Deb Morrow not elected; annoying Tea Partier is re-elected

At left: Daisy and Deb Morrow at Occupy Spartanburg last year.







My friend Deb Morrow has lost to Tea Party-puppet Trey Gowdy in the South Carolina 4th District congressional race. He won by refusing to debate her. (Green Party candidate Jeff Sumerel was also in the race, and also offered to debate Gowdy.)

So sorry, Deb--you ran a good race. But as you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars will always beat someone who doesn't take money from special-interest groups.

It shouldn't be that way, but it is.





Gowdy wins second term in SC's 4th District

COLUMBIA — (Associated Press) The GOP's Trey Gowdy has easily won a second term in South Carolina's strongly Republican 4th District in Greenville and Spartanburg counties.

With about a third of precincts reporting, Gowdy had about 65 percent of votes cast in the three-way contest that included Democrat Deb Morrow and Green Party candidate Jeff Sumerel.

Gowdy says he wants to continue working to get the nation's economic house in order. He says the nation isn't going to succeed fiscally without real conversations in Congress about spending priorities and entitlement reform.

Morrow was making her first bid for political office. She's retired from a computer services business and said she decided to run for Congress after getting involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement and organizing an Occupy demonstration in Spartanburg.

You fought the good fight. (bows)

Occupy Human Rights - candlelight vigil

Last evening, Occupy Greenville celebrated GLBT pride month with a candlelight vigil commemorating all who have been victims of violence, intolerance and bullying. (In first photo, third from left, is Deb Morrow, 4th District candidate for US congress.) We had about 25-30 participants, including high school students from Eastside High school.

In the last photo, the group is being addressed by organizer Abigail LeCompte.

Not surprisingly, we attracted some spirited hecklers, including one rather obsessed individual who went away to fetch religious tracts and then brought them back, presenting them with a dramatic flourish--all while yelling that he would pray for all of us. (Um, okay.) At one point, the exchange became rather heated, as another person who happened to be passing by told him (not us!) to shut up and stood there and made fun of him at some length. Hey, Greenville is changing!

But of course, not fast enough for me.

Thanks to everyone who showed up. I love you all!

You can click to enlarge. More photos HERE!

Friday update

Our own Spartanburg Occupier, Deb Morrow, won the SC Democratic primary! She will go up against awful Trey Gowdy for the 4th District Congressional Seat in November.

I made a special trip to vote for Deb; she was the only candidate on my ballot. I am proud of her efforts (and have attended two of her organizing meetings) and hope she will give us a call at the radio station tomorrow. She tried last week, but was apparently in a moving vehicle, and consequently, we lost her. Give us another shot, Deb!



~*~

Apologies for my late news. I had internet connection issues all week. Unplugged against my will! Argh!

During this time, the shameless scandalmonger in me has stayed tuned to the sordid Jerry Sandusky trial. (Penn State coach accused of sexually abusing numerous children.) No cameras in the courtroom, but reporters have provided a steady stream of horrors. I am amazed at how hands-off the authorities were, over decades... these kids were not from families who would have raised a ruckus. And Sandusky chose them deliberately for this reason.

He repeatedly told them how much he loved them, and they have testified that they loved him in return. They loved the gifts, the attention, the football games.

People on Facebook are howling for Dottie Sandusky's head, believing that she must know more than she is letting on. One victim claims he stayed overnight at Sandusky's house in excess of 50 times. Besides that, Jerry Sandusky stayed in the basement for hours with these kids. Didn't his wife suspect anything?

We will be discussing the Sandusky trial tomorrow on my show, so tune in.

Noam Chomsky update

We are planning a taped interview with Noam Chomsky tomorrow, and intending to run it on the Saturday morning show.

Needless to say, this has made me a nervous wreck.

As Mr Daisy told me, "Well, you'll be talking to a living legend, but don't let that intimidate you."

Ohhh, I wouldn't dream of it!

I am hoping to transcribe the interview for the blog. (It occurred to me a day or so ago, that I used to transcribe silly doctors and lawyers for a living, so I think I know how to do that!) Stay tuned!

Or as Don Cornelius (R.I.P.) would have said, its gonna be a stone gas. (We'll miss you, Don.)

