SOTU: If This be Liberalism, Let Us Make the Most of It

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama delivered some news the Republicans in Congress really didn’t want to hear: Things in America are a lot better, in objectively measurable ways, than they were six years ago when he took office.

An economy growing at the fastest rate since 1999. Deficits cut by two-thirds. Millions more people with health insurance. Soldiers coming home from two brutal wars. Lower gas prices. And much more.

“The shadow of crisis has passed,” the president said, “and the state of the union is strong.”

This, of course, did not sit well with those, both in the opposition party and the media, whose phony-baloney jobs (to quote the great Mel Brooks) depend on keeping Americans in a constant state of crisis, insecurity and fear. They need to keep insisting that nothing is getting better, that the state of the union is one of disaster and decay, that we’re doomed, I tell you, doomed, and we’ll be back to tell you more about it — right after this message from Cialis.

PBS commentator Mark Shields, for example, seemed amazed that the president didn’t slink to the podium dressed in sackcloth, deliver a mumbled apology for being alive, and stumble away under a hail of thrown vegetables and tin cans.

“This was not a conciliatory speech,” Shields said. “It’s amazing that the guy just got crushed in an election and he comes out very strong, very assertive.”

Well, Mark, maybe it’s because it wasn’t President Obama who got “crushed.”

In case you hadn’t noticed, Barack Obama wasn’t running in 2014. In the years he was actually running, it was Mr. Obama who did the crushing, as he noted in the night’s best line. When the Republicans responded to his statement that he has “no more campaigns to run” with derisive applause, Mr. Obama smiled the smile of a man whose opponent has just walked, serenely and all unaware, into a perfectly thrown and devastating left hook.

“I know,” he said, “I won both of them.”



That got a lot of laughter from the Democrats, but I’m wondering if it may have been partially directed at the ones who blew the 2014 elections so badly by forgetting why Mr. Obama won.

There were a lot of Democrats who were defeated in 2014. The thing that most of those candidates had in common was that they “ran away,” not only from the president, not only from his policies, but also from the fact that those policies are working to make life better for millions of Americans.

It’s a lesson the Democrats never seen to learn: When you try to position yourself as Republican Lite, the voters you need stay home, because they don’t see any difference worth turning out for. Mrs. Clinton, are you listening?

Having delivered the good news, the president set out to outline a program to keep the recovery going and make things better for the middle class. Things like: expanded child care for working families; a hike in the minimum wage, which would admittedly cost some jobs but which would lift far more people above the poverty level and put more money into the hands of the people most likely to spend it; free community college to train people for the future; paid sick leave; and tax cuts for the middle class rather than for corporations and millionaires who don’t need them.

I’m enough of a realist to know that these proposals are going to face probably insurmountable opposition in a Congress controlled by people whose knee-jerk reaction to anything that might help anyone other than their wealthiest donors is to snidely ask, “How are you going to pay for that?” Ever notice how they never ask that question when what they want is a fleet of new fighter-bombers that don’t work, or more tax cuts for rich people? We always find the money for the things we make our priorities.

I also know that the right is going to define these policies as “liberal.” Well, if those things, popular as they’re likely to be with the middle class, come to define “liberalism,” then I feel pretty good about the future of liberalism, especially when the other side’s “jobs plan” is taking away people’s newly acquired health insurance, cutting more rich people’s taxes, and building the Mystical Magical Keystone XL pipeline — which, to hear them tell it, will solve all our energy problems, provide us all with jobs, and give every American child a new pony.

These proposals may very well not pass this Congress. But they lay the groundwork for electing the next one, if the Democrats remaining can find their spines. Because fighting for the middle class isn’t just good political theater; it’s the right thing to do.

An Appreciation of Stephen Colbert, aka "Stephen Colbert"

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

You know, I’m really going to miss “Stephen Colbert.”

I realize that comedian and writer Stephen Colbert, creator and star of TV’s “The Colbert Report,” will still be with us, as David Letterman’s replacement on CBS’s “The Late Show.” But I fear that “Stephen Colbert,” the bloviating, self-important, clueless conservative pundit Colbert-the-comedian plays on his late night show, will be gone forever when the show ends its run this Thursday.

(In classic “Colbert” fashion, the supposed reason for the show’s ending is that its host has “won television” and to continue would just be “running up the score.”)

