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!

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: ruminations on whether fascism is imminent

Left: Our Lady of Sorrows stained glass, from St Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, SC.


Today is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Orthodox Church, this day is called The Dormition of the Theotokos, which literally translates as the "falling asleep" of the Mother of God, her earthly, physical death preceding Her Assumption into heaven.

It is also the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, the Netroots Nation conference (lefty bloggers) and the RightOnline conference (right-wing bloggers).

If you are into astrology, all you can do is shake your head that all of these events are on the same day.

~*~

I have just listened to Michelle Malkin on C-Span, take her turn firing up the Nuremberg Rally at the RightOnline conference. This has been a rather alarming experience right after reading some pages I was directed to over at Onyx Lynx's blog. She quotes Sara Robinson reading the signposts up ahead, the signals that the USA could indeed turn towards fascism.

It's always very tempting to throw up one's hands and scream, here come the Brownshirts. God knows, I've been doing it most of my life. And you know, on a couple of occasions (Reagan's famous Morning in America), I think we were right to scream.

And now? Well, mandated hipster-irony and the required detachment of cool make it very unfashionable to deliver cautionary screams, which is part of the problem. So, simply imagine one long SCREAM, if you will, which has the added astrological and spiritual juice of taking place on a Holy Day.

It's a loud scream, but terribly ironic, so the cool people will listen.

Sara writes:

Back in elementary school, most of us learned that when a bully learns that intimidation and threats work, he'll will keep doing more of it. In fact, the longer he goes without comeuppance, the bolder and badder he becomes, and the harder it is to make him stop. Every success teaches him something new about how to use terror for maximum effect, and tempts him to push the envelope and see what else he can get away with. Do nothing, and he'll soon take over the whole playground.

And it happens like this for bullies in groups, too. Living in a fascist regime is just living in a town dominated by the Mob, a street gang, the KKK, or a corrupt sheriff. It only takes a small handful of thugs to terrorize people into giving up their civil rights, abandoning democracy, and doing what they're told, just so they can keep their jobs, windows, and families intact. The main imperative in life becomes staying off the goons' radar. All the enforcers need to do is make an horrific example out of one or two troublemakers every now and then -- and the resulting fear will keep everybody else quietly in line.

Conservatives have tried to subdue other Americans this way for centuries, so there's nothing new going on here. And this is the way they've always done it: they used race (and yes, the birthers and anti-health care rioters are, at root, all about race) and economic calamity to whip up a posse of terrified, well-armed vigilantes, and then turned them loose on society to "enforce order." Given their colossal investment in organizing and indoctinating the teabaggers, we'd be stupid to believe that this is all going to go away when Congress returns to DC in September. Having had a taste of power and publicity, these newly-empowered mobs are very likely to stick around town and see what else they can do to keep the muck stirred up.

Our choice now is a stark one: knock them back while they're still new, small, and not yet entrenched; or deal with them later, when they've got some real power to fight back with, and the cost to all of us will be so much higher.

Yes, yes and yes.

We must not let them win this one. There will be no end to the bullying.

The Klingons must not WIN THE FEDERATION.

Also see Robinson's Fascist America: Are We There Yet? and this pertinent quote:

As Rick Perlstein documented in his two books on Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, modern American conservatism was built on these same themes. From "Morning in America" to the Rapture-ready religious right to the white nationalism promoted by the GOP through various gradients of racist groups, it's easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it's blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn't have a moment's shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner."

Umm, sound like anything you've heard lately?

On Onyx Lynx's blog, I wrote the following, which I realize I cannot improve upon too much:

As you know, I live at Ground Zero of The New Incipient Fascism, and here up close I see several faultlines that are ripe for exploiting...(do not have time to unmix my metaphors right now)...I should write about these and link this article/series. But for instance, the "Crunchy Cons" are one such faultline, the natural-food/homeschooling fundie-cons really MISTRUST big business, BigPharma and the GOP leadership in general (one reason the GOP lost the election). There is a strong populist sentiment, even here at Ground Zero. The problem (as I see it) is the elitist-liberal/progressive superiority and hatred of the uneducated and religious, and their accompanying unwillingness to work in any kind coalition with them. (I am standing in the gap, if I may quote the Scripchahs!)