~*~

I had a longish post in the works about left-wing talk radio, or rather, the lack of it. It kind of fizzled... and for that you have my profound apologies. Like Stanley Kubrick, I had intended to go back to the Dawn of Radio and explain how this unfortunate state-of-affairs came to be, but as it turns out... I only knew the semi-official explanation.

Yesterday, I went to an organizational meeting for Deb Morrow, fabulous 4th District congressional candidate and Spartanburg Occupier. I met up with my friend Tom Davies, an experienced campaign consultant who once wrote a dissertation on the rise of right-wing talk radio (which made me feel rather stupid on the subject). He positively overflowed with information and ideas, so I put my post on hold. He started riffing impressively on the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (in 1987), which he said was the genesis of the trend. It was? So, the government GAVE BIRTH to right-wing talk radio?

Ah, so no wonder there wasn't (and consequently, isn't) a huge wave of LEFT WING talk radio.

My concern is: how cheap and available radio-time is, compared to television. Shouldn't it therefore be a bastion of LEFT WING sympathies? Why isn't it? Aren't we all about providing the poorest people with information and arming them with facts? (Radio is free to whoever has a radio, unlike cable TV, and is therefore a poor-people's medium, especially as satellite-radio gains popularity.)

Is the dearth of left-wing talk radio another salient example of how the American Left lost the working classes? Or as Tom said, is it simply that the Right rushed in to buy the cheap airwaves, since they had the loot on hand (and the necessary, additional financial backing) to do so?

Opinions welcome. How did the Right-wing take over talk radio?

~*~

And of course, in answering that last question, there is the irreverence factor. As an ex-Yippie, I possess the necessary irreverence and iconoclasm for talk radio... but I do wonder if I have the necessary THICK SKIN.

Recent theoretical brawls in Blogdonia have left me exhausted and bloodied, and even more than that, remembering what I wrote back in October about Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin. Again, I ask: How do they do it? I wish they'd give us a nonpartisan workshop: How not to care what people say about you, a Workshop for Political Women. Something like that.

When they start trashing political women in a specifically sexist and personal way, saying "Man Coulter" and calling Malkin racist, anti-Asian names--how do they handle this stuff? Do they just turn it off and refuse to read the insults? Does it ever keep them awake at night? Do they have bodyguards? Have they had stalkers? Inquiring minds want to know!

I have recently had the experience of being called all kinds of vicious names by total strangers who have not interacted with me, ever. This is patently weird. I am used to people who have interacted with me (or claim they have), announcing I am full of shit and/or evillll, but total strangers? This is a new phenomenon in my life; it means I am getting semi-famous, or at least, infamous. (Am I ready for that?)

Eeeeep! I would appreciate a workshop on what will happen as we take my radio show to the next level, and how I should gird my loins for the umm, FANS, who might come out of the woodwork.

Going into the six month of the show! Can you believe it? WHOEVER THOUGHT we would continue this long? The Green Party (my current sponsor) appreciates my blather, and I appreciate that they appreciate me.

As stated before, stay tuned. Its gonna be a stone gas.

And happy Groundhog Day!

Al Jazeera: The challenges of Occupying South Carolina

Al Jazeera ran an article about South Carolina Occupy!!! Woot!

How interesting that it's up to foreign journalists to understand what's going on around here. You sure can't find this kind of insightful analysis in the New York Times, or even the Greenville News.

Excerpt:

With about ten per cent of South Carolinians unemployed, economic woes might make South Carolina seem like a receptive setting for the Occupy movement - which reserves some of its harshest rhetoric for banks and corporations they deem largely responsible for income inequality.

But compared with other states, there aren't many Occupiers in South Carolina: in Charleston, the state's second-largest city, there are some 20 to 40 active participants, says Anjana Joshi, a research analyst at a Charleston law firm.

South Carolina tends to be a conservative state: its governor and all but one congressman are affiliated with the right-wing Tea Party movement. Deb Morrow of Occupy Spartanburg says dislike of President Obama is so strong in parts of the state that it's "difficult to get people to engage" with issues such as unemployment and income inequality.

Although about 75 Occupiers held a demonstration at the capitol last Saturday in Columbia - near a statue of segregationist senator Strom Thurmond - about ten times as many people had gathered on the other side of the state house earlier that day as part of an anti-abortion rally.