I confess that, when the “Colbert” character got his own time slot, a spinoff from John Stewart’s now-essential “The Daily Show,” I had my doubts. I thought basing an entire half hour, four times a week, on a single character, would be a one-joke premise that would quickly run out of steam. Eventually, I thought, Colbert would have to break character.

Boy, was I ever wrong. On the very first show, Colbert coined a word that would soon find its way into the actual dictionary: “truthiness.” Webster’s dictionary now defines truthiness as “the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts of facts known to be true.”

When he introduced the concept as part of his regular segment called “The Word,” Colbert promised, “Some of you may not trust your gut, yet. But, with my help, you will. The truthiness is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news ‘at’ you.” It was absolutely perfect satire, summing up in a single made-up word the anti-intellectual, facts-are-what-my-gut-says-they-are attitude that permeates so much of American culture, politics and journalism. “Truthiness” caught on so fast that Merriam-Webster named it the 2006 “Word of the Year.”

Colbert followed up with some of the most brilliant on-screen pranks ever committed to video. Like his “438-part series, Better Know a District,” in which “Colbert” interviewed a congressman or congresswoman from some district, always referred to as “The Fightin’ [district number]!” He would then proceed, with a totally straight face, to tie the hapless lawmaker in such verbal knots that eventually Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel began warning members of the Democratic Caucus not to go on the show (a prohibition which Pelosi later lifted).

Then there was the time when Colbert discovered that the Hungarian government was holding an online poll to name a bridge over the Danube River. “Colbert” urged his followers (aka “The Colbert Nation”) to go online and vote to name the bridge after him.

After 17 million votes were cast for “Colbert” (7 million more than there are actual people in Hungary), Hungarian Ambassador András Simonyi appeared on “The Colbert Report” and announced that “Colbert” had won the vote, but unfortunately could not have the bridge named after him because he was (1) not fluent in Hungarian; and (2) not dead. He then gave “Colbert” a consolation prize of a 10,000 forint bill (about fifty bucks American) — which “Colbert” promptly tried to use as a bribe.

Colbert didn’t even break character when he was invited to be the featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was attended by President George W. Bush and the first lady, as well as a variety of other VIPs. “Colbert,” in the guise of a glowing tribute, delivered one of the most scathing critiques ever delivered to a sitting president’s face.

“There are some polls out there,” he said, “saying that this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in ‘reality.’ And reality has a well-known liberal bias.” He went on to say of Bush that: “You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday.”

He didn’t spare the members of the press corps for their lazy acceptance of everything that came out of the Bush White House: “Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, and the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out.”

It was brave, and brilliant, and boy, did it make some people angry, even as it made many more laugh. That, my friends, is the purpose of great satire.

Can Colbert the comedian deliver the same bite and sting to a mainstream late night talk show on stodgy old CBS? I have my doubts. But then again, I’ve learned not to bet against him. RIP “Stephen Colbert.” Long live Stephen Colbert, America’s greatest living satirist.

Wingnut Media Fails Once Again

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

By now, we’ve all heard of the egregiously racist things spouted by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling to his trophy girlfriend in a recorded phone conversation that was recently released to every media outlet, with the possible exception of the “Sesame Street News Flash.”

Immediately, right-wing media leapt into action, their crack investigative teams digging hard for the answer to the most important question of all: How do we turn this into an attack on the Democrats?

“Racist Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Is a Democrat,” blared a blog post on the National Review website. “Report: Clippers Owner Caught In Racist Rant Is a Democratic Donor,” said Fox Nation. Right-wing icon Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report told us that “NBA Sterling is a Democrat,” while Tucker Carlson’s vanity project The Daily Caller claimed “Race Hate Spewing Clippers Owner Is Democratic Donor.”

All of this, it seems, was based on the fact that, as The Daily Caller put it, “Between 1990 and 1992 Donald Sterling made a $2,000 donation to former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, a $1,000 donation to current Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as well as a $1,000 donation to the recalled former governor of California, Gray Davis.”

Got that? A multibillionaire makes donations of his pocket change to three Democrats 22 years ago, and suddenly he’s a “Democratic donor,” for purposes of right-wing smear campaigns.

I suppose they were desperate for something to latch onto after the debacle in which rising star Cliven Bundy turned out to be not only a freeloading welfare rancher and domestic terrorist, but a racist nutball as well — but only after he was embraced by the likes of Sean Hannity and Rand Paul.

