Just when I thought it was safe to carry on a conversation on the left about various Obama administration policies, the phrases “same as Bush” or “worse than Bush” have skulked back into popular use thanks to the leaked Office of Legal Counsel white paper on the targeted killing of terrorist combatants who were born in the U.S.

You really can’t miss it. It’s all over Twitter and the blogs — screeched by experts in the field of shaming anyone who doesn’t similarly screech for the immediate censure or impeachment of the president over his national security strategy.

As with last week, I’m going to start a Monday column with a word about something from Real Time with Bill Maher the other night. Maher brought out The Daily Beast‘s Tina Brown who, during a segment about drones, said, “[Obama] would be impeached by now on drones, if he were W. Bush. Don’t you think?” And then she somewhat backed off the impeachment talk and continued, “If this were a Republican president, the outcry about drones would be far greater.”

First of all, I’m shocked that Tina Brown doesn’t know. There’s a huge outcry about drones and OLC white paper. But before I get into specifics, here, too, is The New York Times with some shocking sensationalism:

Four years into his tenure, the onetime critic of President George W. Bush finds himself cast as a present-day Mr. Bush, justifying the muscular application of force in the defense of the nation while detractors complain that he has sacrificed the country’s core values in the name of security.

This is absolutely ridiculous, regardless of whether you’re pro-drone or anti-drone — pro-white paper or anti-white paper. There’s simply no comparison between the two, but the pervasiveness of this meme leads me to believe that some of these people are desperate to use the line regardless of the circumstance or severity of the trespass.

Let’s take a look back to the dark ride of the Bush years. In spite of his awesome Wes Anderson-esque artwork, George W. Bush, under the influence of sociopathic neocon warhawks, invaded two nations in the name of fighting terrorism. He committed legions of American soldiers to invade and occupy Iraq under false pretenses and in the complete absence of an exit strategy or a true sense of mission. Because Bush’s defense secretary failed to provide these soldiers with adequate body armor or properly outfitted Humvees, more than 30,000 American soldiers — again, in a war of dubious origins — were either killed or mutilated or psychologically shattered or a combination thereof.

In the name of fighting terrorism, the Bush administration tortured a wide variety of detainees: an unethical and completely immoral series of war crimes, say nothing of the fact that it’s an ineffectual form of interrogation. Meanwhile, aided by a compliant Congress, the Bush team suspended the civil liberties of Americans when it passed the PATRIOT Act and other fearmongering policies. And yet the Bush administration failed to capture or kill Bin Laden, and the commander-in-chief who tasked scores of Americans to fight and die for his Cause admitted through a giggling smirk that he doesn’t spend time thinking about getting Bin Laden.

I could spend vast column inches running through the egregious national security policies of the previous administration, but I think you remember.

On the other hand, President Obama not only ended Bush’s hubristic war in Iraq, but he’s in the process of ending the war in Afghanistan. This is a critical point: he was handed a pair of wars and the Herculean responsibility to wind them down in a way that didn’t leave the troops who sacrificed everything with a sense that their service wasn’t an exercise in futility. That’s no easy task. But it appears as if we’ll be able to nobly withdraw from Afghanistan without witnessing desperate scenes of American personnel grappled onto the skids of evacuation choppers on the rooftop of the American consulate. In other words, this president has created an exit strategy that never existed during the Bush years and it’s a strategy that honors the sacrifices of the men and women who served in country for far too long.

The use of drones in Pakistan, the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and continued use of indefinite detention of enemy combatants are all byproducts of the third war: the war on terrorism. To repeat what I wrote last week, the president ought to work with Congress to repeal the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which would rescind his extra-constitutional powers. The use of drone technology as a CIA and military weapon ought to be regulated and checked to make sure its risk-free convenience doesn’t lead to its abuse. But if the exercise of these powers are the worst aspects of the Obama administration, there’s no intellectually honest way to market in the claim that Obama is as bad or worse than Bush. There’s no way.

