Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009 and have re-posted it every November since then. Since this is the 50th anniversary of the assassination, it seems even more pertinent and poignant.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.



~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

#WhenIseeaObamabumpersticker brings out the vicious, good Christians

(you can click all Tweets to enlarge)

As many of my regular readers know, I have nearly been run off the road several times for my (old, obsolete) Obama bumper stickers... and I did not even vote for Obama in 2012 (voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein instead). Nonetheless, those scary bumper stickers remain, because I refuse to be intimidated, and my car is old besides (but paid for!). Thus, when I saw the Twitter hashtag #WhenIseeaObamabumpersticker (excuse bad grammar, but what did you expect?), I admit that I reacted very strongly to the right-wing, racist bullies who came out of the woodwork to trumpet their bullying... the kind of bullying I have been dealing with for 5 years now.

Not surprisingly, they are damned proud of themselves.

When called on it, haha, it's suddenly a 'joke'--although at least some of them admit they are dead serious.

I know that the people who have repeatedly tried to run me off the road, tailgate me dangerously on interstates while shooting the bird, etc, are/were VERY serious, and not at all joking. And as they angrily pass me, they often show me their Dubya/Romney/anti-abortion/pro-NRA/anti-gay marriage (et. al.) bumper stickers as well--just in case there is any question WHY they feel moved to behave like maniacs.

Needless to say, I have never tried to run any of THEM off the road, nor flip them off, nor in any way act like a goon simply because they disagree with ME. Nor would I. But then, I am not a bully, and I have never understood the psychology of bullies. They really would have been quite at home in the old Soviet Union, which jailed all dissenters. They value ideological lockstep.

Further, I noticed that when I checked out several of these people's self-descriptions... virtually all of them claim to be BIBLE-BELIEVING CHRISTIANS! Do you believe that?!? (well, of course you do) They trash the poor while claiming to believe in the Messiah who said Blessed are the poor and the poor we always have with us. The Messiah who said, as ye do to the least of these, so have you done to me. The One who said, The Last shall be first. When I dared comment on this gross theological discrepancy, they found it amusing and re-tweeted me. HAHA!--this bitch expects me to actually LIVE WHAT I CLAIM TO BELIEVE, IS THAT FUNNY OR WHAT?!

Yes, I suppose it is.

So much loss...

... its hard to contemplate. I am concentrating on gratitude. Just when we start to think we need more money, more cars, more houses, more STUFF... the world caves in and reminds us of first principles and what is truly important. Its a cliche, but oh so true.

It is almost impossible to process.

A short recap --

As of right now, the whole Boston area is on lockdown, looking for the second Boston Marathon bomber.

As of right now, West, Texas is in mourning following a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant. The mourners include my dear friend Yellowdog Granny, whom I have quoted and borrowed from so often in this space. This is her first-hand account of experiencing the explosion up-close and personal, which I also read aloud on the radio yesterday.

Some looney tune Elvis impersonator tried to poison President Obama and Mississippi Senator Wicker, for reasons unknown.

Sean Collier, a police officer at MIT, was shot and killed.

The controversial gun control bill was defeated.

And just when you think things can't get any worse, The Atlantic is warning us that Tylenol is scrambling our ethical sense. Yow!

Currently, we have thunderstorms all over Georgia and the Carolinas, and in the famous words of Tony Joe White (by way of South Carolina's own Brook Benton), I feel like its rainin all over the world.

~*~

Rainy Night in Georgia - Brook Benton

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009 and have re-posted it every November since then.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.


~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

Five of Wands

Five of Wands: Conflict, competition, discord








The Boy Scouts of America were selling some sugared-up substances outside my local grocery store this weekend... and I really really really wanted to walk right up to them and ask, do you let the transgender scouts in? The Girl Scouts do! But I lacked the nerve; the scout-leaders on duty had that hyper-masculine, super-patriotic Toby Keith vibe going on. I could easily see it all escalating into a heated argument, and possibly culminating in a call to Greenville's finest.

Those guys love cops. Some of them ARE cops.

I used to relish that sort of thing, but now I get weary and tired just thinking about it. (sigh) Do we get less radical as we age, or just more sensible? I mean, it would all be a huge waste of time, and could get me locked up besides.

