Comedy Tonight: The MJ memorial concert as imagined by Mike Luckovich

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Is Rep. Peter King just not very bright, or is he demagoguing the death of the "pervert" Michael Jackson? (Some choice!)

"Let's knock out the psychobabble. This guy was a pervert, he was a child molester, he was a pedophile, and to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country? I just think we're too politically correct. No one wants to stand up and say, 'We don't need Michael Jackson.' You know, he died, he had some talent, but fine. There are people dying every day, there's men and women dying, say, in Afghanistan. Let's give them the credit they deserve."

-- from a video posted on YouTube Sunday by NYS Rep. Peter King

by Ken

Time was when Rep. Peter King was thought of, and I imagine thought of himself, as a "moderate" Republican. Apparently no longer.

Perhaps our Pete has noticed that alleged moderateness hasn't been saving the dwindling ranks of Northeastern Republicans in Congress from extinction, or perhaps he's emboldened by the 64 percent of the vote he racked up in 2008 in his Long Island district. (NY-03 straddles Nassau and Suffolk Counties on New York's Long Island.) There is talk of his challenging Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand next year for the Senate seat she was appointed to.

Amid the countdown to today's Michael Jackson public memorial in Los Angeles today, Representative King seems to have felt a need to weigh in. You may recall that Noah, in his DWT remembrance of Michael Jackson, commented on the mindless media cacaphony, noted: "What I haven’t heard is anything about the baby-dangling, serving the Jesus Juice to little boys, or even attempting to buy the Elephant Man’s bones." Well, you knew that couldn't last.



On HuffPost, Sam Stein has reported, "Michael Jackson Fans Raise Money to Defeat Peter King." And last night the Washington Post's milder-than-milquetoast Mary Ann Akers posted this follow-up:

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) says he never imagined the short Web video he made bashing the media for its round-the-clock coverage of Michael Jackson's death would go viral the way it has.

The congressman said in a telephone interview this afternoon that when he typically sets up a news conference, "maybe one radio station shows up." Of the frenzied reaction over his Jackson video, he said, "I didn't get expect it would get this response...My God."

In the video, which King posted on YouTube, the tough-talking, blue-collar Long Island pol calls Jackson a "pervert," a "child molester" and a "pedophile" and says the media has "disgraced itself" with its relentless coverage of the pop superstar's passing.

King's video, which as of this afternoon had more than 22,600 views and had generated a spate of news stories, has infuriated die-hard Jackson fans. They have mobilized online to dethrone King, so to speak.

King tells the Sleuth that just as his stance has won him detractors, he also has plenty of supporters. "A professional wrestler from Long Island who weighs 500 pounds has offered to be my bodyguard," King told the Sleuth, chuckling. . . .

Mary Ann also notes: "King says he has gotten so much attention for his Jackson video that he has had to turn down TV appearances, which, as anyone familiar with the camera-loving Long Island congressman knows, is very rare."

There is, of course, much to complain about in the kind of media attention the death of MJ has spawned. Even the controversial word "orgy" used by the congressman could be defended. But he made it clear that it wasn't the kind of attention he was speaking out against, it was the fact of all that coverage.

Parenthetically, you may recall that Noah also wrote:

There has been some brief mention of [MJ's] legal trials, but he was, after all, acquitted, so it would be awkward for the media to spend much time dredging up the muck -- not that I wouldn’t put it past them. A modicum of decorum, and respect for the old adage that one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law from the media? Now, that would be news!

Sigh.

Thinking back, I actually don't recall hearing the congressman talk a lot about the mess in Afghanistan. Of course, there isn't much indication that he has anything useful to say on the subject. This was just your standard "Yes, We Got No Brains" Republican support-our-troops obfuscation. If our Pete really doesn't see that the one story has nothing to do with the other . . . oh, never mind. If he doesn't see the difference, he's not very bright, while if he sees the difference he's just demagoguing.

Not much of a choice.

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The King And Queen Of The GOP Weigh In On The Palin Resignation-- And No, This Is Not Another Lindsey Graham Post

It's amazing how very wrong so many delusional Republican operatives can be about Sarah Palin. The de facto head of the Republican Party, in fact, is either kidding himself or kidding his audience. Limbaugh, off on a golfing holiday, is fuming over establishment Republicans writing off her political career. Limbaugh insists that the political establishment is "Still Scared To Death Of" Palin. It may be true that serious-minded Americans across the political spectrum, although clustered above the 3 digit IQ spectrum, fear what someone as provincial, ignorant and narrow-minded as Palin or someone like Palin could do to America. But as far as I can tell, there are no rational members of either party who envision her getting any closer to being in a position to achieving political power than she already was as the VP nominee for a doddering and foolish self-serving (and failed) presidential candidate. The GOP Establishment recognizes that in 2012 the sacrificial lamb will be a Mormon-- and not one coming back from China.

