Fundraiser Day #4

Ladies' Night in the Village of the Damned.

After decades being the "fiercely" compliant political rage-dumpsters for some of the most disastrously failed, corrupt, atavistic, anti-American policies in modern American history...

...Conservative Women are Angry.

At Imaginary Liberal things!

They are Rising Up!

Against...stuff!

Sigh.

I have been the beneficiary of the wisdom and humor and strength of strong women my whole life. My sister, my mom, my late grandma, my wife-to-be...they would fucking amaze you, as would my ex-ma-in-law, ex-wife, aunts, teachers, friends, former lovers and a hundred other students, colleagues, competitors and co-conspirators I have known. They have saved me, have hurt me, made me, unmade me, remade me, schooled me, floored me, knocked me flat, bailed me out (Hi Mom!), knocked heads with me, and led me out of some very dark places.

Individually they have taught me more that I will ever be able to repay -- more than I will ever be able to pay the interest on.

Collectively they have taught me this: being a poo-flinging shrike doesn't make you fierce, being a bigot doesn't make you strong and being a liar, a sadist and a chum-bucket for haters has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with being a warrior.

So having nearly destroyed America, how is it that this Conservative virus is still allowed to run so feverish and wild through our body-politic? How is it that any of these freaks still have soapboxes to stand on?

Take a wild guess (from me in April of 2005 and quotes are from a Nick Kristof NYT editorial of the same vintage):

Here’s what a ship that has already sailed looks like

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In your weird fetish to be “objective”, the Republicans learned the little trick that makes you dance like organ grinder monkeys. Whatever goofy-assed idea they came up with, you’d reflexively cede them half the distance between the truth and their goal.

There was a book I loved when I was a little driftglass called, “Half Magic” by Edgar Eager, about a talisman that granted the user exactly half of what they asked for. Wish to be ten times stronger that Lancelot, you’ll get five. Wish for a million in cash, you get 500K. In the Mainstream Media, the Right Wing of the Republican Party found their Half Magic Charm. And each time you met them halfway, they moved the goalposts another twenty yards again...and you jogged right on along behind them, ten yards at a time.

The “compromise” between the truth and a lie...is a lie. The “compromise” between science and superstition...is superstition. Now, would you care to guess what the compromise between tolerance and bigotry is? Between knowledge and ignorance? Between Ann Coulter and Paul Krugman?

I don't see any easy solutions, but print, radio and television all need to take much bolder steps to reconnect with the public...

Oh goodie! Another journalist making with the sackcloth and ashes! Every few months, year after year after year, journalist/self-flagellates moan publicly about how awful it’s getting and how Somebody should really Do Something! As predictable as Aldermanic indictments in Chicago in Spring. And yet year after year after year it gets worse.

We also need more diverse newsrooms. When America was struck by race riots in the late 1960's, major news organizations realized too late that their failure to hire black reporters had impaired their ability to cover America. In the same way, our failure to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today.

What, you mean “Lou Grant” didn’t fix all of this stuff ?

You may have missed it, but “red state evangelicals” have their own media – its called Fox/CNN/AM Talk Radio. They have their own literature – it’s called "The Left Behind" series. They even have their own political party... and in case you haven’t noticed they run the country and they're coming for you with ropes and pitchforks. But hey, maybe if you just bend over a liiiittle further and waggle you bare ass just a liiiittle saucier, they wont leave so many bruises this time.

So, they are hardly underrepresented. Many of them are, however, downright nuts. It might help your credibility with the 69% of Democrats who think you’re irredeemably McGoo-myopic about Evangelicals already if you would pause to notice -- out loud and in print -- that Falwell, Robertson, Wildmont, Schafly, Dobson, DeLay are not “controversial” or “traditional” or “conservative”. They are hateful, bigoted theocrats who work diligently to pave over the Constitution and erect a State Religion in its place.

If one word can capture the public attitude toward American journalists, I'm afraid it's "arrogant." Not surprisingly, I think that charge is grossly unfair. But it's imperative that we respond to that charge - not by dismissing it, but by working far more diligently to reconnect with the public.

No, the word you are looking for is “irrelevant.” I ask my college classes what, if any, news they read. The results are terrifying. By huge margins they don’t even bother reading you any more at all. They know craven and compromise when they see it, and they’re not buying any anymore. Some do enjoy some of the talk shows...but only the ones that are amused by putting red and black ants in a jar and watching them tear each other apart.

Unless we can recover the public trust, our protests about reporters' going to jail will come across as self-serving whining. And we'll wake up one day to find ourselves on the wrong side of history.
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Sorry, that day was in 1987 -- the day the Reagan administration invited the Fairness Doctrine over for a little lunch, took it down in the basement and shot it in the head.

When it upheld the Doctrine in 1969 U.S. Supreme Court said, in part, that, “It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”

The rule use to be the primacy of the citizen, but then then came Reagan and his FCC Chair Mark S. Fowler. Formerly a broadcast industry lawyer, who made it crystal clear that he held in utter contempt the whole idea of broadcasters had a civic responsibility for their product or a responsibility for making sure the media was really “Fair and Balanced” in a was that served democratic debate.

That was the moment for you to make your Glorious Stand!

Fowler peddled the ludicrous doctrine that forcing people who were getting Crazy Rich using the public airwaves the make sure that both sides of important issues were heard would somehow actually stifle Free Speech, because if you knew you might have to let the other side get a word in edgewise, then you might be less inclined to shoot your mouth off.

And Jimney Christmas, you also might be less inclined to hit a guy you disagree with in the face with a snow-shovel if you know a cop might toss your ass in jail…and you might get sued out of your split-level ranch and into a packing crate on Lower Wacker Drive.

But as with every single aspect of the GOP agenda – from speech to ethics to impeachment – the Republicans have no interest in a “fair fight” or in a marketplace of ideas. They’re interested in WINNING and since the Republican party cannot win in a straight fight, winning means cheating. Or, rather, raping and razing the rules once they come to power so that they’re no longer bound by any recognizable concept of “fairness”.

In other words, why risk jail time pounding someone’s face to steak tartar, if you can just pass a law that you now have the legal right to beat him senseless whenever you fucking well feel like it…and HE’S the one who can be jailed or sued if he fights back?

But how does one get away with such villainy? I’m glad you asked. Enter Reliable Republican Judicial Stooges #1 and #2: Reagan appointees to the D.C. Circuit, Judge Robert “Baby Face” Bork and Judge Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia. Their 1986, 2–1 decision dodged around the whole question of the Constitutionality of the issue completely. By the interpretation of the nuanced use of ONE WORD (“under” instead of “by”) they declared that whole thing was an administrative matter, to be decided at the discretion of the FCC.

And in 1987, Dennis Patrick, Reagan’s new FCC chair, pulled the plug on it. Later that year, Reagan vetoed a bill that would have reinstated the doctrine, and in 1991 a movement to try again died why Bush 41 threatened veto.

And in 1988, Rush Limbaugh was off to the races.

For over 20 years, the Right Wing has gotten fat and rich and powerful running the same scam on you buffoons over and over again. No matter how batshit crazy their position is, you’ll concede half the stage, half the clock and give them the benefit of the doubt. Which give them an automatic victory. They showed up at the table with little more that bad-acid delusions, and now the control 50% of the battlefield because you defaulted it right into their laps.

And when you don’t completely capitulate to 100% of their insanity, they turn right around and feed that into their own Pravada Media as Further Proof of the evil left wing media conspiracy.

“Victim,” they shriek. “Anti-religious Bigot!” They rant this from the rooftops because of the tiny bit of sane ground you did not surrender...and you jellied eels dependably cave in even more.

And thus they have led you – and the rest of the nation you whose common interests you were supposed to be serving -- by these half measures, right into the foyer of your own slaughterhouse.
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It still is really quite an amazing story.

And it still is too bad we don’t have a press anymore to report it.