Then again, IS it a waste of time? Could one of those unassuming, plucky little boy scouts be gay or transgender and therefore: silently cheering me on? Could I make a good impression by accident? (I know I have in the past, but I usually only find that out years later.)

Well, I'll never know now. I passed them by and pretended not to hear them when they politely addressed me as ma'am and asked me to buy their sugar-treats. If I had stopped, even for a second, the argumentative questions WOULD have tumbled right out of my mouth. I am old enough now, to Know Thyself well.

Therefore, I know when to keep on walking... unless I have the strength and wherewithal to deal with the various Toby-Keithesque-characters of upstate South Carolina. And at that time and place, I just didn't.

I hope some brave young person, with energy and time to burn, does.

One of those little scouts needs to hear you speak up.

~*~

We watched the whole first season of HOMELAND on DVDs, which was terribly enjoyable but politically disturbing.

Is the CIA really this much of a mess? I shudder to think.

And do we accept this fact without question, just to have some mind-twisting entertainment? Are government-sanctioned, covered-up drone attacks on masses of children now just another plot development?

Saints preserve us.

As when I watched Standard Operating Procedure, I had nightmares after one of the episodes, the one about the drone attacks.

Observations: Nobody plays crazy as well as Claire Danes. Her stream-of-consciousness mania/complaining about not being able to find a green pen (Not blue!) was fantastic. I highly recommend the show for sheer class and talent on display, and yet... I resent the fact of the war, the tortures, the devastation they are dramatizing. But of course, that is all some genuinely high-stakes stuff, isn't it? This makes for some honestly gut-wrenching drama and challenges to the moral sensibility. One's conscience is suddenly thrown into high gear, and how many TV shows can manage to do that?

On the other hand, the danger is that horrifying, harrowing military realities are reduced to the status of a Tom Clancy thriller. I find this disorienting. It leaves a decidedly-unpleasant taste in the mouth. More psychologically sophisticated than John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima, to be sure... but still presented as entertainment. And is there any way the CIA does NOT come off as a glamorous occupation, with Claire Danes madly running around risking her life to save the unsuspecting populace? Or, as Peter O'Toole noted in that obscure cult movie, The Stunt Man: "I know a man who made an anti-war movie; a good one. When it was shown in his home town, army enlistment went up six hundred percent."

Is it possible to portray something, anything, in movies and TV without somehow making it interesting and cool?

On the political flip-side, conservatives have often asked this same question about drug abuse. How can one properly dramatize drug abuse and its accompanying devastation, without inadvertently glamorizing drug use as dangerous and edgy?

Because it if weren't, on some level, we wouldn't bother watching.

We don't get the Showtime network, so I will probably not see the second season of HOMELAND in its entirety until it comes out on DVD. (I hope I can resist Googling the spoilers, as I have been known to do.) If the second season can keep up the dramatic tension, it should be excellent. The second season will debut on Showtime at the end of this month.

The nasty snipes at Dick Cheney are obvious, at least. And well-deserved.

~*~

Saturday's radio show podcast is online. Hope you will give us a listen.

Speaking of radio... Bob Jones University has sold their radio station, which had the cutesy call letters of WMUU: World's Most Unusual University. (Nobody ever argued with that.) It will now be converted into still another conservative talk-radio station here in town. Certainly, we know that is a DIRE NEED here in the upstate! (snark)

Swimming upstream, but we are still afloat. One slim hour of lefty-radio in a sea of constant and endless right-wing blather.

It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009, and re-posted it last year at this time.

I am posting it again, since it accurately captures my nostalgic feelings/memories at the end of every November.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.


~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

Radio radio (update)

Today on the ever-fabulous Daisy Deadhead show, we covered the following:


>>Is the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement being hijacked by newcomers? More people and organizations are joining Occupy Wall Street or expressing solidarity every day. Whether it's an infusion of vital energy or a force that tears at cohesion is up to the movement.

>>Governor Haley uses the South Carolina Governor's Mansion as a Motel 6 for Republican millionaires campaigning for president. You'd think millionaires wouldn't have to ask the poor people of SC to foot the bill for their ridiculous, ego-ridden presidential campaigns... but you'd think wrong. Newt Gingrich stayed there this week (en route to Hilton Head), Michele Bachmann has racked up two visits, and Mitt's spouse, Ann Romney, stayed overnight once. And the campaign season isn't even in full swing yet!