Ann Coulter agrees with most Palin intimates that Princess Sarah is just too big for a backwater like Alaska:

[S]he’s too big to be a lame-duck governor stuck dealing with fishing licenses in Anchorage right now. She’ll be much bigger now and can play on the national stage without constantly setting off state ethics investigations by loons, parasites and liberals. None of this applied to McCain or Kerry-- both of whom went back to the Senate-- because their national campaigns diminished them. Palin’s national campaign made her a major star. As she said, she’s not retreating, she’s advancing in another direction.

Neither Rove nor the admittedly self-interested Huckabee sees it quite the same way as Coulter. "[B]oth seemed to be scratching their heads over Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's decision to resign her office in an appearance along with Alaska Lt. Gov Sean Parnell on Fox News Sunday.

Rove said, "I'm a little perplexed," since "she's not going to be able to escape media attention." 

And Huckabee deemed it "a risky strategy," adding that "if she did get out because of a feeling of getting chased, that's not going to stop if she stays in politics." 

He also questioned the way the resignation was announced, saying, "You don't call a press conference to create questions, you call one to resolve them." 

Huckabee, looking at his own time as a governor, asked that "If that had been the case for me, I would have quit about the first month? Been there, done that.? One of the things you have to do is decide, 'Look, they're not going to chase me out.'"

Most rational people-- and there are certainly few enough of them in the punditry field-- see this whole Palin thing as a diversion. Over 80% of Americans want health care reform and they realize that Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Huckabee, Boehner, McConnell, Rush Limbaugh, Coulter, Sanford, and all the other Republiclowns oppose serious government action-- as opposed to platitudes and vulgar partisan talking points-- to handle the problems that Americans are most concerned with. Sarah Palin is a diversion-- not as big as Michael Jackson's death*, but bigger, at least outside of Nevada, than John Ensign's prostitution scandal. In this morning's Washington Post, Chris Cillizza mentions that the biggest winners in the latest turn in the bizarre Palin story are philanderer Mark Sanford, Mitt Romney, Don Young and Nixon Jew counter Fred Malek. And the winners? Huckabee and the state of Alaska.


*SPEAKING OF THE DEATH OF MICHAEL JACKSON --

For the benefit of those who may just be slipping back into harness from the holiday weekend, I just want to mention one last time Noah's moving reflection on what matters to him about MJ's life and career. I think you'll agree that, despite all the empty blather we've endured from the 24/7 Blabbermouth Media, there were real stories to be talked about and shared. (And wearing my PR-mongering hat, let me ask again, did you know that the Thriller video, the video that changed the pop music business, came close to not making it onto MTV? Or how MTV was finally "persuaded" to air it? Noah's got the inside dope.) -- Ken

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Happy 4th of July!

Click to enlarge (at least a little)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

-- from the Declaration of Independence

Some texts never get old.


AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE? A PLUG FOR
NOAH'S REMEMBRANCE OF MICHAEL JACKSON



For anyone who missed Noah's post yesterday on Michael Jackson, I'm thinking the holiday may be the perfect time to relax and let it sink in.

Noah cuts through the hack media coverage to reflect on what remains important to him about MJ as both a person (of the rarefied subspecies "celebrity") and a performer. Obviously I'm biased, but I found the piece not just insightful but thought-provoking and seriously moving. It certainly doesn't resemble any of the endless gibberish I've been unable to avoid hearing on the subject since the news broke of MJ's death.

In addition, I wonder if you were aware that the now-legendary Thriller video, whose appearance on MTV may fairly be said to have changed the face of American pop music, almost never made it to MTV. At the time, the fledgling network didn't show videos by, um, people like Michael Jackson -- an excruciatingly uncomfortable way of avoiding saying that they didn't show videos by black artists. Not many people know how that barrier was overcome; Noah offers an insider's view.


