2008: A YEAR ON STEROIDS, Part 3

Did the Big Three CEOs base their survival strategy on

this National Lampoon cover -- with us as the dog?

Random observations, thoughts, and rants on 2008, Part 3 (of 3)


by Noah


1. THE ILLUSION OF NEWS

"CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

-- Arthur C. Clarke

Sure, Clarke's quote refers to Desert Storm, but not much has changed. (One obvious change: Ted Turner is long gone from CNN, and most everything else he once controlled.) I stopped watching Corporate News Network after the 2004 "election," because their incessant pro-Bush programming sickened me beyond repair. To this day, if I find someone has left CNN on where I work, I grab the remote and put on the Weather Channel, just so some sense of reality is emanating from the tube. I often muse that Fox "News" exists just so CNN has an appearance of integrity by comparison. But really, how do you say one mass murderer is a nicer person than the other?

Then there's USA Toady. Every hotel I stay in drops this piece of journalistic flaming dog poop on my doorstep every morning. Not counting the tabloids, who make no pretense at being truthful, whatever the worst fast food chain out there is, this is its print-news equivalent. On its face, it presents an illusion of news just like pictures on a fast-food menu lead one to imagine that one is about to get food.

The illusion of food, the illusion of news -- what's the damn difference? Both give you the same thing in the end. Toady was a scheme from day one. Back around 1970, a crooked U.S. attorney general (imagine that, a crooked AG!) named Ed Meese proudly proclaimed, "We will turn this country so far to the right, you won't recognize it." One of the ways they're doing it is with free reading material that purports to be news, free fast-food news that you can grab as you leave your hotel or run through the gate to catch a plane. USA Toady, Weekly Standard, whatever. The corporations that run our hotels and airlines are all with the program. Catapult the propaganda, as Dubya says! Millions absorb and regurgitate it daily, until it becomes prevailing public opinion for those who aren't interested in having an opinion of their own. What did Goebbels say about repeating a lie often enough? It's the power to cloud minds.

Sean Hannity fits right in with all of this. In another century, he would just be regarded as someone's local village idiot, sitting on a wall in the park babbling to himself. But now we are so advanced that we put him on camera, and the effect is the same, multiplied ad infinitum. Dumbing down made easy.

It's worth pondering (to me, anyway) that we have been beaming our television programs out into space for about 70 years now. Suppose someone or something out there is watching. Picture beings who are unfamiliar with our ways, with our cultures. Imagine that, say, they only get some fractured broadcasts of prime-time cable "news" panels filled with incessant shrieking and shouting and jabbing of fingers, and some bits and pieces of Three Stooges reruns from TVLand. Could they discern the difference? Would we be put on a list for immediate extermination? Should we be embarrassed?

Hannity, Coulter, and Beck. Moe, Larry, and Curly.


2. STEROIDS WERE BIG THIS YEAR (PUN INTENDED)

I'm puzzled as to why you can go to jail for decades in some backward states like Texas for possessing two joints, yet not for selling something that has proven to be much more harmful. Oh, that's right, it's a question of who's making what you're selling!

The issue of steroid use is a complicated, multilayered one. Testing and laws haven't caught up to modern drug tech, and of course enforcement will always lag behind. When a lot of athletes started using steroids, you could buy the stuff in a health-food store just a block away from where I live; no prescription or back alley dealer necessary. They hadn't even been banned from Major League Baseball yet.

That doesn't excuse those who continued to use them or started using them after the ban, but we give the makers and promoters a pass, just as we give the sociopathic heads of tobacco companies a pass, even after they lie to Congress and it comes out that they have even targeted children not just by putting more nicotine in their product but by experimenting with chemical combos for the so-called "filters" that heighten the addictive properties of the product. We spend more time pontificating about toxic toys from China. Where's the even hand?

I love Rep. Henry Waxman, but the idea of a bunch of his grandstanding congresscreep colleagues with obvious alcohol-abuse and overeating problems pointing fingers while letting drug companies, including tobacco companies, off the hook also bugs me. Without public financing of campaigns, such absurdities and inequities will continue and continue. Inaction is bought and paid for. The issue of so many Southern Senators supporting foreign auto companies but not our own has a similar root cause. More on that below.


3. GEORGE W. BUSH, ROD BLAGOJEVICH . . .

How the hell do such ridiculous people get as far as they do? Certainly lots of people have seen the danger signs at the local level before they become national figures.

The answer lies in the means used to present these cretins to the public on a statewide or national scale. That means is the media, of course. It's more than the fact that there is virtually no investigative reporting anymore. We've gone way beyond that low. Obviously the media is all too willing to sell itself like the cheapest whore on the corner for campaign advertising revenue. Integrity and concern for our society never enter the equation for the media lowlife types. They make their money, and the country goes down the chute.

Nice folks. Money doesn't talk, it swears. Then again, maybe they just like such cretins. Maybe they see more than a bit of themselves in them.


4. EVERYWHERE, THERE ARE LOTS OF PIGGIES

Take that just-mentioned incredible cursing boy from Illinois. I'd have to say that Governor Bleepovich is crazy. Or at least he wanted to get caught, which may be the same thing. I mean, look, he knew he was being investigated and he still said what he said on his phone. Maybe he's just retarded, but then he would have run with the other party.

In any event, it looks like he crossed a legal line. Like it or not, and I don't, politicians make deals. That's at the root of what politics is. Most basic deal: They will give you something if you raise money for their campaign. It appears that this guy took it a step further and was saying, "Just give me the money." Either way, crazy or not, the guy is a sleazebag. Here in New York, we thought we had a real sleazo in Eliot Spitzer, but he can't be number one on the list anymore. Spitzer's case was a sex scandal, and no one in either party defended him, unlike what happened with Sen. David "Diapers" Vitter, who the Repugs all rallied around. There is a difference in the two parties, eh?

So much of this stuff centers around the corrupting influence of money. It's another reason for public campaign financing. Right now you have some Southern Senators against present and future auto bailouts because they are financially heavily supported by foreign automakers who have plants in their states. The U.A.W. supported their opponents, so they'd like to blame them for everything and get rid of them, too. Senators literally have to raise thousands of dollars per day to get reelected. To me, the reason to oppose bailouts is because the CEOs will likely just pocket the money and little if anything will change. To me it's welfare, although the pols and their media slaves don't call it that -- though they would if you or I were asking for the money.

The problem is that there is also a reason to support bailouts for the Big Three which the media didn't mention for a long time and barely mentions now. That reason is the jobs that are not Big Three auto-company jobs but jobs in related industries like parts suppliers, metal workers, etc. Three million people stand to lose their jobs over this crisis, but they are not of a class that Repugs like Alabama Senator Dick Shelby care about. Wall Street, yes. Our class, no.

Another unspoken thing is: What will happen to the advanced tech that our auto companies have? The answer is that, if the Big Three go bankrupt, selected divisions of them will be bought up by various foreign interests, especially Chinese. China is dying to get its hands on this stuff, and it's nowhere near as simple as just buying one of our cars. It's like when we sell planes and missile parts; we don't do it until we have something more advanced that renders what we sell to foreign interests out of date. China wants our R&D, future tech. It's like the Big Three CEOs copied that old National Lampoon "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" cover, only this time the dog is us.

We're now stuck between a rock and a hard place for real. It's extortion. And it's very ironic that the party that says it's more patriotic is the one that's in favor of aiding and abetting foreign interests, not to mention screwing the middle and working classes while pushing the economic meltdown further into a full-blown depression. Who hates America? At least those lowlife senators haven't pulled the gold from our teeth, like their idols from another time. Who can afford a dentist now anyway?


5. THOSE SUPREME FOLKS WHO GAVE US PRESIDENT DUBYA

I understand the idea that Bush is a prime source of material for standup comics and that people will miss that about him (if you need a fix, check out this clip), but what he's done to all of us is tragic. The damage he has done will never be over. No political figure has ever damaged our country more. Somewhere -- in a cave, a tent, or a deluxe high rise -- Bin Laden has a smile of satisfaction and accomplishment on his face.

One can only hope that history is once again taught in our schools someday and that the names of the criminal "Supreme" Court judges who gave us President Dubya are memorized by future students as examples of how corrupt judges can be and what tragedy they can inflict on the populace. It would be nice if the graves of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy are well-marked and well-known, so that future American dog-owners know right where to take their dogs for walkies.


6. A PARTING THOUGHT ON CAMPAIGN 2008

More than a few times I heard the argument for McCain-Palin that they would "protect the babies" or some such not-thought-out nonsense. Of course Repugs are never concerned about the health or future of the already-born. To Repugs, it's "once you're born, you're on your own." If, for example, you grow up in your local Love Canal, it's your fault. So, all you Focus on the Family types, think about this if you can grasp it: No American pol killed more babies in the womb than your sainted George W. Bush. He did it with his environmental policies, his health-care policies, his bombs, and a smirk. You voted for him. Nice work, suckers.


7. AND A PARTING THOUGHT TO SENATE DEMS RE. 2009

Senate Repugs have acted like schoolyard bullies for far too long, and the Dems just lie down and take it, getting run over by a Mack truck every time.

Change is coming!

However, there's only one way to deal with a bully. We're in a culture war, and a war is a war. I have no use for that "turn the other cheek so they can slug that one too" stuff. In the real world, though, I'm sure we'll see the Senate once again tied up by obstructionist Repugs who make sure that the Dems need 60 votes to pass every piece of Obama's legislative program, 60 votes that they will hardly ever be able to get. Then in 2010 the Repugs will say the Dems have accomplished nothing.

Maybe there's a chance. But only if the Dems change their attitude and grow a spine. That starts with getting rid of Harry Reid as majority leader.


FRIDAY IN PART 1: Sarah P and Joe the P, Gov. Spritzer, Keith and Rachel, the Repugs stuck in mid-20th century, and more

YESTERDAY IN PART 2: Dubya's pardons, Hank the Grifter's bailout, GOP election-stealing, and more

#