Mitt and Ann Tomney have a net worth of between $190-250 million (I guess its too much to count accurately, at those levels) and yet, can't afford to pay for their own Hampton Inn bill. Do you trust him to be the president? Think of what ELSE he will charge to us.

Meanwhile, Governor Haley continues pretending she is a "fiscal conservative"--while spending our money on her friends. Nice work if you can get it!

>>Three women's rights activists win the Nobel Peace Prize! Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, activist Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and rights activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen share this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday. These women were chosen "for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work," the Nobel committee said in Oslo, Norway.

>>Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'. American militants like [recently assassinated] Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. According to Reuters: There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.


And we wrapped up with earnest exhortations to join local OCCUPY TOGETHER demonstrations: Thursday, October 13th, noon, Bowman's Field at Clemson University, ... and at about the same time, MoveOn is sponsoring one in Daniel Morgan Square, Spartanburg, which will be going on all day.

Your humble narrator will be in attendance at the latter event, so come on down!

And please join us on the air next Saturday morning at 9-10am, streaming on WFISradio.com or locally at 1600am or 94.9fm on your radio dial. (The podcast is up!)

If Disney did a horror movie, might look like this

Left: Victoria's birthday party; she is the one in yellow who looks just like me.







My granddaughter turned six on September 11. I certainly DO wish her birthday was NOT a national day of mourning. To my daughter's credit (that's her in the photo), she has always tried to make her birthdays happy. I don't think Victoria will become self-conscious about the date until she is older, and maybe not even then.

As one commenter on a blog recently said to me: If we let them take our happiness, they have indeed been successful in totally destroying the day. I agree.

Meanwhile, my granddaughter is SIX whole years old! I will be seeing them next week for the first time in over a year, and I am very excited.

And don't these partiers look a little scary? ;)

Nix on Coexist

Here at Ground Zero of the Tea Party Movement, I get lots of reactions to my bumper stickers, some almost violent. On Saturday night, the day Gabrielle Giffords was shot, I found a business card stuck onto my windshield. It was stamped with the identifiable, well-known COEXIST design (at left), which is one of my bumper stickers.


The card explained, on this day of all days, why we can't co-exist:

Can all world religions coexist? Does it matter what you believe? Does your belief make it true? Imagine having to jump from an airplane that was about to crash. If you had three possible items to strap to your back, which would you choose: a tire, a briefcase full of money, or a parachute? There is only one right answer that can save your life. This is why all religions can not coexist. They each give different ideas about God, but only one is true! Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) He made an exclusive claim. Either it is true or it is not.

There was more, of course, but you get the drift.

Was the day a coincidence? Maybe.

And maybe not, too.

~*~

From Slate, more on The Tea Party and the Tucson Tragedy by Jacob Weisberg:

It is appropriate, however, to consider what was swirling outside Loughner's head. To call his crime an attempted assassination is to acknowledge that it appears to have had a political and not merely a personal context. That context wasn't Islamic radicalism, Puerto Rican independence, or anarcho-syndicalism. It was the anti-government, pro-gun, xenophobic populism that flourishes in the dry and angry climate of Arizona. Extremist shouters didn't program Loughner, in some mechanistic way, to shoot Gabrielle Giffords. But the Tea Party movement did make it appreciably more likely that a disturbed person like Loughner would react, would be able to react, and would not be prevented from reacting, in the crazy way he did.

I read the news today oh boy...

We've been comfortably snowed in, but today I actually have to go to work in this mess! Ahhh, she said wistfully, our surprise southern snow vacation is over. No more Law and Order marathons for me! (It was almost as great as a real holiday!) I'll try to post some purty snow photos later.

I have been so upset over the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, that I have not been able to adequately verbalize my feelings, except to repeat some variation of I TOLD YOU SO. As I've said here numerous times, it's getting bad out there. I am at Ground Zero of Reload Territory, and I've worried something like this would happen. The Tea Party proudly and routinely traffics in incendiary, artillery-oriented language, and don't let them tell you any different, now that they have this on their heads. Suddenly, those little symbols on Sarah Palin's website are not cross-hairs, oh no, they are SURVEYOR SYMBOLS. (Do you believe that shit? Talk about memory holes, George Orwell, call your office.)

This is what transpires when extremists like Palin and Beck continually fan the flames of Tea Party discontent, using dangerous rhetoric... AND (incidentally) we have a clutch of disaffected, angry young men with semi-automatic weapons running loose throughout the land. Presto.

