How to raise two ungrateful brats

I will tell you, though, Malia and Sasha -- my daughters, they're just not as impressed. The first time we went on Marine One -– right? You've got the Marines in front and they're saluting you. And we go up and we're passing the Washington Monument, circling around on the way to Camp David and Sasha looks over and she says, "Are those Starbursts?" There's, like, the candy in the little canister. That's –- "Can we have some?" So they're splitting up the Starbursts and we're flying over the Lincoln Memorial. So they got a whole 'nother level of cool.

Barack discussing the 'pressing' issues with Jay Leno, March 18th on The Tonight Show (NBC). If the story's true, we rarely believe a word that falls from Barack's mouth, or if it's not, he needs to stop telling it. His daughters riding on a jet the US tax payers pay for and blithely dismissing the Washington Monument does not play 'cool,' it makes them come off like ungrateful brats. If the story is true, toss the behavior back at the parents who damn well should have explained to their children how to conduct themselves. If these 'tales' continue, there may be a move to restrict travel to the president. And maybe there should be? The spouse and children were not voted into any office. You can't travel on Air Force One, have Daddy share (unflattering stories about you) and still be off-limits. The Obamas better self-check because they can make their daughters off-limits or not. They will determine it by their own actions and right now Barack's begged America to take pot shots at what he's portrayed as two stuck-up and ungrateful young girls.

TV: Explaining Moyers

Near the end of last week, a friend called and heard us laughing as we picked up the phone. "Oh good," he said, "you're watching my show." Uh . . . Yeah. But not right then. See, these days the funniest sitcoms are not your half-hour scripted fare but what passes for 'informed' discussions on 'public affairs' programming.



For example, the laughs don't get much bigger than Mike Davis and Bill Moyers, doing off-off Broadway in Two Old White Male Gas Bags Sitting Around Talking. The two of them sat down across from each other Friday night on Bill Moyers Journal and we couldn't help thinking of the tag line from the opening of Hart to Hart: "Because when they met, it was murder."

Truth is always the first casualty. Watching Bill and Mike speak before the cameras, 'letting it all hang out,' was like watching the latter day Tab Hunters and Anthony Perkins pretend they are just friends. There was Mike explaining why he was a Socialist and how he chose it because he "didn't want become a Marxist." Apparently Bill and Mike sit around wondering how things will 'play' in the mythical Duluth of their minds? That's the only plausible explanation for their refusal to tell the truth repeatedly. Mike Davis isn't a Marxist? That's hilarious.

It was hilarious -- and telling -- to see the two elderly White men chat on about 'injustice' which, for White Little Piggies, always means the woes of the Black man -- emphasis on the "man." If you don't get what two losers Bill Moyers and Mike Davis are, fast-forward and check out the hell they spawned which show up at DC Indymedia to post "Smack A White Boy: March 21 Radical People of Color Anti-War (distr)Action." Proclaiming "A Brownie A Day Keeps Whitey Away," the alleged 'radicals' signs off "D.C. Anarchist People Of Color" and "Philadelphia Anarchist People Of Color." In between, when not yawning, you'll wonder if the two cock-knocking orgs can halt their glorification of the phallus long enough to appreciate what idiots they are?

Probably not. (In fairness, Bill and Mike can't stop self-stroking long enough to grasp how badly they come off either.) So for nine paragraphs (eleven if you want to count in full -- they don't seem to grasp that they reposted two paragraphs twice), they go on about "people" and how "people" have been hurt. But it's not "people" they're concerned with, it's men. It's always men. That's all men like them (and Bill and Mike) give a damn about.

It's not a new characteristic of the left (Ellen Willis railed against it in the late sixties) so it's not surprising to grasp how strong the hatred of women still is. It's there in the comments replying to the DC Indymedia post. It's there when an African-American woman attempts to speak up about sexism. All the "we care about people of color" fronting slides away as the woman is ripped apart and is left undefended by "Tariq," for example, who can't stop posting repeatedly on every other comment.

