Month: April 2007

They Were Warned

by digby

As the media elite and various political insiders continue to behave as if they’ve just been hit over the head with a cudgel on this Imus matter, perhaps they should wake up and recognize that there have been people out there noticing the raw hypocrisy among this Imus Elite for years. And this does not just come from the more recent bloviating by scruffy bloggers in their deplorable “efficiency” apartments.

There have always been a handful of columnists and journalists who got it. And no one got it better than the late Lars Erik Nelson:

Daily News (New York)

September 22, 1995, Friday

POLS WHO TALK NICE AND ACT NAUGHTY

BYLINE: BY LARS-ERIK NELSON

SECTION: Editorial Pg. 41

LENGTH: 583 words

Washington Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) came to the Senate floor with
a look of sad concern on his face. He was deeply troubled, he said, at the vulgar, morally repugnant content of the new TV season. “We are lowering the standards of what is acceptable in our society and we are sending a message to our children,” he said. He denounced an “acceptance of rude language, foul imagery and gross behavior in the entertainment mainstream.”

Then, warning parents who might be watching on C-SPAN to move their little children away from the TV sets, Lieberman cited a few of the outrages: On ABC’s “Wilde Again,” a character asks to be called “Daddy’s little whore.” Another ABC program showed an upraised middle finger. CBS’ “Bless This House” used the phrase “little hooters” in reference to a girl’s breasts. “Profoundly disturbing,” Lieberman intoned. “Sophomoric.”

Funny thing: The previous morning, Lieberman had been a guest, as is his regular custom, on the Don Imus radio show on WFAN, a program that seems to get the bulk of its yuks from penis references.

If you have never heard the Imus show, listen in. It is a cross between an endless infomercial and a bunch of 8-year-olds telling doo-doo jokes into a tape recorder. It is rescued only by increasingly rare moments of inspired, hilarious brilliance.

Tune in any morning and you’ll hear Imus or one of his sidekicks joking about having “lipstick on the dipstick” and much worse. This is nationwide morning radio.

Lieberman worries, on the Senate floor, that the increasing vulgarity of network TV “is lowering the standards of what we accept on television, particularly in what used to be family programing hours.”

But he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. This week’s moments of supposed humor on Imus, broadcast at an hour when children are rising for school, included a reference to Attorney General Janet Reno in crotchless pantyhose, an interview with Screw Magazine’s Al Goldstein and a drunken woman saying “s—” over the air. Teehee.

Lieberman is alarmed that some child watching an 8 p.m. TV show might hear the word “hooters.” Yet he legitimizes, by his regular presence, a radio show that will fill the child’s ears with far more vulgarity, sly racist jokes, gay-baiting and all-around bad taste than the child is ever likely to hear on TV.

Why jump into this sewer? Votes. Imus is free media. His audience consists mainly of those 18-to-34-year-old males who are so hard for a politician to reach.

The temptation is overwhelming. Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) will in one breath deplore the coarsening of our national discourse and the state of race relations, then appear on Imus where the idea of a neat joke is to suggest a black football player might be a carjacker.

Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) righteously denounces Hollywood for its raunchy movies and then joins the gang on Imus for a little friendly guy banter.

You can’t blame Imus for being what he is. He even serves the positive purpose of making current events entertaining. His parodies only make sense if you have been paying attention to the world around you.

But for Lieberman there is no excuse. One moment he joins the snickering on Imus, the next he’s on the Senate floor as the pious defender of family virtue against encroaching vulgarity.

By all means, Lieberman, Bradley, Dole and the rest should go on Imus. But if they do, spare us the sanctimonious sermons about the vulgarity of modern broadcasting.

They never stopped. in fact three years later Lieberman took to the floor of the Senate and “helped” Bill Clinton by saying to the whole world that he was immoral. All of these moral scolds, but most especially Lieberman, are rank hypocrites.

I do not want to hear another word from these people about civility, rudeness and the decline of the discourse. And I certainly don’t want to hear any more BS about blogging ethics and good manners on the internet from any of them. For more than a decade we had to endure lectures from many of these people about “values” and more recently we’ve had to listen to them call for the smelling salts over the degradation of the public square from the barbaric polloi. Yet throughout they loved to hang around with that overgrown adolescent and let him sell their books for him when he wasn’t cruelly disparaging everything in his sights, including them. If those are the decent values Joe Lieberman has been braying about incessantly for the last decade, he certainly got what what he was looking for.

And might I also add that this whining about rappers is pretty much the same thing? I know it’s been a long time since these guys were kids, but didn’t their mothers tell them that just because some of their schoolmates jump off a bridge it doesn’t mean they should do it too?

