Truest statement of the week

The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed. They do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power. Their role is to funnel viewer energy back into our dead political system -- to make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns. The cable shows, whose hyperbolic hosts work to make us afraid of self-identified liberals or self-identified conservatives, are part of a rigged political system, one in which it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, General Electric or ExxonMobil. These corporations, in return for the fear-based propaganda, pay the lavish salaries of celebrity news people, usually in the millions of dollars. They make their shows profitable. And when there is war these news personalities assume their “patriotic” roles as cheerleaders, as Chris Matthews-- who makes an estimated $5 million a year -- did, along with the other MSNBC and Fox hosts.


-- Chris Hedges, "The Day That TV News Died" (Truthdig).

A note to our readers

Hey --

Another Sunday.



First up, we thank all who participated this edition which includes Dallas and the following:



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),
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with?

• Truest statement of the week

Chris Hedges.  Not only did we all agree but because we all thought so, he was the only one we brought to the table.  So we only offer one truest this week.

• 
  
• Editorial: The Drone War

The Drone War.  The video alone made it appropriate for today's editorial (it's Easter).   This ended up being easier to write than expected.

• TV: The Death of the TV Movie

This did not.  I (Jim) gave the topic to Ava and C.I. Sunday morning (around two) and my point was that we had a lot of e-mails asking why, since they've done great pieces on the genres of sitcoms and variety shows over the years, they've never tackled the TV movie genre.  Ava and C.I. looked at me like I was crazy.  And I well may be.  They said (a) that topic is too huge to drop on them, (b) that topic is too huge for one article, (c) the only reason they might do it is there is nothing at all "trendy" or "Water Cooler" about it, (d) let them make some calls to any friends who might be up and they'll get back to me.  They still weren't sold on it when they finished their phone calls but figured they could give it a try since we were hoping to be done before seven a.m.  They roughed out a draft that they hated.  But did so to make the deadline.  Then we didn't make the deadline.  And since some have young kids, that meant regrouping later in the night.  Which we did.  At that time, Ava and C.I. took a second pass on the piece.  I thought it was a solid piece with the first attempt.  I realize now why they didn't.  With minor tweeking and removing a sentence here, adding a few words there, they turned into an Ava and C.I. piece -- as opposed to staid academia.

• A sure sign that NPR is out of touch with listener...

This has been brewing as a topic for some time.  The decision to ignore listeners and axe Talk of the Nation made it a must do piece this week.

• Video of the Week

A friend of C.I.'s asked us if we could work in a link to this group.  My response was, "I'm sure Ava and C.I. can if we can't" -- meaning they could do a link in their TV article.  Then, days later, when we're doing the edition, Ava and C.I. are singing along to this amazing song.  What is that song?  It's Chic Gamine's "Closer."  Oh.  Oh!  We quickly made this video of the week.  They are amazing in this video.  

• Photo of the Week

Our Iraq piece.  

• Bad Move of the Week

We didn't set out to call out Black Agenda Report.  We honestly only visited today looking for a second truest but instead we found a problem.

• The Death of the Media (C.I.)

This piece has a lengthy intro from me so I'll let that stand.  C.I. did some great writing in this piece be sure to read it.

• More species die out (Socialist Worker)

Repost from England's Socialist Worker.

• The Tour de Peace

Repost on Cindy Sheehan's Tour de Peace action.

• Rallying to save the post office (Workers World)

Workers World repost.

• Highlights

Mike and the gang wrote this and we thank them for it. 

Peace.




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

Editorial: The Drone War

That's the new video from Brave New Foundation.


For years now, The Drone War has taken place and with little objection.


People have been killed.  Innocents?  All are innocent.  None were convicted of anything.  But, yes, children have been killed (as many as 197 in Pakistan alone),  an eight-year-old girl has watched as a drone killed her mother.  The Drone War is US terror inflicted upon innocents, especially children, who watch these attacks from the sky on their family, on their friends, on their neighbors.

And you better believe, these attacks will not be forgotten as the children grow into adults.


The Drone War takes place in Somalia, Yemen and, especially, Pakistan.  In Pakistan alone, US President Barack Obama has launched 366 strikes.





The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has compiled various data on The Drone War and you're big question there should be where is the US press equivalent?


