for pith to college freshman and getting rounds of applause because no work's been done to shape an act which could provide laughs.
No work is ever done by Janeane and that's why she's never seriously studied acting (which she needed to do back when she had a chance at an acting career), which is why she never shows up on a set with a character to play, which is why her tired stand up is the exact same thing she was doing over 15 years prior (but back then, she did it in better clubs). Doing anything, anything at all, might risk Janeane's chances of being miserable and it appears that, in the end, being miserable is the only thing she continues to hold onto.
In a sane world, Janeane's turn as Janis would stand as the weirdest thing on TV last week. We don't live in a sane world and as long as Janeane's wooden acting has to go up against real people like Warren and Draper, you'll have to file it under yet another competition Garofalo lost.