HOWEVER YOU'RE SPENDING YOUR 4TH --

Make it a happy and healthy one. Thanks for making DWT part of that day, and come back for the rest of the day's schedule of posts! -- Ken

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Michael Jackson (1958-2009): Thoughts About Peter Pan

INCLUDING THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW MJ'S GROUND-
BREAKING THRILLER FOUND ITS WAY ONTO MTV



by Noah

“An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine, a money machine.”

-- Marilyn Monroe

Every life has its times of misery and its times of joy. With some of us, these peaks and valleys can be more extreme than others. In the case of Michael Jackson, I doubt that we’ll ever know just how much misery he had and what specific demons prodded him along on his path. I do suspect, and I could be wrong, of course, that his highest moments of joy came when he was performing. He seemed driven, if not born, to perform and entertain.

Right now we are being saturated with articles and commentary about Michael Jackson and his tragic death. It’s unavoidable. His life was an important one to so many. I’m only adding to this pile of commentary because, if you choose to read further, I can offer the perspective both of someone who both spends a lot of time shaking his head at what spews forth from the media and of someone who was there at a key moment in Michael Jackson’s career and pop culture in general.

First, though, some comments about the media circus:

(1) In its effort to be “all MJ all the time," the corporate media have set a new low in just throwing stories out there for the sake of boosting sales of papers and magazines and bringing more eyeballs to the tube.

First the cause of death was a daily Demerol shot. Two days later, there was no Demerol. Next we heard that one of the kids saw him die and thought he was just “clowning.” It’s a horrible thought, but now we hear it isn’t, shall we say, based in fact. Then there’s a will. Then there’s two wills. Then there’s no will at all. Now, as I write this, guess what: There's a will!

The media is just intent on filling space. Facts be damned! It goes on and on. It changes daily. What are we supposed to believe? I tell ya what I believe. I believe the media have sunk to a new low in tabloid journalism. What ever happened to fact-checking before you run with a story? It’s a failing that just gets worse and worse, as if everyone in the media looks at the money that sleazy carny hucksters like Rush and Beck and Hannity are raking in from their daily fiction and follows their lead. The same bozos that consistently told us Bush won for eight years now just switch their fantasies daily. Remember when the media was consistent in their lies, for years at a time?

(2) There have also been some really genius quotes in the MJ coverage. My favorites:

* “The concert promoters can’t sue the estate. Once he dies, he doesn’t have any obligation to perform.” That's Bob Rasmussen, dean of the Gould School of Law, USC. Oh well, the football team there is pretty damn good.

* How about this one, from Old Suspenders himself, Larry King: “It was hard to love him, but hard not to.” Yogi Berra he ain’t. But hey, Larry King adores the Bushes, all of them, so let’s not go expecting pearls of wisdom from what’s left of his mind.

* But it’s no surprise that the worst quotes of all in the “all MJ all the time” coverage come from MJ’s own father. “We just lost the biggest star in the world.” True enough, at least, but if I had a son that died, I might first say that I lost my son and what he personally meant to me, etc. Later, at a tribute to his son, Dad struck again, using the occasion not for a eulogy but to announce the formation of his brand-new business enterprise! Smooth! Gee, I wonder why, despite such staggering talent, Michael was so dysfunctional?

(3) What I haven’t heard is anything about the baby-dangling, serving the Jesus Juice to little boys, or even attempting to buy the Elephant Man’s bones.

There has been some brief mention of his legal trials, but, he was, after all, acquitted, so it would be awkward for the media to spend much time dredging up the muck -- not that I wouldn’t put it past them. A modicum of decorum, and respect for the old adage that one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law from the media? Now, that would be news!

I have also been waiting for someone to tell us, what was the source of such physical pain that he needed to take so many painkillers in the first place? What sent him down that road? I seem to remember that there was a stage accident, back in 1984, which resulted in head trauma and serious scalp burns from an effects explosion during a shoot for a Pepsi commercial. Perhaps no one wants to offend Pepsi. In any event, we get nada on this. In hindsight, things were not the same with Michael after that incident., but instead we get sordid stories of stomach-pumping of multiple-pill combos. To me, the oddest mixture is not what was in his stomach but what is and isn’t reported in a media that has gone tabloid across the board. This man, or more aptly man-child, was in tremendous physical and psychic pain, pain so extreme that it directly led to his death.

(4) Then there’s the search for a handle on the meaning of this great pop icon’s life, contribution to the world, and status in some mythical Hall of Pop Culture Icons.

