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6/24/2008
"The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin, 1937 – 2008
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It's the old American double standard, you know, say one thing, do something different. And, of course, the country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of a slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give up a color, we'll wipe it out. You got it.
So, anyway, about eighty years after the Constitution is ratified, eighty years later, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it, of course. Just sort of on paper. And that was, of course, during the Civil War. Now, there's another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one: civil war. Do you think any country could really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me" [gun shots] - "I'm awfully sorry. I'm awfully sorry." Now, of course, the Civil War has been over for about 120 years, but not so you'd really notice it, because we still have these people called Civil War buffs, people who thought it was a really keen war, and they study the battles carefully, and they try to improve on the strategies and the tactics to increase the body count, in case we have to go through it again sometime. In fact, some of these people actually get dressed up in uniform once a year and go out and refight these battles. You know what I say? Use live ammunition, [bleep], would you please? You might just raise the intelligence level of the American gene pool.
But what do you expect? Hey, come on, this is a warlike country. We come from that northern European, basically the northern European genes, the blue eyes. Those blue eyes. Boy everybody in the world learned real quick, didn't they? When those blue eyes sail out of the north, you better nail everything down [bleep]. Nail it down, strap it down, or they'll grab it. If they can't take it home, they'll burn it. If they can't burn it, they'll [bleep]. That's what happened to us. And it's a warlike country. C'mon, I mean, forget foreign policy. Even the domestic rhetoric is warlike. Everything about our domestic policy invokes the thought of war. We don't like something in this country, we declare war on it. The war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on AIDS, the war on cancer. We've got the only national anthem that mentions [bleep] rockets and bombs in the [bleep] thing. You know what I mean?
"I think every comedian who came after Carlin looked up to him as a guy who showed that a stand-up comedian wasn't just telling jokes, he was making commentary. He was a thinker, not just a joke teller. And also, Carlin, because of his long career, I mean, he showed that being a stand-up comedian was an important thing, as something you can do for your entire life. He didn’t get any help from movies. He never had a movie career. He never had a sitcom career like a lot of other stand-up comics. But he could be a top draw on the stand-up comedy circuit for more than forty years, and that was a real inspiration, and I think it's helped make stand-up comedy a vital art form today."
-excerpts from an interview on DemocracyNow! with Richard Zoglin, author of Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America.
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6/17/2008
Media Guru Tony Schwartz, 1923 - 2008
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The best thing about radio is that people were born without earlids. You can't close your ears to it.
Called the man "who moved sound recording into the realm of the arts," by photographer Edward Steichen, "the King of Sound" by the New York Times and the "the guru of the electronic age" by Marshall McLuhan, Tony Schwartz began "documenting life in sound and pictures" in 1945 "when he bought his first Webcor wire recorder and began to record the people and sounds around him. From that hobby resulted nineteen phonograph albums for Folkways and Columbia Records, a diverse collections of voices, street sounds and music, part of the ennormous body of Tony Schwartz's work now housed in the Library of Congress
Tony Schwartz authored two influential books on communications and the media. The Responsive Chord (1973) was the only book, according to McLuhan, to begin to approach the "problem of human scale in relation to electronic media". Media: The Second God (1982) described how media has changed our society and how to use it to change our society. On that subject Tony Schwartz was the supreme master having created more than 20,000 radio and television spots for products, political candidates (over 200) and non-profit public interest groups, and not to mention, the Guerrilla Media Program, a citizen's guide to using the electronic mdia for social change.
Tony Schwartz is best known, however, as the creator of the infamous "Daisy" commercial. The sad truth is that the lesson of that commercial has been so well learned by today's campaign gurus:
Forget about trying to impart information about your candidate. Voters already have an opinion and have no experience of solutions anyway. Instead, create sensory impressions to evoke an emotional response. (Center for Media Literacy)
But read this about Tony Schwartz from an interview with
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, American Professor of Communication and the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
Tony's messages involve listeners and viewers in an intricate and subtle dance, that ultimately leaves you in a partnership. And so, in the typical Schwartz message you're left feeling very involved. And you're also left with powerful residual impact. The reason people read Goldwater into the "Daisy" commercial was because everything in that ad is speaking to their fears about nuclear weapons, and everything in the campaign was magnifying Goldwater's stands about nuclear weapons. And so you naturally invest that into an open message that invites those fears. That makes that the most powerful ad of that campaign. It also makes it the cleanest ad of the campaign. Because to the extent that Goldwater is in the ad he was invested there by the audience. And the audience isn't going to indict itself for dirty campaigning. Tony's ad is absolutely clean...
If one takes Tony Schwartz's philosophy of communication seriously then he will never be able to use communication to persuade you to hold something you don't already believe. Essentially he believes that we have an aggregation of experiences and attitudes that advertising can bring to the fore, can make more salient -- or that advertising can push back, can force into the background. And that advertising is not the process of putting things there, but drawing things out. If that phi
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6/16/2008
Vincent Bugliosi on The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
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Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions?
