Blog Noir.An interplay of cultural references, snark, the occasional smutty joke, Dadaism, Mamaism, and a genuine outrage at the horrors of The Situation.
--to paraphrase Freddy el Desfibradddoro
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Journalism: Old School
As you say, Spot, people usually do their best when they know that somebody important is probably watching. So maybe, like you said, the cleansing sunlight of Truth is necessary to burn out the pockets of evil eating into our System like gangrene. Or maybe it's just that people up-to-no-gooding don't wanna be caught, and like most all vermin problems, you can limit the damage by depriving them of safe places to feed and breed. You know, good old fashioned habitat destruction. And you are correct, that's what the good old fashioned journalists did. But the good old fashioned journalist habitat has been seriously degraded by the fact that nowadays the billionaires own all the best printing presses. Nowadays prospective journalists need to choose between doing their job and having one. That's why it's kinda cool when somebody like this Assange guy builds his own printing press and then cranks it up to eleven.
Even if ignorance is bliss there is no excuse to wear it on ones sleeve as if it were the fashion of the week. We live in a wonderful country, but democracy is not a God given right. Government of the people, by the people, for the people is more precious than gold. But, friends, it is slipperier than greased lightning and disappears twice as fast if the people don't attend to it every minute. In our lifetime we, the people, have not attended to it. We have let our eyes be dazzled by visions of MTV. We have let our ears be clogged with fables of free markets and Homeland Security. We have occupied our minds with trivia and gossip about the decadent lifestyles of the rich and famous. And the only pity in our hearts has been reserved for the poor rich inheritors of inconcievable wealth. And while we were too busy, ladies and gentlemen, too busy eating, drinking and making merry to attend to the world our children will live in, our wonderful country has slid far down the slope into the Valley of the Shadow. We have grown accustomed to government of the people, for the corporate, by the corporate. We have learned to judge candidates, not by their character or voting history, but by the appearance of their genetilia and their position on abortion. We let the money changers run the temple and they stripped out the copper wiring and plumbing, we left Bonnie and Clyde guarding the bank and now we wonder where our money went!
Friends, I say it is time, and past time, to pull our collective heads out and take a good look around. Democracy isn't about choosing the wisest leader. Democracy is about what E. B. White once called, "the sneaking suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half the time." It's about putting all the facts in front of the people, letting them put their collective heads together and then abiding by the decision they make. When we let all the power fall into the hands of a few individuals, those few individuals are subject to all the influence the pressure peddlers can apply, and they will be influenced - they are only human. When we unbridled power fall into the hands of a few individuals, those few individuals are subject to greed, and arrogance, and pride, and all the temptations that humans are prey to - they are only human, you know.
I am here today to ask for your support for a candidate who, in life, was largely unmoved by the temptations of the spirit. A candidate who, as a zombie, is largely immune to the temptations of the flesh. A candidate who organized the Demons of Hell and has taken a leave of absence from heaven so he can be with us here. Just because that's the kind of guy he is. I mean, of course, Zombie Eugene Debs, candidate for President of the United States of America!!!!
Members of the conservative junta are so intent on making sure that the tattered shreds of our economy hold together until the election is over that they will stop at nothing. Today’s news shows that not only are they willing to co-opt Obama’s “change” meme, but have completely plagiarized Debs’ “public ownership” message. But they get it completely wrong.
With 80% public ownership of American International Group (AIG), the McCain/Bush junta has made explicit their plan to “privatize profit, and nationalize debt.” This is, of course, not Debs’ Socialism, but the naked use of government to give the most beknighted of our hereditary financial class a “do-over.” Roll back individual bankruptcy protection, while making corporate bankruptcy protection available for the asking. Regressive taxation in two senses: taking from the poor to give to the rich, and taking from the careful to give to the gamblers.
This may sound like Socialism on a superficial level, but here is Eugene V. Debs to remind us what real Socialism sounds like:
Less than 2 percent of our people privately own our natural resources and our industrial machinery. In virtue of which they have the power to rule the nation and rob the people… As long as the industrial machinery that feeds and clothes and shelters the people is the private property of the 2 percent minority of exploiting capitalists, the people will be poor, life will be wretched struggle for existence, the divine in human nature will never be realized, and this world will still be nearer to the jungles than to any real civilization. The Socialist Party says put an end to private ownership of social necessities. The end of private ownership means the end of exploitation, and the end of exploitation means the end of war and the beginning of worldwide peace.