In the United States, we only get garbage.  Today, NPR aired their most recent 'report' on The Drone War.  It was the usual garbage one can expect from NPR, from Weekend Edition and from Rachel Martin (link is text and audio).


RACHEL MARTIN:   This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. The drone attacks carried out under the Obama administration have for years been one of the biggest open secrets in Washington. It was only last year that the president's then-counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, acknowledge the program publicly for the first time. In recent months, there have been calls from both Democrats and Republicans to make the program more transparent. One suggestion floating around Capitol Hill is the idea of something called a drone court, which would examine the legality of a drone attack. Gregory McNeal has been writing about accountability and oversight of the drone program for Lawfare. It's a blog covering national security law. He also teaches that same subject at Pepperdine University's School of Law. We asked him to explain the different ways a court like this could work.


GREGORY MCNEAL: A drone strike happens against an individual. It turns out, based on journalist reports, whatever, that it was wrong or a family member says, you know, this person was not involved in terrorism at all. You've taken his life, you've destroyed our property - that could be part of the suit as well - you owe us some compensation for what you've done. This one is the least controversial in my mind because it's the type of thing that courts are able to do; review facts after the fact and it's not second-guessing the judgment of the commander in chief, at least it's not second-guessing it before a strike happens.


MARTIN: So, let's walk through another option that you outline. It would be a court modeled after what are called FISA courts. These are the courts formed out of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, essentially a secret group of judges who can hear very highly classified cases and decide, for example, whether or not the government can open a wiretap or otherwise monitor a person of interest.



The Drone War is a problem, Rachel Martin and NPR apparently believe, but the only possible solution is to create a court of some kind to be over it?

The notion of eliminating, of ending The Drone War doesn't occur to NPR or Rachel Martin?


That's just how limited the thinking and the discourse is on NPR.  They should be ashamed of themselves.

Brave New Foundation notes:

Brave New Foundation has the honor of releasing a video to accompany a seminal report by human rights law experts at Stanford and New York University law schools. The report, entitled Living Under Drones presents chilling first-hand testimony from Pakistani civilians on the humanitarian and security costs of escalating drone attacks by the United States. The report uncovers civilian deaths, and shocking psychological and social damage to whole families and communities – where people are literally scared to leave their homes because of drones flying overhead 24 hours a day.

The report is based on nine months of research, including two investigations in Pakistan. The Stanford-NYU research team interviewed over 130 individuals, including civilians who traveled out of the largely inaccessible region of North Waziristan to meet with the researchers. They also interviewed medical doctors who treated strike victims, and humanitarian and journalist professionals who worked in drone impacted areas.

As U.S. citizens, we feel a responsibility to know the real impact of the policies of our government. We hope you will join us at www.WarCosts.com to be part of this fight for a more humane and just world.

CNN's Dan Merica did cover Brave New Foundation and the new video.  If you're wondering how often NPR has covered them, the answer is zero.


If you're wondering how much NPR cares about those killed in The Drone War, the answer is zero.

TV: The Death of the TV Movie

Donato:  That ring and that watch were hot stuff.  Hector kept them in a safe and they were stolen by his boyfriend Larry Gaines. 

Jessie Lee Stubbs:   Hector was gay?

Donato:   He was gay, yes, and, Larry Gaines, he was anything.  Hector was sore at Larry because Larry quit him.  Hector knew he could bring the cops down on Larry by using the nurse.


The above is from a scene between Farrah Fawcett (Jessie Lee Stubbs) and Steve Artiaga (Donato) in Criminal Behavior (written by Wendell Mayes, directed by Michael Miller) a 1992 TV movie.  In the 80s and 90s, network television re-discovered that they could get strong ratings with TV movies starring women.




ABC didn't create TV movies but they did air ABC's Movie of the Week from 1969 to 1976.  Sometimes these films were pilots for TV shows (Lee Majors' The Six Million Dollar Man, for example).  Sometimes they were remakes (Tuesday Weld starred with Joan Hackett and Sam Waterson in Reflections of Murder, a November 24, 2974 Movie of the Week that was a remake of Diabolique).  Sometimes they were based on other material (F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood was a 1976 Movie of the Week starring Tuesday Weld, Jason Miller and a then emerging James Woods).

