Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Kitchen Sink #3: Bernie is a Pod Person

OK, so this is more of a chipped finger bowl than a kitchen sink, but it does speak to the increasing desperation of the Clinton campaign:

Remember that iconic photo of Bernie Sanders speaking at a CORE rally in Chicago in the 60s? According to Hillary's oppo researchers, that wasn't really Bernie at all. It was only a fellow who looks like Bernie. The real Bernie was probably spooning vanilla Ben and Jerry in a Vermont pot barn somewhere instead of working for civil rights. The Bernie in the photo had to be a character out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You see, say the Clintonoids, Real Bernie was, is, and always will be unashamedly white. He is so white, in fact, that he single-handedly turned Latino-heavy Nevada into a white Sanders planet overnight, forcing Hillary to spend time in another state which her campaign snootily complains is not really a state at all.

She coulda been a contender. She could have been in Palm Beach with Bill this week, schmoozing with the rich and famous at their $32,000-a-plate bribe-fests.

The rumors of Bernie's alien status first gained traction when civil rights icon John Lewis was herded in front of cameras to reveal that he'd never met Sanders in the 60s. Since John Lewis didn't know Sanders, the media concluded, then it obviously follows that Sanders did not and does not care about black people.

 And then Time magazine helpfully ran an article flicking the finger bowl water at Bernie, confirming Clintonland's claim that the guy in the photo wasn't Bernie at all, but some sort of Bernie-lookalike pod-person.

But then it turned out that Danny Lyons, the photographer who shot that scene, is still alive, well and absolutely willing to debunk the latest Clintonoid smear tactic. From U.S. Uncut, quoting Lyons:
“In 1962 and the spring of 1963 I was the student photographer at the University of Chicago, making pictures for the yearbook, the Alumni Magazine, and the student paper, The Maroon. By the summer of 1962, I had taken my camera into the deep South and become the first photographer for SNCC.

“That winter at the University of Chicago, there was a sit-in inside the administration building protesting discrimination against blacks in university owned housing,” Lyons said. “I went to it with a CORE activist and friend. The sit in was in a crowded hallway, blocking the entrance to the office of Dr. George Beadle, the chancellor.
“I took the photograph of Bernie Sanders speaking to his fellow CORE members at that sit-in… Time Magazine is now claiming it is not Bernie in the picture but someone else. It is Bernie, and it is proof of his very early dedication to justice for African Americans. The CORE sit-in that Bernie helped lead was the first civil rights sit-in to take place in the North.

Young Bernie: The Real Deal

Time was then forced to retract its original reporting. It made sure to issue its retraction in very tiny little letters that not many people would notice.

Time is pretty much out of mind, including its own. In December, it announced that Bernie Sanders was the overwhelming winner of its Person of the Year readers' poll. And then it summarily banned Bernie from its list of eight semi-finalists for the honor and settled instead on Angela Merkel, beating out such Time-honored contenders as ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

Of course, Time is only acting in the interests of the corporate media-political complex, Democracy is a very complex and pragmatic thing, you know. It is so complex, in fact, that Super Delegates get weighted votes and (so far, anyway) are giving the very unpopular Hillary Clinton an undemocratic advantage over Bernie Sanders. If the Clintonoids have their way, they will turn the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare right on its head. In their twisted version, the "slow and steady wins the race" happy ending of a President Sanders will be transformed into Cheaters Always Win, and Winners Always Cheat.

The real pod-people are the Clintons. They live in their own pluto-pod bubble, in which $675,000 for three Goldman Sachs speeches is considered a public service accomplishment.

Digging through the Sardonicky archives, meanwhile, I discovered this old photo of young President Bill Clinton, announcing that millions of black mothers would be kicked off the welfare rolls and forced to take crappy low-wage jobs with no child care or retraining subsidies whatsoever:

 
(Oops.That's really Donald Sutherland in the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The editors sincerely apologize for the error.)

10 comments:

annenigma said...