As a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney, Vincent Bugliosi successfully prosecuted 105 of 106 felony jury trials including twenty-one murder convictions without a single loss. As an outspoken critic of the media and lawyers and judges in major trials, Bugliosi wrote a bestselling book, Outrage, on the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, and The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President, on the 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision.
Helter Skelter was Bugliosi's first book. Written in 1974 about 1969 Manson Family murders and Bugliosi's own prosecution of Charles Manson and his followers, it became the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history and won the 1975 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book. Now Vincent Bugliosi is releasing his nineth and latest book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.
Perhaps the most amazing thing to me about the belief of many that George Bush lied to the American public in starting his war with Iraq is that the liberal columnists who have accused him of doing this merely make this point, and then go on to the next paragraph in their columns. Only very infrequently does a columnist add that because of it Bush should be impeached. If the charges are true, of course Bush should have been impeached, convicted, and removed from office. That's almost too self-evident to state.
But he deserves much more than impeachment. I mean, in America, we apparently impeach presidents for having consensual sex outside of marriage and trying to cover it up. If we impeach presidents for that, then if the president takes the country to war on a lie where thousands of American soldiers die horrible, violent deaths and over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, even babies are killed, the punishment obviously has to be much, much more severe. That's just common sense....
Let's look at the way some of the leading liberal lights (and, of course, the rest of the entire nation with the exception of those few recommending impeachment) have treated the issue of punishment for Bush's cardinal sins. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote about "the false selling of the Iraq War. We were railroaded into an unnecessary war." Fine, I agree. Now what? Krugman just goes on to the next paragraph. But if Bush falsely railroaded the nation into a war where over 100,000 people died, including 4,000 American soldiers, how can you go on to the next paragraph as if you had been writing that Bush spent the weekend at Camp David with his wife? For doing what Krugman believes Bush did, doesn't Bush have to be punished commensurately in some way? Are there no consequences for committing a crime of colossal proportions? - excerpted from The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
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6/4/2008
David Sirota on Lou Dobbs
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Called "a new-generation populist who instinctively understands that the only real questions are 'Who's getting screwed'" by Molly Ivins and a "populist rabble rouser" with a "take no-prisoners mind-set" by the New York Times, David Sirota has emerged has a leading syndicated columnist who may, according to Barron's, be the progressive "answer" to Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. His first book, Hostile Takeover, was a lucid examination of the corruption of the US government, both major parties included, detailing how it colludes with big corporate interests to the depriment of the poor, the middle class and democracy.
David Sirota's latest book is Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, the story of the re-emergence of populist politics on both the Right and Left in America. Yesterday he appeared on DemocracyNow! He had this to say about Lou Dobbs as a populist figure:
Out of anybody in the major cable news, he's the only person who, for instance, talks about corporate power. He's the only person who talks about the inequities of our lobbyist-written trade policy. He's really the only person who even acknowledges what he calls the war on the middle class.
Now, what I'm critical of him in the book is that—and I think it's deceptive—is that he segments the issues he talks about. Right? So the best example is, he talks about immigration, and he's very, very—basically anti-illegal immigration. And he talks about free trade. And never the twain shall meet, right? There's never a discussion about, hey, wait a minute, when you pass a NAFTA that wipes out a local farming economy, for instance, in Mexico, that you're going to create a system, a situation, where Mexicans are going to want to come to this country, because they've been thrown off their land by our trade policy. Never the twain shall meet. And I think he doesn't mix them or doesn't meld them. And I was on his radio show yesterday, and we argued about this. And I basically say in the book, he doesn't meld them, because that message is more of a, for lack of a better term, holistic message. You're actually looking at the problem and not just symptoms. You're not just riling people up; you're actually going to the heart of the problem. I think his show taps into an unfortunate desire, when he talks about immigration, to—of xenophobia, of scapegoating immigrants. And I think that's where I disagree with him.
- from DemocracyNow!
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5/28/2008
Boots on the Ground by Dusk, Mary Tillman's four year quest to expose the coverup of her son's death
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Pat Tillman left his professional football career and a multimillion-dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to
enlist in the United States Army following the September 11 attacks. He was the armed forces' most famous soldier. On April 22, 2004, he was killed while serving in Afghanistan.
His family was told that he had died a hero, charging enemy troops after his unit was ambushed. Pat Tillman was awarded a Silver Star.
It was given to the family by President Bush. We now know that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire. The Military, the Bush Administration and, in particular,
Donald Rumfeld, lied and engaged in a coverup concerning the his death. Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, has now written a book, Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman. On why the truth was not told, on why Rumsfeld lied:
Well, because once you tell a lie, it's very hard to say you lied. And I think that the lie is planted, and they’re not going to say otherwise. But I think that Pat’s death was used by the administration, by the military, to deflect, you know, Abu Ghraib, to deflect Fallujah, to deflect all these things. They saw an opportunity to use him.