Tuesday Weld, in fact, can be considered one of the original strong actresses doing TV movie work.  In 1978's A Question of Guilt, she plays a mother accused of murdering her children.  In 1980, she did ABC's Mother and Daughter: The Loving Wars. In 1981, she starred in a remake of Madame X playing the Lana Turner role.  In 1982, she starred with Tommy Lee Jones in HBO's remake of The Rainmaker. 1983 found her starring in CBS' Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Winter of Our Discontent in an Emmy nominated performance.  1984 found her teamed with Keith Carradine and Peter Coyote for Scorned and Swindled (CBS) and, in 1986, she finished off her TV movie cycle with two tele-films, Circle of Violence: A Family Drama (where she physically abuses her mother; River Phoenix is among her co-stars) and, with Ellen Burstyn, she starred in Something in Common (which also featured Eli Wallach).

During this period, many actresses took so-so roles in splashy premises that were a form of stunt casting resulting in attention if not applause.  See Shirley Jones play a gambling addict in 1975's Winner Take All!  See Sally Struthers survive spousal abuse at the hands of Dennis Weaver in 1977's Intimate Strangers!  See Eve Plumb play a prostitute in 1976's Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway!  However, except for Elizabeth Montgomery, few of the TV stars were really up for creating full blown characters.


Montgomery was a natural whether playing Belle Starr or Lizzie Borden, whether doing something heavy like Amos (abuse in a nursing home -- Kirk Douglas also starred in the TV movie) or something lighter like Mrs. Sundance.  But she was the exception in the 70s.   For the most part, it was left to film actresses Tuesday Weld and Lee Remick to do the strongest work in the TV movies of that time period.

If the genre itself had a layer of cheese over it, that stemmed from too many generic performances and too many superficial victim roles.  There's not a problem with playing a victim, per se.  Michelle Pfieffer rightly called out rewrites on the film Wolf that tried to turn her character into 'career gal' because the writers didn't know what to do with her -- not knowing what to do with her was the character.  And playing a character like that with awareness can be a strong statement.

But the TV movies fell into the trap of being nothing but statements.  Well, exploitation hidden under the guise of 'we are making a strong statement.'  So you weren't supposed to be critical of the TV actress playing the mother hitting the child, you were supposed to be thrilled that abuse was being tackled.  (We're not referring to Cheryl Ladd who starred in the TV movie When She Was Bad.  Cheryl was actually very moving in that film.)  All these 'social issues' TV movies were supposed to be applauded for intent.  Apparently because if you didn't applaud at the start for the intent, no one would ever applaud when the end credits rolled and you realized just how bad a production that movie was.

The demise of the TV movies was hidden in part by some major successes in the TV mini-series genre.  A movie usually lasted one night (some lasted two and were billed as "movies" and not a "mini-series").  A mini-series lasted two or more nights.  There were the prestige ones like Roots and The Winds of War there were the entertaining ones like Scruples and Hollywood Wives.  The networks preferred a semi-successful mini-series to a successful TV movie.

Thornbirds, for example, was huge (second only to Roots as the highest rated mini-series) and the network could and did spend months promoting this mini-series that would take up multiple nights in the schedule.  By contrast, 1975's Trilogy of Terror was but one Movie of the Week ABC had to try to drum up enthusiasm for while also promoting the other TV movies that would be airing.

So more attention was paid to the mini-series format and the TV movies got weaker and weaker.  Is there really a point, for example, to The Best Little Girl in the World other than seeing how much weight Jennifer Jason Leigh could lose?  We're not panning her performance -- she's one of the greatest actresses working today -- but we are panning the TV movie and the same goes for Something About Amelia which may have been about incest but really doesn't work as a movie.  The scripts are threadbare in those and other 'social issue' movies of that time.  Noble cause may look good on a resume but it usually translates on screen to self-celebration.


In the 80s,  Ann-Margret, Farrah Fawcett and others would bring new life and new layers to the genre.  With 1983's Who Will Love My Children? and 1984's The Burning Bed, the two women set a new standard for performances and for quality of material.   They didn't settle for 'good cause,' they wanted characterization and they wanted story.  They fought for it and those are two of the finest TV movies of that decade.