I'll be back after a trudge through the arctic. For more reading:

The "Politicized Mind" Of Gabrielle Giffords (Andrew Sullivan)

Assassination Attempt In Arizona (Paul Krugman)

Missing from Arizona shooting debate: Guns (Politico)

Second Amendment Remedies (Dave Dubya's Freedom Rants)

Earlier Thoughts on Gun Nuttery and Right Wing Demagoguery (Cogitamus)

"On Extreme Right And Left" (Andrew Sullivan)

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: Last year at this time, I posted this and I've gotten a fair number of hits on it ever since. I am running it again, since it accurately captures my nostalgic feelings/memories at the end of every November. Comments welcome on both posts.


~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

How to stop the war (and future wars too)

Comrade Physioprof's witty post titled Rejection of Reality in its entirety:

Rational response to terrorism necessarily includes giving serious consideration to the fact that *our* actions as the biggest imperial military power on Earth have a massive influence on the *desire* of wackaloon nutjobs to blow themselves to smithereens while taking out one of our civilian aircraft. Of course, this consideration is absolute taboo in our depraved and toxic political culture because ARE YOU SAYING AMERKUH *DESERVES* TO BE ATTACKED??!?!?!?!!111!!!1!!!!???!!?!?!???
TREASON!!1!!1!!TRAIOTR!!!1!!!ELEVNTYY!!111!!!
USAQ!USA!USA!USA!

Yeah. (sigh)

A fellow named Thomas Joseph replies:

Ok, so we’ve now come to this realization? Now what the fuck are we, your average citizen, supposed to do about it?

And here was my reply:

Thomas Joseph, organize marches on the Pentagon, as in the old days? Oh wait, you need to have a draft army for that kind of indignation, yes?

Didn’t anybody learn anything from Richard Nixon?

Here it is:

Re-institute the draft; ALL overseas adventures will henceforth require 100% military conscription for every able-bodied person, up to the current age-limit (which I believe is 42?), no deferments except for pregnancy (major baby-boom will be an unfortunate but temporary side effect), medical personnel and EMTs, cops, fire-fighters and a few other occupations. NO DEFERMENTS FOR COLLEGE and certainly, NO DEFERMENTS for intellectual jobs. In fact, if I may sound like Chairman Mao for a moment, I’d ship all the neocon book editors out to Afghanistan FIRST.

One thing the American people are quite populist about, is the make-up of the military and how the affluent avoid service. The loudest people objecting will BE the affluent, which is why hardly anyone in congress has kids in the military.

Follow these directives, and ALL soldiers from ALL overseas adventures (including Korea, et. al.) will be home by lunchtime.

I’m just sayin.

And I am repeating my comment here, because yes, I meant it.

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.






It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

Woman halts Fort Hood bloodbath

At left: Police Officer Kimberly Munley (Twitter photo)


Perfect feminist post title, wouldn't you say?


Although the news out of Fort Hood is generally horrific, feminists everywhere can rejoice that A WOMAN stopped the killing.

From CNN:

Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) -- The police officer who ended the Fort Hood massacre by shooting the suspect was known as the enforcer on her street, a "tough woman" who patrolled her neighborhood and once stopped burglars at her house.

"If you come in, I'm going to shoot," Kimberly Munley told the would-be intruders last year.

It was Munley who arrived quickly Thursday at the scene of the worst massacre at an Army base in U.S. history, where 13 people were killed. She confronted the alleged gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and shot him four times. Munley was wounded in the exchange.

That's just like her, friends and family say.

"I just felt more protected knowing she was on my street," neighbor Erin Houston said.

Munley, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, lives on a street where a lot of homes are vacant because so many residents are deployed at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We sleep a lot safer knowing she's on the block," said Sgt. William Barbrow, another neighbor.

When Bryan Munley heard that his sister-in-law thwarted the alleged gunman in a shootout, he wasn't surprised.

"There's nothing that stands in her way. It completely makes sense that she did what she did," he said from Downingtown, Pennsylvania. "It was amazing. Without her, there would have been a lot more people killed."

He added, "She is definitely a tough woman."

Munley, 34, is being treated for her wounds. Her father, former Carolina Beach, North Carolina, Mayor Dennis Barbour, said his daughter is doing well.