Or as Joan Walsh pithily remarked:

I hate the misogyny of some rap music — it’s not all misogynistic — but rappers didn’t invent sick notions of black women as sexual objects in America; those ideas have an old, old history here, going back to the days when the chains black men wore weren’t bling. As I said to Scarborough and Ridley, when we have “Snoop Dogg Country” on MSNBC, and Young Jeezy’s doing the morning drive-time show instead of Imus, then let’s talk about how rappers deserve the outrage Imus brought on himself. In my opinion, hundreds of years of the racist misogyny of white men like Imus and McGuirk are far more responsible for misogynistic rap music than the reverse. And as I type this I’m thinking, is that even up for debate? Fellas, please.

H/T to PN. Thank you.
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Laying The Foundation

by digby

TPM points to this post by Josh Green referring to his 2003 piece referencing Karl Rove’s history of crying “voter fraud.” As it happens, some of you may remember that I flagged Green’s piece back in March to illustrate the same point — that while “voter fraud” has long been a GOP rallying cry to explain why nobody likes them, Rove has made a career out of using it to steal elections.

I felt before the last election that Rove was preparing a full-on voter fraud challenge if the numbers were close enough in key states. But the GOP was just too damned unpopular everywhere to even try to steal it. Had this US Attorney scandal not turned this rock over and revealed the the festering politics beneath, this plan would have gone forward for 2008.

To fully understand how they were laying the groundwork among the wingnuts, here’s that nice lady, Howard Kurtz’s new bff, writing for the racist organization VDARE back in 2004:

The Illegal Alien Swing Vote

By Michelle Malkin The right to vote is precious, the politicians preach. Our democracy hangs in the balance, the pundits screech. Yes, but if we all value the sanctity of the voting process so highly, why is it that I’ve never once been asked to produce identification of any kind in the 16 years I’ve been a voter, from Ohio to California to Washington State to Maryland? And why is it that we can’t protect our elections from people who have no right to vote, no right to be here, and no right to undermine our safety or sovereignty? While unhinged Democrats spread fear about the alleged discriminatory disenfranchisement of American citizens, they have supported the indiscriminate enfranchisement of untold numbers of foreign outlaws—including suspected al Qaeda operatives and terrorist sympathizers. Last week, the Columbus Dispatch reported that illegal alien Nuradin Abdi—the suspected shopping mall bomb plotter from Somalia—was registered to vote in the battleground state of Ohio by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a left-wing activist group. Also on the Ohio voting rolls: convicted al Qaeda agent Iyman Faris, who planned to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge and had entered the country fraudulently from Pakistan on a student visa.[ “Long gone but still registered Ohio’s Election Day rolls include people who couldn’t—and shouldn’t—vote ,October 24, 2004, Jon Craig The Columbus Dispatch“] In the battleground state of Florida, indicted terror suspect Sami Al-Arian illegally cast his ballot in a Tampa referendum in 1994 while his citizenship application was pending. He claimed the unlawful vote was the result of a “misunderstanding.” State officials declined to prosecute. You’ve heard about those satirical “10 out of 10 terrorists agree: Anybody But Bush” bumper stickers? There may be more truth to them than you think. John Fund, author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, reports that at least eight of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were eligible to vote in Virginia or Florida while they plotted to kill Americans. What’s to stop the next foreign terrorist plotter from casting a tainted ballot in the nation he has sworn to destroy? Not much. According to the Franklin County Board of Elections, the Dispatch reports, the office simply “takes a person’s word, that they’re (sic) a U.S. citizen.” In the battleground state of Wisconsin, the story is the same for those who are responsible for registering other people to vote. Not only do we regularly do nothing to verify the citizenship of people voting, but we also shrug our shoulders at the citizenship status of election workers. I recently obtained a disturbing set of investigative reports from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), outlining how the city of Racine neglects to ask deputy registrar applicants for identification or proof of citizenship. FAIR’s investigation also alleges that a deputy registrar in Racine registered two individuals—one posing as an admitted illegal alien—and reportedly advised them to lie on their forms. The report notes that the deputy registrar—working for the open borders lobbying group, Voces de la Frontera—then gave the couple information on other illegal alien benefits, including employment rights and bank accounts. Law enforcement officials in Wisconsin—which has been swamped with voter fraud shenanigans—have copies of the report, affidavits from the couple who dealt with the registrar, and recordings of their conversations. But no action, if any, is likely until after the Nov. 2 election. Democrats at the state and federal levels have aggressively courted the illegal alien swing vote. The most-egregious example, of course, was the taxpayer-funded Citizenship USA program under the Clinton-Gore administration, which abandoned criminal background checks to naturalize 1.3 million immigrants (including scores of criminal alien felons) in time for the 1996 elections. Ethnic and racial grievance groups, with backing from the likes of Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy, have forcefully opposed basic ID requirements at the polls. And they have armies of lawyers standing by to assist them. Responsible election officials who ask for proof of citizenship will be accused of “harassment” and “intimidation.” They will be accused of causing a “chilling effect”—never mind the corrosive effect of unchecked illegal alien voter fraud on law, order, and the integrity of our electoral system. Political correctness cost us 3,000 lives on Sept. 11. It may cost us an election on Nov. 2.