Going back to Tina Brown’s accusation that liberals are hypocritical for evidently giving Obama a pass on the above powers, I’ll take the bait. Would I be angrier at Obama’s anti-terrorism efforts if he was a Republican? Absolutely. If Obama was a Republican, or if somehow Bush was still president, his actions would be significantly worse — an assumption made with significant evidence gathered over eight brutal years. It’s not difficult to see how a Republican’s conduct would be significantly more hawkish and bloody. Bush Republicans are more recklessly bellicose than Democrats. So instead of using drones in Pakistan and Yemen, perhaps a Republican president like Bush would commit more soldiers in more boots-on-the-ground invasions. Is that so far-fetched given what we’ve observed in Bush and the two Republican presidential nominees?

On top of a would-be Republican’s management of the wars and the war on terrorism, a Republican president’s domestic and fiscal policies would be guided by the tea party and Fox News’ influence, seriously threatening our economic and climatological progress; jeopardizing the reproductive rights of women; and further deregulating the corporations that caused the Great Recession.

Comparative political analysis of the presidency requires serious evaluations of context. A question for Tina Brown: how should liberals evaluate progressive hero FDR given how he fire-bombed Tokyo, a paper city, while also incarcerating more than 100,000 American citizens in indefinite detention camps without due process? How should liberals evaluate Abraham Lincoln who unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus, threatened to arrest the Chief Justice and killed 250,000 enemy combatants who happened to have born in the U.S.? Naturally we have to consider the context of these actions. In spite of their more questionable deeds, these presidents were otherwise historically strong leaders with powerfully liberal legacies. Had they not been, and had their more harrowing decisions been accompanied by many, many other harrowing decisions (what if Lincoln acquiesced to slavery and southern secession?), then yes, liberals ought to view them through the same contextual prism, say, Nixon, Hoover or George W. Bush.

But kneejerk conflation of Obama and Bush could be the most ridiculous talking point to come out of the mouths of liberals in the post-Bush era. Without the benefit of logic or historical context, it’s merely a cheap crowd-pleaser used by anyone seeking the accolades of similarly nearsighted sycophants.

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent decision to lift the ban on women in combat has sparked some heated debate, it seems mostly on Twitter.  My personal account has been besieged by people who don’t object to the new policy because women cannot handle the role but who think it is horrible that we are going to subject women to “capture, torture and rape.”  My answer was that no one — male or female — should be subjected to these things but that was met with; “that’s how it has always been.”

Earth to these people — so have women, even when not in combat positions. This really is an issue of fairness.  Men who serve in combat are eligible for promotions and accommodations that their female counterparts are not.

Why should we allow women to serve in combat?

1. Women are already serving in combat positions.  Shocking but true.  While they have been barred from certain positions such as artillery, armor, infantry and others (1994 rule), American women are already serving in many combat position.  Most European countries have no such restrictions.  More than 20,000 women have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, 800 have been injured and at least 130 killed.  This was all BEFORE the restriction on this was lifted.
2. Objection: women are not physically able to serve in combat. Another message from reality; not all men are physically fit enough to serve in combat.  No one wants to see people who are not able to serve be put in that position.  The stanard should be fitness, not gender.
3. Fairness is important.  By allowing women to serve in positions — and no one is forcing anyone to do so, we give them access to hundreds of thousands of jobs.  We also make them eligible for the same accommodations and awards their male counterparts can get now.

But that’s not why my Twitter account was a magnet for all the vitriol this week.  How  horrible a person I must be to want to subject women to such horrible things as capture, torture and rape.

I am not even going to go into the huge, global problems of human trafficking of women and girls or the need for laws such as the Violence Against Women Act in the US – proof that being female is enough to make those things threats.

Rape is already a weapon on war and women do not have to be in the military to be victims.  Don’t believe me?  Check this out.  If you really think keeping women out of combat positions will keep them safe from rape (and if you think they can be raped without being captured and tortured, you clearly are unaware of what rape is), you are at best wrong and at worst delusional.