"Her efforts were superb," said Col. Steven Braverman, the base hospital commander.

Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, Fort Hood's commanding general, described Munley as a "trained, active first responder" who acted quickly after she "just happened to encounter the gunman."

"Really a pretty amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer," he said.

Cone said Munley and her partner responded "very quickly" to the scene -- reportedly in about three minutes.

On social networking sites, she was lauded for her actions. One Facebook fan page was called "Sgt. Kimberly Munley: A Real American Hero" and had more than 1,400 members.

"My prayers for a fast recovery as well as my sincere thanks of an outstanding job," one person wrote. One woman added, "U got some brass balls, girl ... u r my hero!!!!"

Authorities say Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood on Thursday, killing 13 and wounding 30 others.

Cone was asked on CNN's "American Morning" whether Munley's shots brought down the assailant and stopped him from shooting.

"That's correct," Cone said. "The critical factor here was her quick response to the situation."

Bryan Munley said Munley is married to his brother, Staff Sgt. Matthew Munley. He said Matthew was in Downingtown, outside Philadelphia, visiting his family when the shootings happened. The couple, married since 2006, have a 3-year-old daughter named Jayden.

Bryan Munley said Matthew had recently been transferred to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and has done two tours in Iraq. Kimberly was trying to find a job in North Carolina and was hoping to move there soon, Matthew said.

Matthew was at Fort Bragg on Friday, trying to get a flight to Texas to see his wife.

A page on Twitter lists the name "Kim Munley" of Killeen, Texas, near Ford Hood. It has a photo of a female police officer with the name "Kim Munley" on her uniform.

Its bio blurb has particular resonance in the aftermath of the incident.

"I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life."

Ohhh, you sure have. May God Bless you for your self-sacrificing work.

~*~

More on Fort Hood:

Neighbors: Alleged Fort Hood gunman emptied apartment (CNN)

Letter from Fort Hood (Mother Jones)

Fort Hood shooting: police woman hailed for bravery (UK Telegraph)

Pregnant Chicago woman, Francheska Velez, among Fort Hood shooting victims (Huffington Post)

Mosques Up Security in Wake of Ft. Hood (CBS News)

What is known about Nidal Malik Hasan and Fort Hood shooting (Christian Science Monitor)

Jerome Corsi at it again, and so soon, too. (Huffington Post)

Will Bill O'Reilly be held accountable for hate speech against Dr Tiller?

As you have probably heard by now, late-term abortion provider Dr George Tiller was shot and murdered yesterday while attending church in Wichita, Kansas.

Church. Shot him in church.

As I commented on the Feministe thread, not even the mafia does hits in church.

If you would like to send condolences, the Feminist Majority will forward them to Dr Tiller's family.

~*~

There is much fascinating and intense commentary in the wake of Dr Tiller's murder, signaling deep moral confusion about the subject of abortion, at least here in the USA. I recommend Jill's Feministe thread about the kinds of late-term abortions Dr Tiller performed; these were usually medical emergencies. Also recommended is Heart's post on the Quiverfull connection. (I knew there had to be one.)

Meanwhile, we have William Saletan at Slate, who asks the loaded (pardon expression) question: Is it wrong to murder an abortionist?

To me, Tiller was brave. His work makes me want to puke. But so does combat, the kind where guts are spilled and people choke on their own blood. I like to think I love my country and would fight for it. But I doubt I have the stomach to pull the trigger, much less put my life on the line.

Several years ago, I went to a conference of abortionists. Some of the late-term providers were there. A row of tables displayed forceps for sale. They started small and got bigger and bigger. Walking along the row, you could ask yourself: Would I use these forceps? How about those? Where would I stop?

The people who do late-term abortions are the ones who don't flinch. They're like the veterans you sometimes see in war documentaries, quietly recounting what they faced and did. You think you're pro-choice. You think marching or phone-banking makes you an activist. You know nothing. There's you, and then there are the people who work in the clinics. And then there are the people who use the forceps. And then there are the people who use the forceps nobody else will use. At the end of the line, there's George Tiller.

Now he's gone. Who will pick up his forceps?

Tiller's murder is different from all previous murders of abortion providers. If you kill an ordinary abortionist, somebody else will step in. But if you kill the guy at the end of the line, some of his patients won't be able to find an alternative. You will have directly prevented abortions.

That seems to be what Tiller's alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, had in mind.

Megan McArdle writes in The Atlantic:

Imagine a future in which the moral consensus has changed, and our grandchildren regard abortion the way we regard slavery. Who will the hero of history be: Tiller, or his murderer? At the very least, they'll be conflicted, the way we are about John Brown.

I was waiting for someone to mention John Brown. They always do, on both the right and the left. His moral certainty haunts us.

McArdle continues:

We accept that when the law is powerless, people are entitled to kill in order to prevent other murders--had Tiller whipped out a gun at an elementary school, we would now be applauding his murderer's actions. In this case, the law was powerless because the law supported late-term abortions. Moreover, that law had been ruled outside the normal political process by the Supreme Court. If you think that someone is committing hundreds of gruesome murders a year, and that the law cannot touch him, what is the moral action? To shrug? Is that what you think of ordinary Germans who ignored Nazi crimes? Is it really much of an excuse to say that, well, most of your neighbors didn't seem to mind, so you concluded it must be all right? We are not morally required to obey an unjust law. In fact, when the death of innocents is involved, we are required to defy it.

As I say, I think their moral intuition is incorrect. The fact that conception and birth are the easiest bright lines to draw does not make either of them the correct one. Tiller's killer is a murderer, and whether or not he deserves the lengthy jail sentence he will get, society needs him in jail for its own protection.

Still, I am shocked to see so many liberals today saying that the correct response is, essentially, doubling down. Make the law more friendly to abortion! Show the fundies who's boss! You know what fixes terrorism? Bitch slap those bastards until they understand that we'll never compromise!

Well, it sure worked in Iraq. I think Afghanistan's going pretty well, too, right?

Using the political system to stomp on radicalized fringes does not seem to be very effective in getting them to eschew violence. In fact, it seems to be a very good way of getting more violence. Possibly because those fringes have often turned to violence precisely because they feel that the political process has been closed off to them.

Indeed, I think it is notable that this happened after Obama's election, at a time the rightwing feels beleaguered. According to most statistics I have seen, the actual number of abortions is decreasing. Thus, this terrorist act was not about a situation that is progressively worsening... in pro-life terms, the situation is IMPROVING.

Therefore, we can conclude the real catalyst was a feeling of hopelessness on the part of the anti-abortion movement; the sentiment that they have "lost" the battle for good.

Strategically, this motivation is very different from that of John Brown, who hoped to ignite a full-scale rebellion (and eventually, there was one, called the Civil War). By contast, Scott Roeder appears to have acted because there is NO HOPE of a full-scale rebellion, so he might as well do whatever desperate acts he can manage.

Even if he has to do it in a church.

And finally, Salon correctly points out that Fox News demagogue Bill O'Reilly has been waging a non-stop verbal war on Dr Tiller for years now. After calling everyone from Michael Moore to the DailyKos bloggers "terrorist apologists" and worse--I think it's now Bill's turn to wear the title of TERRORIST APOLOGIST, since his incendiary and inflammatory screeds have everything to do with WHY Dr Tiller was in the right-wing cross-hairs.

There were only three doctors in the entire country (and now only two) who did late-term abortions. Why do we only know the name of Dr Tiller? Largely because Bill O'Reilly was obsessed with him, in particular:

Tiller's name first appeared on "The Factor" on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as "Tiller the Baby Killer."

Tiller, O'Reilly likes to say, "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000." He's guilty of "Nazi stuff," said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and Al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. "This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union," said O'Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006.

O'Reilly has also frequently linked Tiller to his longtime obsession, child molestation and rape. Because a young teenager who received an abortion from Tiller could, by definition, have been a victim of statutory rape, O'Reilly frequently suggested that the clinic was covering up for child rapists (rather than teenage boyfriends) by refusing to release records on the abortions performed.

When Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, an O'Reilly favorite who faced harsh criticism for seeking Tiller's records, was facing electoral defeat by challenger Paul Morrison, O'Reilly said, "Now we don't endorse candidates here, but obviously, that would be a colossal mistake. Society must afford some protection for viable babies and children who are raped." (Morrison ultimately unseated Kline.)