Is Michael Jackson up there with Elvis, James Brown (oddly ignored in the coverage I've seen), The Beatles, and Muhammad Ali (also ignored)? Certainly he is to the '80s generation. So many bought Thrillerthat it became what I call a coffee-table item. It was a "must have" to certain people who bought it, took it home, and, as evidenced by the number of sealed copies of original pressings being offered on eBay, never even opened it. Hell, they probably didn’t even have a record player.

I’m old enough to remember when the Jackson Five first came on my radar screen, with the hit with ABC. I had stopped following Motown at the time, but I thought that song was great and whoever was singing it had broken some barrier of youthful exuberance. I still remember a little kid with his mother dancing joyfully to the song in a park in Boston, where I lived at the time, as it played on their radio. Five years later there was “Who’s Lovin’ You?,” sung by an 11-year-old Michael. At first that gave me pause, but then I put it in the context of a sixth-grader with a crush on a classmate, experiencing the pangs of youthful jealousy. Been there.

I also remember working in a record store and watching kids walk up to the Jackson Five section doing “The Robot.” They tried, often unsuccessfully, to imitate Michael’s every move. They had music made for them by one of their own. The point is that a hell of a lot of people grew up with Michael Jackson, grew up right along with him, and loved him even when he stopped growing up. Like Ali, Michael’s name is known the world over. Everywhere!

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“I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.”

-- Marilyn Monroe

Walter Yetnikoff, head of CBS Records from the late '70s through the '80s, was publicly ridiculed when he signed the Jacksons for what was then thought to be “too much moola” -- right around the same time another bombastic CEO, George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees, signed another Jackson, Reggie, for what was also then thought to be a ridiculous amount of money. Both wild and crazy guys apparently made the right move.

Not only did the musical Jacksons, thought by many to be old news, do fine, but in 1979 one of the group, Michael, had a huge, multi-platinum seller of a solo album called Off the Wall. It was a record that could get play on several styles of radio stations, reaching a multitude of demographics. Michael Jackson was about to knock through barriers of age, gender, nationality, and race to an extent that few if any artists could have ever imagined or hoped for.

The next album was Thriller. There was a problem though. By the time it came out, the game of how you reach the most people was changing. The game changer was called MTV. I was a marketing executive at CBS Records at the time. I worked for the Columbia label; Michael was on our sister label, Epic. Yetnikoff ran both. We all knew that Michael could reach across racial barriers if given the chance, but MTV wasn’t about to give him that chance. Some artists just didn’t “fit the format” in the narrow minds of those running MTV in its early days. There was an unspoken barrier, a restricted entry, just like a golf club that doesn’t let in “the Jews.” Today, as exemplified by the current media coverage, Michael Jackson is credited with being the first artist to break down those barriers on such a large scale. But it almost never happened, and Thriller, the album that changed so much for so many, almost never became what it did.

The man that made it happen was Walter Yetnikoff [seen here in his later years, hawking his 2004 tell-all memoir, Howling at the Moon]. I know because I was there. I was in the office of the head of marketing when Yetnikoff conference-called a few of the powers-that-were at CBS Records about the fact that MTV would not play Michael’s videos, no matter how many records he sold. I was allowed to listen in as Yetnikoff announced his simple remedy for this disgusting situation. He pointed out that MTV’s survival at such an early stage of its growth was not assured. He also pointed out that two record companies, CBS and Warners, provided the lion's share of the video clips that MTV relied upon for programming at the time. (Keep in mind that at that point in time all MTV did was play music videos. The ever-popular insipid “reality” shows and the like would come later.) If one of those two record companies were to pull all of their videos from MTV, MTV would die. Yetnikoff then got the lords of MTV on the line and persuaded them to change their minds.

Pop culture changed that day.

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I am reasonably certain at this point that the out-of-control coverage of the death of an out-of-control artist named Michael Jackson has been so confusing and reckless that it will lead to decades of conspiratorial speculation as to what really happened, not unlike the mysterious barbiturate death of Marilyn Monroe. Whatever the specific cause of death (and we may never get the truth), Michael Jackson had a hugely dysfunctional life and a hugely successful artistic career, both creatively and financially.

There have been painters and writers and musicians before who met the definition of severely dysfunctional. Vincent van Gogh went around stalking fellow painter Paul Gauguin with a razor and ended up cutting off one of his own earlobes. It is theorized that he used the color yellow as much as he did because of his overdosing on absinthe, which contains a neurotoxin that causes one to see objects in yellow. He painted some awfully nice sunflowers! In fact, people pay millions for them today, but during his highly unstable and probably bipolar life, he never sold a painting.

