Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills), Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, and Wally of The Daily Jot and all highlights selected by us unless otherwise noted.

"Thomas Friedman in his element" -- Betinna continues searching for answers and for Nicky K (Kristof). She finds her stuff in yet another dive where her crossdressing husband Thomas Friedman contributes to noise pollution. She also finds a bit more.

"Garlic potatoes in the Kitchen" -- Trina explaining conventional oven via microwave in terms of crispness as well as the latest on Dennis Kucinich's campaign.

"Nation magazine damage becomes an illness" -- Forget Bird Flu, we're more concerned with The Nation Flu which appears to have inflicted a number of commentators. Symptoms include a swollen tongue from giving baths to Barack Obama and a fever induced state when perceptions become warped. It is thought that Patricia J. Williams was the earliest carrier of the disease but she's been quaranteneed since babbling that Obama should be president of the United States because he was president of the Harvard Law Review.


"Hoprah, watch your back!" & "THIS JUST IN! BARACK GOES BOTH WAYS ON IRAQ!" -- Cedric & Wally have had their immunizations (required as they 'travel' the globe) and are protected from The Nation Flu. Which is why shortly after Obama had finished his speech, they were already calling it out.


"only mike gravel spoke the truth on hugo chavez", "Univision's Democratic forum" and "Iraq snapshot" -- Rebecca, Kat and C.I. covering the Univision debate which seems to have gone largely unnoticed when compared to other debates thus far this year.

"Judy Collins -- Shameless" -- Kat gives more background on her most recent recent CD revies: "Kat's Korner: Judy Collins makes like Eydie Gorme."

"Cindy Sheehan, Patrick Cockburn, Naomi Klein" -- You do not have Naomi Klein's new book! You don't! Or that's what an e-mailer insisted to Elaine. Yes, she did have it. We all had it. We discuss it here today.

"Bully Boy's backstage antics" & "THIS JUST IN! UGLY BULLY'S BACKSTAGE PROBLEMS!" -- Cedric and Wally go all E! and Behind the Music on your asses to explain how Thursday night's primetime special almost didn't come off.

"And the war drags on . . ." -- Ty told us this entry by C.I. was the most requested highlight in e-mails to this site. Ty noted that Nikoli's e-mail especially deserved a shout-out because Nikoli explained -- in detail -- how his own campus was reflected in the entry. If Nikoli gives his permission, his e-mail will run in full in the gina & krista round-robin this Friday.

"Obama the War Hawk speaks like an idiot" & "Baby Obama makes a stinky"-- Elaine and Mike don't suffer from The Nation Flu either. Which is why they didn't fall Barack Obama's meaningless spin. Samantha Power works really hard, ya'll, on those speeches! She just wants to invade the world one country at a time! Give it up for Sammy. It's not hard being Our Modern Day Carrie Nation!

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Bully Boy 'lets' David Petraeus speak to Congress" -- Isaiah's prediction (which turned out to be true) of Davey Petraeus performances before Congress.

"phyllis bennis & eric lever ignore over 400,000 iraqi deaths" -- the one and only Rebecca offering her take on the useless. "Eric Lever"? Rebecca, "Spelling his name properly is the least of my worries and 'Lever' is also an inside joke."

Note

We are doing a new edition today. Most of it is written. We are all, however, tired. And we're going to take a nap. It's 7:25 a.m. EST. We'll be posting our latest features in an hour or so. (Dona says "I need at least two hours of sleep. So no one should expect anything for at least two hours. More if I overlseep.") "More" because Dona cracks the whip around here when it comes to time limits. Ava and C.I. haven't written their TV commentary so I (Jim) can't tell you what it's about. We have completed the book discussion for this edition on Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. We need to edit that and type it but there is a book discussion this edition.

Truest statement of the week

The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.
We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there's a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.
The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?
How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It's difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can't hear the explosions.
I wonder at how the windows don't rattle as the planes pass overhead. I'm trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I'm trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…
How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?

Riverbend, Baghdad Burning, writing of her family's trip to Syria after the illegal war drove them out of their home.

Dumbest statement of the week

"CBS is owned by General Electric. GE is working hard to get favorable trading status with any number of foreign trading partners. The U.S. trade representative is working hard on GE's behalf."

-- the Online Predator decided to 'critique' Katie Couric. Well, at least it prevented him from trying to lure underage girls into sexual meet ups. (Viacom owns CBS. GE owns NBC, just FYI.)

A Note to Our Readers

Hey --

Sunday, Sunday. As Mike would say.

Here's who worked on this edition:



The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim,

Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,

Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,

C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,

Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),

Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,

Mike of Mikey Likes It!,

Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz,

and Wally of The Daily Jot

In addition, Dallas hunt down links, Rebecca photoshopped the illustrations (and C.I. and Rebecca worked forever getting that tiny photo of Katie Couric just right in one illustration).
We thank everyone for their help.