Laura Olson, a political science professor at Clemson University, doesn't think the Occupiers' small numbers are necessarily problematic for the movement. "The political context here makes it tough for any kind of progressive movement to get much traction. But that can be an advantage in a way too," she explained. "Even though you're not going to attract huge numbers of people, you might get folks who are more deeply committed than you otherwise might" in a more liberal state.

The many faces of Occupy

The stereotypical Occupier is often portrayed as a young, unemployed, college student. That may be one demographic - but far from the only one.

South Carolina, with its many military bases and academies, has a lot of veterans - and a disproportionate number of Occupiers seem to be veterans. Of the 11 people arrested when Occupy Charleston set up a short-lived encampment in the city's Marion Square, five were veterans, including Ramon Caraballo of Charleston.

Caraballo, who served in Iraq for 15 months during the surge, links his participation in Occupy with his military service. He says he became involved with Occupy after seeing police in Oakland fire beanbag guns and tear gas canisters at demonstrators close-range - which he says the US Army isn't allowed to do to Iraqi protesters. "We ourselves are dead wrong for what we impose in other countries - and we can't even follow those rules here," says Caraballo.

And in the seaside city of Myrtle Beach - which has a large number of senior citizens - many people active in the Occupy group there are retirees, says Brian Noyes Pulling, himself a retired social worker.

Although Occupiers in South Carolina say the reception they've gotten hasn't been overwhelmingly negative, it hasn't been altogether welcoming, either. Cliff Berardo, a driver from Columbia who's involved with Occupy, says people in the state often see participants as "dirty, filthy hippies" who "want a free ride". For example, Ronald Moulder, who's active with the Tea Party, described Occupy participants demonstrating at a Tea Party convention in Myrtle Beach as looking "like they just got out from under the bridge".

Olson believes that many South Carolinians "see the movement as sort of distant from here, as something that is going on in big cities in the North ... It feels too '60s-ish, I think, for a lot of folks".

Increasing activism

"There are whole communities of people that our local government just doesn't care about."

- Anjana Joshi of Occupy Charleston

Some Occupy groups in the state are trying to overcome the perception that they are, in the words of Occupy Spartanburg's Deb Morrow, "just standing out there and doing nothing". Every Sunday, for instance, Occupy Charleston holds a free potluck dinner in the city's low-income East Side neighbourhood. "We try to get into our actual communities and help people and fill the void that the government has left," says Joshi. "There are whole communities of people that our local government just doesn't care about."

A handful of Occupiers are becoming active in electoral politics as well. Although Occupy groups do not endorse political candidates, at least two Occupy participants are running for congress in South Carolina, both against Tea Party incumbents elected in 2010. Deb Morrow is running in the Democratic primary in the state's 4th District for the chance to take on Trey Gowdy. And Jeanne van den Hurk of Greenville will challenge 3rd District congressman Jeff Duncan if she becomes the Democratic nominee.

Both say one of the main reasons they're running is the role money plays in politics. "There's becoming an awareness that corporations are holding us hostage," van den Hurk told me at an Occupy event in Columbia.

Occupy participants largely reject comparisons with the conservative Tea Party movement - and vice versa. "They want government," said Charleston Tea Party chairman Mike Murphree. "I don't want nothing to do with government."

Comparing movements on the US Left and Right

But although their politics are quite different, there are nevertheless some similarities. "Both movements are coming from the same place," argues Olson, "and that is anger, dissatisfaction, alienation, lack of trust in government."

Both movements say they've changed the national political dialogue: Tea Partiers claim that more Republican politicians are talking about federal spending and taxes; Occupiers point out that income inequality and corporate misdeeds are becoming part of the public discourse - even in the Republican primary.

There's no way to prove causality, but some Occupiers here note that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry's attacks on Mitt Romney for his tenure at private equity firm Bain Capital sound very similar to what Occupy Wall Street has been saying all along (Perry went so far as to call Romney a "vulture capitalist" - not a charge often made by Republicans today). Archconservative pundit Rush Limbaugh took notice, averring that Gingrich is "singing from the same hymnal" as the Occupy movement.

Candidates' talking points come and go. Perhaps a longer-lasting political effect of the state's Occupy movement is the forging of a network of left-leaning activists "who didn't know each other a year ago", in the words of South Carolina Green Party co-chair Scott West. "We all know one another now."

We sure do! I now count both Deb Morrow and Jeanne van den Hurk among my friends.

