"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Monday, March 18, 2019
Will Beto Be America's First Latino President? The Same Way Bill Clinton Was America's First Black President?
>
Syndicated columnist and Fox News commentator Ruben Navarrette claims he's "the most widely read Latino columnist in the country, and the 16th most popular columnist in America." His perspective is distinctly right-of-center and over the weekend he was on the pretty massive anti-Beto bandwagon-- using political correctness against him (cultural appropriation-- which even liberals are starting to hate). The title of his USA Today column, For Latinos, 'Beto' O'Rourke Is Just Another Privileged White Guy Trying To Manipulate Them. Not as savage as Tim Russo's brutal and highly personal take-down (complete with musical critique), Navarrette wrote that "O'Rourke hasn't earned the familiarity he allegedly has with Latinos. He should know that life in America's largest racial minority isn't all fiestas... [T]hat’s basically the refrain I’ve heard from dozens of Latinos who-- unlike the media, which is run by white liberals who are fascinated by other white liberals-- refuse to go loco for Beto."
They’re concerned that Robert Francis O’Rourke, who this week joined an already-crowded field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, is trying to put one over on Latinos by tricking them into thinking he’s one of them. Or, at the very least, they think that his strategy, or that of his handlers, is to come across to Latinos as a simpatico who connects with them the way that Bill Clinton-- who writer Toni Morrison mischievously dubbed “our first black president”-- connected with African-Americans. At least until Barack Obama came along, and the Clinton machine tried, and failed, to destroy him. So is that the deal? Is O’Rourke aiming to become America’s first Latino president? Por favor. Please. Speaking as a Mexican-American, let me spare you the suspense: That zapato won’t fit. Sorry, Beto, you’re no Bill Clinton. What actual Latinos tell me is that they resent the presumptuousness of this supposed familiarity that we’re told Beto feels with a community that he has done, at best, a mediocre job of representing when he had the chance. For instance, at a time when Latinos feel under siege by ethnocentrism and anti-immigrant demagoguery, where was O’Rourke on the explosive immigration issue during his three terms in the House of Representatives? Judging from the comments by lawmakers who served with him, it appears he was in hiding. But hey, let’s cut the guy some slack for going AWOL when Latinos needed him. O’Rourke hails from the border city of El Paso, Texas. Where would anyone encounter immigrants in a place like that? The Democrat is also criticized for not reaching out to Latino voters in Texas during his Senate race last year against incumbent Ted Cruz, perhaps thinking he had them in the bag and so he could take them for granted. One Mexican-American professor who teaches at a university in San Diego criticized that the politician called himself "Beto." He said it seems like O'Rourke is taking advantage of his nickname to pretend to be something he’s not. Another professor and lawyer, who is Panamanian-American, said that O'Rourke hasn't lived the life of a Hispanic man. As a white male, his life was easier. And it still is. A Mexican-American woman who works in public relations told me he seems condescending. Given his privilege, it is irritating that he seems to pretend that he knows and understands what bothers a demographic that he’s not part of. The Beto backlash reminds of the idea of stolen valor, the righteous outrage felt by combat veterans when others who didn’t see action claim medals they don’t deserve. You see, being a member of America’s largest minority-- especially in the Donald Trump era-- isn’t all fiestas and churros. And if you haven’t had your ticket punched, you don’t get to take the ride. Now let’s deal with this business about the name. Who, or what, gave birth to the legend of Beto? Robert Francis prefers to be called by that name, and he and his army of supporters-- the Beto bots-- swear it has nothing to do with politics. They even point to the fact that O’Rourke seems to have first gotten tagged with the moniker when he was a child, showing off a photo of him as a boy wearing a sweatshirt with the name “Beto” on it. What they appear not as eager to talk about, however, is the fact that Patrick O’Rourke-- Robert Francis’ father-- once explained that he was the one who gave his son the nickname in the first place and the reason had a lot to do with politics, as well as geography. According to the Dallas Morning News, the patriarch reasoned that if his son ever ran for office in El Paso, the odds of being elected in that largely Mexican-American city were far greater with a name like Beto. When told of his father’s words, O’Rourke shrugged them off, calling his father “farsighted.” I’d use different words, like cynical and dishonest and manipulative. It's certainly not respectful to assume that people can be so easily fooled. And, as any real Latino can tell you, respect goes a long way in our community. O’Rourke should take the time to get to know us better. And, if he did, more Latinos might have a better impression of him.
So, that'll be part of the Republican strategy if Beto makes it onto the national ticket. It's divisive... but not unsurmountable. I just love the idea of conservatives taking up the cultural appropriation cudgel for their own use though! It always seemed to me to be tailor-made for them anyway.