Truest statement of the week -- Riverbend and her family made it out of Iraq.

Dumbest statement of the week -- The Online Predator, twice busted, decided to explain why Katie Couric isn't a good journalist. He did so by explaining how GE pulls CBS' strings because GE owns CBS . . . but GE doesn't own CBS, Viacom does. Seriously, how did Common Dreams and Truthdig both post his column and not catch the error? And, better question, if two arrests for underage online solicitation don't get you banned from those sites, what does?

Editorial: You should be very angry -- We're happy with this editorial. It was the last thing we wrote and we had agreed to cover this story. We ended up waiting on writing the piece and waiting until finally it became "It's the editorial focus or it's not going in this edition." So we made it the editorial.

TV: The question's not 'Is it worse?' -- it's how much worse? -- Ava and C.I. did carry The George Lopez Show commentary over to Maria, Francisco and Miguel's newsletter. You can read it in today's El Espirito (check your inboxes if you're a community member). We think that's a great commentary and has a lot to say. Do I (Jim) regret asking them to postpone writing it repeatedly? Not really. We got a string of hard hitting TV commentaries from them in this period. It would be great to have the Lopez one up here but it would be great to have the incredible commentary that they did on TV portrayals of women, criticism of them and the TV show Twins. That one ran in the gina & krista round-robin and we all lived. We had no idea what they'd cover this week but they knew we needed something hard hitting. We knew they had something on war resisters. We think they wrote another epic. They're concerned that there aren't enough jokes. If that's true (I can't tell you), the power of the piece more than makes up for it. (The power of this article is what stood out to me then and now.)

Bash the Bitch, available where shoddy toys are sold and sexists gather -- The illustration, if you look closely, has the little boy holding a Katie Couric figure in his fingers. When this went up, Ty was checking the e-mails to see if anyone would complain about one section. Someone did. If you don't care for the fact that we noted personal attacks come from a woman who draws a veil around her own personal life, get the hell over it. Ty's openly gay and neither he nor we will shed any tears that we 'dared' to note the public reality that the veil is drawn over the fact that her husband was gay. If she wants to draw the veil, she should apply the same principle to others. The e-mail complaining (the only one in thus far) also whined that because Ava and C.I. know Katie Couric, they defend her. That's not true. In fact, it's the opposite. Because they know her, they try to avoid the topic of Katie Couric. The reality is we could address Couric here each Sunday and still not have written even a tenth of the "Bash the Bitch" she's been subjected to since it was announced she was becoming the anchor. Ava and C.I. have avoided reviewing The CBS Evening News because they know if they write something nice, it will be, "Oh, you know her and like her, so you just defend her for that reason." Ava and C.I. have not made the issue about liking Couric, they've made it about basic fairness. If you're going to rip apart a woman, do the same with the men. We don't give a damn about tone. We do care about fairness. Rebecca was pushing for this piece. Ava and C.I. agreed but it really only took off once we (Kat, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, C.I. and myself) hit the toy stores Saturday thinking we might find something from a game box we could could use. If Couric's Satan or you think she is, call her Satan. But make damn sure you treat all the male anchors the same way. That's not happened. Instead it's been dog pile on Couric. Where this ends is Couric could end up being fired. Maybe that's something the sexists (male and female) want. If so, they better pray they can point to a record of treating males and females the same because if Couric gets fired, it's going to be years before another woman gets hired and you better believe the howler monkies cheering them on today will be replaced with angry people tomorrow who will point out that Couric was lynched.


Mailbag -- We did this first because Lenora e-mailed saying we hadn't done one of these in so long. We don't know how long but we agreed with Lenora it was needed. The typos in the whiner about Ava and C.I.'s TV commentary are the whiners. We did not correct his spelling.
And to repeat, there is no privacy policy here. If you e-mail, we may or may not quote you -- in part or in full. (The whiner was quoted in full.) We may or may not list your name. That's our call. If you don't like it, don't e-mail. (In the case of the professor, C.I. said she teaches a conservative college. We're not sure she's political -- and her daughter, not the professor, is a reader of this site -- so we avoided naming her or mentioning the college to avoid her getting on some watch list as a 'lefty' when we have no idea if she is. On her, and some kind people at The Nation -- a few exist -- and other types we will continue to make that call.)

Brown is invisible? -- Joe Biden's skipping the Spanish debate. If we'd known that when we wrote this, we would have worked that in as well. Apparently Brown is also invisible to Biden.
Rebecca said to put in here that her in-laws know Chris Dodd. She doesn't and has no strong opinion on him.