The extremes of Michael Jackson’s life might not be equaled for a while.

One last thing I have noticed is that I have been hearing much better music coming out of car radios as I walk around NYC since MJ died. So why not just stop the madness and just let the music speak for itself, and for MJ? That is the legacy that will last the longest.

“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.”

-- Marilyn Monroe

THE LEGACY LIVES ON . . .

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Tomorrow on DWT: Noah reflects on the life and career of Michael Jackson, and what's been missing from the media hoopla

Surely you weren't expecting me (Ken, that is) to have anything useful to say on the subject?

As a matter of fact, though, a couple of years ago I found myself watching some sort of TV entertainment retrospective at the home of some friends, and on came an early Jackson Five clip, and there smiling broadly and singing and above all moving all over that damned stage was this amazing little kid. I didn't know until I was told who the little kid was, but I knew that whoever he was, he was riveting. You just couldn't not keep your eyes glued to him. Some kinds of talent work that way: They're explosive and instantly and universally recognizable, and it doesn't matter that you can't explain the what or why.

I think anyone who cares about MJ and (especially) his music will be fascinated by Noah's reflections, including a terrific bit of personal witness from a crucial point in Michael's career. It'll be our 6am (PT) post in the morning. -- Ken

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Not All Republicans Like Being Compared To Nazis-- Another Steele Blunder

Maybe Michael Steele thinks it's a way of currying favor with Limbaugh's crowd or maybe he thinks he can strong-arm Specter into voting against Employee Free Choice, but the hapless RNC chair reiterated his threat to finance a primary challenge next year against Snarlin' Arlen. If Specter gets angry enough he'll just switch parties, give the Democrats a filibuter-proof majority and... well, chances are the first casualty would be a very unemployed Michael Steele. In fact, that may happen soon anyway.

Right-winger Byron York warned yesterday that there is growing Republican unhappiness with Steele. Today a North Carolina RNC member called on him to resign. It's been barely over a month since Steele was elected RNC chair and many GOP leaders are already having serious second thoughts-- and not just because he offended Rush Limbaugh. Sitting and nodding while a CNN host referred to the Republican's CPAC NutFest as a Nazi Party look-alike, didn't sit well with Republicans who would rather keep the party's neo-fascist outlook under wraps.

Shortly after his January 30 victory in the chairman's race, Steele fired virtually everyone at the RNC-- a move many outsiders applauded after the party's back-to-back losses in 2006 and 2008. But Steele has yet to replace many of the people he sacked. Now, as Steele enters his second month in the chairman's office, there is no chief of staff for the RNC. There is no political director. There is no finance director. There is no communications director. Many lesser positions remain empty as well. 

"I think it's been a disaster of a first month," says one Republican who has served on Capitol Hill and the RNC. "He needs to disappear for 60 days, go and staff the building, put his personal energy into making sure he has the people he wants, and go from there. That's what people are hoping he will do."

"It's not good," says another GOP politico. "People feel that it's been very erratic at a time when we really need some sort of stabilizing force."

On top of that, there is an ongoing corruption investigation of Steele by the FBI-- and it's starting to heat up. That Steele is a crook who used campaign funds to enrich himself and his family has been known forever-- and is hardly an impediment to success inside the GOP. Less well-known, however, is that Steele was involved-- at least financially-- with the firm that supplied prostitutes to top-dog Republican scam artists like Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Kyl "Dusty" Foggo and Brent Wilkes, all currently serving prison sentences. The tens of thousands of dollars funneled to Sandy Roberts through the Steele campaign was supposedly for "consulting," not prostitutes. But... his company trades commodities and, through a high end limousine operation for the GOP elite, whores, not consulting services.


Adding to the problem, these insiders say, has been Steele's high profile on television. Steele made headlines for his appearance on CNN last weekend in which he characterized Limbaugh's program as "incendiary" and "ugly." Limbaugh hit back hard, and Steele later apologized, saying his words did not reflect his true feelings. But some Republicans who were not particularly upset by Steele's references to Limbaugh were appalled when Steele, during the same program, sat quietly while CNN host D.L. Hughley said that last year's Republican National Convention "literally looked like Nazi Germany. It literally did." GOP insiders who saw the performance unanimously agreed that Steele was seriously, perhaps unforgivably, remiss in not challenging a television host who compared Republicans to Nazis.