How about you do some research into the recent conflict in Rwanda?  The current conflict in Congo (will write more about that next Monday).  And want to go further back?  Check out the book, The Rape of Nanking.  These are just a few examples.

Yeah, keeping women out of combat roles is the way to protect women from rape in war.  And if you really want to read my personal experience with this (not in war) you can read this.

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

President Barack Obama meeting in the Oval Office with two of his speechwriters on Feb. 5, 2013. (White House photo by Pete Souza)

By Robert Parry

The United States is a nation foundering in a vast sea of secrets, with government officials showing little regard for the damage that is done to a democratic Republic by withholding millions upon millions of documents from the people.

Some of these excessive secrets relate to current events, such as the unwillingness of the Obama administration to explain its legal reasoning for drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. While there may be some legitimate operational secrets involved, great harm is inflicted on the public trust from refusing to release the parameters and rationale for the program.

The not-unreasonable assumption among many Americans is simply that there is no legal coherence to the policy, at least not one that can be defended in the court of public opinion. Many Americans thus conclude that the government is arrogant, a judgment that runs parallel to an opinion held by many people in Yemen and other countries where drone strikes have occurred.

This image of a hubristic United States has its own negative consequences. It feeds not only anti-Americanism abroad but a sense of alienation at home. Many Americans see democracy as not only short-circuited by all the manipulative political techniques bought by billionaires but by an intentional starving of an informed electorate denied factual sustenance by the government.

This alienation, in turn, is feeding the heated controversy that has played out this week over NBC’s disclosure of the Obama administration’s white paper, which was provided to Congress summarizing what is contained in a longer classified version of the legal arguments that justify the killing of al-Qaeda suspects, including Americans.

The Justice Department’s white paper said it is lawful for “an informed, high-level official” of the U.S. government to authorize the killing of an American if the target is a ranking figure in al-Qaeda who poses “an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States” and if capture isn’t feasible.

The disclosure of the white paper has heated up the debate inside the United States about how such “targeted killings” are done and why the Obama administration has resisted a full discussion of the practice and any legal safeguards that might be applied, such as requiring review by a special court or at least treating such extraordinary overseas slayings with a review similar to what police face when they use deadly force.

A History of Doubt

This debate also is occurring amid a growing popular distrust toward an overly secretive government. The American people intuitively understand that they are being kept in the dark about some of the most vital decisions that a country must undertake, including issues of war and peace. At high levels of government — among both Republicans and Democrats — there exists the benighted view that sharing information with the public is a messy business that is most easily resolved by simply keeping as many secrets as possible.

Sometimes, the motivation is sinister, such as when governments want to lead the American people into warfare and do so by inundating them with propaganda. A decade ago, President George W. Bush applied that strategy to get his war of choice in Iraq. Other times, the secrecy is more the result of timidity or bureaucratic inertia. It is much safer, career-wise, to withhold information than to release it.

Remarkably, despite the many deceptions surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the most severe punishments have been meted out to Americans who have exposed the truth, not those who have hidden it. For instance, Pvt. Bradley Manning is likely to spend much of his young life in prison for releasing government information to WikiLeaks, while senior Bush administration officials who helped spin a giant web of lies have escaped any meaningful accountability.

But the secrecy problem is deeper than these more recent events. On Tuesday, I spent a day at Ronald Reagan’s presidential library in Simi Valley, California, poring through files that date back three decades. I discovered that Freedom of Information Act requests that I filed years ago have failed to gain the release of thousands of pages of documents, which probably never should have been secret in the 1980s, let alone in the second decade of the 21st Century.

Ironically, some of my FOIAs related to Reagan’s aggressive use of propaganda and disinformation to herd the American public behind his policies in Central America and the Near East. Since Reagan’s techniques were sometimes hatched inside the CIA and the national security establishment, each of those agencies gets a chance to object to the release, meaning that the process for declassification can go on for many years.