At one point, "h" would feel the need to link to "Open Letter To Activists Concerning Racism In The Anti-War Movement" -- more telling garbage and this signed by the following losers:
Steve Bloom, Jean Carey Bond, Humberto Brown, Saulo Col?n, Bhairavi Desai, Cherrene Horazuk, Randy Jackson, Hany Khalil Ray Laforest, Ng? Thanh Nh?n, Ren? Francisco Poitevin, Merle Ratner, Liz Roberts, Juliet Ucelli and Lincoln Van Sluytman. [That's the way the letter is signed for those wondering about spelling.] Losers in every sense of the word. The rag-tag begins there "open letter" with "Brothers and Sisters" and tosses in a shout-out to "gay". That's it. One "sisters" and one "gay." Then it's about what they always want to talk about, "race" which translates as only one race (they're never concerned about Asian-Americans, about Latinos, or any other grouping) and only the male members of it. It's garbage, it's reductionist garbage.

The only injury, according to these Carl Davidsons, is the injury to African-American males. That is a fixed point of the remedial 'understanding' these White men almost managed. Heaven forbid they be forced to deal with complexities, let alone realities.

So you get Mike Davis yammering on about, "Well, in my case, there really was a burning bush. And that was the Civil Rights movement in San Diego where I grew up in the '50s and '60s. And at 16 years old my father had a heart attack. And I had to leave school for a while to work. And the black side of my family by marriage, they got me to come to a demonstration of the Congress of Racial Equality in front of the Bank of America in downtown San Diego. And I mean, it literally transformed my life, just the sheer beauty of it and the sheer righteousness of it. And I won't claim that every decision or political stance or political group I joined as a result of the Civil Rights movement was the right one. But it permanently shaped my life."





As you read that babble it's enough to almost make you side with Barack Obama for part of the bad speech he gave in Philadelphia. No, not for the section he stole from this website the Sunday before he gave the speech. But for his comments regarding Jeremiah Wright's generation. If you take those comments but apply them to the White males (and some women) of that generation, we're all on board. Because they are the ones who do the damage: the Mike Davises and the Bill Moyerses. The Jeremiah Wrights may be bitter or not. If they are bitter, they are bitter with good reason. But the soft White hands of a Mike Davis or a Bill Moyer can't grab personal victimhood so they try to hog it by association as they flash back on a rare moment when they briefly (and not to fully) thought of someone other than themselves.



You know those really bad 'coming of age' films, where the (White) boy has the 'universal' experience and we're all supposed to identify and supposed to praise it? That garbage keeps getting tossed on screen for a reason. Not because it's universal. It's done and redone over and over because men in power think they're the template. They think they are the universal. And it's not different from Moyers and Davis. They had their 'leave childhood behind' moment and can never stop yacking about it all these years later.

As Moyers simplistic racial discussions indicate year in and year out, it's not about education. It's about rubbing that fixed memory, rubbing out their nostalgia orgasm.



We can never step forward as a society not because of Jeremiah Wrights but because of the likes of Michael Pfleger. Remember him? Mincing about onstage at Barack's now-former church. Mincing about and screaming about racism. Never mentioning sexism, naturally. Attacking Hillary with lies and hate. And it being eaten up by that uneducated crowd. Whitey Pfleger has nothing to offer. He can't talk about love or God's love. Despite being a man of the cloth. So Pfleger goes to the largely Black church of Trinity and serves up attacks on . . . White people. Serves up race based attacks that have no bearing on reality. And it gets eaten up. That crowd caught on camera looks like Romans screaming with joy as Christians are fed to the lions. There's nothing civilized or advanced about that taped moment and never forget that it was a White man stirring it up.

Which is what Mike and Bill do every day of their life. They're not interested in injustice. They're interested in (and caught in) the past. Which is how you get Socialist (Marxist-Environmentalist) Mike Davis waxing on and on about Barack Obama. Why? Because Mike sees the bi-racial Barack as "Black." The programs of Barack? Mike can't stand them. But those programs are never Barack's fault in Mike's eyes. Of course not. As a "Black" man, Barack is the eternal innocent in Mike's patronizing eyes.



It's really ridiculous and pathetic and most of the time we just roll our own eyes. But we were wrong not to confront it earlier. It's what put Barack in the White House and it's what put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. In both cases, women had to be savaged in order for the men to be installed. So it's time to get honest about what's going on because the Michael Pflegers and Bill Moyers are ensuring that their garbage is fed to younger generations.

All those decades ago, it was the height of 'sophistication' for Moyers, a racist from the South, to grasp that racism against Black men was wrong. That was the life altering moment for Bill and he can't stop revisiting it. Think of it as the political equivalent of Losing It or Porky's or any other movie where the young male 'comes of age' by losing his virginity. All these years later, as Bill constantly revisits Summer of 42, he doesn't see it as it was, he sees it only in his idealized view, the one he's beat off to repeatedly during the many lonely nights that have ensued since.