Ann-Margret would follow up Who Will Love My Children?, with 1984's A Streetcar Named Desire.  Though she would continue to give strong performances in 8 more TV movies and 2 mini-series, only 1998's Life of the Party was worthy of her.

That goes to the level of the material out there.  By the 90s, TV movies were something of a joke.  "You're so Markie Post in every single Lifetime movie," Will tells Grace in the second episode of Will and Grace.  Substitute Michelle Lee, Nancy McKeon and Merdith Baxter and you have summed up many a bad TV film starring many an actress giving the exact same performance she gave in everything else she ever did.

Ann-Margaret's available choices may also have suffered from the fact that the type of TV movie she favored -- quality versions of those types of TV movies -- usually had leads already snapped up by Lindsay Wagner who tackled strong topics and delivered incredible performances (see especially Evil In Clear River).  Equally true, TV movies were going for young actresses as well.  The battle there was basically between one-note performer Melissa Gilbert versus the very talented Valerie Bertinelli (see especially Rockabye).  (They were both following in the footsteps of Mare Winningham who starred in 7 TV movies or mini-series from 1979 to 1981 alone -- the best being Freedom, The Women's Room and Off The Minnesota Strip.)

Farrah Fawcett was fierce in hunting down strong material (and in fighting on the set to keep it strong and to make it stronger) which is how she and Colleen Dewhurst created such magic in 1986's Between Two Women, the same year Farrah delivered an amazing performance as the lead in Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story.  She'd finish out the eighties with Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story (1987) and 1989's Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White and Small Sacrifices.

As she finished up the 80s, she noticed the roles were getting more victimized while the scripts became more superficial.  That's why she went with Criminal Behavior.  As she explained to Harvey Solomon (Los Angeles Times),  "That's why this character was so interesting, why she was allowed to do the things she did.  She moves the story along--she wasn't victimized, she wasn't beaten up or beaten down."

In the film, she's an attorney with a low opinion of the police due to her family's experiences ("My family tree is recorded on police blotters") and due to her job.  A. Martinez plays police officer Pike Grenada.

Jessie Lee Stubbs:   If you'd let my client out, maybe he'd just come right to her.  There'd be Larry Gaines, right at her door.  I don't get the way that you guys think.

Pike laughs.

Jessie Lee Stubbs:   What is so funny?

Pike:  You are.

Jessie Lee Stubbs:  No, I'm not.


She wanted strong characters but found weak characters who suffered for the bulk of the movie and then the writers justified the suffering by allowing the women to turn into Charles Bronson and the movie into a revenge fantasy.

So she went with roles like The Substitute Wife that she hoped had larger truths.

That was 1994.  After TV movies especially changed.  In 1992, Amy Fisher shot the wife of her lover.  That year and the following year saw four TV movies about the shooting and affair.  The rush to get the tawdry topic to the small screen led to Drew Barrymore's The Amy Fisher Story airing opposite Alyssa Milano's Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story (January 3, 1993).   With the source material and the rush, there was little doubt that both would be little more than Trash TV (fortunately Barrymore and Milano have given stronger performances in many worthy projects).

And that's what really destroyed the TV movie.  Cheap and tacky, cheap and tacky.

1990's A Killing In A Small Town starring Barbara Hershey, 1986's Nobody's Child starring Marlo Thomas, TV movies like that were no more.

The Substitute Wife is a good TV movie.  It's also, surprisingly, a Lifetime TV movie.  The TV movie largely exists today due to Lifetime and no one's done more to destroy the TV movie then the Lifetime.  Vengeance fantasies dominate with more time being spent on get-even twists than on characterizations.  Not every TV movie needs to be life or death.

They do need to capture the viewer's attention.  Lifetime's succeeded, for example, with the TV movie The Client List which was entertaining.  The Cartier Affair, starring Joan Collins, was a caper TV film but it was also a satisfying TV movie.


Lifetime movies became a joke in the same way that people snicker when they watch Jennifer Lopez in Enough (not a TV movie, though it feels like one): They don't resemble life.  They can slap "based on a true story" at the front of every one of those TV movies, but there's nothing lifelike about it, nothing relatable, nothing truly frightening.  But as big a joke as Lifetime can be, the bigger joke is HBO which seems to think their centrist-left applauding, right-wing demonizing films provide entertainment or art.  We're back to the period of nobility only these days noble is being a corporatist whose hue and cry is "My Democratic Party, right or wrong!"  In other words, somebody grab the grater, another layer of cheese has formed.