So, the American people are even denied the facts about how they were manipulated 30 years ago. And this hidden history is not irrelevant to the present. Not only were Reagan’s state-of-the-art techniques for controlling public opinion passed on to subsequent administrations but some of the false narratives that Reagan’s spin-masters twirled continue to misinform public policy to this day, such as misleading perceptions of how the conflict in Afghanistan originated.

The interminable delays in releasing the true historical record also means that some of this history will be lost forever. Many documents, even when they are finally released, do not clear up all the mysteries. Often, you have to track down the officials involved. But if they are no longer alive, serious gaps will remain.

Plus, the notion that some brilliant historian will someday review the fuller record and grasp all its nuances is largely a myth. Many crucial details only make sense to people who were close to the actual events, whether policymakers or journalists. Once that knowledge is lost, it can’t be recreated.

Yet, disclosure of secrets – whether past or present – remains a low government priority. Indeed, when President Barack Obama began his administration by releasing some secret Justice Department rationalizations for torture, he came under intense criticism from Republicans and their right-wing media allies. The experience seems to have chastened him. It certainly has not been a “mistake” that he has repeated often.

There are always plenty of “tough-guy” reasons why releasing information is tantamount to helping the “enemy.” But the long-term consequence of this incessant secrecy is to undermine public trust in government and thus to endanger the future of democracy. Plus, excessive secrecy breeds so much suspicion that it erodes acceptance of secrecy in those moments when it is truly necessary.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

(Originally posted at Consortium News)

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

They say if you move far enough to the left, you end up on the right. As such, throughout the last four or five years I’ve witnessed this phenomenon on way too many occasions, the most recent one being yesterday’s reactions to the article I wrote about the Justice Department’s white paper regarding the targeted killing of American citizens suspected of being high level al-Qaida operatives.

I discovered quite quickly that one of the common traits among the far-right and the far-left is a total inability to accept compromise — or even concessions to their point of view.

To recap, I essentially called for one or both of the following actions. 1) The elimination of drone missions against U.S. citizens who happen to be enemy combatants via ending the war on terror and rescinding the disgusting Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). And, 2) the strict regulation of drones and how they’re used by establishing law enforcement-style rules and oversight.

Not good enough.

My reasoning was based on the fact that the white paper made its case based on the president’s war powers, which were established in the 2001 post-9/11 AUMF. No AUMF, no war powers, no legal justification for the targeted killing of suspected terrorists born in the U.S. However, if the war continues, the president or the next president could continue the policy based on the wartime precedent exploited by Lincoln and FDR who presided over the killing of American citizens in wartime (more elaboration on this presently). But if it’s impossible to rescind the AUMF, then Congress needs to exercise its authority by regulating how the president can use the drone technology and to ban the targeted killing of Americans without due process.

While I accept the existence of the technology as a weapon of war, it’s critical that we get a handle on its usage before it’s too late because its unmanned, risk-free capability presents new moral territory for American warfare. Furthermore, drones or not, the AUMF has to be rescinded and the war on terrorism has to end. President Obama, who earned anti-terrorism capital by getting Bin Laden and crushing al-Qaida, is in a unique position to do so.

Unless I’m way off base, this is a reasonable, rational approach.

But evidently there’s no room for reason or rationality because it’s much easier for certain politically ignorant, selectively outraged liberals to scream “baby killer!” while waving photos of dead children not unlike the worst zealots in the anti-choice movement. These people believe the drone program as a kind of political singularity — gravitationally absorbing and crushing every other issue, positive or negative, within its inescapable vortex. No accomplishment is big enough to outweigh the worse-than-Bush trespass of killing Anwar al-Awlaki and using drone strikes in Pakistan.

If you don’t screech about drones, you’re apparently with the drones. You’re an Obamabot. Come to think of it, I learned yesterday in the comments section here that if you haven’t been screeching about drones since January 20, 2009, you’re not allowed to write anything negative about them either.