You will, of course, note that she specifically talks about Wisconsin where massive pressure was brought to bear against the US Attorney there to bring indictments. Indeed, in the last few days it’s become known that he may have been on the list to be fired for failing to “make it work”, but for reasons about which we can only speculate (a well-timed political show trial) he was allowed to keep his job.

This article in today’s NY Times shows definitively that even with the full force of the White House pressuring people to come up with evidence of voter fraud, there just isn’t much to find.

It doesn’t address the real dangers however, which Malkin in her infinite wisdom sees so clearly:

What’s to stop the next foreign terrorist plotter from casting a tainted ballot in the nation he has sworn to destroy?

It’s one short step from terrorism to fraudulently voting for Democrats. My God, these barbarians will stop at nothing.

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One Down

by digby

So CBS said sayonara to Imus. The fabulously wealthy man is out of a job at least until he can put together a satellite deal, which is fine. If people want to subscribe to his bullying, sophomoric show, they can have at it. And if all these beltway types want to further sully their reputations by yukking it up with that mean, crude, nasty man, they can do that too. But I don’t know how many books it will sell for them …

But before we all dance around the campfire singing ding dong the witch is dead, take a moment to absorb this, from a C&L post of a couple weeks ago:

Hugh Hewitt Wrong again This is what he said on The Situation Room: HEWITT: “No, that’s not right, because talk radio, when you look at Rush, at Sean, at myself, at Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, we all conduct ourselves appropriately on the air, or the FCC will smack — smite — smack us down.—So, I think what we have got is basically a monopoly on responsible new media on the center-right side, and talk radio is responsible new media, even though that fever swamp on the left, the Michael Moore-disease-ridden Democrats on the left, they don’t want to admit that, so they won’t. But, in fact, talk radio is quite responsible.” He’s quite selective in his reporting which is nothing new. The fact that he says he starts from “the center” is laughable. Here’s a quick example of the fine, responsible right wing talk radio: Boortz: I saw Cynthia McKinney’s hairdo yesterday — saw it on TV. I don’t blame that cop for stopping her. It looked like a welfare drag queen was trying to sneak into the Longworth House Office Building. That hairdo is ghetto trash. I don’t blame them for stopping her… Michael Savage wants people to burn the Mexican flag. Glenn Beck called hurricane survivors in New Orleans “scumbags,” said he “hates” 9-11 families.

Liberals have been extremely hard on MSM figures and Democrats who patronized Imus and we have held their feet to the fire these last few days.

How much are we betting that the “conservatives” do the same?

Yeah. That’s what I thought.

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Professionalized Corruption

by digby

The TPM empire is chasing down the voter fraud issue with its usual zeal and Josh is connecting the dots and putting things into perspective. (Here’s a nice write-up of the Rove speech to the RNLA.)

As everyone knows, the Republicans have been throwing around this voter fraud trope for years as a way of intimidating minority voters. And I’m sure it works. Between the long lines and the harrassment at the polls, a lot of people just won’t bother. That, of course, is exactly the point.

Last week I wrote about this paper done by the Center for Voting Rights before the 2004 election which discussed in depth the GOP’s modern voter intimidation operation, which is called the Republican National lawyers Association. It turns out that it was formed for the purpose of combatting “voter fraud” which, as Josh explains in his post, is pretty much non-existent in any systematic way and is usually some guy faking signatures on a registration form to earn money, not actual people voting. They are trying to intimidate people into not voting and the way they do this is by making an example of some poor person in a minority community who made a mistake and filled out a form incorrectly, like this one:

Another example is that of Pakistani immigrant Usman Ali. He’d been in the US for ten years and owned a jewelry store. He was in line one day at the DMV when a clerk put a registration form in front of him along with other forms. Ali hastily filled it out. He never made any attempt to vote. But the mistake got him deported back to Pakistan where he’s now trying to rebuild his life with his US citizen wife and daughter.

Again, note that these random “crimes” rarely include actual illegal voting. They are almost always some snafu related to registration paperwork. (See this NY Times article debunking the myth of widespread voter fraud.

How all this relates to the US Attorney scandal is partly what Marshall points out today — all roads lead to Karl Rove’s white house office where he directed various schemes which may have obstructed justice, but in any case were unethical interference from the political side of the administration.

But there’s more than just Karl’s direct efforts. In a post on the subject at All Spin Zone, Richard writes:

I have no doubt that RNLA-trained and equipped lawyers are now serving in U.S. Attorney positions around the country. And most of them are regarded as “loyal Bushies” first, and instruments of the proper administration of the U.S. Department of Justice second. That’s the way the Bush regime works.

Yes it is:

In his day job, Christian Adams writes legal briefs for the voting rights section of the Justice Department, a job that requires a nonpartisan approach.

Off the clock, Adams belongs to the Republican National Lawyers Association, a group that trains hundreds of Republican lawyers to monitor elections and pushes for confirmation of conservative nominees for federal judgeships.

Vice President Dick Cheney credited the 3,000-member association in 2005 with helping the Republicans win the previous two presidential elections. Last year, President Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove shared with the group his insights on winning elections in key battleground states. At a conference the association organized last month, speakers called the controversy over whether eight U.S. attorneys had been fired for partisan political reasons “farcical” and “ridiculous.”

According to the group’s Web site, Adams is one of dozens of Bush administration appointees or civil servants who are members, including at least 25 in the Justice Department, nine in the Department of Defense and others in the Labor and Commerce departments, the White House and the Office of Special Counsel, which oversees investigations into allegations of ethical misconduct by government employees.

Some are entry-level employees; others are high-ranking political appointees.

Their names appeared on the organization’s Web site under the heading “Find a Republican Lawyer,” in many cases along with their federal government e-mail addresses and work telephone numbers.

While government employees are permitted to be members of political organizations, the prominent listings on the Republican National Lawyers Association’s Web site strike some current and former Justice Department lawyers as inappropriate, especially given that several members of the group work in the Justice Department’s voting section, criminal division or as assistant U.S. attorneys.

Lawyers in those jobs are supposed to be especially careful to avoid the appearance of partisanship, because of the sensitive political nature of the cases they may handle, including voting access lawsuits and public corruption cases.

Justice Department officials deny any improper politicization, but after McClatchy Newspapers contacted Adams, his affiliation with the Justice Department was removed from his listing on the association’s Web site. He declined to comment.

The work phone number, e-mail address and biography of counterterrorism adviser Frances Fragos Townsend also were removed at her request after McClatchy contacted the White House.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Townsend “is a member in her personal capacity. That is perfectly lawful.” He added that Townsend told him “she’s not active really at all.”

Former and current Justice Department officials said the Web site listings were an example of how government lawyers had become more open about their political leanings as federal agencies took a more permissive – even encouraging -stance toward partisan political activism.

The concept of political corruption has become adorably quaint at Versailles on the Potomac, but to the rest of us out here in the hinterlands, the idea that current members of a legal organization formed for the express purpose of partisan electioneering are working in the Justice Department seems just a little bit troubling. These guys have the full force of the federal government at their disposal, after all. Federal agencies like the Justice Department taking a more “permissive” stance toward partisan political activism and using the taxpayers money to do it seems like a bad idea if you care about maintaining people’s faith in the justice system. (Perhaps they really don’t care about that, being the relativists they actually are…)

But hey, even the “liberal Richard Cohen” thinks finding this sort of thing troubling is “criminalizing politics,” so best we say no more about it. The decadent insiders have determined that we citizens are being stickers about things we don’t understand. Using tax dollars to rig the vote for Republicans is just business as usual.

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Bad Uncle, Good Uncle

by poputonian

Regulars here know that I’ve quoted Kurt Vonnegut more than once in the past. Last evening came the sad news:

Kurt Vonnegut, the Indianapolis-born literary giant behind seminal 20th-century novels “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Breakfast of Champions,” died Wednesday evening at age 84.

Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

“He’s the closest thing we’ve had to Voltaire,” Tom Wolfe, whose first book had a blurb from Vonnegut, told Bloomberg News Service. “It’s a sad day for the literary world.”

Vonnegut had been scheduled to speak in Indianapolis on April 27 as part of the ongoing “Year of Vonnegut” celebration honoring his life and work. Vonnegut’s son Mark planned to give the 2007 McFadden Memorial Lecture written by his father.

The author’s writing was distinctive for its combination of the satirical and the fantastical, and leavened by a black humor that looked disdainfully upon humankind’s capacity for destruction.

“I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations,” Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

The most popular post featuring Vonnegut that I had written was Blown Circuits: An Autopsy Of The PPs. In that one the master ranted on about the psychopathic personalities now running America.

Labor Day Thoughts borrowed quotes where Vonnegut discussed Socialism and Christianity, and the Sermon on the Mount. That one drew out some nice commentary by Hullabaloo’s best.

In Cortez The Killer, I clipped Vonnegut’s thoughts about music but left out something important that he’d said:

No Matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC

I’m going on sabbatical now and wanted to wish the best to all the Hullabaloovians. I close with an excerpt from Vonnegut’s book A Man Without A Country. This piece was recommended by a commenter to the Blown Circuits post linked above.

I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.

Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any “Good Old Days,” there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, “Don’t look at me, I just got here.”

There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity — the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, “Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.”

When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, “You’re a man now.” So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it.

Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a man can’t be a man unless he’d gone to war.

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Get A Clue

by digby

Oh for gawd’s sake. I’m about to shoot myself in the face if I have to hear another wingnut say that Al Sharpton needs to go after rap lyrics or he’s a hypocrite.

Do rightwingers have google? No More Mister Nice Blog does.

h/t to Julia.

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Nobody Stood Up For Him

by digby

Tucker just said that nobody among Imus’s lifelong friends in the media came forward and vouched for his character, saying he was a good man and not a racist.

Tucker doesn’t watch his own network:

DAVID GREGORY: And Mike, I think I speak for both of us, we are both, as the audience may know, frequent guests on the Imus program. You have known him and been on the program even longer than I have. And this is a difficult time, not just because of the hurt that he has inflicted and what he said, as he tries to deal with it, but for all of us who are on the program and certainly don’t want to be associated with this kind of thing that he’s done, as all of this plays out.

So, first, your reaction to this as we go forward.

BARNICLE: David, you’re right, it is a difficult thing to endure, it’s a difficult thing to hear for any of us, no matter whether you’re on the program or not. I’ve known Don a long time. I can tell you, as he has indicated several times today and last week, he is a good man, he is not a racist. I mean, it sounds pitiful to have to say something like that, but he’s a good man.

[…]

BARNICLE: Oh, David, he absolutely gets it. He, more than any of us, more than you, more than Gene, more than myself, more than a lot of people realizes that word are weapons, that the hurt that these words inflicted are deep, lasting, historical in some sense. The historical pain is resurrected here. He certainly understands that. He also knows that something the two of you just alluded to, this is not over, that we live in a nation, given the power of the Internet and bloggers, that we are a nation of 300 million newspaper columnists today and everyone will weigh in on this, from coast to coast. And at some point, some blogger in Pocatello, Idaho, carries somewhat equal weight to, like, George Will.

That’s the country and the culture we’re a part of. He gets all of that.

[…]

FINEMAN: To answer your earlier question about whether Imus gets it, I think he does get it. But he said what he said, and there will be consequences for what he said. And NBC made it clear tonight what those consequences are. And I think NBC is hoping, as I do, when I spoke with Imus this morning on the radio, that he uses this as what I call the teachable moment, that he learn from this. And as I think he said at one point this morning when I was talking to him, he said, I need to grow up, at least a little. And that’s a humorous way of saying the obvious truth here, that he does. He’s 66 years old. People learn.

I think the form of humor that he was using is not only risky but has probably outlived its usefulness.[! — ed] I think times have changed, things have changed.

But in any era, at any time, to say what he said about those women was, as I think Steve Capus of NBC News said tonight, just reprehensible and outrageous and completely unacceptable in any framework. [nice save…ed]

[…]

GREGORY: Craig Crawford, is it time for Imus to go?

CRAIG CRAWFORD, “CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY,” MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Not at all. I don‘t see how that helps anything. I would say this man—you know, in my experience on the show—I‘ve done it nearly 70 times in the last three years—this—his heart is as big as his mouth, and the mouth gets him in trouble, as it has now.

[…]

GREGORY: But Craig, you feel a little bit differently here. You think that people are overblowing this, that he‘s apologized, that we should move on.

CRAWFORD: I think in the context of this show—I know, as you know say, that much of it is serious commentary. And when they do the sports, as they were doing here, that‘s where you see more to the comedy elements, some of the skits they do. It‘s not just racial. We see jokes about Catholics, about Jewish people, gays, I mean, and my argument would be that when you stifle that kind of speech, when you stifle it, you‘re not dealing with the sentiment behind it. And to actually say someone should be fired for making jokes about this kind of stuff doesn‘t really get us down the road toward discussing what‘s behind it and how—how…

That’s just from Hardball alone.

Tucker got the idea that nobody vouched for Imus’s character from this rather shocking interview with someone I normally quite admire, Jonathan Alter:

ALTER: I do go on the show. I will continue to go on the show. I think what he said was racist, not to mention being unfunny and stupid, but if you don‘t believe he should be fired, then you can‘t call for a boycott, because a boycott would amount to the same thing as his being fired. If all of his guests, all of those senators in both parties, all the journalists all stopped going on, that would be the end of Imus. It would be.

CARLSON: I don‘t know. He could do a sports show.

ALTER: Come on, that‘s his show. So if you favor boycotting him, you favor the end of “Imus in the Morning.”

CARLSON: How about a middle ground?

(CROSS TALK)

CARLSON: — your our own personal conscience doesn‘t allow you to participate in a racist enterprise.

ALTER: That is a boycott. That‘s saying—also, it buys into the idea that I am responsible for every stupid thing that you have said.

CARLSON: So what does going on say?

ALTER: You‘ve said some pretty stupid things. You haven‘t said any racist things that I know of. But you‘ve said some pretty appalling things.

CARLSON: On today‘s show.

ALTER: I don‘t want to have the responsibility to endorse or not endorse things that you said.

CARLSON: I understand. So, what is the message of—you say the message of not going on would be to boycott the show, and that‘s some how wrong. What‘s the message of going on the show?

ALTER: I think the message of going on the show, and if the subject comes up, what I will say the next time I go on the show, is that he does have to be called to account for this. And he has work to do. And he started that today, and he needs to continue it. I think it would—

CARLSON: What kind of work?

ALTER: Well, He needs to go and apologize to those young women directly.

CARLSON: That‘s enough?

ALTER: I don‘t know what‘s enough. I would we could argue about the work that he has to do. But what he said to them was just wrong and racist, and he needs to be called to account for that. The question is whether he deserves the professional death penalty for it and I don‘t believe he does.

CARLSON: Well, he is an older man who is extremely rich, so nobody‘s dying here.

ALTER: Again, the question is, is it the end of his career. Other people, they have seen—

CARLSON: It was the end of George Allen‘s career and nobody cared.

You know what I mean? Nobody cared.

(CROSS TALK)

ALTER: The George Allen comparison is facetious.

(CROSS TALK)

ALTER: I just said what Imus said is racist. You said that there was a double standard.

(CROSS TALK)

ALTER: Voting for them is not the same thing. That‘s a complicated judgment. The question is, should people have had to have boycott appearing with George Allen if they were politicians. I didn‘t call for that. I didn‘t say any Republican should be ashamed of going down and campaigning for George Allen. You didn‘t hear me say that or anybody else.

CARLSON: I did hear people say that, but OK—Richard, do you want to jump in here.

[…]

ALTER: I will go on the show, because I do not believe that even though I think what he said was disgusting and racist that I am responsible for everything that comes out of his mouth. And I don‘t think it‘s a moral issue, as it applies to me.

Well that explains it. Imus makes zillions of dollars for decades with his revolting, stomach churning swill because the establishment media have never felt they have any moral or civic stake in the consequences of such talk. The man is a bullying jerk of the highest order — his ongoing schtick is crude, mean and nasty, almost always something puerile about somene’s looks and physical characteristics, like “nappy headed”, regardless who he and his little band of “comedians” are deriding. And his show adds nothing positive to the discourse even if he does have various insiders on to talk to each other and pimp their books — and give him a veneer of respectability. Sure, you can pretend that just being on his show doesn’t mean anything — but it does to the people who are the object of his cruelty. Nobody’s saying that you can’t go on shows with people with whom you disagree. But when the media and political elite constantly appear with someone who makes a living demeaning others in the coarsest and most inflammatory ways and then laugh and yuk it up on the same show, they are, at the very least, endorsing the kind of show he does if not the specific statements.

If you ever wanted to see how the establishment media bubble is floating around way outside the everyday world in which the rest of us live, this is it.

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Illiberal Insiderism

by digby

Atrios says that this Imus flap isn’t about rappers, despite Howard Kurtz going on TV and spouting MSM talking points to that effect. That is correct — there is a conversation to be had about misogynist rap lyrics, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

I just had a conversation with a wingnut in which I was held responsible for Imus because the so-called liberal media were his strongest defenders so therefore, they are racists, which makes me a racist also. Did you get that logic? That’s where they’re going with this, folks.