A sure sign that NPR is out of touch with listeners

More and more, NPR is about taking the "Public" out of National Public Radio.  That's why, for example, they're ending Talk of the Nation which they bill as "a call-in show."  That's the real reason.

You can always count on David Folkenflick to lie and he did so on Morning Edition Friday (link is text and audio):

You know, if you think about NPR's show - it distributes THE DIANE REHM SHOW out of Washington, ON POINT out of WBUR itself, that TALK OF THE NATION is no longer quite as distinctive and they wanted a show that could bridge the gap in those hours between the end of the last run of MORNING EDITION and the first run of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED in the afternoon that could respond perhaps more quickly to developing news. They thought this format (unintelligible) the new show out of BUR might help do that.

Check out this illustration.

First off, as NPR listener Anne Pancella observed about the claim that NPR has so many call-in shows, "Diane Rehm is the only one that comes to mind, and how much longer can she keep going?"  Or, as Trina would ask, how much longer should she be allowed to stay on air?  She'll turn 77 this year.  Secondly, most stations either carry Diane Rehm's show or On Point -- few carry both.  But guess what all carry?  That's right.  Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

The magazine format with the giggly hosts dumbing down news and thinking they're cute?  It's already done to death and Tell Me More struggles to add stations (their most recent stab at another magazine show).

Plus, as Betty points out, "They just killed off science."

In a nation where science regularly is ignored despite all the proclamations that America needs to increase its science skills, that the future will depend upon it, NPR's taking the axe to the only program that provides science every week: Talk of the Nation Science Friday.

NPR maintains Science Friday will live on in another form.  Really?

With the egos of these on-airs and none really prone to science we're supposed to believe another show will make a serious commitment to including science and keep it for more than six months?

Keep dreaming.

This is part of the general sneering at the public that's taking place at NPR.  

You can catch it all over.  We caught it March 22nd on the first hour of The Diane Rehm Show as 

Tom Gjelten, Julie Hirschfeld Davis (Bloomberg News), Michael Scherer (Time) and Jerry Seib (Wall St. Journal) pretended to provide a public affairs discussion about sequestration . . . while ignoring the public.  How bad was it? 

Half way in, guest host Gjelten had to clear the air:

Welcome back. I'm Tom Gjelten, sitting in today for Diane Rehm. By the way, Diane Rehm is at East Tennessee State University, not East Tennessee University as we mistakenly said at the top of the show -- East Tennessee State University. She will be back on Monday. Meanwhile, we're holding down the fort here: Jerry Seib from The Wall Street Journal, Julie Hirschfeld Davis from Bloomberg News and Michael Scherer from Time magazine, and we're discussing the domestic news of the week. We have a number of emails. You know, the Diane Rehm show is a national show, but we obviously have a lot of listeners in the D.C. metropolitan area. And many of our listeners would be affected by the sequestration cuts that would hurt the -- cut into the employment roles, the -- in federal agencies. And I want to read, "It was exasperating."  This is from A. Leonard, "It was exasperating to hear folks in "The Diane Rehm Show" discuss sequestration from such an impersonal view. Would you be so calm if your salary were going to get a 20 percent cut as DOD," that'd be Pentagon, "civilian workers are facing?" "Why is no one," this is a note from Ed, "Why is no one talking about the 800,000 people who are about to have their salaries slashed by 20 percent?"  Another one from Brian, who says, "I'm a government employee and planning for a minimum 20 percent pay cut." All right. So there's a whole stack of emails here from people who are going to see their pay cut -- going to possibly see pay cut although, Julie, we don't know yet, for example, whether or -- when or maybe even whether those cuts are going to take effect. Is that right? Well, that's right. I mean, that's right to some extent. I think some of the furlough notices haven't gone out yet. But certainly there will be furloughs, there will be people who'll see their salaries cut. There will be people who see their unemployment payments cut as well if this continues. And so, you know, we shouldn't downplay the impact of that for people who will feel it.


And the mop up above?  Pretty bad.  One of the e-mails?  From a federal worker but he doesn't work in DC.  Tom Gjelten is such an idiot that he fails to grasp there are federal jobs all over America -- not just in DC.