And we all suffer for it.

Doubt us? Let's review the guest list for the year thus far.

March 20th featured Mike Davis and Marta B. Pelaez




March 13th featured Karen Armstrong





March 6th featured John Lithgow





February 27th featured John McWhorter and Robert Johnson





February 20th featured Parker Palmer and Robert G. Kaiser





February 13th featured Nikki Giovanni and Simon Johnson





February 6th featured Eric Foner, Glenn Greenwald and Jay Rosen





January 30th featured Pierre Sprey, Marilyn Young and Vartan Gregorian





January 23rd featured David Sirota, Thomas Frank, Melissa Harris LIEFACE and Patty Williams.





January 16th featured Simon Schama





January 9th featured Leo Gerard





January 2nd featured John Lithgow





Besides marveling over the fact that in three months John Lithgow has been booked twice, you should have caught on to another basic fact: more men than women. Over twice as many men as women: 17 males and 7 women to be exact. And Bill does this year after year and gets away with it. You'll never catch FAIR calling Bill Moyers Journal out because closeted radicals stick together -- closeted radicals and closeted sexists. (And if you're really observant, you'll note that African-Americans are underbooked and that other racial minorities fared even worse over the last three months.)





Bill Moyers thinks he's a decent caring man. He believes he fights injustice and does a real service. But if that were the case, Bill, how do you repeatedly exclude women? How do you take the majority of the US population and repeatedly under-represent them when compiling your guest list. It's not unlike that ridiculous best-film-of-the-year list that surfaced awhile back where Bill could be fascinated by anything and everything but women. Monsters and King Kong? Check. Mae West (in two box office smashes and film classics), Katharine Hepburn (in an Oscar winning role) and all the other women were ignored in Moyers' long, long list of 'film classics' for 1932.





The Journal doesn't like it when we talk like this. They never like it. They get angry and snitty and it floats back to us via PBS friends. While we put off a sitcom producer this week, he took it in stride. PBS friends freaked when we mentioned that we might be addressing Bill Moyers again.





We were accused of "leading the left movement against Bill!" We weren't aware that there was a movement against him (from the left or the right) but that's really not our problem. Our problem, PBS' problem, America's problem is that Bill Moyers has been cuddled and ego-stroked for far too long. His sexism has been on display for decades, tales are still told of his CBS days and, in DC, tales are still told of his LBJ days. In fact, at a formal dinner Wednesday night, an LBJ alumni entertained our half of the table with nonstop Moyers' tales.





If we were leading a war against Bill Moyers, believe us, we'd be repeating these stories word for word. Instead of getting pissy with us, they might try asking why a 'respected journalist' can't adjust himself to the 21st century? Or why PBS can't impose some order on his show? It's not like they haven't repeatedly tried. On our end, we haven't seen a leftist movement against Bill -- led by us or anyone else. Knowing that Moyers frets and imagines one may be the funniest thing about last week. But like all of last week's other big laughs TV provided, it was an unintentional one.

Who's that hiding in the hangers?

Ava and C.I. had a long aside in one of their TV commentaries this week and we wanted to pull it out to underscore a point they were making.



"Socialist! Stop saying that!"



"It's so unfair!"



That's what Janine Jackson and fellow freak Steve Rendall (already punked out once last week) were yammering on CounterSpin last week. Why do people keep asking about Socialism! Mean Republicans!



First, Janine and Steve, you're not Democrats. You are grown ass adults, why don't you try acting like them? Why don't you tell the world what you are? Seriously, it's okay.



The politically closeted really need an intervention.



And when they whine and moan and, yes, kvetch about Socialism being mentioned, you may be confused as to why that is?



Since when the hell is Socialism a bad thing?



It's a bad thing when you're in a political closet. So instead of being glad that a political theory is getting some traction, some talk, the closet cases have to hiss.



If you're not getting it, picture your uncle Felix. 49-years-old. Never dates. Lives with his best friend Tony. Has for twenty years. And whenever someone mentions Ellen or Lance Bass, Uncle Felix goes into a tizzy. Freaks out.



See, Uncle Felix has locked himself into a sexual closet. People like Janine and Steve lock themselves into political closets.



Closets should only hold wardrobes.



But remember that the next time someone starts whining about whomever mentioning Socialism -- whether they're attacking Newsweek or Republicans or whomever.