I’m not sure how that makes any sense. When I don’t write about drones, I’m an Obamabot. When I write about drones and call for the elimination or regulation of the program, I’m an Obamabot who’s somehow not awesome enough to oppose drones. I couldn’t help but to think about those hipster d-bags in high school who, when you’d tell them you liked a particular band, would reply in an aloof hipster d-bag tone of voice that they’ve been listening to the same band from the beginning, before it was popular, and now that everyone is listening to the band, the band sucks.

I’d often fantasize about elbowing those insufferable bastards in the throat. That’s certainly not the case with the commenters I encountered yesterday, of course.

There’s an obvious and understandable emotionalism that goes along with the phrase “targeted killing of American citizens without due process.” It’s a scary idea and one which, taken at face value, should be loudly opposed by, you know, everyone. But throughout the day, I debated with several people about that phrase in the context of warfare, and there is, in fact, precedent for it. In my article I noted that Lincoln killed 250,000 American citizens without due process who had taken up arms in a massive act of treason against the United States. American citizens were killed when Allied bombers attacked various European cities. And there were at least eight American citizens killed by Allied forces after they joined the Nazi army. (There were countless other Americans who fought for the Nazi army but who weren’t killed.) Agree or disagree, the American government, Congress and the president, believe we’re engaged in a hot war against al-Qaida and thus it’s a matter of wartime prerogative to kill anyone in al-Qaida who’s taken up arms against the United States, regardless of origins.

So yes, it’s the “targeted killing of American citizens without due process,” but there’s not due process in war, except when a combatant is captured, and then there’s minimal due process (military commissions are a topic for a different time). And whether a combatant is killed or captured is up to the discretion of the commander-in-chief and his subcommanders. In a general sense, what’s happening now, specifically the killing of enemy combatants irrespective of origin, isn’t unprecedented. Lincoln and FDR are members of the Pantheon of great liberal presidents in spite of it.

However, what’s unprecedented is the scope of this so-called war on terrorism. There doesn’t appear to be a defined goal. When does end? What does an ending look like? If it’s endless (there will always be terrorism), then there’s no way we can allow the commander-in-chief to continue this drone policy in perpetuity. Therefore, it’s imperative that Congress either repeals the AUMF or amends it with a sunset provision so, at some point soon, the president is stripped of his additional post-9/11 war powers. If this can’t be done, and the government believes the war on terror must go on, then there needs to be checks on the process and the elimination of the targeted killing program against American-born combatants. It simply can’t become a matter of ongoing policy. It’s too dangerous and if it should fall into the wrong hands, it could get much worse.

Yeah. That’s a lot of nuance. More nuance than accusing the president of being a bloody executioner of American citizens without cause or precedent. But war is complicated and morally shaky, especially when the enemy isn’t dressed in military uniforms and has blended seamlessly into civilian populations. It’s worth noting, too, that this white paper policy isn’t like torture, which is illegal, ineffective and morally wrong. It’s much more complicated than that, which is why we need to either strongly regulate it or totally wrap it up immediately — or both. The alternative is too dark and disturbing to imagine.

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From ThinkProgress:

A new government report is predicting the budget deficit will drop below $1 trillion for the first time in President Barack Obama’s tenure in office.

The Congressional Budget Office analysis released Tuesday says the government will run a $845 billion deficit this year, a modest improvement compared to last year’s $1.1 trillion shortfall but still enough red ink to require the government to borrow 24 cents of every dollar it spends.

The agency also projects that the economy will grow just 1.4 percent this year if $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts take effect as scheduled March 1. Unemployment would average 8 percent. Obama wants to ease the cuts by replacing them with new tax revenue and alternative cuts, but a clash is looming with Republicans who insist that last month’s tax increase on wealthier earners will be the last tax hike they permit.

The report predicts the deficit would dip to $430 billion by 2015, the lowest since the government posted a $459 billion deficit is former President George W. Bush’s last year in office. That would be a relatively low 2.4 percent when measured against the size of the economy. But deficits would move higher after that and again reach near $1 trillion in the latter portion of the 10-year window – despite the recently enacted tax increase on family income exceeding $450,000 and automatic spending cuts of about $100 billion a year. The package of spending cuts and tax increases are punishment for Washington’s failure to strike a long-term budget pact.