Nice article, and thanks to the ever-intrepid Joni LeCompte for putting me onto it.

Deb Morrow for congress!

Deb Morrow has not 'officially' announced her run for congress, but I already blurted it out on my radio show, Saturday morning. She was a great sport and didn't mind.



I attended Deb's first organizational meeting in Spartanburg, yesterday. I love that an Occupier is running for office, but at the same time, I am skeptical that the Democratic Party brass will allow this, or will back her candidacy. Will they find some party-hack to run against Trey Gowdy, since Deb is a genuine working-class, progressive Democrat?

As you may recall, this is what happened in 2008 to Ted Christian, who was bringing all kinds of Ron Paulish-Libertarian-leaning local folks into the Democratic party. In response, the Establishment Dems trotted out some flunkie, whose name slips my mind, to pretend to run against Republican Rep. Bob Inglis.

And most recently in 2010, when Inglis was down for the count, the Democratic party could have tapped some local heavy-hitters, or at least found another rabble-rouser like Ted, to give the Republicans a run for their money. Instead, they sat on their hands and let the GOP take the 4th District, once again.

Sometimes, I wonder if these things are choreographed, as so many non-jury trials are. Is it all decided by the powers-that-be before the elections even start? (Do they divide up the state, as Roosevelt and Stalin divided up Europe?)

I am reminded of Christine O'Donnell's doomed Delaware senatorial campaign, which the Republican Party honchos ignored. She was elected in the primary due to a groundswell from the Tea Party Movement, which embarrassed the Yacht Club Party to no end. There they were, clutching their hanging-chads, and asking WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED? The Tea Party out-organized you, is what. They took it straight to the people. And as a result, the resentful Republican Party in Delaware basically disowned O'Donnell and did not share their considerable political and financial power with her. Who is THIS person, seemed to be the consensus. (And as Glenn Greenwald and others pointedly noted, this is precisely why "regular folks" were ready to listen to her.)

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I hope this won't be the farce. It would be fabulous if Deb actually won the 4th District congressional primary, simply due to a groundswell of anti-bailout sentiment; people are totally fed up with the rich getting it ALL. But will the Democratic party support Deb, if she wins? Or will some boring, party-approved, regulation white guy get brought in at the last minute?

If this happens, it will likely be the last time I help out a Democrat candidate. Like one of my heroes wrote, we won't get fooled again.

~*~


Today's confession: I am unsure of what my sign means. Well okay, I know what it means, but not all of the particulars. I grabbed it from a pile, because it was RED, my favorite color. ;)

I also think the idea of MORE bailouts, makes most ordinary folks start frothing at the mouth, and that's the reaction we want! (Yes, we stood out there in the rain, which really does wonders for my hair. Is there any way we could bottle this, do you suppose?)

Commercial: Don't forget to drop by Coffee Underground tonight for our Occupy-Greenville-sponsored showing of "Capitalism, A Love Story"--a film by Michael Moore. The show starts at 7pm, so be there or be square!

~*~

Aside: Sitting here watching INSIDE DAISY CLOVER (no relation) and wishing Natalie Wood had not drowned. They have re-opened the case, but having read all of the major biographies and accounts of the drowning-story, I have no idea what they think they are going to find. It's 30 years later, people. (Is there newly-discovered DNA evidence or something else we don't know about?)

In this movie, they dubbed Natalie's singing voice with Jackie Ward's, just as they dubbed her voice in WEST SIDE STORY with Marni Nixon's. (She always found that embarrassing, that her singing was not deemed good enough.) They left it alone in GYPSY, but partially dubbed Rosalind Russell's voice with Lisa Kirk's.

I read that Barbra Streisand wants to play Mama Rose, which is the world's most perfect casting. THAT WOULD BE SO TOTALLY AWESOME! Although some people prefer the actress who actually won the Tony award for the playing the part, Patti LuPone.

I do love Patti, but Streisand IS Mama Rose, and I am really pulling for her in the role. I just swoon thinking about Barbra singing this:

Everything's Coming Up Roses - Ethel Merman



Extra points if you knew she was gay, according to Jacqueline Susann, who knew everything about everybody. (And who suddenly just thought of the movie "Airplane"?)

PS: This song is officially dedicated to Deb Morrow!!! Good luck to you, Deb.