Alex Shephard, at the New Republic, also went to town on Beto over the weekend: The Profound Emptiness of Beto O’Rourke. Like many of us, Shephard is offended by Beto's "empty platitudes" and doesn't particularly like the comparisons to Obama, "with whom he shares a message of optimism and unity. But the comparisons end there. He has all of Obama’s self-assurance with none of his intellectual fortitude, inspirational biography, or oratory power. His rhetoric is as empty as his platform, his paeans to 'coming together' the stuff of Obama fanfic... [T]he biggest thing that O’Rourke has in common with Obama, the 2008 candidate, is the belief that they can transcend a broken political system with lofty rhetoric about bringing people together. But when Obama spoke about healing divisions, millions of people believed him. And it still didn’t work. Obama came to his senses while in office, as the Republican Party committed itself to bigotry and intransigence, and he now spends his political capital and energy on reforming our broken democracy. Many of the Democratic candidates for president have their own proposals for doing so. O’Rourke just has a blog, and a big beautiful smile that some folks can’t resist. It’s as if the last ten years of American political life never happened."
How Badly Are Democratic Leaders In Congress Alienating The Voters Who Put Them In Power?
>
No one elected Hoyer and Pelosi king and queen of anything, let along of the House Democratic caucus. Their innate, across-the-board, status quo, establishment perspective-- especially Hoyer's-- holds the Democrats in the House back and saddles America with no-can-do policies on virtually everything to the left of Pay-Go... meaning everything. You can imagine how freaked out they are about having to contend with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her band of allies. Fox News was only too happy to report that "a brash batch of freshmen Democrats including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) captured the hearts and imagination of the Democratic Party’s activist wing with an agenda combating climate change and income inequality and beyond. But the influence and attention they are quickly amassing, as well as high-profile stumbles along the way, are creating tensions with party leaders-- which exploded in full public view this week." Fox reported that establishment hysteria over Ilhan's criticism of AIPAC was just "the latest sign of growing tensions between a tight-knit group of female freshmen and the party brass." True dat. The Democratic leadership does not support the policy agenda-- first articulated by Bernie, who none of them respect anyway-- and which includes what millions of Americans use to persuade themselves to even bother voting for a bunch of corporate careerist whores like congressional Democrats, who have tried, successfully, to always position themselves as just a little bit-- but never more than just a little bit-- better than the Republicans.
That agenda that both establishment hierarchies dismiss out of hand includes Medicare-For-All, the Green New Deal, free public universities, Job Guarantee, etc. Pelosi and Hoyer have made it clear that those will never pass while they still run the House. Many voters who propelled the Democrats to victory in November are learning they made a terrible mistake by imagining the Democrats who get behind what Bernie has been talking about-- and what progressive candidates were talking about-- last year. The majority of the Democratic freshmen-- having been chosen by Pelosi's New Dem-controlled DCCC, absolutely suck and are not any better on the issues people care about than are Pelosi, Hoyer or... the Republicans. Let's take a look at what's going on in the minds of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Fox is in touch with the Democraps:
Strategist Brad Bannon told Fox News that the new wave of energetic, more radical Democrats shows the shift in the electorate from baby boomers to millennials. “With all her flaws, Ocasio-Cortez is good for the Democratic Party, because she reflects the growing power of millennials in politics, and the tension between her and Pelosi is good for the party,” he said. He said, however, that the recent stumbles hurt the party, and that he expects more senior Democrats to try and rein in lawmakers like Ocasio-Cortez. “I think they will try and rein her in, yes, is the short answer. And basically, I think what they're telling her and her friends is that it’s fine to raise these issues but you have to be careful how you do it,” he said. “If you’re going to introduce a Green New Deal, make sure you’ve dotted the ‘i’s and crossed ‘t’s before you do it.” But he didn’t doubt Pelosi’s power to use the energy that the freshmen bring to her advantage: "Pelosi is a master legislative tactician and the thing about Pelosi is she knows how to use and channel energy of younger members. I think she looks set to do that.” Other strategists warned that, with 2020 Democrats under pressure to go along with these policies, it could drag the party into unelectable territory next year. “If we’re going to be competitive in 2020, the Democrats need a message that is more reflective of the mainstream of the country,” Doug Schoen, a Fox News contributor and former adviser to President Bill Clinton, said.