And Steele is having problems outside the Party as well. Now that he groveled before Limbaugh, publicly kissed his pilonidal cyst and begged forgiveness, the head of the Baltimore school district is demanding that he apologize to the school system as well.

City schools chief Andrés Alonso publicly asked Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele tonight to apologize for making disparaging remarks about Frederick Douglass High School on national television.

...In February 2006, Steele visited Douglass in West Baltimore, holding it up as an example of the failures of urban education and making a personal commitment to turn the school around. Though he has not returned to Douglass since -- a spokesman said shortly thereafter that school officials were not receptive to his help -- he again said Douglass isn't doing its job during an interview this week on D.L. Hughley Breaks the News on CNN.

But, as both Alonso and Gov. Martin O'Malley noted tonight, Douglass has improved significantly since Steele's visit: Its graduation rate went up 14 percentage points last year, from 43 percent to 57 percent.

"I don't think Michael Steele has been here since he came in an election year to demagogue, kick around our children," O'Malley said tonight before his town hall meeting at Douglass on education and the economy.

Meanwhile Rich Lowry thinks Steele "needs to apologize to every Republican in the country." I guess Lowry's one of those Republicans who doesn't like being compared to a Nazi. No word from Lowry yet on how he feels about the head of his party being a pimp.



Steele may want to put the GOP in a 12-step program (different from the 12 step program they've been in for the last couple decades) but the real question is, will the media remain focused on him and Limbaugh's clown routine when the King of Clowns is back. Perhaps Steele and Limbaugh can do a mud-wrestling match to open Michael Jackson's concert tour.

THE PLOT THICKENS IN BATON ROUGE-- THREE-WAY RACE OFFERS VOTERS A REAL CHOICE

This morning CQPolitics did a Louisiana story claiming that challenges to corporate shill Mary Landrieu and alleged bribe taker William Jefferson top the state's political news. The Landrieu story hasn't actually developed into much and, where once she looked to be the only vulnerable Senate Democrat up for re-election, she's looking safer by the day. Karl Rove's strategy of recruiting the Democratic state treasurer, John Kennedy, to jump the fence and run as a Republican hasn't been panning out. Meanwhile a hodgepodge of 7 Democrats have filed to run against Jefferson in the September 6 primary. I can't figure out who the progressive is in this race.

I'm more interested in the competitive House seats that could result in a seats switching parties, the Shreveport district (LA-04, where McCrery is finally resigning, presumably so he doesn't have to spend any more time with his family and pretend he's straight, and where Paul Carmouche-- typical DCCC website with no positions on issues; I guess Rahm hasn't told him how he feels about stuff yet-- is running for the open seat in the very red district; and the Lafayette-Lake Charles district (LA-07), where African-American state Senator Don Cravins is challenging extremist clown Charles Boustany.

Oh, and the Baton Rouge district (LA-06)... which could well flip back Republican. Let me tell you why. First, let me say that in May I mentioned how African-American legislators in Louisiana have grown increasingly frustrated over the state and national party ignoring them in favor of conservative white Democrats. The threats to bolt the party helped Cravins get at least lip service support from the Democrats, although they certainly seem to be putting all their effort behind conservative white Carmouche even though both districts have PVIs of R +7. The other Democrat mentioned in that May story was Michael Jackson-- and Jackson is bolting and could very well cause Cazayoux to lose his recently-won seat.

A little history. After Richard Baker retired in February, there was a Democratic primary that Don Cazayoux won. His main primary competitor, a far more progressive state Rep, Michael Jackson, backed him in the general election and Cazayoux was able to scrape out a victory for two reasons. First the GOP ran an extremist lunatic widely regarded as a quasi-KKK candidate. And second, Jackson was able to deliver the East Baton Rouge African American precincts that backed him in the primary, to Cazayoux.

The problem is that real Democrats in the district have been dismayed to see Cazayoux get into Congress and vote with the Republicans again and again. He hasn't been voting long but his record is already astonishingly bad-- the 8th worst of any Democrat in the House. On substantive issues where there is a strong partisan divide, Cazayoux scores a dismal 37.50 out of 100, right between worthless reactionaries Heath Shuler (NC), Jason Altmire (PA), Brad Ellsworth (IN) and Dan Boren (OK). He voted to keep the Iraq occupation going and he voted for retroactive immunity for warrantless wiretaps. Jackson opposes the war and opposed the FISA bill. He thinks Cazayoux has swung way too far to the right. He's running as an independent.