- Debs: The Wall Street Explosion [Sept. 25, 1920]
Zombie Eugene Debs. Right for America, alive. Right for America, dead.
Ahoy, there! It has been five months since the earth-shaking 08 endorsement of Eugene Debs for President was published, and the cockroaches are scattering as if someone opened a door and shone a bright electric light inside.
The professionally irate James Dobson was the first to skitter away from the light, opining that only he knows the proper way to interpret the Bible (which, in his interpretation, boils down to the New Testament only). [1] Dobson, of course, equates Biblical hermeneutics with getting soundbites on CNN Radio. But, we can still ask, according to Dobson, who understands the Bible correctly? In his book, Marriage Under Fire, Dobson makes the following tragically unfortunate comparison:
Like Adolf Hitler, who overran his European neighbors, those who favor homosexual marriage are determined to make it legal, regardless of the democratic processes that stand in their way.
So, who was it who correctly understood the Bible? We might extrapolate that Dobson would think that an elected leader who outlawed and tried to eliminate homosexuality understood it. But can he find references to pink triangles in the New Testament?
But my favorite skittering roach be none other than General Wesley Clark. Clark launched a subtle attack on Debs when he blithely remarked that: “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”
This be clearly a figurative jab at the only dead candidate in the race, Eugene V. Debs. Clark gets it wrong, though, Debs did not get shot down in a plane, or on a train (or with a fox or in a box), instead he died in 1926 at a sanitarium in Elmhust, Illinois, broken by the experience of being jailed for his anti-war views. Clearly, Clark is impugning the judgment of people who find themselves in fatal or near-fatal situations. Followed to its logical conclusion, this reasoning rules out every single zombie candidate there has ever been! But just to show HOW cravenly wrong Clark is, the Debs campaign is proud to unveil the following slate of deceased cabinet choices:
Secretary of the Treasury Giuseppi Pinelli
Giuseppi Pinelli died in 1969, after falling out a window while being interrogated by the Italian police following a bomb explosion at the Agricultural Bank in Milan. Historians argue that Pinelli was not actually involved with the bombing, but Pinelli’s Chief of Staff Dario Fo notes that Pinelli was fully capable of flying instead of falling, but chose not to in order to die and thereby incriminate the police. Pinelli did what McCain did, but had the guts to do it without a parachute!
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tennessee Williams
In 1983, the author of Streetcar Named Desire was using eyedrops when he choked on an eyedrop bottle cap in New York. He would routinely place the cap in his mouth, lean back, and place his eyedrops in each eye. If Williams were Secretary of HHS, not only would consumer safety of eyedrop bottles improve, but we would rapidly close the histrionics gap with Communist China. He's like the Straight Talk Express, but, you know, not, strictly speaking, straight.
Chair, Joint Council of Economic Advisors Frank Hayes
In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes dies of a heart attack during a race. His horse, Sweet Kiss, won the race, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race. If you can think of a better metaphor for the best case scenario for managing the current economy, please contact me. [2] Hayes beat a field of living jockeys, which is more than can be said of John McCain's victory over his challengers in the 2008 Republican primary.
We DEMAND that Clark admit that this Cabinet of the Dead [TM] would be much more effective than the current cabinet!
This is NOT fake outrage!
Riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down IS so a qualification to be president!
Ah find it despicable that SO close to the Fourth of July, a four star general would suggest that the dead are less patriotic than the living!
That was so NOT a non-sequitur slipped in just to wrap our candidates in the flag!
But IF our candidates were wrapped in flags, the would STAY wrapped in them!
In closing, Ah urge all the candidates to join the Debs campaign in repudiating these remarks, cutting Clark loose, and baking eyedrop bottle caps into his favorite kind of muffins and scattering them on the sidewalk opposite his garage!
