Over twenty years ago, in a review of Carl Bernstein's memoir Loyalties, Walter Isaacson (Time magazine) wrote:
Those are all worthwhile questions. It is especially true when you're dealing with a type of Communist who feels that she must destroy the system by any means which, yes, does include lying repeatedly. That type of person would be Amy Goodman.
An attack took place in Tuscon, Arizona two Saturdays ago and if you scratched your head over Amy Goodman's coverage last week on Democracy Now! it was only because you have still not grasped that she's the type of Communist who lies repeatedly and feels that is justified because she just knows she's bringing down the system. Before she even opened her yap, we'd already stressed that people were rushing to conclusions that no evidence yet supported.
Notice how that didn't deter Amy Goodman who spent a week on hysteria and did her best to really get the country boiling.
"Terror in Tucson," she was insisting on Monday when, we were on the ground, what we saw was a lot of sadness, a lot of reflection. From Pravda on the Hudson, Goodman could see "terror in Tuscon." And she brought on Sheriff Clarence Dupnik who became a hero of the non-thinkers when, shortly after the shooting, he began politicizing it just the way they wanted to. Asked about gun laws, the 'intelligent' sheriff wanted to talk about how "we can't get the legislature to pass a law against texting while driving." As the week would continue, an obvious pattern would emerge: Alarms were sounded about the suspected shooter repeatedly and those calling the sheriff's office were told it was under control. Goodman was so thrilled to have someone who would say what she wanted said that she never thought to ask, "Should law enforcement have stepped in sooner?"
She was also so in love with the sound of her own tribal drum that she never thought to discuss Dupnik's record. Christopher Beam (Slate) provided some highlights:
In 1981, Dupnik sent a message to all residents: Arm yourselves. Police couldn't adequately protect the populace, he said, because they didn't have sufficient manpower: "Not only are things not good, they are going to get worse. For those who are so inclined, it's time to start protecting yourselves."
[. . .]
Dupnik provoked the Hispanic community again in April 2009 by suggesting that public schools should check students' immigration status when they enroll, even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that denying enrollment to the children of illegal immigrants is unconstitutional. "It's wrong for the taxpayers in this country to spend the millions and millions and millions of dollars that we do catering to illegals," Dupnik said, including providing free education to their children. Rep. Raul Grijalva and 10 other prominent Democrats signed a letter requesting an apology. Grijalva even called Dupnik "Arpaio light." Dupnik refused to apologize and downplayed the backlash: "If you read the blogs, and I don't know if you do, I think you'll have a different opinion."
A journalist would have explored that. But Red Amy's not about illuminating, she's about forever attempting to create a crisis, create a war of citizen on citizen. So she lies a lot every day. Then she brought on Chip Berlet to talk about "moral cupability" -- a subject he should know something about having stabbed the Christic Institute in the back when the right-wing was already attacking them and the MSM was working to undermine them. Chip Berlet as a reliable and trusted source? That's as funny as the thought of Chip naked.
It was a full hour of speculation which always drew the worst conclusions about Goodman's political enemies and it didn't matter that she had to spit polish (with her tongue) a xenophobic sherrif in order to do so or to bring on the full crazy with Chip Berlet and Jeff Biggers or I-wasn-t-there-but-I-must-testify US House Rep. Raul Grijalva.
The not so-hidden subtext of every segment was "Those Damn Right Wingers." Which made Tuesday's first interview segment all the more hilarious as Goody interviewed a former classmate of the suspect -- a brown haired man who had dyed it pink and purple. Because what? Right-wing, conservative men are dying to hang out with guys sporting multi-colored shag haircuts? Even more hilarious was watching Amy Goodman work overtime to use Steven Cates to connect the shooter to the right wing. There was, she said, an abortion poem read. And the suspect was offended. To know how right or wrong that was, you'd probably need to read the poem but Goody wasn't having any of that. She wanted Cates to tell her about it. Cates who says "I was absent that day." But that didn't stop him from yammering away or Goodman from asking him, 'And what happened after saying something like that?" He knows how? He wasn't there. Then Goody wanted to talk mental illness with H. Clarke Romans, then gun laws with Matt Heinz and then "nonpartisan solutions" with a former Bully Boy Bush appointee, Richard Carmona.