The Pacifica Archives -- Ruth had hoped to note this in her report Saturday. She didn't have time or room and suggested it to us. We were happy to grab it. We all agree -- everyone who worked on this edition, in fact -- that the Pacifica Radio Archives are worth supporting. Of the ones writing this note, all but C.I. agree that until KPFA apologies online for threatening to cut the stream to listeners, you shouldn't give them a dime. (C.I.'s position is, "I never say 'don't donate' to anything Pacifica related. People can make up their own mind and, with KPFA especially, I'm uncomfortable getting behind a 'Don't donate' policy. However, I do agree that they need to post an apology to online listeners.") The archives need preserving. It's our history and one point we should have made stronger is that: our history. It's not just the famous being interviewed and covered. It's not PBS offering heads of state and government officials. It's the people. If you've got money to give (now or when the fundraiser rolls around), please consider giving. Five dollars, ten dollars (one time donations of those amounts) are appreciated and everything that is given goes to preserving history before it's gone forever.

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Kat, Rebecca, Betty, Wally and Cedric wrote this. We thank them for it. (We were all typing and editing while they did that except for Ava and C.I. who used the 20 to 30 minutes to do their TV commentary.)

Mark your calendars -- This went up first. That wasn't our intent. But it was getting close to time for The Next Hour to air. If you missed it and would like to check it out, you can visit WBAI's archives. All the broadcasts noted will be archived.


Now, Mike's "Marjorie Cohn on Iran, Third." Every Monday (unless Monday is a holiday -- or unless he's sick though that hasn't prevented him thus far), Mike writes his version of this note where he notes various things from the edition. If you enjoy the note, please make sure to check Mike out each week. He has a day (and sleep) before he writes it. We're often able to note something when he calls so his note usually includes more. It's also true that his note often catches things I (Jim) miss because I'm tired and we just want to go to bed and get some sleep. Actually, like many Sundays after the note, we're going to watch a movie, snack and fall asleep in the middle of the movie. We know it will be a comedy and have five titles we're arguing over.

What's coming up next week? We usually never know. But we meant to note the Green Party this week and did but it runs in the print edition. It wasn't working and we couldn't fix it. (Ty's boyfriend in NY distributes the print edition on our old campus -- 'our' is Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and myself. We have a deadline with that and many things make the print edition that don't make it online.)

So that's a sketch of this edition. We'll also be visiting the issue of sin taxes shortly and intended to cover that this week. It may be done next week. Next week, fingers crossed, we're also going to have a book discussion on Naomi Klein's new book. (Provided Mike and Betty finish reading it and provided there's time. We're breaking street date, it comes out at the end of September. But there's a push to get some 'heat' on the book so we'll do our part.)

See you next week.


-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.

Editorial: You should be very angry

Today, in DC at one p.m., Tina Richards (Grassroots America) and Adam Kokesh (Iraq Veterans Against the War) will hold a press conference at 1247 E Street SE.



What's going on? The same old question during life under Bully Boy: What the hell's happened to this country?



The backstory, September 15th (see A.N.S.W.E.R. for more information) a mass protest will be taking place in DC and IVAW will lead a "die-in". This will be part of a several days of action lasting from the 15th through the 18th. September 17th IVAW will kick off Truth in Recruiting. CODEPINK will be conducting a Peoples March Inside Congress (along with other groups and individuals) on September 17th. United for Peace & Justice (along with others) will begin Iraq Moratorium on September 21st and follow it every third Friday of the month as people across the country are encouraged to wear and distribute black ribbons and armbands, purchase no gas on those Fridays, conduct vigils, pickets, teach-ins and rallies, etc. And those are only some of the upcoming actions.



Simple enough, right? No. The DC police have harassed A.N.S.W.E.R., threatened A.N.S.W.E.R. and, last Thursday, you got a sign of just how ugly life in America is under the Bully Boy.



What happened? Tina Richards explains, "On September 6, 2007 I arrived at a press conference where Adam Kokesh and I wanted to demonstrate the legal application of the September 15 coalition. An attorney scouted the area prior and this utility box was chosen to be in legal compliance with the law. As this coalition doesn't have millions of dollars to advertise like Ari Flesher's latest campaign, putting up lawful posters is a way to inform the grassroots cost-effectively. "



Now the mainstream media likes to look the other way when these incidents happen, they like to pretend that it's a he-said/she-said case and there's no way to determine which side is telling the truth.



In our modern age, where every moment can be captured and transferred, the answers can be found in a video anyone can check out by visting YouTube.



What do you see?



You see Kokesh, Richards and others in a public place speaking to the press in Lafayette Square. You see the DC police rush in to attempt to bust up the peaceful press conference. You watch as Tina Richards's container of wheat paste is jerked from her, after her arm is jerked repeatedly and a DC cop calls for backup, you'll hear a DC cop start chattering nervously about "national security".



