Brisbane Trampled by Thundering Herd

Poor Arthur Brisbane just can't get no nuance.  In a column that critics are calling a parody straight out of The Onion, the New York Times public editor plaintively asked readers today if they think the paper should bother calling out lies. The commentariat, whom Brisbane has infamously derided in a past column as "the thundering herd", trampled him but good in their 200-plus universally scathing and outraged responses.  By the time reader Denis N. alerted me to the column a few hours after it hit the site, comments had already been slammed shut by the shaken p.e.


Brisbane, apparently, was stunned that readers were stunned he had even needed to ask if reporters should be nit-picky in checking their facts and the veracity of those they quote. And he obviously thinks readers are just as stupid as they were a year ago when he wrote his "Thundering Herd" column* (a/k/a "Readers With Plenty to Say") Here is what he huffily emailed to media critic Jim Romanesko today:

 I have to say I did not expect that so many people would interpret me to have asked only: should The Times print the truth and fact-check? Of course, The Times should print the truth, when it can be found, and fact-check. What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut dubious facts in the bodies of the stories they are writing. I was hoping for diverse and even nuanced responses to what I think is a difficult question....I often get well-reasoned complaints and questions from readers, but in this case a lot of people responded to a question I was not asking.

Take that, thundering herd! Artie gives you a D for conduct and effort, despite the fact that the Gray Lady has seen fit to reduce the length of reader responses to a paltry 1500 characters (three or four very short paragraphs), so nuance is kind of hard. Nuance is also totally unnecessary and inappropriate when responding to drivel. A quick eff you would have sufficed.  Speaking of effort, a typical Arthur Brisbane Sunday column consists of cut and pasted letters from the readership. That's it. He slaps up the missives and does not even deign to respond. He usually receives but a handful of reader comments, so today's deluge might have had him sputtering.

Brisbane does have at least one semi-defender in the person of Esquire scribe Charles P. Pierce, who writes that reporters in this digital age are up against constant deadlines, cutthroat competition, and editors who often side with the lying liars. The bottom line trumps truth and accuracy:

Most newspapers -- most especially, the New York Times -- have forced upon their reporters what are called "ethics codes," but which, in reality, are speech codes written to prevent the beancounters and careerists from having to answer angry phone calls from wingnuts. I am not kidding -- under some of these abominations, a reporter literally can be disciplined for spouting off about, say, Willard Romney in a bar, if someone heard the reporter, and called the beancounter to complain. The campaign buses are filled now with young reporters who know full well that, given sufficient pressure from either inside or outside "the company," their bosses do not have their backs.

There is some truth(iness) in this. When I was working as a cub reporter at the dawn of time, when they still had manual typewriters, I got into big trouble once  for being a bit too obsessed with veracity. I had the poor taste to write an article on a something I'd come across in the police blotter that morning: the son of a mayoral candidate running on a law and order platform was arrested on vandalism and burglary charges. Somehow my scoop slipped past the editor's mangle and got into print. The candidate stormed in, livid. I got a dressing-down from my boss for having done a nasty bitchy thing by not keeping a private family matter on the QT. In the end, it didn't matter: she won the election.  

So, yeah... I can imagine Pinch Sulzberger's phone ringing off the hook because one of the bitchy reporters hurt Mitt Romney's feelings by calling him out on a fib or hundred. It's all about access, not alienating the advertisers and the rich and powerful -- and nuance. Journalists are as expendable as the wrapping for last night's fish.

Which is why I am perfectly happy to be a poor blogger in my dotage. People can complain all they want (and they do). But nobody can fire me.

*Art interviewed me for that piece. He made me the lede Elsie too!  He even gave me his private cell phone number. I kept it, just in case I ever need a rich guy to bail me out of jail. 

Rombama Theater

You have to hand it to Newt Gingrich. Since the Democrats won't go for Mitt Romney's jugular, Gingrich will do it for them.  The worst epithet I have ever heard Barack Obama use against Wall Street bankers is "fat cats".  As he is wont to frequently point out, the Wall Street kitties have a lot of business savvy and didn't actually do anything illegal.

Not Newt.  He has laid into Romney like a rabid mountain lion disemboweling a pampered Angora. Gingrich does severe damage, calling him a vulture capitalist job killer in the withering tone that only he can pull off.  In a few days he has dared to go where the Obama crowd has thus far feared to tread, succeeding in putting the entire private equity industry on the defensive.  Not so Obama, who probably will remain purring and preening for the primary duration.  Even DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not known to be a shrinking violet, will only call Romney a "job cremator." Capitalist pig is, unfortunately not in the neo-lib capitalist lexicon.

Newt's characterization, while vicious, is entirely accurate.  Here's the famous infomercial  funded by a NewtPac now playing in South Carolina. It's called "When Romney Came to Town" I learned a thing or two -- for instance, I had no idea Bain Capital was behind the destruction of the Kaybee Toy Store chain!  That makes him a hater of little children and teddy bears as well as a greedhead who makes Gordon Gekko look beneficent. I guess Newt Gingrich could well be called the DNC's useful idiot.

Of course, if you believe as I do that the Rombama match-up is just more Kabuki presented for our torture by the oligarchy, Romney is simply playing Bad Cop to Barry's Good Cop.  Mitt is fulfilling his duty of calling Obama a European Socialist, so the president can blithely defend himself as a PragProg (pragmatic progressive, a/k/a lifestyle liberal and a fiscal conservative) stealing OWS rhetoric and hoping to get away with it.  In this interview with Matt Lauer today, Romney presumes to hand the Occupy crown to Obama on a velvet jewelry tray:

ROMNEY: You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it.

LAUER: Yeah but envy? Are there no fair questions about the distribution of wealth without it being seen as ‘envy,’ though?

ROMNEY: Yes, I think it’s fine to talk about those things in quiet rooms and discussions about tax policy and the like. But the president has made it part of his campaign rally. Everywhere he goes we hear him talking about millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street. It’s a very envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach and I think it will fail.

He is probably right, because the real story and the real power is with Occupy Wall Street. The barriers to Zuccotti Park have been removed and the protesters have moved back into their space. The northeast winter has been very good to this movement.  Not one flake of snow on the streets.  Membership in Climate Change World has its privileges for the underprivileged.

As Matt Taibbi put it in a recent blogpost:

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.
In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

According to The White House, Obama was to have flown from Washington to Chicago tonight for three separate fundraisers (including one at the home of a private equity firm mogul) -- and then jet back home in time for bed.  It is estimated that he is already, this early in campaign season, spending between 10 and 20% of his working hours speechifying and canoodling with his rich bundlers-who-are-not-lobbyists.

Underhanded Malice

So the big news inside the Beltway is the new Obama tell-all and its juiciest bit: the lavish Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland-themed Halloween party the president hosted in 2009.

Corporate Media World has the typical gripes:

We weren't invited. W-a-a-a-h.  It cost the taxpayers a bundle in the middle of a recession.  It was too glitzy.  Duh.... we were still enamored of all things Obama and didn't care.

But here are some criticisms I haven't heard yet.  The refreshments included fake blood served in vials, and among the attendees were military families. Did anybody stop to think how this trendy visual libation would affect the guests, many of whom have already experienced enough blood and gore to last a lifetime? The rates of PTSD in these people (and their kids) who have served in endless deployments is through the roof.  And was it really smart for Johnny Depp to show up in eye makeup straight out of A Clockwork Orange for a kids' party? 

How about we just criticize this soiree and the outrage it has spawned for its sheer kitschiness? 

Oh, and the movie itself reeked. It was a bleak, dark, sometimes-violent, high tech mess that had little if anything to do with Lewis Carroll.  Tim Burton, the party's host and designer, bombed in a big way with his psychotic take on Alice. His Jabberwocky is transformed into a computerized Godzilla who tries to kill Alice. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 51% (Obama's approximate approval rating after the bin Laden brag-a-thon ).  The reviews -- mixed at best --  sound like they could be describing the Obama presidency itself.  Just substitute the allegedly real characters for the fictional ones. Compare "Underland" with the current Administration. Let your imagination run wild.