What a moron.


To be clear, there are times to remove shows and good reasons too.  If this were a Pacifica Radio show, we'd probably be less concerned.  While both are public radio, NPR is a different model.  Meaning NPR does not broadcast, it makes programming that it offers to radio stations who then pay for it.  Point being, there's no reason to discontinue Talk of the Nation right now.

If you think that what NPR listeners want is another magazine show, offer them Here and Now for a year and Talk of the Nation for a year.  After 12 months, see which one is being carried by more stations and reaching more listeners and then you make the decision to take the axe to one.

But that would be allowing the public a say in National Public Radio and, let's face it, that's the last thing NPR wants to do.

Video of the Week

Canada's Chic Gamine with "Closer" -- Closer is also the title of their debut album.

Photo of the Week

The Iraqi Spring MC photo had the photo of the week.  Protesters in Kirkuk carried this poster of Saleh al-Mutlaq with a red X across his face.  In the Arabic writing on the photo, he's being called a traitor to the Iraqi people.


Last week, Saleh al-Mutlaq decided to skip the Iraqiya boycott and return to the Cabinet meetings.  Iraqiya was boycotting the Cabinet meetings until Nouri started addressing the protesters demands.  Protests have been taking place across Iraq since December 21st.  Over 10% of the population is participating.

al-Mutlaq yet again stabbed the Iraqi people in the back.  And they weren't happy.


This was a surprise to the media that doesn't pay attention.  It wasn't a surprise to those who follow Iraq via The Common Ills.  On December 30th, Saleh wasn't greeted 'warmly' in Ramadi and C.I. explained:


Why he was stupid enough to go to a protest is beyond me.  Yes, he is Sunni and, yes, he is in the Iraqiya slate.  But Saleh al-Mutlaq is not popular.  He and Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi (also Sunni and Iraqiya) were both targeted by Nouri in December of 2011.  While Tareq ended up having to leave the country and being convicted of 'terrorism,' Saleh sailed right through.  In May, Nouri dropped his efforts to strip Saleh of his office.


By that point, there had been months of speculation in the Iraqi press that Saleh al-Mutlaq had cut a deal to save his own ass, that he was now in partnership with Nouri al-Maliki.  This seemed to be even more true when Saleh was seen as undermining efforts to get a no-confidence vote against Nouri as spring was winding down.


Saleh al-Mutlaq is seen -- rightly or wrongly -- by Sunni Iraqis as someone who protects himself and does nothing for other Sunnis (whether they're politicians or average citizens).


He went to a Sunni area, Ramadi, where protests had long been taking place and was immediately greeted with a demand that he resign from the Cabinet.  (That would not have taken him out of his MP status.  He just would no longer be a Cabinet member.)  He was appalled by the idea and rejected it outright.


Nouri's first term was notorious for one Cabinet walk out after another.


But Saleh wouldn't even entertain the idea?


You've got provincial councils going on strike but Saleh can't even do a walk out?


Of course they threw rocks and bottles at him.  He was already seen as a sell-out.  And people want to believe that's not the case but then he appears before them and acts like that?  He destroys his own image.


He never should have gone and it's a sign of just how out of touch with Sunni public opinion he is that he did show up.



Saleh al-Mutlaq's been unpopular for years now.

Bad Move of the Week

Ben Carson is Dr. Benjamin Carson and Johns Hopkins notes:


Dr. Benjamin Carson is the Director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.  Dr. Carson focuses on traumatic brain injuries, brain and spinal cord tumors, achondroplasia, neurological and congenital disorders, craniosynostosis, epilepsy and trigeminal neuralgia. He is also interested in maximizing the intellectual potential of every child.
An internationally renowned physician, Dr. Carson has authored over 100 neurosurgical publications, along with three best-selling books, and has been awarded 38 honorary doctorate degrees and dozens of national merit citations.
Dr. Carson majored in psychology at Yale and graduated from the University of Michigan School of Medicine. He went on to complete both his internship in general surgery and residency in neurological surgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. In addition, he served as senior registrar in neurosurgery at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Queen Elizabeth II Medical Center in Western Australia.
Dr. Carson sees patients on Monday afternoons and Fridays at The Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center located in Baltimore.