______________________________ (1) Dobson, trained in Pediatrics and Psychology, not Theology or Religious Studies, condemns the beknighted among us who fail to recognize those “Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.”
(2) Other suggestions include Dr. Caligari for Cabinet Secretary Without Portfolio, Jim Croce to run the FAA, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg to direct the FBI, Natalie Wood as Secretary of the Navy, and, of course, the Marquis De Sade to run the CIA. Other suggestions for the zombie cabinet welcome below.
Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today No I hate the men sent the jobs away...
We Can't Make It Here Anymore James McMurtry
(I speak for Eugene Debs when I approve this message)
CorpoRat Media: irrational attacks on ZED supporters
Let me tell you something else, Jon Stewart is taking a beating from the CorpoRats lately. The same CorpoRat biased media is claiming that Jon Stewart is a scab. Now I'm telling you that being a writer who is given no credit, that, that, it's a thankless invisible job! You have the funny ideas and the guy who repeats them on air takes the credit. But, when the writers went on strike, Jon had this idea and we talked about it, several of us did, which was, let me tell you, it was a scary scary idea, and he bravely went on the air, went on the air with no material, nothing he was supposed to say. Wow! I would really really like to see those CorpoRat wannabees try that. But Jon did go ahead and go out here and do his show without any writers. He was willing to look stupid so that people could appreciate what the writers do. You probably have no idea how gutsy that was. I mean, he didn't even have some feeble talking point he could expand on endlessly. To me, that really says Jon Stewart must care about the workers or he would not have taken that kind of personal risk. And when a guy like that endorses Zombie Eugene Debs for president in '08, well, it just means that much more.
The fight to free Debs almost a century ago was the first time that Americans organized to defend the right to speak against war. A timely lesson for us today.
Jon Stewart, the smirking television personality who had figured out the Iraq War before many other Americans, follows conservative actor Bruce Willis' endorsement with one of his own:
ROLLING STONE: I read that one of your childhood heroes was Eugene Debs, the five-time Socialist Party candidate for president in the early twentieth century.
Deadsidential candidate, Zombie Eugene Debs, delivers a speech on US-Iran relations.
A Warmonger's Warmonger I Like Pie'sendorsed candidate for the '08 election, Zombie Eugene Debs, has risen from the grave and sent us the following position paper on the "Warmonger" issue. - Cappy Rudyard
1. John McCain is a warmonger. 2. John McCain supports economic policies that will keep the world in a state of permanent war. 3. John McCain is tasty.
Let me explain:
#1. Self-evident. #2. John McCain will "Cut The Corporate Tax Rate From 35 To 25 Percent." How does his pro-corporate, pro-plutocrat platform make him doubly a warmonger?
"They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter. [The] Wall Street Junkers. . . are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people." [The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)]
For proof of this connection we need look no further than McCain's continuous support for the Iraq War, for his rhetoric of maximum bellicosity toward Iran, and for the right of the US government to torture Iraqis and spy on Americans. This makes McCain the worst sort of Christian: the religious hypocrite.
"Thou shalt not kill" is now the law. But it applies only to individuals — not yet to nations. To slay your neighbor is murder — unless you are in uniform. But when the nation slays its neighbors and the killings mount into the thousands, it is not murder but patriotism to be proud of, glorify, and rejoice over. When shall peace come to earth? When the brute and savage shall have died in us and we have become human. In a word, peace will come to earth when humanity has been humanized, civilization civilized, and Christianity christianized. ["Peace on Earth." (1915)]
Yet some would vote for McCain despite the self-evident failure of the Iraq invasion to even have a purpose that a majority of citizens can name. They seem to think that our atrocities teach a valuable lesson, or at least one valuable to the Wall Street Junkers. They are deceived by confusing might and right, and along with faux Socialists like Dead Gus Hall*, insist that a strong Stalinesque hand is needed for real peace. Zombie Eugene Debs is here to tell you that is not the case. Social justice is the key.
"The end of profit and plunder among nations will also mean the end of war and the dawning of the era of 'Peace on Earth and Good Will among Men.'" ["Peace" (1916)]
#3. His pinkish orange pate no doubt houses a tasty brain. Zombies know these things. * See also.
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