In fact, there is a General Yellen, in his testimony to General Jones, who was the third investigative officer—or, pardon me, yeah, the third general, actually, or the third officer to investigate Pat’s death—he asked General Yellen, “What was the tone, basically, of the chain of command once they learned that Pat’s death was of fratricide?” And of course, you know, they did know within twenty-four to forty-eight hours that it was at least a suspected fratricide. He said, “Well, it’s like we were given a steak dinner, but they handed it to us in a garbage can cover. You got it, you work it.” In other words, Pat’s death, to them, was a positive thing, because they could use him to promote patriotic feeling for the war. But he was killed by friendly fire, so they were going to have to spin the story.
- from DemocracyNow!
The reason they used Pat is so they could use him for public consumption, just like Jessica Lynch. Pat was used to dupe the public, which is outrageous. And if people don't see that, then I think it speaks to how numb we are to the deceit and deception and lies we have been subjected to the last eight years. This is a young man who gave up a tremendous amount to serve his country, and he was killed, and they tried to use him to their benefit, to their advantage. They lied to us and in lying to us made us feel like we were losing our minds, because the documents we were receiving didn't make sense. I mean, it's crazy-making behavior, and it's cruel and it's abusive. And also, Pat is not an isolated case. I think definitely the public should be outraged.
- from Alternet
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5/25/2008
David Rieff on lying to his dying mother, Susan Sontag
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It was impossible even to tell her...that I loved her because to have done so would have been to say:
'You're dying.'
The Guardian has printed an extended excerpt from David Rieff's memoir,
Swimming in a Sea of Death,
the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer
But it is one thing to believe, as I did and do, that my mother owed neither me nor anyone
else anything whatever with regard to the matter of her death, and quite
another to pretend that the decisions which she took and the way she involved
me in those decisions came without a cost. By choosing - if it even was as volitional
as that - to go to her grave refusing until literally the last two weeks before she
died to accept, let alone admit to anyone else that she was dying, my mother made it
impossible for those close to her to say goodbye properly. It was impossible even to tell her -
in a deep way, I mean - that I loved her because to have done so would have been to say: 'You're dying.'
- excerpted from the
Guardian
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5/18/2008
Swing Hammer Swing! author, Jeff Torrington, 1935-2008
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"It is the spirit of Glasgow distilled into 400 pages," wrote one critic about Swing Hammer Swing!, the book which took 30 years for Scottish writer Jeff Torrington to complete and which won two
Whitbread Awards in 1992, for best first novel and book of the year. "Each tiny drop intoxicating – and thus to be slowly savoured – but you can't help just necking half the bottle at one go. No-one has ever encapsulated so much of the language, humour, attitude, philosophy, character and restless energy of the dear green place (Glasgow)."
Jeff Torrington, long suffering from Parkinson's disease, died last Sunday aged 72.
Birds do it, bees do it, and even, if public television is to be believed, walruses do it, and when they do, it looks ridiculous. One of the funniest sex scenes ever written occurs in Jeff Torrington’s Swing Hammer Swing! (1992), when Glaswegian hero Tom Clay (his torso a busy blur, his MacDougall at attention) gives the delectably slutty Becky McQuade a right seeing-to in 1960s Glasgow. After dancing “boozily” together, there follows “a little Simon and Garfumbling,” as Tom’s hands frolic like frisky salamanders up Becky’s dress, leading to “what old Walt Whitman calls ‘libidinous prongs’ forking up through me, that carnal revving of the senses as the moral brakes ease off.” (Oh, my!) Torrington’s homage to James Joyce’s Ulysses is a Scottish masterpiece, and is criminally and inexplicably out of print. Thieve, slander, swindle, donate soft-money—do whatever you have to do to find a copy
-- Susan McCallum-Smith, writing for urbanite
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5/14/2008
Philippe Sands before the House Committee
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Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at University College London, has testified before the House Judiciary Sub-Committee about the findings in his new book, Torture Team, which examines the legal implications of the Bush administration's policy of torture. The Bush administration has always claimed that the legal authority to use violent tactics "came from the bottom up", that they were simply reacting to requests from "people on the ground". But that is merely part of the cover-up and spin Sands told the committee. It was top-down. It was the US government's explicit and deliberate policy to abrogate the Geneva conventions and subject the supposedly most dangerous captives to what were euphemistically called "aggressive interrogation techniques", 18 specific techniques that flouted international definitions of illegal torture. Following his testimony, Sands appeared at the forum Beyond the Torture Debate, Charting the Legal Path from 9/11 to Guantanamo.
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