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin

I support most of President Barack Obama’s actions and policies.  That does not mean when they violate the fundamental ideas that make me believe in our republic I will blindly follow him.  The recent reports about his use of drones to target Americans trouble me.  If these same policies were announced under George W. Bush’s tenure in the White House I would be furious.  Case in point:  I opposed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  This expands law enforcement’s abilities to spy on its own citizens.  The proudest moment of my career was when I texted my then boss to repeat the above quote on the floor of the House of Representatives before he voted no to its reauthorization and he did.  I was even more appalled when a Bush spokesperson explained away the deaths of some Americans overseas — they were on a bus that had been targeted because there was a terror suspect on board — by saying that; their proximity to the terrorist meant they were equally as guilty, as if they had any idea.

So the revelation that we are using drones, and my feelings on their use in general ranges from just bad policy to being downright evil, disturbs me greatly.

Every US passport reads, “The Secretary of State of the United States of America herby requests all whom it may concern to permit this citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.”  So, even when outside of the country, the rights bestowed on Americans while inside the US, extend to us when we are outside of it.  It’s why embassies are considered to be part of the country they represent. (If you are wondering how I feel about the policy to hold US citizens indefinitely when suspected of being traitors, I feel exactly the same way).

Our Constitution, the guiding document of our government provides us with certain protections against being signaled out for prosecution and certainly death at the hands of our government.  I am willing to give up some conveniences to be safer.  I take my shoes off and walk through often confusing and less than coordinated policies the TSA has set up when I fly. I accept that on any given day, I am photographed or videotaped countless times as I go about my day to day life.  I am not willing to give up those protections, however and believe both the provisions that allow our federal government to detain or kill anyone because it thinks it has “intelligence” that proves they are terrorists.  Our “intelligence” told us Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.  It has also more recently lead to us using our drones against such dangerous threats as weddings.

Specifically, these provisions violates:

The Fifth Amendment:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The Sixth Amendment:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

The gist of how this policy works is a senior US government official — apparently the president himself, reviews intelligence and decides who lives and who dies.  Notwithstanding the inherent flaws in any intelligence of this sort — even when followed to the letter, our criminal justice system has deep flaws (Look at the number of people removed from death row or the states that have imposed moratoriums on it due to DNA evidence) — we elected a president, not a god or king.

Yes, al Qaeda wants to attack us and yes, the definition of war has changed dramatically how we fight non-nation states.  In the post “24″ and “Zero Dark Thirty” world, maybe we think we need to resort to extreme tactics to keep our citizenry safe.   I do not subscribe to the view that torture produces good intelligence (to quote ‘Reservoir Dogs” – “If you torture someone long enough they will admit to setting the Chicago Fire but that don’t make it so.”) but that’s a point for another day.

I still don’t think tossing due process under the bus is ever a good idea.  I mean, if we destroy the very things that make our nation so special, I guess the terrorists can all go to Disney World because they clearly have won.

Here is that memo as obtained by NBC News.

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

The Wizard of Oz was written during a time of political turmoil.  You know how politicians are always saying “This is the most important election EVER!”  I would seriously pay money to hear one say, “You know, not much is going on right now.  This election is just moderately important.  Actually, it’s downright insignificant.  Vote, don’t vote.  Whatever.” So despite being considered a child’s story, it has a lot of political subtext.  Given the current state of things in Washington, DC, I think it deserves another look.

What did the whole thing mean?  In the book, Dorothy’s shoes were silver, not ruby.  At the time we were moving from the gold to silver standard. Oz is the abbreviation for ounces. The Emerald City was Washington, DC.  The Scarecrow was Midwest farmers without much intelligence.  The Tin Man was industry without any heart.  The Cowardly Lion was Congress without any courage. (And the 112ths Congress was how far in the future?) The Wizard was the president without any power.  The wicked Witch of the East was eastern bankers. The Wicked Witch of the West was the untamed western US.  What the movie could do that the book could not was use color.  Kansas scenes are all black and white vs. the bright colors of Oz to show the depression.