He's a conservative with conservative views.  Having lived through the dark days of Bully Boy Bush, we're not all that surprised to discover conservatives exist.  Sadly, others on the left have to grab the vapors.

On Fox News, Carson recently came out as an opponent of marriage equality as he declared, "Marriage is between a man and a woman.  It's a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality -- it doesn't matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition."



The reaction from Black Agenda Report was disappointing to put it mildly.



Wilmer Leon offered "Dr. Ben Carson: Great Surgeon, Bad Icon" which was a thoughtful column and one worth praising.  Sadly, however, it featured an introduction -- not written by Wilmer Leon -- dismissing Carson as one "of the Right's favorite Negroes."  No, he is the right and that's really offensive the way Black Agenda Report tokenized someone just because they disagreed with the person.  We think Carson's ideas are lunacy but we don't for a moment believe that he's embraced by the right because he's a token.  He's embraced by the right because he's one of them.  And they've embraced him back for the same reason.

Sadly, a bad intro was the least of the problems with the disgusting crap Auset Marian Lewis offered "Dr. Ben Carson: Send in the Clowns."  Here there are multiple premises -- none of which is truly developed -- but the worst is the comparison of Carson to the Samuel L. Jackson character in Django Unchained.

The racist film by Quentin Tarantino works under the premise that KKK Jonah Hill is adorable, that slave owner Leo Di Caprio is understandable and that the most vile person in the history of US slavery is a Black slave played by Samuel L. Jackson who enjoys favors by selling out his own.

Now we're not arguing that's the portrait of a saint.  We are questioning, in that line up, a KKK-er ready to attack and kill a freed slave, Leo Di Caprio with a plantation of slaves who are regularly beaten and Jackson who gets a tiny bit of power, the worst offender is Samuel L. Jackson?

Django Unchained is a racist film.  Some people have made idiotic and offensive comments praising that trash.  The audience does not stand and cheer when, for example, Leo dies but, when it's time for Jackson to suffer, the crowd goes wild.

It's really interesting how the White Tarantino was able to get away with making yet another splatter movie but this time one that indicts for slavery not a White person but a Black slave.

That's why the film's so popular.  It plays into the myth that Black people brought slavery on themselves while pretending to be about freedom.  It degrades and dehumanizes African-Americans while glorifying the slave owners.

It is the anti-Roots.

The true crime of slavery, in Tarantino's world, was the 'uppity' Black.

So to find some idiot at Black Agenda Report trying to compare Ben Carson to an offensive stereotype of Black people popularized by a White man?

That's just disgusting.

It's also disgusting that everyone wants to be shocked by Carson's words.  Their next step?

To demonize him.

Is that because they're too ignorant to fight back against Carson's words?

Carson is arguing against marriage equality because he maintains same-sex relationships are unnatural.  Are the writers aghast at the thought that they might have to actually defend same-sex relations?

Same-sex coupling takes place all the time in the animal kingdom.  It's taken place historically throughout the world among humans.  No, not just in Greece.

We'd refer readers to a book edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe entitled Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities (1998).  From the back cover:

Among the many myths created about Africa, the myth that homosexuality is absent or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring.  Historians, anthropologists, and many contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked African same-sex patterns or claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans.  Among African Americans questions surrounding sexuality and gender in traditional African societies have become especially contentious.  
In fact, same-sex love was and is widespread in Africa.  Boy-Wives and Female Husbands documents same-sex patterns in some fifty societies, in every region of the continent.  Essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines explore institutionalized marriages between women, same-sex relations between men and boys in colonial work setting, mixed gender roles in east and west Africa, and recent developments in South Africa, where lesbians and gays successfully made the nation the first in the world to constitutionally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.  
Also included are oral histories, folklore, and translations of early ethnographic reports by German and French observers.  The first serious study of the subject, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands is a significant contribution to anthropology, history, and gender studies, offering new often surprising views of African societies, while posing interesting challenges to recent theories on sexuality. An invaluable resource for everyone interested in the continent's history and culture, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands reveals the denials of African homosexualities for what they are -- prejudice and willful ignorance.



So maybe it's time you educated yourselves.  Maybe then, when Ben Carson made an ignorant remark, you could confront the ignorance and not be left using ugly stereotypes popularized by racist films?