Another for instance, Obama's people seem to have written off South Carolina, which is 33% African American, thankyouverymuch!

The lefty atheists and their endless intellectual-superiority doesn't help, just as the feminist dogmatism doesn't help, the closet Democratic racists don't help, PETA doesn't help...I got a list! :P

But this article is great, and you've got me thinking about the fault lines, and there are several.

Which brings me to the Nuremberg Rally and Michelle Malkin's invocation to GO FORTH and INTIMIDATE THEM SOME MORE.

I studied the RightOnline crowd carefully, and I saw middle class, yea, even lower-middle-class people, who align themselves with the Right. I asked myself, what makes them do this?

The crowd was overwhelmingly white and middle-aged, for one thing. It is comforting to me that knowledgeable young folks don't buy this nonsense as readily. However, it is NOT comforting to me that so many in my own age-group seem to be brainwashed by Fox News and the endless perky-pablum offered by Malkin and her ilk. I sense a fear of The New, the Head Metrosexuals In Charge, those people on the coasts.

And here we get to the heart of it; Michelle got out her populist slide guitar and started to jam.

Why doesn't the New York Times review books by people like Michelle, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, yet puts them on their bestseller lists?

That's a very good question. Direct hit. Michelle now jams into the stratosphere, and the crowd is with her.

Why don't they?

The problem with the coastal liberal elites is that they really don't CARE about The Heartland and The People that they claim to care about. When we talk, they don't listen. They tend to have their minds all made up. They disdain religion, country music, tradition, the ties that bind a community for generations. They consider themselves FAR ABOVE people who have not attended college. (NOTE: There is no faster way to be suddenly IGNORED during an online political discussion, than to admit you didn't finish college... even by folks who only a second previously, were hanging on your every word. Suddenly, you give yourself away as a non-person.) Religious concerns--say, about gay marriage--are regarded as total backward idiocy. Thus, so is any effort to counter these using specifically religious language, as many of us know how to do very well. We are drowned out by the "fuck offs" from the non-religious, the superior-intellects from New York and all points East.

Taken together, these snubs add up.

Why should the People In The Fabled Heartland trust the elites on the coasts and in Washington, to look out for them, when they can barely hide their contempt?

Whilst Twittering yesterday, I encountered the "#nn09" notation, which meant Netroots Nation 2009. I didn't know about it otherwise. I am a lefty blogger, but not good enough, young enough, hip enough, New Yorker enough, to get notified of this supposedly major event for my blogging demographic. (I refer the movie geeks in my readership to Brian DePalma's Home Movies: Those who know, know.)

When I Tweeted and ASKED what it was, nobody replied to me. My ignorance embarrasses everyone, one assumes.

And then I wondered, AM I the blogging demographic in question? Perhaps my age and location automatically disqualify me. After all, I am here thinking Malkin has made some good points when she talks about the media exclusion of the so-called ordinary working-class American, the person OBAMACARE, ET. AL. IS SUPPOSED TO BE HELPING.

Robinson is accurate, but she leaves out an important part of the story, and that is a repeated failure of the left ever since the Great Depression, particularly the modern avant-garde, global-oriented left: an active and actual aversion to the actual working-classes one seeks to help. Otherwise, as I peruse the list of Netroots folks, why do I see so many hyper-educated Big Bloggers? Why don't I see any "regular folks"?

Meanwhile, the RightOnline conference is busily conducting workshops and teaching people how to Twitter and blog--stuff I had to muddle through on my own. How nice if someone had actually taught me and offered me a 'blogging-ring' of helpers! How nice if I didn't have to hustle my local news coverage and was heartily welcomed into an existing network! The right-wing is organizing at the grass-roots level, for real. Not just gassing about it, but doing it.

And somebody might read this when I post it on Twitter, but it won't make much difference. The Netroots Nation thinks they know everything already, and can't even be bothered to explain their acronyms to me.

What's wrong with this picture?

If fascism comes to America, I hope the left won't wring their hands, once again, that it wasn't anything they could stop.

It was, it is, and it always has been.

Odds and Sods - Baltar is my prophet edition

The season finale of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA was last night.... and wasn't it just SO GREAT!!!????

~*~

SPOILERS AHEAD!

~*~

The next time someone argues with you about global warming, just show them the last episode of this season! Earth has been irradiated, and the whole place looks like the coast of LAKE ERIE!

Heather Havrilesky of Salon sums it up very well for us:

The road to Earth is paved with good inventions -- like a viper that knows the way! Friday night's "Battlestar Galactica" finale was packed with big surprises, from the revelation of the secret four Cylons living among the fleet to the suddenly bellicose maneuvering of D'Anna, fresh from her resurrection. But the biggest whopper of them all came in the last few minutes of the show when the Cylons and the colonists make peace and follow Starbuck's viper to Earth, only to discover that…. Oh nooooo! Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland!

But that's exactly the combination of high stakes and suspense that loyal viewers have come to expect from "Battlestar Galactica," a show that shines the most brightly during the start and finish of its demi-seasons (with a little bit of finger-strumming and pacing in between). When the final episodes of the series begin to air in January 2009 (Oh noooo! Why must we wait so long?), the colonists (and their big Cylon buddies) will be forced to reckon with the fact that their new home, which they've imagined so long is their salvation, isn't the land of sunshine and moonbeams that they'd so dearly hoped it would be. At least it isn't anymore. After the celebrating and embracing and high fiving over finally locating Earth, that moment where Admiral Adama runs his fingers through a fistful of irradiated soil and then scans the wreckage-strewn, overcast landscape is just devastating. Welcome to the promised land, motherfrackers!

I'm very relieved they didn't execute Captain Tigh, who looked so regal and resigned, facing his fate with solemn military bearing as that green light flashed and Lee reaches for the key to blow him out of the airlock. He was ready to die with dignity, and you know that living with the knowledge that he is a skin-job is a far worse punishment than death for him. He is the best alcoholic I've seen on TV for awhile.

Cylon alcoholics! WHO KNEW???

Meanwhile, Baltar is still playing his preacher-prophet role to a fare-thee-well, and we'll see what his glazed-eyed groupies do in the next season, as they undoubtedly gain religiously-based power within the BSG-population. Will he become a Messiah? We can only hope!

~*~

Speaking of Messiahs, or fake ones, or whatever it is, I'm still getting steady hits on my Is Barack Obama the Antichrist post. I followed one of the searches and discovered that although I WAS about fifth or sixth on the list, as one of the first cynics, I have now fallen to the second and third Google pages ((frowns)) as the religious fanatics have eagerly taken over the topic.

They are dead serious, of course.

Intrinsic to the claim is the foofaraw surrounding the year 2012. This probably deserves a post of its own, but I am not yet knowledgeable enough on the full spiritual significance of the year. Suffice to say, its got something to do with the Mayans, Nostradamus, numerology and various other prophecies... Apparently, the Biblical account in Revelation has been wedded in some strange way to these ideas. (As Ash famously said in the movie ALIEN: I'm still collating.)

These combined-theories, presented together, look like a total mishmash to me, and I am naturally given to seeing weird connections everywhere. Let's not JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS!

At my workplace (a veritable bastion of scientific objectivity) we are selling a CD titled UNLOCKING THE MYSTERIES OF 2012, which sounds interesting. (There is also a book to go with it, but we don't sell it yet.) A co-worker listened to the CD and wasn't unduly spooked. If you have a positive attitude, it will all work out for the best!