Side note; Judy Garland was not slated to play Dorothy.  They wanted a blond – a younger girl and they wanted to use less makeup.   People think she was lucky for landing that role.  I don’t know.  At the end of her life, after she became an alcoholic, she said she had ‘rainbows coming out of her ass.’  I am sure she was speaking metaphorically because otherwise, that would suck.

Why does this matter?  It matters because we write off a lot of things as being ‘just entertainment.’  By doing so, we often miss the point.  Many current politically themed movies hit you over the head with their message, this one was more subtle.  The president, for all his problems, was still a well intentioned guy.  The lion was a wuss but he knew it and wanted to change.  As did the Tin Man.  People recognized their failings and did things to fix them.  I see no one in our federal government doing that today.  Look at Chuck Hagel.  Look at the moderate Republicans who left Congress because it was too annoying to stay.  Or look at Paul Ryan who doesn’t think the fact that he lost his own town in the presidential election means that maybe, just maybe, the country isn’t ready for him.  I am sure there are Democrats who are equally stubborn.  I think President Obama should spend more time with people from the other side of the aisle (and people on his side, rumor has it, he doesn’t much like spending time with either).

If you read my stuff regularly, you will find a common theme; we have to work together.  If this boat sinks, even the people with the best intentions will drown along with those that don’t.

PS. No post about this movie is complete without mentioning the infamous suicide that takes place in the background. Now you can research this and believe the stories that it’s a hoax, my gut tells me this is totally true. Right after the Wicked Witch of the West sets fire to the Scarecrow, the trio set off on the Yellow Brick Road singing.  If you look carefully, you have to have the DVD to do this, you will see a figure walk out and place a chair in the background. The figure then stands on the chair and is next seen swinging from a rope. Don’t believe me?  My roommates and I spent hours reviewing this DVD frame by frame (and you had better ways to waste your time in college?).  I think it’s true.  Don’t believe me?  Look at the DVD.

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

If you are interested in politics, you know that former senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, was pretty much cannibalized by Congress. This is the problem with absolutism. You might agree with Barry Goldwater when he said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

Perhaps not.  Perhaps we need to remember that our electeds represent us — in theory — the opposite of what is said is equally as valid.  Modernization is no vice and strict adherence to an ideology is no virtue.  I have grown up a lot since moving to Washington.

So we are this random space in time, to me — as a Democrat, I am not used to seeing such discord on the the other side. Republicans oppose Chuck Hagel”s nomination to be the next Secretary of Defense.  They have some real issues, some personal (looking at you, John McCain) and some policy oriented (hello there, Lindsay Graham).

I talk about this all the time.  Politics SHOULD end at our borders.  It doesn’t.  And as a liberal Democrat, my views on this may be meaningless.  And then my partisanship will leap out at you – Sarah Palin had no business talking smack about the country she claims to love. (For the record, I do believe she loves America.)

But really? We cannot even acknowledge good ideas if they come from a party to which we do not belong?

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below:

President Barack Obama delivering one of his regular weekly addresses. (White House photo)

By Danny Schechter

There is one subject that most politicians avoid: talking about the media. Most spend most of their time positioning themselves for media attention because most seem to need and rely on media visibility. The media provides their political oxygen and, hence, explains why they spend so much time spinning their words with hired press secretaries, advisers and consultants.

In many ways, being on the air validates a politician’s role if not his or her existence. Hence, many scramble to be interviewed for TV news and on Sunday shows. Media visibility is a key tool in the permanent campaigns most pols run for their reelections and to move up the political ladder. Much of the money they spend so much time raising also goes right back into the media for commercials.

As a result, politicians usually don’t discuss their experiences with the media or their opinions about the media, perhaps out of fear of antagonizing media outlets by suggesting that they don’t operate responsibly. As is, most fear media retaliation if they step out of line or say “the wrong thing.”