Now, of course, they’re backpedaling on their support for Bundy faster than Wile E. Coyote when he realizes he’s gone over the edge of the cliff, while the wingnut media scramble desperately to find someone to take the heat off. I guess Donald Sterling looked like the perfect target.

Problem with the Sterling-as-Democrat charge is that, according to California’s voter registration rolls, it turns out that the creepy old dude’s a registered Republican and has been since 1998. Oops. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to make an issue of Sterling’s party affiliation — huh, guys?

Once again, members of the right-wing media have fallen flat on their faces in their desperate attempt to support one of the most absurd Republican tropes: “We’re not racist. Democrats are the real racists, because of Robert Byrd. So there.”

Apparently, the party whose supporters wave signs showing President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, a party that courts the support of a washed-up rock star who calls that president a “subhuman mongrel,” a party that has no problem with its most prominent talk show host referring to the first lady as “uppity” and playing songs about “Barack the Magic Negro,” a party that embraced a candidate who told Iowa primary voters, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” (even though there are more white than black welfare recipients) — apparently it’s very important to that party to distract from the pervasive racism in its own current ranks by convincing the American people that it’s the Democrats who are the real racists because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, Southern Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act 50 years ago (although most Northern Democrats supported it), and Sen. Robert Byrd was in the KKK before most of us were born.

Forgive me if I don’t find this argument convincing, especially after the years since 1964 — those years that brought us the GOP’s race-baiting “Southern Strategy,” giving us gems like Bush the Elder’s Willie Horton ad (AHHH! SCARY BLACK MAN!) and Jesse Helms’ infamous “White Hands” spot (“You needed that job, but the government said it had to go to a minority”).

I’m not saying that all Republicans are racists or that there are no racists in the Democratic Party. Clearly neither of those is true. I’m saying that an awful lot more racists seem to find a welcoming home in the GOP, and that the first step to solving your problem is to admit that you have one. It’s a simple truth the Raging Republican Right doesn’t seem to have learned.

Donald Sterling is now banned from the NBA for life. It’s a pity that the GOP doesn’t have the same backbone to deal with its virulent racist wing.

Get It Now, Get It First, Get It Wrong, Redux

Latest Newspaper Column:

One of the most aggravating features of our multi-network, Twitter-driven, twenty-four-hour news cycle is something that invariably happens in the wake of a horrible event like last week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon: driven to get something, anything, out there, the cable news channels, the airwaves, and the Twitterverse became veritable fountains of misinformation. Apparently, the old journalistic principle that you didn’t go live with something unless you’d verified it with at least two sources is as dead as Walter Cronkite. Now what they report on is what’s been “reported,” whether or not said “report” is actually true or even from a credible source. Hey, they’re not lying. All they’re saying is that someone else said it. Such is the sorry state of “journalism” today. 

So in the aftermath of the carnage, unsubstantiated rumors and gossip became “reports”, which were breathlessly passed on but which quickly became discarded as new and more lurid rumors took center stage. The device was a pipe bomb. There were two other devices found that hadn’t exploded. No, three. Twelve people were dead, among them an eight year old girl who’d come to see her Daddy run the marathon. A Saudi national had been arrested running from the scene. And, of course, before the echoes of the blasts had died down and the wounded were still bleeding in the streets of Boston, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones of the online nuthouse Infowars were proclaiming that the whole thing was a government conspiracy. (When an Infowars “reporter” asked if the bombing was a “false flag operation to take away our civil liberties,” Governor Deval Patrick’s three-word response was a lesson in how to handle stupid questions: “No. Next question.”)

The wave of BS reached a crescendo on Wednesday when CNN said there were “reports” that a suspect had been identified. Then there were “reports” that there was a suspect in custody. Then there were “reports” that there wasn’t. Finally, the Boston FBI office released a statement refuting the story: “Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack.” Once can almost hear the exasperation as the release goes on to say: “Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.” 

Yeah, good luck with that. 

The part about “unintended consequences” brings to mind one of the most pernicious effects of misinformation: if you say one thing today, and say something different tomorrow, there are thousands of the above-mentioned conspiracy theorists out there who’ll insist that the correction was not an attempt to set the record straight, but is part of a cover-up. For example, after the Newtown massacre, one incorrect MSNBC report that killer Adam Lanza (originally misidentified as his brother Ryan) had left his Bushmaster semi-automatic mass murder weapon in his car is still being seized on to this day by callous gun nuts to “prove” that the government is lying about assault weapons to promote the “gun control agenda.” Of course, these are the same people who won’t believe anything else ever reported on MSNBC, but you can’t expect consistency from crazy people. 