He went on to say that items like the Green New Deal are “at best aspirational, rather than necessarily prescriptive.” “It raises doubt in people’s minds about the seriousness and practicality of the Democratic Party,” he said. “Further, some of the anti-Israel and frankly anti-Semitic comments raise doubt about the entire commitment of the Democratic Party to Israel and the sort of traditional values, that approach [to] politics we longtime Democrats have come to expect from our party.” That stance saw some agreement from moderate Democrats. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) head of the Problem Solvers Caucus [and one of the most corrupt Wall Street-owned scumbags ever elected to Congress], told the Washington Post that the Democratic Party “has to be open and recognize that.” “And if we don't and insist that everyone takes a hard line view on everything, (a) I don't think that's going to attract votes in the next election, and (b) it puts our majority at risk," he said. Democratic leaders and centrists are likely to face more pressure to act against the left-wing newcomers going forward-- particularly as Republicans sense an opening. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with the slightest of grins, told reporters Tuesday that he was planning on bringing the Green New Deal to a vote in the Senate: "Give everybody an opportunity to go on record and see how they feel about the Green New Deal."
As Norman Solomon wrote in a short essay, Bernie 2020 Campaign Has Corporate Democrats Running Scared, Tuesday evening, "The overarching fear that defenders of oligarchy have about Sanders is not that he’s out of step with most Americans-- it’s that he’s in step with them. For corporate elites determined to retain undemocratic power, a successful Bernie 2020 campaign would be the worst possible outcome of the election... Last week, Business Insider reported on new polling about Bernie’s proposal to increase the estate tax, the tax paid by heirs on assets passed down by the deceased. Sanders’ idea would lower the threshold to qualify for the tax to $3.5 million in assets, down from the current $11 million. The plan would also introduce a graduating scale of tax rates for the estates of wealthier Americans, eventually reaching a 77 percent marginal rate for assets over $1 billion. Here are the poll results: “When presented with the details of the proposal, 37 percent of respondents supported Sanders' policy while 26 percent opposed, according to Insider’s survey. (The rest had no opinion.) That kind of response from the public is a far cry from claims that Sanders is somehow fringe. In fact, the ferocity of media attacks on him often indicates that corporate power brokers are afraid his strong progressive populism is giving effective voice to majority views of the public. The Republicans-- and their corporate masters-- are swooning. The NRCC announced a 2020 district target list this week, predominately composed of freshmen but also including a dozen non-freshmen-- Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL), Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY), Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Conor Lamb (D-PA), and Ron Kind (New Dem-WI). The only targeted members I would vote for are in a general election are Loebsack, DeFazio and Cartwright and the only one endorsed by Blue America so far this cycle is Cartwright. As for the freshman members-- none of the GOP bêtes noires like Ocasio or Tlaib or Omar, mostly the corporate slime who vote most frequently with the Republicans on crucial roll calls and who undercut their own standing with the base by opposing the progressive policy agenda. These are the targeted freshmen and their crucial vote scores so far from ProgressivePunch:
Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)- A ($716,143) Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)- A ($1,010,411) TJ Cox (D-CA)- A Katie Hill (New Dem-CA)- A ($793,385) Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA)- A Katie Porter (D-CA)- B ($691,718) Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- B ($710,386) Mike Levin (D-CA)- A ($756,941) Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)- A ($896,765) Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)- A ($828,319) Donna Shalala (D-FL)- A ($624,002) Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)- A Abby Finkenauer (D-IA)- F Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)- F Sean Casten (New Dem-IL)- A Lauren Underwood (D-IL)- A Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)- F ($513,944) Jared Golden (D-ME)- F Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)- A ($1,125,159) Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI)- A ($634,872) Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)- A ($775,961) Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)- A ($580,192) Chris Pappas (New Dem-NH)- A Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)- F Andy Kim (D-NJ)- A ($761,557) Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)- A ($945,081) Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- B ($1,447,753) Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)- A ($925,202) Steven Horsford (New Dem-NV)- F Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- F ($785,839) Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- F ($1,105,197) Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- F Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- F Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- F Susan Wild (New Dem-PA)- A Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- F Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)- A ($721,140) Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)- B ($822,559) Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- F Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- F ($808,338) Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog-VA)- B ($884,026) Jennifer Wexton (New Dem-VA)- A Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)- B ($735,528)
There's a dollar figure next to some of the names. Those are the freshman members who have been feeding at the bankster trough-- and that's how much money they're taken so far from the Financial Sector. They're the ones who have scooped up over half a million. Normally anything over $100,000 in a single cycle is considered corruption and should be deemed criminal behavior. Just sayin'.
The Queen Of No Soul-- A Guest Post By Sebastian Doggart
>
Partially because I'm such a huge Federico Garcia Lorca fan-- and of Sebastian's book about him-- I was thrilled when our old pal Coleen Rowley asked me to run this perverse musical combination contrasting Aretha Franklin and Condoleezza Rice by Mr. Doggart. Just so you know, Sebastian Doggart started his career as a journalist in Peru and then Argentina and then moved back to London to direct theater. In 1997, he was a campaign manager on Martin Bell’s successful bid to become the first Independent MP to be elected to the British Parliament since 1945. He moved into TV production, where he produced and/or directed for ITV/Bravo (South Bank Show and Two Thousand Years), Channel 4/TF1 (Raid Gauloises), Film Four/Bravo (History of Movie Genres), and Channel 4 (Hollywood Vice). In 2000, he moved to the U.S., where he produced/directed Project Runway (nominated for a 2005 Primetime Emmy), ABC's Wife Swap, 15 Films about Madonna for A&E, and lots of other TV films and series, particularly for MTV. He also directed Courting Condi, a feature musical docu-tragi-comedy about Condoleezza Rice that won 26 awards on the festival circuit. Sebastian is trilingual and has written one screenplay, Casanova’s Return, and three books, including the one on Garcia Lorca and one on Latin American theater. You probably see him from time to time at HuffPo. So, without further ado... I'm very proud to welcome Sebastian Doggart to DWT:
Two events, both of which feature a public figure named 2005’s most powerful woman in the world, may go down as the most bizarre of the year. The first took place last Saturday, in San Diego, where Condoleezza Rice was the Distinguished Speaker at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Convention. That’s a very long way from the world-changing press conferences she was commanding at the State Department 18 months ago. The second occasion is one of the weirdest concerts ever conceived, and may spark a firestorm of controversy. Its organizers, the Mann Center of Philadelphia, are marketing $95 seats with this enticement:
The Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin pairs up with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for an evening of classics and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Ms. Rice will enchant us with selections from Mozart and more, and will feature Aretha on vocals... This extraordinary effort is sure to be a crowd pleaser. Don’t miss this amazing duo for one night only!
I’ve been investigating Condoleezza Rice for the last five years, and have completed two films about her, with a third due out in July. Of all the stranger-than-fiction discoveries I have made about Rice, this spectacle, scheduled to take place on July 27 in Fairmount Park, is certainly the most surreal. The Philadelphia Weekly agrees, describing it as "the most unusual musical pairing since Ben Folds & William Shatner … or maybe even Burt Bacharach & Dr. Dre.”
I set my iPod to play my modest collection of Aretha Franklin songs to try and find the connections. “Son of a Preacher Man” was up first, and, yes, I could see the link. Rice’s father, John Rice, was a Presbyterian minister. According to his illustrious daughter, who is his only child, John was hoping that she would be born a boy: “I was supposed to be his all-American linebacker. He already had the football bought. I was going to be named John, like him.”
Then came the impatient first chords of “Think”, a commandment Rice has passionately followed, from her diligent studying to be “twice as good” as the white children in her class, to her meteoric academic rise to become Provost of Stanford, to the careful encouragement and advice she gave President Bush as his closest and most enduring confidante.
Next up was “I Say A Little Prayer.” Also very appropriate. According to what her biographer Glenn Kessler told me, “Rice prays every day. She goes to church regularly. She believes that God has set forth a plan. One reason why she doesn’t really look back, she doesn’t dwell on the kinds of mistakes she might have made, because what is happening is God’s plan is unfolding and this is how it’s going to be.”
A final validation of the Rice/Franklin link came in “Do Right, Woman.” How aptly this song captures her longstanding drive to do the morally correct thing! When asked by a Stanford student last year how the US should go about winning the hearts and minds of the rest of the world, she replied, “first of all, you do what’s right. That’s the most important thing.” Just in case Aretha intended her lyric to have a more political meaning, then Rice’s continuing status as a darling of the Right is a testament to her compliance with the song’s direction.
The main reason that Rice is doing this concert is that music is her life-blood. It’s in her very name, Condoleezza, which derives from the Italian musical notation, con dolcezza, or ‘with sweetness’. According to Julia Emma Smith, her neighbor and family friend, whom I interviewed in Rice’s hometown of Birmingham, “her mother started her taking piano when she was just three. By the time she was five, she could play Beethoven and other classical music. Everybody thought music was going to be her career.”
Marcus Mabry, author of the excellent biography Twice as Good, continues the story: “When she was 17, as a sophomore at the University of Denver, she went to a famous music camp at Aspen. There she saw little kids who could play from sight music that had taken her weeks or months to learn how to play. And at that point she saw she wasn’t good enough and she dropped it, with no emotion, no feeling whatsoever.”
Rice explained what happened: “I encountered the realization that if I stayed a music major, I would end up teaching kids to murder Beethoven… I didn’t wanna really be second best.”
Her piano teacher at the University of Denver, Theodor Lichtman, gave further reason why she could never have made it as a concert pianist: “In taking very specific technical directions she was very good, very obedient. Emotional directions she didn’t have an easy time with. As long as it was mechanical things-- do this, hold your hand this way-- that was fine.”
“But as soon as I touched her inside,” he said, tapping his heart, “there was a resistance.”
Rice continued to play music in chamber groups while living in both Stanford and in Washington DC. She accompanied cellist Yo Yo Ma in a 2002 performance of Brahms's Violin Sonata in D Minor for President Bush at Constitution Hall. She again performed Brahms-- whom she admires for being “passionate but not sentimental”-- in a recital for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in December 2008. So a performance with Queen Aretha can thus be seen as a logical progression. The pairing makes even more sense since she listed the song "Respect" as her third favorite piece of music ever in a 2006 interview with the Independent (Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor, which she is scheduled to play at Fairmount Park, and Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love took first and second place, respectively. Kool and the Gang’s Celebration trailed unexpectedly in fourth place.)
Grabbing an opportunity to play with Aretha is a no-brainer for Rice-- a fun and exciting opportunity that any pianist would leap at. It also sounds a whole lot more fun than her engagement last weekend, with those laugh-a-minute members of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.
Although Rice pocketed a fat free from the discarded metal kings, she’s making it abundantly clear that her motives for the Fairmount Park concert are charitable. “Dr. Rice is graciously donating her services to the Mann Center,” its Chief Executive, Catherine Cahill, told me, “in support of our arts education programs for the area's inner-city youth. She’s not just a highly accomplished pianist, she also wants to give back to the community.”
Rice has no problem with such munificence after a highly lucrative 16 months following her release from the State Department’s payroll. She landed a whopping $2.5 million advance from Crown Publishers, part of Random House, to write three tomes, one on her experience in the Bush Administration, and one on her parents called Extraordinary, Ordinary People (due out this October). She’s also raked in a good salary as a professor at Stanford’s Hoover Institution (even though she has yet to teach any courses to students). And her aggressive representatives at top Hollywood agency William Morris demand six-figure speaking fees from corporations keen to leverage her experience both in government and as a former director of Chevron, J.P. Morgan, Hewlett Packard and Charles Schwab. How wonderful that such a thunderous revenue stream can allow her to confirm publicly what a “compassionate conservative” she is!
The Mann Center’s validation of her philanthropy will shore up the political capital she stands to gain from the event. Since leaving office, her public appearances have been dogged by protests, and she has wisely kept a very low profile at Stanford. Accompanying Aretha Franklin’s virtuoso rendition of two operatic arias is a classy and uncontroversial first step back into the public arena, and part of a long-term political strategy. She is one of very few African-American women in the Republican party, and that, coupled with her extensive experience in government, stands her in powerful stead on a post-Obama political stage. She’s never actually been elected to office, and has said she doesn’t like the cut-and-thrust of politics. But if she plays her cards right, I would not be surprised to see her as a vice-presidential Republican candidate, possibly with Mitt Romney, in 2016.
I am surprised that such a political resurgence is possible-- and indeed that she has been invited to perform in Fairmount Park at all. This is an opinion shared by Professor Alan Gilbert, who was Rice’s political history teacher at the University of Denver. Commenting on the announcement of the concert, he said: “I suppose it is better that she play music (soullessly) than torture people. If she were not a war criminal, it would be charming.”
War criminal? Torturer? Condi Rice?!
I had the same response while making my investigative documentary on Rice, American Faust: From Condi to Neo-Condi. Over the course of researching and producing it, I have come to share Professor Gilbert’s view that the gravity of Rice’s crimes and misdemeanors, still largely unknown to the American people, outweigh the benefits of President Obama’s view that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
The conviction that we need to read the page of history before we can turn it underpins American Faust. Through the form of a biographical documentary, we tell a Faustian story of a woman whose hubris tempted her into a pursuit of power that destroyed her core values, and hurtled America into a perilous new direction. It’s a portrait of a woman who has changed the world but about whom most people know very little. It overturns the popular misconception of Rice as a yes-woman to Bush and reveals her as his chief confidante-- with deeper and more enduring influence than even Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Karl Rove-- and thus responsible for much of the Bush legacy.
The film follows her step-by step quest for power, starting at the age of ten, when, on a visit to the White House, she turned to her father and said, “Daddy, I'm barred out there because of the color of my skin, but one day I'll be in that house.” 40 years later, having achieved her dream, Secretary of State Rice said, “I want to leave office without anyone knowing where I stand on any of the issues.”
Our team did our best to portray her in a balanced way. Archival interviews with Rice herself form the core of the documentary. Her supporters include both Presidents Bush; her step-mother Clara Bailey Rice; Oprah Winfrey; mentor and later critic, Brent Scowcroft; her former fiancé, Rick Upchurch; childhood friend Celeste Mitchell; John McCain; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Dick Cheney; and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Offsetting these positive accounts are some explosive criticisms. Author Laura Flanders relates how she was such a devoted board member for Chevron (despite its violent repression of Ogoni tribes-people in Nigeria) that they named an oil tanker after her. Her record as National Security Advisor is devastatingly attacked by CIA Director George Tenet and Counter-Terrorism chief Richard Clarke. They reveal how she ignored scores of warnings in the spring and summer of 2001 that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent.
Biographer Marcus Mabry pinpoints the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq as the period when she abandoned her realism and advocacy of a humble foreign policy, to become a fully fledged ‘neo-con’ idealist. With the winds blowing towards Baghdad, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, says she had no qualms about pumping up the case for waging war in Iraq (“we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”). Congressman Robert Wexler pinpoints 56 times that Rice misled the American public. Richard Ben-Veniste, a senior 9/11 Commissioner, points to the techniques that Rice used-- wordplay, filibustering, amnesia-- to avoid telling the truth.
A question then is why Aretha Franklin would want to buddy up to a woman with such a sketchy record. Franklin has been hailed as a role model for women and people of color, while Rice’s record on both counts has been execrable. American Faust documents how, while Provost of Stanford, she pulled up the ladder of affirmative action that had secured her tenure, and implemented budget cuts that led to dozens of lawsuits for unlawful dismissals of female professors. Her behavior while the levees were breaking during Hurricane Katrina infuriated black groups who felt that she had dishonored her position as the senior black member of the government. Spike Lee comments in the film: “she was buying Ferragamo shoes on Fifth Avenue and went to see Spamalot while people were drowning.”
Maybe Ms. Franklin feels she owes Rice a debt of gratitude. After all, Rice’s boss awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 9, 2005, at the White House. That kind of R-e-s-p-e-c-t may need payback.
I suspect that both Ms. Franklin and the concert organizers at the Mann Center are unaware of the film’s most explosive revelation: that it was Condoleezza Rice who is primarily responsible for the Bush Administration’s torture program. It was she who ordered the CIA to use torture techniques including genital mutilation, fingernail extraction and electrocution in countries across the world. The CIA agents who carried out these interrogations were acting under orders which came directly from the chairwoman of the Group of Principals: Condoleezza Rice. The role of the Principals-- a group that included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales-- was to select and authorize ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ proposed by CIA Director George Tenet.
According to Christopher Anders, attorney for the ACLU: “The CIA would come in and give a presentation of what they wanted to do, to the point where, where they were choreographing interrogations and the torture from the basement of the White House itself.”
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Kessler says: “These ‘enhanced interrogation methods’ included water-boarding, fingernail extraction, and sleep deprivation. Condi signed off on the orders to the CIA with the words, ‘This is your Baby, go do it!’” Richard Clarke, US chief counter-terrorism adviser between 1992-2003 concurs: “Rice decided what torture to use on what person.”
American Faust reveals that the techniques that Rice approved went far beyond the mock executions and water-boarding already made public. Our film has first-hand accounts of torture techniques that make stress positions look like a slap on the wrist. Binyam Mohamed had his penis cut, and acid poured into the wounds. Khalid el Masri was drugged, sodomized and imprisoned without charges. Abu Omar was tied to a wet mattress and electrocuted. Mamdouh Habib had his fingernails torn out.
Even John Ashcroft, known for a nutty rendition of his song Let the Eagle Soar but not for his leniency to Moslem prisoners, objected to the torture meetings that Rice chaired: "Why are we talking about this in the White House?” he asked. “History will not judge this kindly."
Ashcroft’s concern was well-placed. According to historian David Rothkopf, author of Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power, “it was recognized by Condoleezza Rice, among others, that they did make a pact with the devil. They essentially said we will do whatever it takes, regardless of morality, regardless of law, in order to protect the American people.”
Rice did what she could to conceal the torture. She authorized the CIA to send detainees outside the U.S., to "black site" countries, including Thailand, Italy, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Syria, Jordan, Macedonia, Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, as well as the "torture ships"’ USS Peleliu, USS Bataan, and USS Ashland.
When Congressional and legal investigations began into the detention program, videotapes of CIA interrogations of terror suspects were destroyed. She avoided all questions about this felony, and stepped up her work as an international ambassador for the most blatant legal black hole of all, the detention center at Guantanamo bay, which she called “essential for the war on terror.”
These were the actions, then, that comprised Rice’s Faustian bargain.
They were the crimes that led to Rice becoming the Queen of No Soul.
The consequences of these crimes will cause damage for generations of Americans. The illegal imprisonments, kidnappings, and torture that Rice authorized have become a recruitment tool for anti-U.S. militants around the world. As General David Petraeus, Republican hero and the current leader of U.S. Central Command, put it: “We end up paying a price for it, ultimately. Situations like that are non biodegradable. They don't go away. The enemy continues to beat you with them like a stick.”
Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, Dean of the Academic Board at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, agreed in last week’s New Yorker: “Torture is wrong under any circumstances,” he asserted. “The publicity surrounding Guantanamo, water-boarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ have created far more terrorists than most people understand. For a country that professes to stand for the rule of law and individual rights, we look like the worst kind of hypocrites.”
I have thought long and hard about how such a highly educated, cultured woman of faith as Dr. Rice could have fallen to the infernal point of ordering medieval acts of torture, fomenting a catastrophic war, and supporting the trampling of the rule of law and the Constitution. This is a similar conundrum to the one posed by historians and philosophers after World War II. How could well-schooled Nazi officers spend their evenings weeping over Rilke poems, and playing Schubert in string quartets, and then wake up the next morning to gas thousands of men, women and children? Education and culture did not bring more humanity to man, just more knowledge to create more sophisticated forms of violence and barbarity-- just as it did with Dr Rice and the decisions she made on which torture cocktails to be distributed.
So what happens now? Earlier this month, I was at Kent State University, which was commemorating the 40th anniversary of the shootings by National Guardsmen that left four students dead, and nine injured. I was helping the Kent State Truth Tribunal record testimonies. I met some of the injured and the families of those killed. They all shared an enduring outrage and anger that no one has ever been held accountable-- let alone imprisoned-- for the massacre. Doris Krause, mother of one of the fallen, 19-year-old Allison Krause, told me: “I hope this is the last time I come back here. Even after forty years, there is so much bitterness.”
There will be no closure around the barbaric acts of May 4, 1970 unless formal culpability is assigned to, or accepted by, those responsible for the killings-- not just the guardsmen who fired, but right up the chain of command responsibility. That means Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes (who made a public statement the day before the massacre that “we are going to eradicate the problem, we’re not going to treat the symptoms”), right up to President Nixon and his Vice-President Spiro Agnew (who urged university authorities to “just imagine the students are wearing brown shirts or white sheets and act accordingly”).
The same principal of command responsibility applies to the Bush Administration’s torture program. Its legacy will continue to poison U.S. military and civil society, and act as a rallying call to her enemies, until Rice and her accomplices are held accountable. In American Faust, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, whose position as Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff made him a first-hand witness to her actions, states: “I think Americans should be appalled that Dr. Rice was sitting giving the authority to water-board.” Marjorie Cohn, former President of the Lawyers Guild, calls for her to be removed from her current research position at Stanford University: “We hope to continue this pressure until Rice and her fellow war criminals are punished for their crimes.” Alan Gilbert, Rice’s former history professor at the University of Denver, identifies the specific laws she has broken under the US Constitution, the UN Convention against Torture, of which the US has been a signatory since 1988, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Manfred Nowak, the UN’s chief Torture Commissioner, says: “There’s an obligation under the Convention against torture, to investigate every allegation against torture, and there is a responsibility to bring this person to justice.” Christopher Anders of the ACLU states: “You can be sitting in the State Department and if you’re making decisions that are authorizing and facilitating a crime being committed, you’re responsible for that crime.”
With such a "smoking gun" still in her hands, it is flabbergasting that Rice remains at large. We filmed her at Stanford University (where ABC news cheerily reported her new love of golf) claiming, Nixon-like, that “by definition, if the President authorized it, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention against Torture.” This is as brazen a perversion of the law as the memos written by White House attorneys claiming ‘water-boarding’ was legal, which Rice used as further justification for her torture program.
Escaping punishment is one thing. Flaunting her infamy like a pop star is another. And that’s where the Fairmount Park concert becomes a real outrage. Her appearance is the equivalent of Sergeant Larry Shafer, the one National Guardsman who has admitted firing on the Kent State students, accepting an invitation, two years after the shootings, to sing an aria at the Metropolitan Opera; or Governor Rhodes taking a cameo role on Dynasty. There’s no artistic reason for Rice, a mediocre pianist by her own admission, to be on that stage with the incomparably more qualified Ms. Franklin, whom Rolling Stone magazine ranked No. 1 on its list of the Greatest Singers of All Time. Rice is on the ticket because of the notoriety she gained while desecrating the posts of National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, two of the most honored positions of authority in the country. It makes Governor Rod Blagojevich’s appearance on Celebrity Apprentice look the epitome of good taste.
There is a time for telling stories, and there is time for action born of civic duty-- or, in Ms. Franklin’s words to “Do right, woman.” As a documentarian, I have done my best to tell Rice’s story objectively. But the failure of the media, Congress, and the judiciary to pursue the evidence now publicly available on these crimes is intolerable. I am now working with a growing group of activists to try, as a first step to bringing Rice to justice, to have her banned from the Fairmount Park stage on July 27th, and to prevent this real-life equivalent of Springtime for Hitler proceeding. Allies here include Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent-turned-whistleblower, who, along with two other women, won Time’s Person of the Year in 2002; and the Stanford-based Action Condi group. Earlier this week, Steven Jewell MD, one of its leading advocates, a retired emergency physician, wrote this letter to Rossen Milanov, the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra:
By appearing on stage with Ms. Rice, you associate yourself and the Philadelphia Orchestra with crimes against humanity. Under Article 8 of the Rome Conventions, torture is defined as a crime against humanity, along with genocide, slavery, systematic rape, and disappearances of political opponents.
It would be a grave mistake to tarnish your own reputation and that of the orchestra with this event, and I urge you to do the right thing for the orchestra and your own reputation. Those who condone torture are complicit in the continuation of a horrible crime. I remind you of the holocaust poem that addresses the torment of the "Good German" during the Nazi period:
"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."
I implore you to do the right thing.”
Maestro Milanov has yet to respond.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.” Those words were recently cited by Rwandan President Kagame as an inspiration to him in his efforts to heal the wounds left by the 1994 genocide that left 800,000 dead, and to secure truth, justice and reconciliation in his country. The successes his community tribunals have achieved (although recent reports of re-education camps have shown this program has been far from perfect), give hope that, given the right political will, a similar process of holding the criminals accountable, and then moving on, could happen in the US. Measures could be implemented to prevent torture from recurring. But President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder have made it clear that justice for the torturers is not a priority for them.
The only way that will happen is through a concerted grass-roots movement. Every citizen can participate in this endeavor. Here are some suggestions on how you can make a difference:
1. Urge the Philadelphia Orchestra to refuse to play with Condoleezza Rice. You can e-mail the conductor Rossen Milanov at ym19701307@gmail.com and the orchestra leadership at avulgamore@philorch.org, cHeininger@philorch.org , kblodgett@philorch.org, chamilton@philorch.org , amadonia@philorch.org, mmestichelli@philorch.org, smillen@philorch.org, and jrothman@philorch.org
2. Pressure the Mann Center to dump Rice from its program. Contact its chief executive, Catherine Cahill at 215.546.7900, or ccahill@manncenter.org If you don’t hear back from her, contact the Center’s corporate partners and sponsors-- including Boeing, Ernst & Young, Bank of America, Merck, and National Endowment for the Arts-- and ask them to make their continued support conditional on the removal of Rice from the concert bill. A full list of sponsors is at http://www.manncenter.org/support/SalutetoourPartners
3. Implore Aretha Franklin not to sing to Rice’s tune. E-mail her through her agent, Dick Allen of William Morris Endeavor, at da@wmeentertainment.com or tel: 310 285 9000. Post an appeal to other Aretha fans to back the campaign at http://www.facebook.com/arethafranklin and www.myspace.com/arethafranklin
4. Contact Rice’s representatives at William Morris Endeavor Agency, Jim Wiatt and Wayne Kabak, and ask them to stop what they have called the “reinvention and evolution” of her career, and consider the implications of WME aiding and abetting a torturer and war criminal. Tel: 310 285 9000. Do the same to her agents for speaking engagements, Washington Speakers Bureau, at 703.684.0555
6. Call Attorney General Eric Holder (202 514 2000) and tell him to uphold the Rule of Law and order a full investigation of torture, including those who ordered it.
7. Write to President Obama and ask him not to compromise his principles of equal justice under the law for political expediency, to honor his promise to close Gitmo, and to cease illegal extraordinary renditions to black site countries.
8. Arrange a citizen’s arrest of Rice, in keeping with the provisions of the Penal Code of the state where the arrest is to take place.
9. Raise awareness of Rice’s crimes by recommending American Faust to your friends, or arranging a screening in your community. Get the film.
10. Join the Alliance for Justice and support its campaign to arrest, try and imprison Rice and others implicated in authorizing torture.
11. Write to your Congressperson and Senator and ask them to investigate those responsible for breaking the laws on torture.
12. Sign a petition at www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/cgi-bin/crpetition.php stating that you “believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (including ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”
13. Support the movement to expel Rice from her post at Stanford University. Join the Action Condi group at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/action_condi and write to the Stanford Alumni Society and urge them to set up an escrow account for donations that will only be released once Rice has been expelled from the University.