In the CD, John Major Jenkins explains everything:

• What is the Galactic Alignment of 2012? The astronomical phenomenon predicted by the Mayans, and how it will affect us

• Izapa as the origin place of the 2012 calendar and the "uncorrupted vision" of the early Mayan skywatchers

• How the “Hero Twins” creation story encodes a hidden blueprint for the evolution of human consciousness

• The spiritual practices of the Mayan mystics, featuring a guided breathwork exercise based on their shamanic traditions

Now, who could argue with that?

~*~

The Angry Black Woman points us to John Scalzi, who reports that Fox News actually referred to Michele Obama as Barack's Babymama. (!!!!)

This must be quoted in its entirety:

Back in the day – you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white – news organizations called potential First Ladies “wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it’s basically fine for Fox News to use “Baby Mama” for Michelle Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, “some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can’t stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they’re all relaxed about that shit, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it’s not Fox News that’s calling Michelle Obama “Baby Mama,” it’s outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn’t want to use the term “Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

Meanwhile, over at her personal site, Michelle “Fox News’ Ethnic Shield” Malkin defends Fox News’ use of the “Baby Mama” phrase by essentially making two arguments. First, Michelle Obama once called Barack Obama her “baby’s daddy,” and as we all know, a married woman factually and correctly calling her husband her child’s father is exactly the same as a major news organization calling a potential First Lady some chick what got knocked up on a fling. Second, the term “baby-daddy” has gone out into the common culture; heck, even Tom Cruise was called Katie Holmes’ baby-daddy, you know, when he impregnated her and she subsequently gave birth while the two were not married, which is exactly like what happened between Michelle and Barack Obama, who were married in 1992 and whose first child was born six years later.

So by Malkin’s reasoning it’s perfectly fine for Fox News to call Michelle Obama the unmarried mother of Barack Obama’s children because an entirely different phrase has to her mind entered the common culture, and there was this one time that Michelle Obama once uttered something that sounded like that entirely different phrase, which is not the phrase that Fox News used. But wait! Malkin also points to someone in her comment thread saying that one time, Michelle Obama actually used the phrase “baby daddy”! No apostrophe! It’s in a comment thread, so it must be true. Therefore, Michelle Obama apocryphally using a piece of urban slang makes it perfectly okay for Fox News to use an entirely different piece of urban slang. And that’s why, you see, it won’t be a problem for Bill O’Reilly to refer to Barack Obama as “my nigga” on the next O’Reilly Factor.

It’s shit like this that makes this story on CNN, about whether Barack Obama should be considered black or biracial, an absolute hoot. Here’s a quick test on whether Obama should be considered fully black: Poof! Barack Obama has been magically transported to a KKK meeting in deepest, whitest Klanistan without his Secret Service detail. There’s a rope and a tree nearby. What happens to Obama? If you say, “why, Barack Obama walks out of there alive, of course” then sure, he’s biracial. Also, you’re a fucking idiot. To everybody who cares about Obama’s racial identity, either positively or negatively, the man is a black man, married to a black woman, who has black children. Black black black black black black black black.

It sure as hell matters to Fox News, which is why it’s dog whistling about Barack so loudly that it’s vibrating the windows. Calling Michelle Obama a “baby mama” isn’t just Fox News having a happy casual larf; it’s using urban slang to a) remind you the Obamas are black, b) belittle a woman of considerable personal accomplishment, and c) frame Barack Obama’s relationship to his wife and children in a way that insults him, minimizes his love for and commitment to his family, and reinforces stereotypes about black men. Someone at Fox News just ought to call Barack Obama “boy” at some point so we can have all the cards right out there on the table.

This will keep happening. Fox News will keep finding ways to remind its viewers that the Obamas are black (and possibly Muslim), Michelle Malkin will continue to make excuses for Fox News’ dog-whistling racism that expose the fact that she’s about as familiar with logical thinking as a rainbow trout is with knitting, and eventually some portion of the Fox News audience will get to the ballot box in November convinced that they’re not really racists, they just know that there’s something about that Obama boy they just don’t like. This is how it will go. Let’s not pretend it’s not part of equation, this election year.

226 responses, all worth reading.

I suppose it will get a lot uglier before it's over.