Sure enough, as soon as it was revealed that the “Saudi national” who was supposedly taken into custody was being questioned as a witness, not a suspect, commenters at the right wing website “the Blaze” were proclaiming that the President was “protecting his Muslim brothers.” 

I know we can’t forbid news organizations from spreading misinformation (darn that pesky First Amendment!). But there ought to be some kind of required warning label on all the crap the news media spreads in the immediate aftermath of a horrible crisis. Something like a disclaimer in the ubiquitous “crawl” running across the bottom of the screen: “Warning: thanks to the near-total erosion of journalistic standards, the so-called ‘information’ you are receiving in this broadcast may be based on rumor, half-truth, prejudice, completely unfounded speculation, or the person on-screen just pulling allegations out of their rear end because they have nothing solid to report but don’t want to just stand there looking like a goober.” If we’re going to be so consistently misinformed by our media, we should at least be informed of that fact.

Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, and practices law in Carthage.

Good One!

Best line of last night's press conference:

The president, expressing his "anger" over bonuses paid to executives whose company received billions of dollars in federal bailout funds, was asked why it took him a few days to voice that anger. "It took us a couple of days," he replied tersely, "because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

Ohhh, snap! Of course the "liberal" press has to protect their own, so the answer is being characterized as "cranky". But I think it was a perfect response to Ed Henry's attempt at a stupid "gotcha" question. Someone needs to tell these so-called "journalists" that they're polling at about the level of used-car salesmen in terms of credibility.

When asked a serious question, Obama had his facts and figures and arguments at the ready, and delivered them in a clear. comprehensible way, like this question on cutting the deduction for charitable contributions:

Now, if it's really a charitable contribution, I'm assuming that that shouldn't be the determining factor as to whether you're giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street.

And so this provision would affect about 1 percent of the American people. They would still get deductions. It's just that they wouldn't be able to write off 39 percent.

In that sense, what it would do is it would equalize. When I give $100, I'd get the same amount of deduction as when some, a bus driver who's making $50,000 a year, or $40,000 a year, gives that same $100. Right now, he gets 28 percent, he gets to write off 28 percent. I get to write off 39 percent. I don't think that's fair.

But when asked a "gotcha" question, he delivered the smackdown it deserved.

Of course idiots like Matt Drudge and Bill O'Reilly sniff that the press conference was "boring." Here's a news flash: The President of the United States is not there for your entertainment. We have a grownup in the office now, not some overgrown frat boy who cracks jokes about not finding WMD's and gives reporters stupid nicknames.

One thing Barack Obama has been consistently good at doing is staying on message and not letting himself get derailed by celebrity "journalists" trying to provoke a "gaffe" to make themselves look good. Mike Allen at Politico has a revealing article (hat tip to Balloon Juice):

The unspoken contest playing out under the East Room lights: The president wants to deliver a message – in this case, reassurance on the economy and a plug for his budget – and not get tripped up by issues he considers extraneous, or that might overshadow what he wants to say.

Reporters have the opposite incentive: They want to “make news” by getting the president to say something he hasn’t said before, or wasn’t prepared to say – which, by definition, is not his message.

Barack Obama wouldn't play the game. He wouldn't let the reporters "make news." And they're steamed.

"I’m Not Entirely Sure Where the GOP is Buying Its Drugs These Days...."

John Scalzi delivers the smackdown on the Republican talking point that Obama's "off to a bad start."

And lest you think this is just the work of some partisan, check out this great piece by Scalzi. Heck, check out the whole blog, and, of course, his books. He's always worth reading.

More Like This, Please

The Fix:

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, had harsh words for some of former President Bush's closest advisers during an interview with the Post's Lois Romano yesterday...

But, Axelrod saved his strongest condemnation for the man who held his job in the Bush White House: Karl Rove. Of Rove's criticism of Obama's economic stimulus plan, Axelrod said: "The last thing that I think we are looking for at this juncture is advice on fiscal integrity or ethics from Karl Rove -- anyone who's read the newspapers for the last eight years would laugh at that."

And this needs to be the answer to every Republican and every Republican stooge in the media who's carping and griping about the stimulus or about any Obama policy: "Considering where we ended up after the last eight years of Republican policy-making, we should take advice from YOU? HAHAHAHAAAAAAA!"