LOOKS LIKE CNN IS GETTING READY TO CHALLENGE FOX AS THE MOST RIGHT-WING PROPAGANDA MACHINE ON THE AIR

Since I'm boycotting CNN, I have no first-hand knowledge of this, but it looks on paper like CNN is getting ready to challenge Fox on it's own turf: as the brain-dead propaganda mouthpiece for American fascism. Of course this week they announced their new star anchorman, long-time bigot and right-wing imbecile Glenn Beck, and then today they acquired the rights to a conservative Oklahoma Republican ex-congressman whose mind has generously been compared to a turnip, J.C. (Julius Caesar) Watts.

Watts, who is also an active Republican Party strategist, has as his new assignment this analysis of politics and policy from an extreme right perspective. Reading a 1998 look at the role of Oklahoma politicians on the modern Republican Party, "Give It Back to the Injuns" by David Plotz, it is certainly instantly clear exactly what qualities CNN was looking for when they hired Watts. "The lone black congressional Republican and a former football star, Watts offers little but a sunny temperament and bootstrapping Christian banalities. Issues stump him. Republicans studiously overlook his deficiencies because he's such good press: He delivered a major speech to the 1996 Republican National Convention and the Republican response to the 1997 State of the Union address, two plums that no other two term congressman would ever get."

Before retiring from elective politics, Julius Caesar, who was the first (and last) African-American Republican elected in a southern state to a federal office in 120 years, earned the enmity of people fighting for equal rights (instead of masters' rights) by referring to civil rights leaders as "race-hustling poverty pimps," something which surely titillated the CNN strategy team. Before signing on with CNN Julius Caesar was Chairman of J.C. Watts Companies with works with business clients on strategies of how to suck grants and other benefits out of the federal government. He was also doing infomercials which have been described (by Republicans) as even more banal than the Cher make-up infomercials which plague late night cable networks.