I love your Kitchen Sink series, Karen. Thanks for the laughs!

Btw, I was there and I know that's Bill Clinton and I can prove it - just look at his signature finger pointing/wag (that Bernie later stole).

Anonymous said...

Hi Karen, and everyone. This is a different topic, but I've been thinking lately about how rare it is to see an American president, including President Obama, speaking directly--live and in person--to a group of American citizens and taking questions. When he comes to Seattle, where I live, he goes to fundraisers in affluent suburbs. When he was trying to sell the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Oregon, he spoke at Nike headquarters. Does anyone know of places where people keep track of how often this president or any others speak to crowds of American citizens who aren't screened for anything other than security purposes?

Robert F

Robert F said...

I dug a little deeper. Just considering Seattle and realizing it isn't necessarily representative, it would appear that in the seven years of his presidency, President Obama has never once even given a speech to the open public in the Puget Sound area. Instead, he has spoken at restricted campaign events for other candidates, toured a disaster site, and of course appeared at fundraisers. A summary of his visits includes lots of entries like this:

July 24th, 2012

"Obama attended two fundraisers, both closed to the public, during a quick campaign stop at Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal’s Hunts Point home. First, he met with about two dozen business leaders for a roundtable. Then, he spoke to about 200 guests on Sinegal’s lawn."

Nov. 24th, 2013

"He did not hold any public events in the area, but attended a discussion at the North Seattle home of clothing retailer Tom Campion and dinner at ex-Microsoft executive Shirley’s Medina home."

Oh, he did give a speech at Boeing and did have a stage-managed meeting with a middle class family whose daughters give him gifts they'e made for his family.

I'll vote for a candidate who has the courage and respect to appear before and publicly take questions from the people he or she allegedly represents.

Robert F

Pearl said...

Re: the cause of Scalia's demise. As I figured, he wasn't poisoned, he poisoned himself as well as the purposes of his time on the Supreme Court. Also what a misnomer: "JUSTICE" Scalia.
I hope Obama does one thing right and leaves a decent choice in the Supreme court for the future.

Unknown said...

Thank you, Karen. Great series. I thought this piece by a recovering-Clintonian was worthy of interest to you and your readership.

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/16/the_clintons_will_really_try_anything_false_attacks_and_failed_strategies_as_hillary_repeats_2008/

Pearl said...


Elizabeth Warren would be a nice choice for the Supreme Court - just signed a petition for her, but doubt Obama would have the courage to choose a lady who is the complete opposite of Hillary.

valerie said...

The Salon article was great, Mark. Thanks for the link.

Kat said...

Digging through the Sardonicky archives, meanwhile, I discovered this old photo of young President Bill Clinton, announcing that millions of black mothers would be kicked off the welfare rolls and forced to take crappy low-wage jobs with no child care or retraining subsidies whatsoever
Is thatt true? As I remember one of the provisions for receiving TANF was to be in school or a job training program. Clinton also expanded Head Start and added more day long Head Start programs. So What? I think this piece gets to the misogyny of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (gag me with that name):http://www.progressive.org/node/1573

Karen Garcia said...

Kat,

Yeah, Clinton pretended to cover his ass by promising training and child care help to mothers in preparation for their being kicked off the public assistance rolls after two years. Only problem was, the bill ceded TANF to the states -- ergo, that whole job training and child care fig leaf crumbled pretty quickly, especially in "red" states. No money! This is how neoliberals roll. They play one side against the other, and guess who loses? Poor people, mainly poor women.

Peter Edelman, husband of Hillary's mentor, Marian Wright Edelman, lays it all out in his book "So Rich, So Poor." Hillary always manages to forget the disgust with which the Edelmans hold the Clintons when she brags about working for the Childrens Defense fund.

Kat said...

Well, job training is neoliberalism-- it does not ask anything of employers and it is a way to say you are doing something without really actually having to do something. But it is also saying that the umpaid labor carried out (mainly by women) is not really work.