Richards was attempting to post a flier, with an attorney supervising and vouching it was legal, for the events beginning the 15th. She and Kokesh continued to post them (Richards hands had paste them, allowing the fliers to stick). Richards will be arrested. Kokesh, after the non-armed Kokesh and non-violent Kokesh attempts to post a flier, has his left arm pulled behind his back and is man handled. (Was it good for the cop? Did it provide him with nightime fantasy material?) Ian Thompson will be arrested as well.



As C.I. explained, "The three were charged with 'defacing public property.' Desecrating the Constitution is a-okay in DC which is why Bully Boy's still sitting pretty and not facing impeachment."



As bad as that was, it wasn't the end of it. The detained Richards is speaking to the press, she notes that her son, Iraq veteran Cloy Richards, wasn't fighting in Iraq to see rights destroyed in this country. She was speaking, with the press paying close attention, about the importance of free speech in this country. How to silence her? Send in a mounted cop.



Those at least one squad car had already arrived, suddenly a police officer on horseback comes charging up, frightening the people gathered peaceably, screaming, "Back up, folks, back up, back up, back up, back up!" He's damn lucky no one got hurt and should have his ass busted down to meter patrol.



The Times of India reported, "The charge caused a peaceful crowd of some 20 journalists and four or five protestors to scatter in terror, an AFP correspondent at the event in Layfayette Square said." And if you're thinking it can't get any worse, Paul Schwartman (Washington Post) reports, "A few feet away, Kristine Klein, 13, Richards's daughter, started crying. She said that another officer had grabbed her arm and pushed her. As Richards tried to call to her daughter from the cruiser, another officer closed the window."



Tina Richards has declared, "I have been asked if knowing all that would happen, the intimidation, the injuries and pending legal costs, would I do it again. 'Yes,' I have answered. 'Any day is a good day for the first amendment'." Which reminds of us the Native American proverb: "Today is a good day to die." We're not being sarcastic. We are noting that the 1970 Kent State massacre in Ohio didn't just happen. A White House that regularly sent signals that citizens didn't matter, that assaults on their rights were fine and dandy, set the stage for the murders at Kent State.



Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming,

We're finally on our own

This summer I hear the drumming

Four dead in Ohio.

-- "Ohio," written by Neil Young



"We're finally on our own." Not "Oh my goodness, we're on our own!" The Kent State massacre didn't just happen, there was a huge lead up to it over many years. The Bully Boy's administration has practiced the same dirty tricks and, yes, crimes as Tricky Dick's administration. More importantly, they've repeatedly sent the message that they are above the rule of the law.



What happened to Richards, Kokesh, Thompson and the rest -- including the press -- should be seen as the seminal moment it is. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. And if you don't call this out, be prepared for the next Ohio because it will come bit by bit.



Get angry. And don't use stuff the anger, let it fuel you to make demands of your elected representatives, to practice civil disobedience and to insist that the illegal war be ended and Bully Boy be impeached. If you don't know where to start, many trying to make a difference will be gathering in DC on September 15th.



The illustration below is of Kokesh.

TV: The question's not 'Is it worse?' -- it's how much worse?

Animation seems to be in the air this summer. You've got the really bad The Simpsons movie playing at multi-plexes, you've got ads for Family Guy, the US Navy sponsoring the syndicated episodes of King of the Hill and you've got Wait Till Your Father Gets Home.

Vanity Fair recently gave a wet kiss to The Simpson where they skirted the issue of the gender make up of the writers. Out of 67 credited writers for episodes of the series, we're counting only six women. That's not even one in ten. A rather obvious fact that pages and pages of a Van Fair article managed to avoid.

Apparently we're all supposed to ignore that or how the male heavy Family Guy (even the dog is a male) figured the best way to promote itself was with 'female' advertisements for its upcoming syndicated run. One features a frequently cross-dressing Peter (the father) singing "my milkshake is better than yours," while another shows the infant Stewie also cross-dressing, wondering if he's a dirty 'girl'? Does it ever enter anyone's mind that one reason these multiple ha-has exist is because animated television refuses to do much with their female characters -- the few that exist?

We were visiting a friend early last week, an actress who was convinced she'd lost it (she hadn't, the problem was a badly written scene which she instinctively knew she couldn't play). After the crisis was addressed, we were leaving the set when an associate producer came running up with a DVD set. "You only think you hate the animated stuff on TV today," he told us while handing over the boxed set.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. We didn't recognize the title. The provider had urged us to first check out "Duty Calls." After we got home, we mentioned it in passing to a friend over the phone who informed us the series was streaming online at AOL TV for free -- along with other cancelled shows no one wants to see. Streaming for free, potentially rentable, we felt it could be a viewing option for many of our readers at some point, so we decided to take a look.

The characters look as though they were drawn by someone who had just read a book entitled How To Draw Cartoons. We're not sure if he or she finished reading the book, but he or she appeared to have gotten through the first pages. The sets are nothing to brag about either and offer that 'stark' daytime drama TV look. When we mentioned that to another friend, she started quoting a big Nola (played by Lisa Brown on Guiding Light) scene she did years and years ago in acting class where Nola, about to confront Morgan, looks out her hospital window and declares, "It's good to be reminded of where you're from so you can see how far you've come."