President Barack Obama has become the latest politician to put his toe in the raging waters of the media debate, with some mild observations about the powerful role that media outlets play in reporting – and often distorting – political events.

In an interview with The New Republic, Obama stated the obvious: “One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates. If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

“The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side,” he said. “I think the difference is just that the more left-leaning media outlets recognize that compromise is not a dirty word. And I think at least leaders like myself — and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this — are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done.”

Obama also criticized mainstream media outlets for their adherence to “journalism, which places equal blame on Democrats and Republicans when, according to the president, Republicans should bear more blame.”

“[T]hat’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity,” Obama observed.

“And so the default position for reporting is to say, ‘A plague on both their houses.’ On almost every issue, it’s, ‘Well, Democrats and Republicans can’t agree’ — as opposed to looking at why is it that they can’t agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing?”

He faults what he saw as an obsession with confrontation that contributes to the stalemate we see on Capitol Hill.

“Some of [the institutional barriers] have to do with our media and what gets attention,” he said. “Nobody gets on TV saying, ‘I agree with my colleague from the other party.’ People get on TV for calling each other names and saying the most outlandish things.”

Now this is pretty mild criticism. It does not examine why a calculated form of formulaic polarization is used to benefit the media itself by stoking ratings and eventually revenues.

Dylan Beyers of Politico notes that all media does not have an equal impact and “that right-wing media, especially Fox and Limbaugh, have an outsized influence on Republicans – and are arguably more powerful than most members of Congress.”

Much of our political discourse also takes place on cable channels that do not have the audience that networks traditionally enjoyed. Everyone who works in media knows that pro wrestling was one of the most popular formats on cable with outsized almost cartoon like characters getting all the attention. Politics is just another form of wrestling with smack-downs and bitter fights increasingly common.

Former Vice President Al Gore who has been showered with media criticism for his role in selling the cable channel Current to AlJazeera, and profiting from the sale, has in the past been more insightful. (When was the last time you saw the media attack other media executives and companies for enriching themselves in media deals?)

A former journalist, Gore wrote in his 2007 book, The Assault on Reason, “In practice, what television’s dominance has come to mean is that the inherent value of political propositions put forward by candidates is now largely irrelevant compared with the image-based ad campaigns they use to shape the perceptions of voters. The high cost of these commercials has radically increased the role of money in politics, and the influence of those who contribute it.

“That is why campaign finance reform, however well drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the dominant means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue in one way or another to dominate American politics. And as a result, ideas will continue to play a diminished role.”

As reported on “Lost Remote,” Gore “goes on to cite the news media’s fascination over the years with O.J. Simpson, Chandra Levy, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, among others.”

Gore writes: “In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The ‘well-informed citizenry’ is in danger of becoming the ‘well-amused audience.’”

This is derivative of the far more trenchant TV critique called “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by the late media critic Neil Postman whose ideas, among many from media critics, are rarely seen or heard on the air.

Responding to Gore’s book in 2007, the industry magazine Broadcasting & Cable spanked the former Vice President for “groaning” and daring to blame any of our social/cultural problems on TV, writing:

“Television didn’t create this situation. It is there to be watched, or not. It can be tuned to Spike or PBS. Al Gore concludes that the ‘well-informed citizenry’ is in danger of becoming the ‘well-amused audience.’ There are some ‘inconvenient truths’ in Gore’s media screed. There’s also a load of hyperbole.”

How profound (or not)! But saying Gore is “groaning” is just a way of deriding and dismissing his critique. He tried but failed to build Current into a channel that could challenge our mediaocracy, but maybe just by being there, he helped create the possibility that its successor, the forthcoming “AlJazeera, America” can do a better job.

News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org, the media watch network that goes back on line this week. He blogs at Newsdissector.net. He also hosts a show on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com (PRN.fm) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

(Originally posted at Consortium News)

Subscribe

Bob Cesca's feed

Enter email below: