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This Is What Democracy Looks Like
Today's Note From a Madman
December 30, 2008
The Big Story
There are many web sites, newspapers and other media-type outlets talking about
the big story, and the lesser stories of the year. Certainly Story Number One is
the election of the first African-American President of the United States Barack
Obama (not to mention Time Magazine's Person of the Year). And in relation to
Story Number One, Story Number Two would have to be the collapse of our nation's
financial institutions, which had helped to create Story Number One.
But what about 2009? What will be Story Number One when 2009 ends? Had we asked
that same question in 2000 after it was apparent George W. Bush would take the
helm of our nation, certainly no one would have predicted the terrorist attacks
of September 11, 2001 as being That Story.
Had someone tried to make that prediction eight years ago, those on the Right
would have predicted a flourishing economy after the giant tax breaks Bush
promised were enacted with huge job growth numbers and a stock market setting
record numbers. Certainly Time Magazine's Person of the Year (2001) would have
been "W" himself.
(Note: 2001's Person of the Year was controversial. The magazine was accused of
practicing political correctness when it named New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani
- by then replaced by Michael Bloomberg - instead of al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin-Laden.)
On the Left, predictions of political and economical disasters like job losses
were, unfortunately, realized.
It's just too bad that "I told you so's" don't fix anything.
During the Bush years, many different stories took their turn as Story Number
One. Some, such as Job losses and the Economy had legs because they were of
importance to all of us and couldn't be ignored. Others were brought forth by
the Bush administration and others on the Right due to their ability to divide
and conquer us. And they were used masterfully by the likes of Bush's Brain Karl
Rove, Fox News Channel and Right Wing Radio to drive a wedge in between those of
us who were paying attention and those of us who were looking for an opinion to
adopt.
The latter group - the easily manipulated - lined up behind such causes as hate
for slightly darker people, disguised as Immigration Reform and Morality, which
hid behind the opposition against stem cell research and, my personal favorite
(with all sarcasm intended), the fight to "save" Terry Schiavo.
So, in the spirit of the season, I'm going to take our my crystal ball and make
my prediction for what will be The Big Story at the end of 2009:
The Economy: As long as the Republican minority in the Senate doesn't continue
to offer up filibuster after filibuster, the Obama Incentive Package should come
through at about $800 billion initially and somewhere between $1 and $1.25
trillion by the end of 2009. However, we all know that just throwing money at a
problem isn't necessarily the answer to all of our financial woes. I believe
that our new economy, centered around its biggest providers - the US middle
class - will show real signs of recovery when the 2009 Holiday season rolls
around.
What makes me point to the end of 2009 as the beginning of our full economic
recovery are the promises made by the President-Elect. By providing a cash
release in his Incentive Package and new jobs in a jobs program designed around
rebuilding America, the new administration is attempting to tackle the two main
problems which are facing our economy today. They are putting money into the
hands of the people who will spend it: the US middle class. The Trickle-Down
economics of Reagan and Bush(41) couldn't spark the economy then and the
Bush(43) Trickle-Down policies couldn't spark or save his economy now.
The topper will come if - and it is an "if" - President Obama and the Democrats
in Congress can get health care reform passed and enacted. Taking the specter of
losing everything due to medical bills off the table can do nothing but help our
economy in the end.
And won't it be nice to see our economy advance for a change?
-Noah Greenberg
Q on the Tube: Hate TV
by Victoria A. Brownworth
copyright c 2008, 2009 PGN, Inc.
Majority America gets their news and ideas from TV. This has been true for
decades. Americans want products because of TV, adopt certain styles because of
TV, are interested in celebrity gossip because of TV, decide who to vote for
because of TV–or at least they have since the debate between John F. Kennedy and
Richard Nixon in 1960 where JFK looked young and virile and Nixon’s flop sweat
and five o’clock shadow turned viewers off.
This is why it’s so necessary to have positive and varied depictions of LGBT
characters on the tube in series and sit-coms and why it’s vital to have LGBT
people on talk shows and the news. Most people get their cues from TV.
Millions watch “Ellen” every day. Ellen De Generes has used her position as
comedian and talk show host to raise issues of LGBT civil rights. She discussed
her own wedding to Portia de Rossi on her show. She invited Barack Obama,
Hillary Clinton and John McCain on the show–and they came–and discussed LGBT
issues with all of them. She’s done programs on bullying of LGBT youth and made
it clear to her varied–but largely middle class straight–audience that
homophobia kills.
Rachel Maddow is the other out lesbian with a TV talk show, but hers reaches a
different audience in prime time, on cable (MSNBC) with the focus on politics.
Maddow hasn’t shied away from LGBT topics, either. Last week she took on the
subject of Rick Warren.
The outrage over Barack Obama’s choice of a known hatemonger to give the
invocation at what will no doubt be the most-watched presidential inaugural in
history has been growing. But that outrage which is all over the blogosphere and
in the queer media has been largely unreported in the mainstream media and
ignored by prime-time network and cable TV with very few exceptions (the usual
suspects like Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart).
Yet it has been through TV that Rick Warren has garnered such a vast audience
for his perspective on queers and women, which include equating homosexuality
with bestiality, incest and pedophilia and calling women who have
abortions–legal under the law–Nazi perpetrators of a Holocaust against unborn
children.
It seems unlikely that President-elect Obama will re-think his terrible choice
for the invocation. Like most politicians, Obama is intransigent on issues once
he’s decided he’s right. Even when he’s dead wrong, as he is for having this
hatemonger lead the nation in prayer, implicitly giving Warren’s hate message
his blessing.
TV has allowed Warren the edge–he goes on talk show after talk show (in addition
to being a regular speaker on Christian cable and network programs) and repeats
the same outrageous hate speech about LGBT people and women. There is no
opposing voice to speak for our side of what is being called an “issue” but
which is actually our lives.
Warren used TV to promulgate his message on Prop 8 that same-sex marriage would
weaken heterosexual marriage and also damage the First Amendment rights of
Christians. Warren has used TV since the controversy over his being chosen to
give Obama’s invocation to spread more of his hatemongering views.
But where is the LGBT voice in all of this?
Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” is one of the shows most likely to make the hairs on
the back of your neck stand on end. During the primary his non-stop sexist
assault on Hillary Clinton was so egregious, the network forced him to
apologize–not once, but twice.
Last week the even slimier and aptly named Mike Barnacle was filling in for the
vacationing (and prepping for Arlen Specter’s Pennsylvania Senate seat which he
so does not deserve to get) Matthews.
Barnacle reduced the Warren controversy to a queeny tempest in a handful of “gay
cities.” His guests were Rev. Eugene Rivers for homophobia and Capitol Hill
Democratic gay activist Mike Rogers for the defense of queer lives.
Rivers declared that the outrage of tens of millions of Americans over the
Warren choice was a “pseudo controversy,” which is like saying outrage over
slavery and lynching was a pseudo-controversy, since the controversy is about
the denial of civil rights for millions.
Rogers, as he so often does on his BlogActive website, knocked it out of the
park. No hysteria, no name-calling, no viciousness. Just the facts and a twist
on the way the argument was supposed to go. (Check out the interview at
MSNBC.com)
Rogers declared victory–something neither Rivers nor Barnacle was expecting.
Rogers noted that Warren’s Saddleback Church website had taken down its
stipulation that homosexuals could not be members of the church unless they
repented their sin of being queer.
Obviously, asserted Rogers, the “angry gay protesters” had impacted Warren.
Rivers could only sputter in response.
Rogers also demanded a sit-down between Warren and LGBT leaders. Rivers again
protested, to which the very cool and calm Rogers simply said leader to leader
they should talk, if Warren wanted to defend his perspective.
No defensible protest to that.
The exchange between Rogers and Rivers delineates why the voices of LGBT people
must be heard on TV. When we get to speak, we get heard; our “life style” is no
longer an “issue”–it’s our lives on the line. We become real people, like Ellen
and Maddow–not the faceless statistic of one in ten Americans.
In the new year the LGBT community must make one of its goals getting our faces
and voices on the tube. It’s how America learns about difference. It’s
increasing clear that it’s how we ourselves can make a difference.
In response to, "My main issue now is COAL. There is no such thing as "clean
coal". It's a dirty medieval fuel. Men are trapped and killed underground mining
it, and whole mountains are taken down to get out the coal with big machinery,
which pollutes the creeks and rivers, and then pollutes the skies when it is
burned to create electricity," David W. writes:
I remember, back in 2004, my neighbors told me in all seriousness that John
Kerry and his wife Theresa were sitting on top of huge reserves of clean burning
coal. Yes, the Kerry's were Liberal hypocrites because they wanted everyone to
abandon coal simply because they had all the reserves of clean burning coal
themselves.
Conservatives get to hear the most outrageous crap and the best part is, they
BELIEVE it so strongly. Anyone else hear anything about that?
In response to three separate issues, Lew Warden writes:
You’re half right on the Big Money Bail Out. But Congress should be passing laws
to make the rascals disgorge what they stole, but it won’t because Obama’s boys
were right in there grabbing too.
You’re wrong about Fey hurting Palin. It was the biggest boost she could have
had for a fair shot at middle America. The big mistake was in selling out to the
Religious Right. If he would have gone for it, nominating Lieberman, the guy who
kicked your Left Wing asses in his senate race, would have shattered the
extremists’ strangle hold on both parties.
You’re wrong about coal. Coal is just energy, energy which some day you’ll be
crying for to warm your backsides, if Al Gore’s global warming gets much colder.
Coal can be cleaned up, but, of course, this raises its cost. The Nazis seemed
to do alright with coal produced diesel when their Me 109s were shooting down
our B-17s in bunches and their tanks were rolling. If we hadn’t knocked out
their oil refineries and transport systems, our invasion of Europe might have
been a major disaster.
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-Noah Greenberg