"A visually imaginative fairy tale that suffers slightly from its predictable course but still manages to wow at all the crucial moments".... Detroit News

"The feeling, in this movie, is always that of being frantically rushed to the next thing....Thanks to the Burton-Depp-Elfman brand, and to Disney's unrelenting marketing campaign, a favor Burton returns in the movie, making both the Red and White Queens' castles look like mockups of the iconic Disney one), this Alice in Wonderland will likely pull huge audiences down its rabbit hole".... Slate.

I wouldn’t have minded if Burton used Carroll as the merest of jumping-off points for his own nightmarish visions. What we have instead is a hybrid: Carroll’s hallucinatory wit crossed with Burton’s rank unseemliness rolled into Disney 'wholesomeness.' In the end, “Alice in Wonderland” doesn’t work either as visionary entertainment or as plain old family entertainment....Christian Science Monitor.

 Despite stunning visuals and fine performances Alice in Wonderland never really goes anywhere. Or rather it goes somewhere we've all been before....Joshua Stern, Coming Soon. (the most succinct summary of the O Regime, imho).

The imposition of a fairytale quest structure turns the surrealist wanderings (and wonderings) of a free-associating dreamer into a brusque crash-zoom, as Alice hurtles towards her appointment on the good-versus-evil battlefield.... Lisa Mullen, Sight and Sound.

Hmm... do you get all these Barry/Alice connections same as I do?  Or am I being too mean to Tim Burton?

Rejecting the Duopoly

Here is some encouraging news from a just-released Gallup poll: a record number of Americans are refusing membership in either one of the major two corrupt political parties currently smothering what's left of our democracy.The proportion of self-identified independents in 2011, when the poll was conducted, is the largest in 60 years.

Democrats maintain a slight edge over Republicans, but among those surveyed, an equal amount merely "lean" toward identifying with either party.

According to Gallup, here are the implications:  

Increased independent identification is not uncommon in the year before a presidential election year, but the sluggish economy, record levels of distrust in government, and unfavorable views of both parties helped to create an environment that fostered political independence more than in any other pre-election year.
As Americans' attention turns to choosing a president for the next four years and they line up behind President Obama or his Republican challenger, the percentage of independent identifiers is likely to fall this year. However, if national conditions and the political environment do not change appreciably over the course of this year, independent identification -- even if it declines -- will probably remain on the higher end of what Gallup has measured historically.

The unlimited money flowing into campaign SuperPac advertising is already having an unintended consequence, at least among the Republican contenders.  The Citizens United decision, which gave the right of free and anonymous political speech to corporations, has done more than give personhood to big business. It has spawned a cancer on the host.  Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, to name just two of the "beneficiaries", are busily engaged in mutual annihilation in their dueling attack ads.... and upcoming full-length negative infomercials.
  
The election is still ten months away, and the complicit corporate media monsters are greedily extending their claws for the millions and billions of ad revenue coming their way courtesy of the Supremes. They too have not appeared to ponder the law of unintended consequences. They're like Bush & Co invading Iraq and being utterly befuddled by the lack of enthusiasm of the natives.  How many independent voters/viewers are going to remain paying cable customers just to be invaded and tortured by nonstop political commercials?  Trust me -- since the money is relentless, so too will be the election year waterboarding of the body politic.

One more reason to cut the cord that binds and gags us.  Read a book, read a blog, or write your own. But above all -- Occupy!

A Decade of Gitmo

A human chain will encircle The White House this Wednesday (1/11) to mark the tenth anniversary of the detention center for so-called "enemy combatants" at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay.  Amnesty International is seeking 2700 volunteers -- approximately the same number of detainees currently being held at both Gitmo and the Bagram internment facility in Afghanistan -- to join the protest. The event will also be a demonstration against the recently-signed National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA), which provides for the indefinite detention of anyone, anywhere, without charge and without trial. 