I have written before about my pet peeve that people believe the mainstream media represent liberalism, particularly the alleged liberals of the punditocrisy. (Think Richard Cohen.) And because of this, they also don’t have a clue what “liberals” really believe in since politicians babble in politico speak and these sanctioned pundits and talking heads are so incoherent that they rarely make any sense.

Regardless of their designated perch on the media political spectrum, the fact is that these people are part of a decadent political establishment, which has almost nothing to do with liberalism anymore (if it ever did.) But the successful conflation of “liberal” and “media” has brought all the disgust at the pompous clubbiness of the media gasbags down on our heads and I resent the hell out of it.

This is why I’m so repulsed with this Imus mess. Yes, he’s a racist, misogynist jerk — he has smugly made millions shedding crocodile tears each time he “goes off the rails” and everybody knew it. The SCLM eagerly pimped their books on his little public cocktail party and gave us a very valuable window into the way these people relate to one another. It is how we knew exactly what they were doing. We write about it every day, (and are loathed by the elite media for having the temerity to call them on it.) This is the very essence of the leftwing critique of the political press.

So I’m damned if I’m going to be held responsible for these people. They do not represent me or my thinking and haven’t for decades. If they want to sell their books on racist radio shows, they can have at it. But I’d really appreciate it if their magazines and newspapers would designate them as what they are instead of saying that they are representative of liberalism or progressivism — or anything other than insiderism.

Media Matters has helpfully compiled a list of those who have made the pilgrimage to Imus in 2007. I guess none of these pundits, writers and journalists noticed that Clarence Page, Eugene Robinson, Gwen Ifill, Cynthia Tucker or any other black colleagues from major publications or broadcast networks were conspicuously absent from Imus’s show. (Perhaps in their mind, Harold Ford speaks for all African Americans, including journalists.)

It’s not that there should be a quota. But when someone has repeatedly been taken to task for his racist “jokes” and there seem to be almost no minorities on the show, you’d think that some of these people might have asked themselves whether they might be tacitly endorsing something wrong by palling around with him so blatantly.

We know this happens on the rightwing hate radio all the time. The president himself appears on Rush even though Rush says repeatedly that half the country aren’t even real Americans and are routinely committing treason. That seems a little bit beneath the leader of the free world, but that’s just me. However, the Democrats and the media elite who patronize the Imus on-air frat party aren’t much better. Talk radio in general has been a sewer for many, many years now and nobody in the media ever seemed to give a damn, constantly making excuses and calling it good fun. They still are.

This scandal finally puts to rest that old liberal media trope. There is no liberal political media of any consequence in our culture. There is establishment media, which is actively hostile to liberalism and there is conservative media which is part of the wingnut welfare system. So they can call the Imus regulars whatever they want, but don’t call them liberal.

It’s like when Ann Coulter said they should string up John Walker Lind so liberals would know what could happen to them (as if we dirty hippies on the left are supportive of conservative religious extremists!)so too my wingnut friend’s idea that “liberal” racists are defending Don Imus. It just doesn’t make sense when you stop and think about it. These pals of his may or may not be racists but it’s pretty clear that by hanging around so comfortably with one who makes such a huge profit selling racism that they certainly aren’t liberals.

Update: MSNBC is dropping Imus. I ‘ll look forward to hearing what all his defenders say now.

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Here They Go Again

by digby

I don’t know if they’re joking or what, but I can hardly believe they are going to try to pull this now:

President Bush’s spy chief is pushing to expand the government’s surveillance authority at the same time the administration is under attack for stretching its domestic eavesdropping powers.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government’s powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used.

Known as “FISA,” the 1978 law was passed to allow surveillance in espionage and other foreign intelligence investigations, but still allow federal judges on a secretive panel to ensure protections for U.S. citizens — at home or abroad — and other permanent U.S. residents.

The changes McConnell is seeking mostly affect a cloak-and-dagger category of warrants used to investigate suspected spies, terrorists and other national security threats. The court-approved surveillance could include planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives.

McConnell, who took over the 16 U.S. spy agencies and their 100,000 employees less than three months ago, is signaling a more aggressive posture for his office and will lay out his broad priorities on Wednesday as part of a 100-day plan.

The retired Navy vice admiral recently met with leaders at the National Security Agency, Justice Department and other agencies to learn more about the rules they operate under and what ties their hands, according to officials familiar with the discussions and McConnell’s proposals. The officials described them on condition that they not be identified because the plans are still being developed.