As for Tariq Ali. He's advocating that the US "reimagining Socialism" and did so on Democracy Now! Thursday. But should Newsweek or Time pick up on that, look for further cries of "McCarthyism!"



When those cries come, remember, you're dealing with the politically closeted. Like those who choose to be imprisoned by sexual closets, they're dealing with a lot of internal shame. Pity them. Especially pathetic Amy Goodman. Well, pity her and laugh at her.

And if you're still not getting it, picture that Newsweek's cover story had been "We're All Green Party Members Now." Do you really think Greens would be hissing that someone mentioned their party? Screaming it was unfair? Likening it to McCarthyism?

No. It's only the politically closeted who do that.

The dog (still not picked out) ate his homework

When you think it can't get any worse, it does. From the White House website:

PRESS RELEASES

3/21/2009

Weekly Address: President Obama to Focus on Budget Priorities Next Week

IIn his weekly address, President Barack Obama announced that in the coming week, he will highlight the core principles of his budget: cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term and making investments in long-delayed priorities like energy independence, education and health care reform.

"IIn" is their typo, not ours (before anyone e-mails to complain). So Barack gave his weekly address Saturday and his point was he will "focus on budget priorities next week"?



In the midst of an economic crisis, following a week where the celebrity president sat on the couch across from Jay Leno, Barack wanted to reassure America that, next week, he will be focused?

It all sounds like yet another excuse as to why he didn't turn in his homework. We can't wait hear this week's excuse.

Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.



"Barack has not apologized and people need to quit making excuses" -- Well the most requested entry this week wasn't C.I.'s "I Hate The War" which came in second. Instead it was this entry by C.I. (Third most requested? )





"Iraq roundtable," "ROUNDTABLE ON IRAQ," "Iraq roundtable," "Iraq" "Roundtable on Iraq," "talking iraq," "Roundtable on Iraq," "Iraq," "Iraq," "The Iraq roundtable," "Iraq" and "Talking Iraq" -- Rebecca did this roundtable featuring Mike, Wally, Isaiah, Jim, Elaine, Trina, Ava and C.I.







"The sixth anniversary in broadcast," "The sixth anniversary in print," "cbs and brian have fun playing around," "Dumb F**k Danny Sphincter and more," "How stupid is Danny Schechter?," "ABC News buries the bar," "THIS JUST IN! HARD WORKING ABC 'NEWS'!," "Sixth anniversary of the war in broadcast TV," "The sixth anniversary of the war in print,"
"THIS JUST IN! ABC NEWS TAPS OUT!" and "PaulTap taps out" -- Just some of the media critiques offered last week.



"barbra," "Janis," "Carly," "Aretha," "Scream, he said," "Neil Young, Andy Worthington, Iraq," "Ben Folds Five, Ireland, Iraq" -- Do you have a favorite artist? Do they have a song you can't stand? Rebecca and Marcia came up with that topic and we wrote on it Wednesday night.

Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Everything Bully Is Barack Again" -- Barack and Bush truly are two of kind. That fact certainly excites Little Dicky.

"Kat's Korner: Joshua Radin shares some simple beauty" -- Kat's latest album review. She plans to wait a bit before doing another one; however, we have a music feature this edition.

----------

Confession from Mike: We weren't done. We saved it and intended to come back to it after the roundtable and never did. My apologies because there was a great deal more we wanted to highlight.

Truest statement of the week

The first step in this charade of false closure is Obama's drawdown. The next is to make the citizens of the occupying power forget Iraq ever happened - a brainwashing that has been in process since the "success" of Bush's "surge." One problem though: how do you brainwash the brain dead?
Iraq has been erased from public discourse in the wake of an economic meltdown at least partially invoked by the vast outlays Bush pumped into the war to keep his killing machine choogling. The television networks long ago rolled up their crews and there will be no film of today's massacre on the Six O'clock news. U.S. news media have airlifted out their aces or reduced in-country staffs to a skeleton crew. When after seven years of corpses coming home to the Dover Delaware death distribution center, Obama-Bush Secretary of Defense Robert Gates authorized the press to run photos of flag-draped coffins (if they first obtain family permission), it came much too late for both those Americans who had perished in this heinous aggression and a newspaper industry that is now being interred in its own flag-draped coffin. The New York Times daily Iraq body count has now been combined with the U.S. dead in Afghanistan and the box wedged into a rat hole on the Middle East page.