President Obama, who made shutting down Gitmo a priority during his campaign and who actually signed the order for closure immediately upon taking office, quickly backed away from the plan. His apologists have blamed Congress for tying the hands of his administration. But guess what? The rest of the world is not enmeshed in American political bickering. The rest of the world watches with dismay as Obama obediently continues the policy of the military-industrial-terror American shadow government. According to Amnesty,  

Under international law, domestic law and politics may not be invoked to justify failure to comply with treaty obligations. It is an inadequate response for one branch of government to blame another for a country's human rights failure. International law demands that solutions be found, not excuses. The US administration is currently telling the world, in effect, "we will resolve that Guantanamo detentions when the domestic political climate is right. The USA has not been willing to accept such excuses from other governments seeking to justify their systemic human rights failures, and it should not be accepted when it is put forward by the USA.. 

AI's "Decade of Damage to Human Rights" report, published just last month, continues:

The roots of the problem lie further back, in the longstanding reluctance of the USA to apply to itself international human rights standards it so often says it expects of others. A pick and choose approach to international law by the USA long preceded the Bush Administration, but was built upon in that administration's policy responses to the attacks of 11 September 2001. This included its decision to concoct a global 'war' framework for its counter-terrorism policies under which the applicability of international human rights law was wholly denied. This global war theory -- under which the Guantanamo detentions were but one outcome, though perhaps its best-known and enduring symbol -- continues to infect the body politic in the USA, to the detriment of respect for both human rights both by the USA and more generally. 

Lakhdar Boumediene writes a harrowing account of his own long confinement in Gitmo in today's New York Times. He remained a prisoner, without charge or trial, for more than seven years. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his confinement unconstitutional in 2008,  he still had to wait until the following year to be actually freed. He writes:

About 90 prisoners have been cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo. Some of them are from countries like Syria or China — where they would face torture if sent home — or Yemen, which the United States considers unstable. And so they sit as captives, with no end in sight — not because they are dangerous, not because they attacked America, but because the stigma of Guantánamo means they have no place to go, and America will not give a home to even one of them.

You can sign the Amnesty International petition demanding the closure of this illegal prison here.

Recess Time

So President Obama finally recess-appointed a director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and filled three vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board.  Democratic partisans are in ecstasy because Barry finally got his mojo back, grew a spine, showed he is a true progressive after all and has emerged as grand born-again champion of the middle class.

Of course I am very, very happy that the self-interest of a politician and the greater public good happened to nicely coincide for a change.  But not so fast, liberals! Cynic that I am, let me suggest that the recess appointments were done not only to strengthen his poll numbers -- but mainly to circumvent attempted criminal sedition by the obstructionist Republicans.  Had the president not made the appointments (and remember, he went right down to the wire on them) he theoretically could have been a criminal enabler himself.  Can-kicking and procrastination can be legal no-nos sometimes, as well as bad and cowardly public policy all the time.

It wasn't the qualifications or the personality of Richard Cordray that had the GOP nihilists balking at his confirmation. It was the agency itself -- an agency that was formed by an Act of Congress.  Republicans were actually attempting to illegally nullify a federal agency.  Ditto for the NLRB: their aim was to destroy the whole office.  Very, very illegal.  Here is how Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution describes the ongoing Republican obstructionism:

In the case of the Consumer Protection Board, Senate Republicans have said they would not confirm anyone who does not agree to restructure the leadership of the agency from a single person to a multi-member body. They insist that a legitimately passed law be changed before allowing it to function with a director – a modern-day form of nullification. Same with the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. There is nothing normal or routine about this. The Senate policing of non-cabinet appointments is sometimes more aggressive but the current practice goes well beyond that, more like pre-Civil War days than 20th century practice.

Of course, Donald Berwick, the recently departed director of Medicare and Medicaid Services, resigned when the Congressional minority vowed to block his nomination. He had unforgivably expressed an admiration for the British system of single payer health care.  And Obama never fought for Berwick, who has been replaced by a government bureaucrat who will presumably not discuss any socialist tendencies. 

 Too bad Obama hasn't actually called Mitch McConnell and his cohort out as traitors or coup d'etat villains on their hijacking of democracy. He found himself some mo, but forgot the jo. Very, very tepid.