Ties their hands? Well, the entire constitution “ties their hands” if you want to look at it that way. Wouldn’t they be able to “protect us” better if they could just lock up anybody they find suspicious without any of these messy legal requirements? Wouldn’t their jobs be easier if they could just shoot people they think might be breaking the law? Why are we tying their hands this way? Clearly, all these laws are keeping them from protecting the nation.

According to officials familiar with the draft changes to FISA, McConnell wants to:

_Give the NSA the power to monitor foreigners without seeking FISA court approval, even if the surveillance is conducted by tapping phones and e-mail accounts in the United States.

“Determinations about whether a court order is required should be based on considerations about the target of the surveillance, rather than the particular means of communication or the location from which the surveillance is being conducted,” NSA Director Keith Alexander told the Senate last year.

_Clarify the standards the
FBI and NSA must use to get court orders for basic information about calls and e-mails — such as the number dialed, e-mail address, or time and date of the communications. Civil liberties advocates contend the change will make it too easy for the government to access this information.

_Triple the life span of a FISA warrant for a non-U.S. citizen from 120 days to one year, allowing the government to monitor much longer without checking back in with a judge.

_Give telecommunications companies immunity from civil liability for their cooperation with Bush’s terrorist surveillance program. Pending lawsuits against companies including Verizon and AT&T allege they violated privacy laws by giving phone records to the NSA for the program.

_Extend from 72 hours to one week the amount of time the government can conduct surveillance without a court order in emergencies.

Uhm. No. An administration that has politicized the Department of Justice to the point where even the uber-hawkish, pro Bush Washington Post editorial page is concerned (see Greenwald here) cannot be trusted with more unfettered power to spy on its own citizens. Sorry. Fool me once, won’t get fooled again.

I can hardly believe they are going to try to do this directly on the heels of the US Attorney scandal and worst of all this:

The FBI’s Secret Scrutiny
In Hunt for Terrorists, Bureau Examines Records of Ordinary Americans

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender “all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person” who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities — still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit — by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. “National security letters,” created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

That was from 2005. Just last month we were told about this:

The Justice Department’s inspector general told a committee of angry House members yesterday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that according to the FBI’s own estimate, as many as 600 of these violations could be “cases of serious misconduct” involving the improper use of “national security letters” to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records.

National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI recordkeeping has been chaotic and “significantly understates” the actual use of that tool.

There is a reason that the constitution was written the way it was — to protect free people from the corrupt likes of Karl Rove and his henchment in the powerful office of the presidency. Having been under the thumb of monarchy, the original Americans knew the evil that could be done in the name of the crown and they put in place safeguards.

No executive branch can be trusted in these matters. Not the Democrats and certainly not the Republicans who, in their modern incarnation, have shown themselves for the last forty years to be hungry for as much authority as possible and who seem to have a propensity to use the power of the presidency to spy on their domestic political enemies.

Check this out:

McConnell hinted at his discomfort with current laws last week during a speech before an audience of government executives, saying he worries that current laws and regulations prevent intelligence agencies from using all of their capabilities to protect the nation.

“That’s the big challenge going forward,” he said…

I love these small government conservatives, don’t you? They hate everything about it except use its massive and ever growing police powers. That they truly love.

Here’s why that comment sends chills down my spine and why it should send chills down yours. Intelligence agencies using “all their capabilities” against their own citizens in the name of protecting them is something only a Stalinist could love. There is no end to it. And when you hear the president of the United States and his entire political apparatus repeatedly saying that anti-war sentiment or domestic political opposition is “helping the terrorists” you don’t have to be a genius to figure out what Mr. McConnell’s “protecting the nation” might mean, do you?

This is very dangerous stuff and I hope the Democrats are not listening to the strategists this time who say that this is dangerous ground for them politically. Even if it is, they have an obligation to try to put a stop to this right now.

There is no reason that the government needs anything more than the already existing secret court to issue secret warrants that are good for 120 days. If they can’t “protect us” with that kind of power then they are either incompetent or they are doing something so wrong that even a kangaroo court won’t sign off on it. Loosening those rules is absurd on its face.

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Blog Against Theocracy: Links Parts I – VII

by tristero

Here, for your convenience, are links to the entire series of posts I did for Blog Against Theocracy:

Part I: Meet The Theocrats
Part II: A Taste Of Rushdoony
Part III: God’s Law, Never Man’s
Part IV: Takeover Of The Texas GOP
Part V: How A Christian Republic Punishes And Taxes
Part VI: The Continuing Influence Of Pat Robertson
Part VII: Culture Is Religion
Also, here is a link to Digby’s post about sleeper cells of christianists throughout the Bush administration.