That actually captures the role Wait Till Your Father Gets Home provides. The half-hour program ran from 1972 to 1973 in some syndicated markets which may have aired it in primetime and may not have. Some insist it was trying to be the animated version of Norman Lear's classic All In The Family. That lie may actually be funnier than anything you'll find in watching the entire first season of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. It has more in common with the Bobby Sherman flop Getting It Together than it does with All In The Family.

Sherman, long past his initial (and only) blush of fame, which allegedly had 27 young females fainting at a concert in Buffalo during the late sixties, was supposed to play a gifted composer and audiences were supposed to believe that because Sherman's then agent (Ward Sylvester) kept running around insisting Sherman wrote "one-fourth of the songs he's singing!" If you bought that nonsense, you probably bought Sherman, and Wes Stern playing his lyricist, as talented and a friend of the Partridge family (the show was a spin-off). Sherman, closing in on thirty, was more than a bit old for the part but he just knew the kids would 'dig it' as he wore his hair long with brown boots, brown pants and multiple rings on his fingers. The year was 1971, about a year after his brief run of bubble gum hits had stopped. (He hates "bubble gum" and preferred "soft rock" even then but trifles that start out with "Bein' alone at night makes me sad girl" are pure bubble gum, no matter how you hard you try not to smack it.)

There he was on TV, for a half-hour, pretending to be hippie-like, pretending to be 'modern,' pretending a man looks good sporting a choker, pretending . . . . Well just pretending non-stop. Never really acting, just pretending. The show would have been a hard sale in the mid-sixties. By 1971, no one was in the mood for the junk. The show that killed it? While Getting Together aired on ABC, CBS was programming All In The Family.

Getting Together, like Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, was the sort of useless garbage that Norman Lear drove off our TV screens (at least for a decade). Now the animated series debuted in the fall of 1972 but it got its start on ABC February 11, 1972 as one vignette of Love American Style. It sucked even then.

As with today's animated shows, the female characters do nothing. There are two: mother Irma, daughter Alice. Alice's most striking characteristic is that she's obese. Not plump, not fat, obese. Irma has no striking characteristic -- but dish rags and door mats rarely do. Harry is the star of the show so naturally (as with Peter and Homer and Hank and every other animated primetime series you can probably think of) he's the father. Chet and Jamie are the sons. Jamie, the youngest, is part Bart, part Danny Partridge -- mischievous and money hungry. Chet, a young adult, gets a lot of air time but does very little. He appears to exist in the hopes that the audience would find him as irritating as Harry did.

See while Jamie's negotiating list prices with the tooth fairy, Chet doesn't have a job, dropped out of college and is supposed to be what today would be considered a 'slacker' but at the time was another message about the 'evils' of the Love Generation. Chet talks a lot about his volunteer work in the 'ghetto' but no one takes it (or him) seriously. He also is prone to tossing out names like Ralph Nader which had a different connotation then than now. He, and Alice, are supposed to be the 'left' and, as such, Hanna-Barbara thought it best to show them as slovenly and stupid. Harry's a conservative. (Irma's non-committal politically -- in keeping with every other underwritten detail about the character.)

In some apparent need to make Harry seem 'reasonable,' the character of next door neighbor Ralph is added to the mix. Ralph is voiced by Jack Burns who, there are so many connections, played the role of Officer Rudy on Getting Together. The Commie-hating (and Commie-seeing everywhere) Ralph gets the bulk of the jokes or what's supposed to pass for them.

"Duty Calls" is the episode that revolves around the draft. Chet gets his draft notice. Harry, alone in bed with Irma, is slightly worried. We're not sure whether Irma's supposed to not give a damn that her son's being drafted (to fight in Vietnam) or if her reaction is just not seen as important the same way characterization for the majority of animated Moms today is seen as unnecessary. Chet sees it a bit differently and doesn't want to be inducted.

This show, believe it or not, gets a lot of credit from some for dealing with 'war resistance.' The episode of The Partridge Family where Danny mistakenly receives his draft induction notice said a hell a lot more than this animated garbage. Chet decides to go underground. Then decides to flee to another country (finally Canada becomes the destination of choice). In the meantime, to save Harry from induction (don't ask), Chet's friends kidnap him in the middle of night and attempt to transport him to Canada (again, don't ask). Like today's animated 'wit,' the show features a lot of smut jokes about sex but it adds in some of the preachiest b.s. you'll ever hear. Citing the 'ghetto,' Harry tells Chet that if he refuses to go into the military they'll send one of the 'boys in the ghetto' in his place. Harry, who is not being inducted, gets to have a lengthy remembrance of hopes he had for Chet at various stages in life that end with Chet being the 'disgrace' -- with even longer hair than the character sports in the non-fantasy scenes.