And he made very, very sure to get the legal advice that if the Republicans do happen to sue him over the appointments, they will not have a leg to stand on.  If he wasn't sure of being the winner going in, I doubt he would have attempted the appointments.  This, being an election year, was also a good time to throw the base some bigger chunks of bread instead of the usual crumbs.

The NLRB recess appointments may have even more to with presidential politics than the CFPB, although had the vacancies remained unfilled, this longstanding federal agency would have literally died too.  Labor journalist Mike Elk lays it out:

President Obama's rapid fix to the NLRB's problem stands in stark contrast to the beginning of his term in January 2009, when the board was also inoperable. Obama waited 14 months to make recess appointments to fill those slots. 
The speed in making the appointments may be a move by the White House to gain the support of the AFL-CIO, which has yet to endorse Obama, unlike other major unions like AFSCME, NEA, UFCW and SEIU. It’s unclear as well if the AFL-CIO's delay in endorsing Obama, or AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s recent call for greater political independence for organized labor played any role in pressuring the White House to quickly make the recess appointments to both the CFPB and NLRB.

 Trumka wasted no time in lavishing praise on Obama's appointment, thus presumably giving himelf the needed cover to endorse his candidacy.  Trumka, it should be remembered, is also a member of Obama's in-house corporate CEO lobby, laughably known as the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

When it comes to right-to-work (anti-union) states, Obama has remained his usual passive-aggressive tepid (arch-conservative) self. He infamously called off his Organizing for America campaign arm from direct involvement in the Wisconsin collective bargaining demonstrations last winter.  He has yet to take a stand on upcoming anti-labor legislation in Indiana.  And several trade unions are planning to boycott the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina -- another high unemployment, anti-union state. But conveniently home to Fort Bragg and all those returning troops.

The Semantics of Terror

The arsonist who terrorized Los Angeles last week in a string of more than 50 firebombings is not actually being called a terrorist by the media or the police.  His nationality (German) does jibe with the Homeland Security definition of terrorist.  He is not an Islamic jihadist. He is not an Al Qaeda sympathizer. No matter that whole neighborhoods were literally terror-stricken for days on end, not knowing if they and their property would be incinerated while they slept.  Officials preferred to say the L.A. citizenry were "unnerved", only later deigning to upgrade the emotion to "terrorized." The suspect was characterized by the media as pale and befuddled and weak -- obviously it was mental illness, not politics, that caused his rampage.  He is a white European.  He was arrested not by Homeland Security, not by the FBI, but by a deputized volunteer. He had not been on a national terrorism watch list, even though he'd publicly railed against the United States in a courthouse just before he began his rampage. The judge set bail at $2.85 million.

On New Years Day, five New York City buildings were firebombed in quick succession.  They included a mosque, a Hindu temple and a Spanish bodega.  A suspect was quickly arrested, and authorities hastened to characterize the attacks as "personal, not political" -- even though the alleged bomber had issued a blanket anti-Muslim manifesto. Muslims can qualify as bias crime victims, apparently, but are not permitted to be on the receiving end of terrorism. That seems to be a privilege restricted to true-blue Americans: preferably white and middle class.  The suspect, a New Yorker, has not been renditioned to Gitmo.  He is, however, undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at Bellevue.

In order to qualify as a terrorist, you have to be the marginal loner who has been sitting around in your apartment for months with some matches, Christmas lights and a few dollars' worth of Home Depot hardware.  You may even have been initially rejected as a suspect by the FBI. But if Mayor Bloomberg needs some attention, he has his private military thugs make an arrest so he can brag about thwarting a major terrorist attack. Jose Pimentel, the arrestee, (who never actually succeeded in harming persons or property) was deemed a terrorist because while he was stoned on pot, he expressed resentment to an informant about American troops in Afghanistan and sympathy toward Al Qaeda.  His prior criminal record consisted of one charge involving a stolen credit card. He was not sent to Bellevue for psychiatric examination. He is, however,  being held without bail pending trial ( and who knows, maybe even indefinite detention without trial -- he certainly qualifies under the new NDAA signed by the president).