This is where O'Reilly's campaign against George Tiller becomes dangerous. While he never advocated anything violent or illegal, the Fox bully repeatedly portrayed the doctor as a murderer on the loose, allowed to do whatever he wanted by corrupt and decadent authorities. "Also, it looks like Dr. Tiller, who some call Tiller the Baby Killer, is spending a large amount of money in order to get Mr. Morrison elected. That opens up all kinds of questions," said O'Reilly on Nov. 6, 2006, in one of many suggestions that Tiller was improperly influencing the election.

Tiller's excuses for performing late-term abortions, O'Reilly suggested, were frou-frou, New Age, false ailments: The woman might have a headache or anxiety, or have been dumped by her boyfriend. She might be "depressed," scoffed O'Reilly, which he dismissed as "feeling a bit blue and carr[ying] a certified check." There was, he proposed on Jan. 5, 2007, a kind of elite conspiracy of silence on Tiller. "Yes, OK, but we know about the press. But it becomes a much more intense problem when you have a judge, confronted with evidence of criminal wrongdoing, who throws it out on some technicality because he wants to be liked at the country club. Then it's intense."

Tiller, said O'Reilly on Jan. 6 of this year, was a major supporter of then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. "I think it's unfairly characterized as just a grip and grin relationship. He was a pretty big supporter of hers." She had cashed her campaign check from Tiller, "doesn't seem to be real upset about this guy operating a death mill, which is exactly what it is in her state, does she?" he asked on July 14 of last year. "Maybe she'll -- maybe she'll pardon him," he scoffed two months ago.

This is where it gets most troubling. O'Reilly's language describing Tiller, and accusing the state and its elites of complicity in his actions, could become extremely vivid. On June 12, 2007, he said, "Yes, I think we all know what this is. And if the state of Kansas doesn't stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands as the governor does right now, Governor Sebelius."

Three days later, he added, "No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands. But now so does Governor Sebelius. She is not fit to serve. Nor is any Kansas politician who supports Tiller's business of destruction. I wouldn't want to be these people if there is a Judgment Day. I just -- you know ... Kansas is a great state, but this is a disgrace upon everyone who lives in Kansas. Is it not?"

Speaking of DISGRACE, I think we know who the DISGRACE is.

Of course, he will not apologize for inflaming the rabble. But we cannot allow him to forget that he is accountable, too.

It is not Governor Sebelius, but Bill O'Reilly who has blood on his hands.

Only 9 more shopping days till Christmas...

A rather Christmassy look for Dead Air! (It's supposed to sparkle!)

~*~


I guess I don't mind telling yall, yesterday's entry was the hardest one I've ever had to write. I even have a hard time reading it back. It took me all weekend.

I had just learned Kathy was in the ICU, when I learned of the death of my friend Sue Urbas via Christmas card, and felt the scary onslaught of the Pale Horse, which I described back on December 5th.

Aye, it's been a rough week.

I realize one of the unpleasant parts of aging is that you are LEFT BEHIND (deliberate joke)... and maybe that's why that concept is so frightening? What a terrifying thing to tell the children, that everyone you love will leave you and you will be left behind. Meditating on this awhile, I've decided it's a form of child abuse.

It's bad enough that this will happen to you anyway, if you live long enough.

I knew I had to tell the truth in my obit of Kathy; ironically, she is the one who taught me how to do that.

~*~

Sue Urbas and I were not good friends, but were in the same social circle at one time. She was probably the most tireless activist I have ever known. She was the person we all compare ourselves to, the one who didn't compromise her hard-core values with cable TV or mass-market googaws for her house. She was employed by the old Northend Recycling Center, which was located in the old Northwood Community Center in Columbus, Ohio. (Someday, that place deserves it's own post, if I could find some decent photos. Certainly, I never thought to take any. The story of how an old elementary school turned into a hippie-haven is an amazing tale all its own.) Sue was one of the managers of this building, as was a guy who was an extra in the movie Brubaker, filmed in Ohio. (I can never remember his name, but whenever I see the movie replayed on American Movie Classics, I always wait for him to pop up in the shot with Robert Redford: There he is! I knew that guy!) The community center burned down, not surprisingly, apparently due to arson. The spiffy, shiny community center that was erected in it's place is a bureaucratic replica, populated (of course) by various bureaucrats.