-- John Ross, "The War is Not Over" (CounterPunch).

Truest statement of the week II

WE KNOW that Iraq will remain under occupation until at least the end of 2011, but there is very good reason to believe that between now and then, the Iraqi government, which owes its survival to Washington, will cut a deal to allow U.S. forces to remain longer. Such an agreement would also likely give the U.S. long-term access to military bases and access to Iraqi air space.
The fact remains that Iraq is a fulcrum of geopolitics and a vital front for U.S. military strategy in the Middle East. Washington's goals for Iraq and the region may be less ambitious than when the Bush administration launched its 2003 invasion, but no one is reversing the fundamental policies driving U.S. policy: the goal of controlling the region's vast energy resources and being the hegemonic foreign power there.
MoveOn should be letting its members know this--and urging far more than to "keep watching Washington" to be sure they do bring the troops home. But to do this, the group would have to take on the Obama administration more forcefully on Iraq--and on the occupation of Afghanistan, which is intimately related.

-- Anthony Arnove, "Moved on from the struggle" (Socialist Worker).

A note to our readers

Hey --


Sunday, Sunday. Along with Dallas, the following worked on this edition:


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

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,

Ruth of Ruth's Report,

Wally of The Daily Jot,

Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ

and Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends.

We thank them all. What did we end up with?

Truest statement of the week -- John Ross.

Truest statement of the week II -- Anthony Arnove. There were other nominees for truest but it was clearly Ross and Arnove's week. The only dispute was over who should go where.


Editorial: Do you care enough to show up? -- The editorial. On this topic, we had six ways to go and, due to disputes, used pretty much all six ways. (Jess points out that he and C.I. had also proposed working in Heart's "Will You Be There In The Morning?" I missed that suggestion. Had I heard it, we would have used it. "Will you be there in the morning . . . Will you be there when I wake up . . .") The action is this Saturday. Those who want the illegal war to end should take part.

TV: The cavers and the fighters -- We piled a lot on Ava and C.I. this week. We'd asked them to just cover entertainment. Then, Saturday night, we hit them with, "Can you cover anything else?" That was when we were in a panic over this edition. They said they'd do what they could. They did. This is a lot stronger than we expected. Ava and C.I. note (TV note) that ABC World News Tonight is supposed to report on Iraq all week this week.

Talking Iraq -- The Iraq roundtable.

Barry 'No, we don't!', Arne 'Yes, we do!' -- This is an idea Mike, Ruth and C.I. pitched. In various ways, they worked it last week. (C.I. says, "I did not." Mike and Ruth have already given C.I. credit for help on Thursday.)

Barry BailOuts -- And he wants to travel!!!! He wants to leave the US!!!! And he's still not fixing the economy (still no plan released).

Ty's Corner Mailbag -- Ty grabbed the e-mails and worked through some of the most common and or most pressing topics.

The Bronze Boobs go to . . . -- Corrente more than earned it. They more than earned it. And then some.

Afghanistan -- We mainly wanted to include the excerpt from Dissident Voice. This was Wally and Betty figuring out how we could structure this after Dona had already said it had to be a short piece or she didn't want to hear about (we were all tired and trying to finish up).

The No Agenda? -- Barack's do-nothing committee got the usual easy praise -- but from whom was sometimes surprising.

Those shoulders -- Dona wanted a short feature. Someone (Rebecca?) suggested this as we were rushing to finish. It was shot down as, "That's sexism." At which point, Ava and C.I. spoke up. (They hadn't spoken prior.) "How is it sexism? She's presented herself as a fashion plate," Ava pointed out. C.I., "If I go into an interview in a short skirt and no panties, I can't be upset if the press wants to write about. If I have no projects or anything of value and waste everyone's time posing for Vogue and more, I've declared fashion all my shallow mind can handle and, in a position that the press has to cover in some form, I've invited them to talk about what I reveal by my choices of outfits." This was the surprise piece in that we all liked the way it turned out.

Friday roundtable -- The roundtable Rebecca moderated Friday.

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Betty, Ruth, Stan, Wally, Kat, Rebecca, Marcia and Cedric worked on this and picked the highlights unless they note otherwise. We thank them for that. They also include the e-mail address (Dona just pointed out) thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com. A number of e-mails last week complained it was hard to locate our e-mail address (it's on our profile).

And that's it. That's what we have. We will do an edition next week. We will also be taking part in demonstrations. We hope you will be standing up as well.
-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.