Local Dems are fretting that Jackson will split the vote and allow Republican state Senator Bill Cassidy-- a conservative but not as insane and extreme as Jenkins, the maniac Cazayoux beat in May-- to slip in. That isn't how Jackson sees it at all. He thinks the two conservatives will split the right-of-center vote and allow a forward-thinking progressive to slip in. There are two pro-war candidates running and one who opposes the war. And, remember, this isn't a primary; Jackson is running as an Independent. All it takes is a plurality in November to win the seat. Jackson has as much a chance to win this seat as either Cazayoux or Cassidy-- and he'd make a far better member of Congress than either of them.

HEAVY HANDED DCCC POLICIES COULD BITE THEM IN THE ASS-- IN LOUISIANA

I closely watched the votes rolling in last Saturday in Louisiana's special election. All night Woody KKK-pecker was ahead. It looked like there was little chance Don Cazayoux will be able to overcome his formidable lead in the mostly white suburbs. Finally there was nothing left but the East Baton Rouge precincts-- many of them solidly working class and mostly African-American. Cazayoux hadn't done well in these precincts in the primary. They were all taken by state Rep. Michael Jackson, a respected and admired African-American lawmaker with deep ties to the community. But once those precincts started rolling in late in the evening, Woody KKK-pecker and his friends had no choice but to pour the Pabst back into the cans and save it for another day. The race started tightening, then Cazayoux took the lead and them-- POW!-- KKK-pecker was roadkill. The final vote was 49,702 (49.2%) to 46,741 (46.3%). And Don Cazayoux was in the House voting for Barney Frank's and Maxine Waters' housing reform bills that-- if they get by McConnell's planned filibuster in the Senate and Bush's threatened veto-- will start to help thousands and thousands of American families whose homes are in jeopardy after being victimized by predatory lenders licensed for economic mayhem by Bush-McCain anti-regulatory ideological mania. My guess is that the voters of East Baton Rouge are happy that they turned out in big enough numbers to help pass this legislation.

It might not happen again. The election was to fill out the rest of corrupt lobbyist Richard Baker's unexpired term. In November Cazayoux will have to stand for re-election. The Republicans have promised to go beyond the Klan to find a candidate this time and will look for a mainstream conservative instead of a modern day night-rider. But as a genial and hard-working moderate-to-conservative incumbent, Cazayoux shouldn't have that hard of a time holding on to the seat. He's on the correct side of every issue that means anything this year, especially the economic ones that mean the most. The problem isn't the Republican. It's the voters in East Baton Rouge, his winning margin.

Michael Jackson says that the Louisiana state Democratic Party and the DCCC goons in Washington backed Cazayoux in the primary and hampered his ability to raise campaign funds. That's standard operating procedure for the Inside the Beltway party petty tyrants when they want to knock off a progressive or grassroots candidate. Jackson says he's thinking of running as an independent, which would doom Cazayoux's re-election shot. And Jackson isn't the only African-American Democratic lawmaker in Louisiana not feeling the love from the Democratic insiders club. State Senators Don Cravins, Jr. and Lydia Jackson agree. Cravins: "For many, many years, the African-American community has been very supportive of Democrats, and many of us feel that has not been reciprocated." Cravins in pondering a run as an independent against Republican Charles Boustany and Lydia Jackson may decide to run as an independent for the seat being vacated by Republican closet queen Jim McCrery.

Louisiana has only one black member of Congress: U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat who represents a majority black district.

...Though he said the Democratic Party supports him as a state senator in a majority black district, Cravins said he worries that financial and organizational help would evaporate once he ventures into a congressional district that is majority white.

"When an African-American candidate runs in a majority white district, race is always an issue," said Cravins.

Cravins' father-- Opelousas Mayor Don Cravins Sr.-- ran for Congress in 2004 and lost, and at the time, Cravins Sr. criticized members of the Democratic Party for not providing enough support for his candidacy.

...Sen. Lydia Jackson, D-Shreveport, also said she is weighing a run as an independent for the 4th U.S. Congressional District seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. James McCrery, R-Shreveport. She said she has some problems with the way the party has been recruiting and supporting candidates.

"Looking at the demographics for the 4th, it just makes sense to consider the independent route," she said.

I'll bet Mary Landrieux is working something out right now and my guess is that at least one of these candidates will be a well-supported Democrat running in November.