One thing I noticed about the above-linked obituary of Sue, is no mention of her radical feminism. I grow extremely weary of the much-repeated stereotype of second-wave feminists, that we were all middle-class, shrinking violets engaged in endless tea-and-sympathy consciousness-raising and theory-reading, listening to Meg Christian records. Sue was nothing like that at all (which is possibly why no one thought to mention her feminism in the obituary?)... An organizer of Women Against Rape, she also managed one of the first homeless shelters in Central Ohio; she worked her ass off for unjustly-charged, poor black male defendants. She helped organize the series of punk concerts called "NOWHERE" (as in, Nowhere 79, Nowhere 80). One of these included the late Ronald Koal, a memorable local star of the time. She was also instrumental in organizing the yearly COMFEST, from the time of it's inception.

Left: Shirtless Eric Moore channels Ted Nugent, as he poses in a 70s photo with his band The Godz. (He was wearing shiny long black leather coats long before Neo and Trinity, too.)


I recall Sue was once closely associated with local scary heavy-metal dude Eric Moore, one of those weird friendships nobody could quite figure out. But I thought it was great. It just added to the Sue-legend, just like her friendships with the rough-and-tumble ex-convicts she was always helping to get released on parole.

Thus, she was not a typical radical feminist, by any means. (Are any of us, really? Or is that a stereotype that finally needs to be put aside, at long last?)

Rest in peace, Sue. We will miss you.

~*~

After five weeks, I am finally back to work with my big boot/leg-cast thingie... it is humongous, awkward and gets caught on everything. I am somewhat amazed at how everyone thinks it's okay to joke about it and call me gimpy and suchlike. Is this what disabled people have to put up with, or are people more circumspect if they know it is a permanent vs temporary disability? Is the whole "joke" in calling me "gimpy"--the fact that I am really not gimpy--so it's okay to joke about it? I have shushed at least two people (who I am not willing to argue with at length), telling them someone else might hear them. I am trying to give them the message that it isn't cool to say that, but one person just replied, "OOOooops! You're right!" and covered his mouth. Then he whispered it to me the rest of the fucking day. (Now, I ask you, is that funny or what?)

Last week, I was slowly (and rather painfully) hobbling over to an empty checkout line to pay for something at a local establishment, when a very fit, younger woman galloped in front of me, so she could be first. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I did not cuss her out, but unbelievably, she kept looking at me and half-smiling, apologetically, obviously hoping I wasn't offended by her abject rudeness. (Yes, bitch, I am plenty offended, now just pay for your shit and get out of the way, please.)

I am sure that kind of thing happens to disabled people all the time. So, I have to admit, it's been a learning experience...not necessarily the good kind.

~*~

Why hasn't Politico covered the arson at Wasilla Bible Church, Sarah Palin's church? Why did I have to read about that in my local paper, but haven't heard it covered extensively in the news? (And as you all know, I am newshound extraordinaire.)

Accelerant poured around Sarah Palin’s church before fire, ATF says

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS • December 15, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An accelerant was poured around the exterior of Gov. Sarah Palin’s church before fire heavily damaged the building, federal investigators said Monday.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the accelerant was poured at several locations around the church, including entrances.

Lab tests will determine the type of substance involved. Possibilities include gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel or even lamp oil, Agent Nick Starcevic said.

The blaze was set Friday night at the main entrance of the Wasilla Bible Church while a small group, including two children, were inside. No one was injured. Fire authorities were called to the scene at 9:40 p.m., unusually early for many arson fires, Starcevic said.

“It’s kind of odd to do in the evening hours,” he said. “I can tell you that most of the arson fires I’ve worked on are late nighttime, usually when no one is there.”

Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, was not at the church at the time of the fire but visited Saturday. Her spokesman, Bill McAllister, said Monday that Palin knew about the accelerants Saturday morning before a statement she authorized was released that day.

During her visit at the church, Palin told an assistant pastor she was sorry if the fire was connected to the “undeserved negative attention” the church has received since she became the vice presidential candidate Aug. 29, McAllister said.

Wasilla Deputy Police Chief Greg Wood said authorities had no immediate suspects or motive.

Okay, look, assholes: I don't like Sarah Palin either, as a random search of this blog makes very clear. But if you have issues with Palin, what you do, is DEMONSTRATE in FULL VIEW of EVERYONE at one of her rallies. You do not creep around like a comic-book villain under the safety of darkness and burn a fucking church down with people in it.

Whoever did this, you are a swine and a coward. You deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

~*~

And how is everyone else's week going?