The supposedly 'brave' episode has Chet decide to report for that 'duty' calling which really isn't that hard to believe since, along with the sermonizing from Harry, Chet never really provides a reason not to go. He's not concerned about the Vietnamese, he's not concerned about the illegal war, he mainly seems peeved that he'll have to get up before noon. All In The Family, no surprise, would actually address war resistance and, again no surprise, do it so much better.

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home is visually simplistic, lacks movement in the frames and seems to be one grade level above the preaching done on the Davy & Goliath cartoons. Outside of a drunken Pat Nixon, we can't figure out whom the target audience for this nonsense was supposed to be. (And weren't surprised when, working the phones to track down information on the show's first-run life, were told it was only carried by five TV stations.) By the time it arrived on TV screens, it was already dead or, if you prefer, still born. It had about as much to do with what was actually going on in the country as did Getting Together.

But, when we called the associate producer who'd passed us the set, he told us (after explaining he didn't want it back) that as bad as he thought Wait Till Your Father Gets Home was, the thing he kept coming back to was that all the 'wild and wacky, we'll tackle anything' animated sitcoms of today avoid the illegal war. That is true. Even the allegedly 'brave' Simpsons offer nothing but the occasional (and rare) one liner. Maybe those who hail from The New

Republic(an) can't stray too far from their roots?

Last week, Carolyn Nikodym's "AMERICAN SOLDIERS COME NORTH TO REFUSE AND RESIST WITH A LITTLE MUSIC" (VUE Weekly) covered the influx of war resisters into Canada, the need to raise awareness, Patrick and Jill Hart's situation and much more. The non-liberal Simpsons loves to dabble in drugs (whether in a look forward where Lisa's president and Bart's a stoner, Homer getting high on medicinal pot or when Homer decides to 'get back to the land'). The show that regularly featured Bill Clinton (as well as Poppy Bush and Jimmy Carter) makes it a point to avoid the Bully Boy (going so far as to make Ahnuld president in this summer's film). Along with smutty, jokes they offer racial and gender stereotypes. They have a loyal legion of twerps (as does most animated crap) that take to the internet to proclaim the greatness of the show and other male geared animated shows (male geared and animated are redundant). The twerps take to sites like Crapapedia to catalogue these shows in every entry imaginable via the pop cult refs. For kicks, check that out some time and notice that the only thing that rivals the animated crap for references is sci-fi.

We're living in very strange times and the question the associate producer asked is a worthy one: Is it better to have a bad, preachy and distorted storyline on a very real topic like war resistance or none at all?

Watching Wait Till Your Father Gets Home you'll see more of The Simpsons than in watching The Flintstones (some could argue that's the real debt owed), but which of the two is the more evil? The show that laid down the lines for the stereotypes but still managed to (in a conservative manner) note a few topical issues (that had been topical for over five years prior to the show airing)? Or the shows that continue the stereotypes but make no effort to comment on an illegal war? (No, we don't consider what we'll dub "Invasion Springfield" to be about the illegal war. Yes, we're aware people with The Simpsons do consider it to be about the illegal war.) At a time when the US military is all geared up to use animated shows in syndication as a recruiting tool, we'd argue the silence isn't only shameful, it's potentially deadly.

Discussions on this subject throughout the week with friends (many involved with TV shows currently airing), usually resulted with someone saying TV needed another Norman Lear or Susan Harris. To that, we'd add TV could (still) use Diane English. But while a movement can't start rolling with one single person, we think the problem goes far deeper and we think the bulk of the problem is a conditioned TV audience that regularly applauds reactionary screeds passed off as entertainment, one that refuses to rail against obvious discrimination be it stereotypes or the absence of people of color.

A friend in the offices at CW is trying to build good will for programs that will begin airing shortly. The main one is Life Is Wild and he's all hot on the fact that the supporting cast (after the main family of White people) includes people of color. We pointed out that's apt to happen when you set a show in Africa and wondered if, to get Latinos on the air, someone should greenlight a network show where a White family moves to Mexico or Spain or Latin America?

Many lifetimes ago, TV could -- and did -- offer What's Happening, The Jefferson, Good Times and Diff'rent Strokes. We're not calling them comedic gems, but African-Americans were visible and the shows did not need to be set in Africa for that to happen. Even in the face of the huge success of The Cosby Show, networks weren't piling on in an attempt to copy the ratings blockbuster. In fact, all it took was one Charlie & Co. to kill off any interest.

TV today is Whiter and more male than the country.

Now the Katha Pollitts of the nation aren't at all troubled by that. Either due to racism or the fact that they're idiots. But TV still has a huge audience and it is the modern folk tales of our time, told before a glowing TV set instead of a glowing fire. It does instruct the young (whether it wants to accept that responsibility or not). It does provide many with a limited understanding of the world. Like the big, cry baby boys of today's animation, who'd rather tell stories about the way 'things were' before they were born, we worry they've cloned/infected a young generation today, conditioned them to respond to a life they didn't actually take part in, where women don't work and where people of color, if they exist at all, make fleeting appearances.

As gifted as a Norman Lear, et al, is (and was), the reality is that a White Man didn't make the changes happen in the TV landscape. Public pressure did. From the NAACP, from feminists, etc. They created the climate where Lear's pitch for a show couldn't be ignored. The only time the networks get targeted these days is when some dumb ass show is about to be cancelled. We loathed Commander-in-Chief but if NOW found the show so damn important -- they issued an action to 'save' the show -- we would assume that was due to the lack of range offered in the female characters today, the lack of opportunities. If that indeed is the case, possibly NOW should team up with the NAACP and others to demand (as they once did) representation on TV. That includes animated series and it especially includes Saturday morning cartoons. Sure they might get scolded by racist Katha Pollitt but if she feels the need to again scold the NAACP, we think the mood has shifted more than enough that she'll be told loudly and clearly that Black America really doesn't need direction from a White racist.

Bash the Bitch, available where shoddy toys are sold and sexists gather

As Ava and C.I. have pointed out, Bash the Bitch is a national pastime. And apparently fun for the whole family. The way it works is that a woman gets zoomed in on while males are ignored. Sensing blood in the water, the Water Cooler Set, online and off, zoom in for the easy kill they imagine. They ignore what men are doing. They ignore what anyone's doing. In fact, they frequently ignore what the woman's doing. They just bash, bash, bash.





Elisabeth Bumiller was a popular target a few years back. "Knee pads" and Bumiller seemed to co-exist in every sentence. Though Bumiller was hardly the only offender, name a male reporter (not columnist) who got the same treatment. (Common Ills members can name Todd S. Purdum and note that the "smelly jock strap" joke was created to underscore how a man gets off with bad reporting but a woman's crucified for it.) It's not a secret, for instance, that David E. Sanger (New York Times) and Ann Coulter are buddy-buddy. David Sanger has certainly offered some howlers (including this week on Washington Weak, Ava and C.I. note), but there was no equivalent among the set for what they did to Bumiller. Or Jodi Wilgoren.





At one point, Adam Nagourney was the focus of some ire. That faded long before he learned to suck up to bloggers in print.





Judith Miller, say people who never read The New York Times, got the country into an illegal war. Judith Miller was far from alone. And it's not like she wrote her stories, edited her stories, selected what ran on the front page, printed the papers and then drove house to house delivering them. But when people think about the illegal war, they think Judith Miller.





Now Michael Gordon also sold the illegal war as a reporter at the same paper. (In fact, many did, but let's focus on Gordo.) Gordo's made this year and last about attempting to sell the readers on an illegal war with Iran. So he's a two-time offender. He even co-wrote stories on Iraq with Judith Miller.





But Gordo's name doesn't come up in the discussions of the bad Iraq coverage very often.





If the Water Cooler Set, online and off, were truly concerned about the quality of reporting, it's very doubtful that the demonized set would always be women. But that is how it goes. Juan Williams is just as bad as Cokie Roberts but he's called out far less, to switch to NPR. Ted Koppel, whose entire career was built around selling what the State Department wanted, even got odes online -- from alleged lefties -- when he stepped away from Nightline. Jim Lehren has gone on and on for years shoveling sh*t to PBS viewers and yet he's not a national joke.





Now we don't care if women get called out, provided it's done evenly. If women make themselves a joke, laugh it up. But we do care that the easy yucks avoid the men. We do care that a double standard is being practiced.





You saw that with the 'coverage' of Katie Couric's trip to Iraq last week for The CBS Evening News. Before she even got there, our 'critics' were dishing in a manner Louella and Hedda could only once dream about. (And Louella had the backing of William Randolph Hearst!) Last Sunday, Ava and C.I. wrote, "If Couric (whom we know and like) blows it, does a lousy job, in Iraq, by all means pile on."





Well people certainly piled on. Couric interviewed a general who lies repeatedly (read the transcript of any of his briefings -- usually one or two reporters will force him into admitting he has no proof or whatever claim he's making, one or two out of a huge number of reporters present for the briefing). Some pointed out that Couric didn't question him sufficiently. That is a valid criticism. It would be equally valid to point it out when many male anchors or reporters have done the same. However, that hasn't really happened, has it?





If that was valid, the bulk was nothing but a rush to burn a woman at the stake. People didn't feel compelled to offer facts. Or to even tie their bashing into reality. Couric interviewed Syrian president Bashar Assad and that somehow escaped the 'critics.' Facts were so unimportant to the pile on that the Online Predator (with two arrests to his name -- at least two) could, as C.I. noted, hop on the dog pile by writing, "CBS is owned by General Electric. GE is working hard to get favorable trading status with any number of foreign trading partners. The U.S. trade representative is working hard on GE's behalf." CBS is not owned by GE (it's owned by Viacom). NBC is owned by GE. It says a great deal about the reflexive impulse to take part in Bash the Bitch that neither Truthdig nor Common Dreams caught that very obvious error (and a 'point' the Predator built his 'critique' on) before deciding to post the nonsense.





Is Couric worse than Brian Williams and/or Charlie Gibson? Gibson is infamous for falling asleep on camera and, when a guest touches on a subject that's 'controversial,' declaring that the feed has been lost when it has not (one example of that is an interview for Good Morning America with Gore Vidal). Williams is famous for loving Rush Limbaugh, writing letters as a little boy to his hero Richard Nixon and bragging to Jay Leno on The Tonight Show that he favors censorship.





So it's really amazing that Couric continues to be the focus until you grasp that the real 'crime' she's committed is being born a woman. That's why even people with TV news experience, too old to have bright futures anymore, post nasty little crap about her online while never saying a word about Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson.





Media Matters critiqued Couric last week. We haven't read it all but Media Matters generally treats everyone the same. They'll go to town on a woman as quickly as they will on a man. It's a real shame that others can't say the same. Take CounterSpin -- by the media watchdog FAIR --which should have apologized for the nonsense of trying to turn ratings into a media critique. When an organization named "FAIR" is playing double-standards with women, it's really not a surprise that everyone's seeing a green light to go to town on Couric.





It's real cute the way FAIR used the Tyndall Report to slam Couric but when the weekly report found good news in Couric's broadcasts compared to the other two network's, they didn't feel the need to use that report to criticize ABC or NBC's nightly newscasts.





Couric's a "first." As Ava and C.I. pointed out in 2005, "sometimes a first can be a worst." That may or may not be the case with Couric. To determine that, we'd have to see serious critiques that took all three anchors of the network's news to task equally. But what is known is that Couric is the first woman to anchor (not co-anchor) the evening news. And if this is how the 'left' is going to respond to it, we won't hold our breaths waiting for the next woman.





It's not just men playing Bash the Bitch. And one of the loudest critics last week, calling Couric a phony and fake, but offering little proof of either, was of course a woman who came to fame and money via a marriage to a now out gay man. A man she knew was gay before they married.
She wants to rule that topic off-limits and hits the roof when her ex-husband talks about the marriage. Suddenly, she's a woman and she's a mother and these things just shouldn't be discussed and are no one's business. If that's her attitude, the question might be why she doesn't apply the same attitude to her very personal critiques of Couric?





This isn't an issue of "Katie Couric is above criticism!" This is an issue of fairness. If Media Matters can treat men and women equally in their criticism, if they can call out either based on what they observe, it's a real shame that so many others can't do the same. But Media Matters proves that it can be done.





While everyone treated Katie Couric like a pinata last week, they somehow missed the fact that while she spent the week in the Middle East, many daily papers stopped reporting from Iraq. The Los Angeles Times, to cite only one example, usually has a piece filed by three p.m. EST each Monday through Friday. A polished version appears the next day in print. For some unknown reason, the paper had a real problem filing reports from Iraq last week. When seven U.S. service members were announced dead Friday morning, not only did they not have an article up on that by Friday evening, they didn't have one in the print edition of the paper Saturday or today. Or take The New York Times which managed to cover a mid-week announcement of eight announced deaths of US service members by halving the total and reporting on four.





Katie Couric was the biggest mainstream media problem on Iraq last week?





The day the eight deaths were announced, Today used their 'hard news' period (the first half-hour) to provide segments on a missing millionaire, on whether or not Larry Craig was stepping down from the Senate, on an 'analyst' playing 'impartial' while going to town on Hillary Clinton (and if you love Bill Clinton, you tend to love Hillary -- they are a package, a team, there is no huge split between Bill Clinton supporters and Hillary Clinton supporters) and much more. After fifteen minutes or so, it was finally time for the news reader to provide headlines. What did she lead with? Barbie's Dream House. And when it was finally time to briefly mention the number of US service members announced dead that morning, the news reader got it wrong and reduced the number.





Katie Couric was the biggest mainstream media problem on Iraq last week?





Between Monday and Friday last week, 17 deaths of US service members were announced. Did that register in whatever outlet you utilize? Did it even rate a mention?





The White House spin is that the escalation has worked. It appears to us that a number of outlets wanted to avoid risking the ire of the White House so they avoided filing the usual number of reports from Iraq that they would in even a slow news week.

But most people will never know that happened because most were too busy getting giddy over another round of Bash the Bitch. Who's really served by that?

It's a question worth asking before the game is (again) taught to the next generation.