On Wednesday, she turned the hour over to Haiti. With a full hour on Haiti, you might think she'd have time to come clean that she never should have spent so much time in 2009 and 2010 pimping Wyclef Jean who is not part of the people in Haiti but part of the US-supported ruling class that forced out Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Oh, but corrections, like facts, just get in her way so she dispenses with both.
Thursday, she was airing Barack's remarks and pretending like they weren't aimed at people exactly like herself. No sooner had she aired those remarks, then she was pressing Tavis Smiley to 'dish' on Sarah Palin. He noted he didn't even mention her on his programs. But Amy Goodman's obsessed with Sarah Palin. She was hoping that Tavis would attack Palin (he disappointed her by bringing in Dick Cheney's telling Senator Patrick Leahy to go f**k yourself and Barack's saying he needed to know whose ass to kick). So Goody had to bring up blood libel all by herself. Many argue that "blood libel," by the definition Goodman gave, is what she does in her so-called 'balanced' 'reports' on Israel.
And then there was her tribal interview with Eric Fuller about those bad conservatives -- Eric Fuller now known as "James Eric Fuller" by the press and, when you get three names from the press, it's never a good thing. Ask Mark David Chapman or, for that matter, Philip Michael Thomas. What did Fuller do? Get arrested yesterday, Reuters reports, for making threats and has now been "ordered to undergo a mental evaluation". Clearly, Democracy Now! is now attempting to book like The Jenny Jones Show. What a proud moment for Amy.
But what we were focused on was her efforts to hide behind Tavis Smiley. They reminded us of her efforts to hide behind a Marxist group of women in the UK who were not feminists but Goody wanted to insist they were. She needed feminists to slime two women who may have been raped. And, on Thursday, goodness if she wasn't attempting to use a woman to go there again. It did not, however, work out the way she had hoped.
AMY GOODMAN: Birgitta Jonsdottir, I wanted to ask, as the most prominent woman associated with WikiLeaks, about the -- I can't even say "charges," but the allegations against Julian Assange around sexual assault in Sweden. What are your thoughts on it right now?
BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: I don't want to be placed in the role of the judge in this case, and I don't think anybody should. None of us were present in the rooms where the incidents happened. So I just find it to be difficult to say much about it. I just want it to have its normal sort of process through the justice system.
If only Red Amy could do the same but, of course, someone who sees their role not in imparting information (certainly not truth) but in 'bringing down the system, must constantly stir the s**t.
So Friday meant two more segments on "terror in Tuscan" (again, when we were there last week, we saw no terror). But the thing that mattered even more to Red Amy was bringing on Red Racist Francy Fox Piven.
Francy Fox Piven is a confusing figure to many whose brains have not been turned into soft pate by the loft-liberal brigade of NYC. It's a rare week that we don't get a call from an under-40 left who's encountered Francy or one of her disciples. The call usually goes something like this, "Why does what she's saying sound so racist?" Because she's racist. That's the little secret about the Pravda on the Hudson types. It's why they instantly declare Wyclef Jean a hero -- he's Black! He must think just-just like them! Oops. He's conservative and from the property-class in Haiti? Just pretend like you never praised him. If forced, call him an "Uncle Tom" because he didn't match up to your racist expectations.
Francy's been a bigot for years and everyone knows it. Some pretend not to notice. But this is the White woman who felt she could order all Black voters around as she did everything she could -- from 1988 to 1990 -- to stamp out efforts to build a Black political party in the US. Why would White Francy give a damn?
Well, along with believing that Blacks are incapable of independent thought and need her 'wisdom,' there's the fact that Francy's been advocating the Trojan Horse Democratic Party Strategy since the fifties. The Trojan Horse Democratic Party Strategy is put forward by a number of closeted Communists and Socialists and argues that they can take over the Democratic Party from within. These Trojans stay in the closet because part of the takeover is in using people who have no idea what's going on. "Progressive" is a popular term these days because it's so very generic.
Francy will forever be infamous for her foot stomping in 1988 and 1989 at the though that Blacks might form their own political party. She needed this group she feels she can easily manipulate for her Trojan Strategy. She just knows that as "Miss Francy," all the African-Americans will go along with her wishes because she lives on the biggest plantation of all: The Academia Manor.
When Francy was facing real push back -- especially from African-American activists on the West Coast -- she began to tone down her strategy. So she started showing up in Black publications -- such as The Crisis -- insisting that it was fine and dandy for such a political party to be formed for local votes as long as they were still "voting for the Democrats [only] in presidential elections."
It's hilarious to hear 78-year-old Francy calling everyone else racist. We're talking about a woman who thinks the height of equality is a counter-top serving two races.
Amy (and Juan Gonzalez) babbled away about the attacks Francy's been under from Glenn Beck. Why oh why, they lamented, was Francy Pants being targeted?
We have a one word answer: Karma.
And there's not a serious left activist out there that's not laughing their ass off at the attacks racist Francy is finally facing.
Of course, these attacks have to be inflated because honesty doesn't run with the closeted Communists. So Francy was insisting, "[. . .] Ron Radosh, who recently headlined his blog 'The Second Time is Farce: Piven Calls for Violent and Bloody Revolution'." Not reading the right-wing, we'd missed that one and, always up for a good laugh at Francy's expense, we went in search of it.
Silly us, we forgot rule number one: Francy Lies.
Radosh did write a piece on Francy. At Pajamas Media, not at 'his blog' -- if and when dementia sets in on Francy, people will just think she's still caught in her own web of lies. It's entitled "The Second Time is Farce: Frances Fox Piven Calls for a new Cloward-Piven Strategy for Today." We can't read Francy's piece because The Nation feels they have to protect her (from the masses?) or hide her strategy (from the masses?) and doesn't allow her piece to be available online except to subscribers. But Radosh's synopsis of Francy's ideas ring true. ("In Regulating the Poor, Piven and Cloward argued that any advances the poor have made throughout history were directly proportional to their ability to disrupt institutions that depend upon their cooperation." Woops, that not's Radosh! That's Francy's own biography at FiveColleges.ed. ) And that's probably why The Nation hides it from all but the faithful.
Francy's entire career's basically been that way. She's a hidden pretending to be upfront. She's a freak pretending to be a puritan. She's a liar pretending to be a truth teller.
Which makes her the early forerunner of Amy Goodman. Neither woman could ever lead a movement because they're so busy attempting to figure out how to trick and conceal and mislead.
Back to Walter's questions, specifically, "Was there in fact some danger in having people working for the Government whose loyalty was also to the Communist Party?" The Communist Party, as Walter knows, was a political party and, as he'd be the first to admit, perfectly legal. Stating that, was there some danger in its members being in the government? The divided loyalty line (which Bernstein's book toys with even in its title) was the most often cited potential damage but equally true is that those secretly dedicated to destroying the system might not be the best ones to put in charge of it.
That's always a danger with any group -- Communist, Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Constitutionalist, Green, etc. And it's why honesty -- not civility -- is needed more than ever in the political discourse. We need to know where people stand, we can't afford to be tricked or hyped.
The Amy Goodmans, from their political closets on the left, cast stones at the right and are genuinely shocked that so many people remember their 2008 whoring and realize that there's not a damn bit of difference between an Amy Goodman and a Glenn Beck. Both want to trick you, both want to deceive and enrage you and to do so for their own political purposes.
