Posted inPolitics: National

McCain Agonistes

Am I the only one who notices how radio news reports — even on NPR — on everything from health care to the budget always seem to lead with sound cuts from Republican opponents. They get the time to spout a talking point, then the announcer moves on to the next story. We're left to wonder why these bills that have passed garnered any support. Considering how bought-and-paid-for the Democratic Party is by corporate interests, I find this odd. What are the corporate media afraid of? In any event, when the roles are reversed, and the Democrats are reduced to theoretical powerlessness in the Congress, we will not hear their voices. We will still hear Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and, of course, the wealthy Republican presidential standard bearer John Sidney McCain III.

Even Tiger Woods' numerous paramours had more sense than the media do over their darling, the senior senator "from Arizona." Lately many stories have swooned over McCain "finding his voice again," "leading the opposition to health care legislation," etc. An only slightly more balanced report came today from the New York Times. I hear McCain on CSPAN and he sounds like a bitter old man. The media hear him and angels sing. Old fighter pilots never die, they still get the girls (and guys). That's the best explanation I can muster.

3
Posted inPolitics: National

Why Palin can’t be ignored

Many Democratic operatives are advising Obama and Biden to essentially ignore Palin. I don’t think they can. President-elect McCain (I use the term to focus your mind on the stakes here) has made her one of the most important issues in this campaign.

In choosing — or being forced to choose — a person with no national or international experience, whose government background is a few years as mayor of a tiny exurb and 18 months as governor of a state with 670,000 people (less than half the population of Phoenix), McCain should be giving the nation pause. Pause to wonder about his judgment, for if he chose her it was the kind of impulsive, irresponsible action for which he’s known. Pause to wonder who is really pulling his strings, considering she is the candidates of the hard-core evangelicals McCain once denounced, and the oil industry he claims to be willing to fight. Pause that he would make a shameless political move to energize his base even if it meant putting the country at risk. President Palin. Think about that.

One of the many outrageous things about the Palin affair is her refusal to hold news conferences or meet with reporters. Proper "deference" was demanded by the McCain campaign. Deference? Here, ma’am, the people rule — unless you are willing to proclaim us an authoritarian empire where the press is treated as it is in, say, China. It should be a deal-breaker in itself that she has been shut off like a celebrity.

What is McCain hiding? What is he afraid of?

2
Posted inPolitics: National

McCain mobilizes, and cows, his ‘base’

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half." — Gore Vidal

"The (Bush) aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the
reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe
that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment
principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the
world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and
when we act, we create our own reality.’ " — Ron Suskind

"This election is not about issues. This election is
about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." — Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager

Unfortunately Vidal is probably wrong, considering that most Americans get their tiny bits of information from television. Davis may well be right, despite the critical issues facing the country, and that his campaign is running to continue the very Bush-Cheney "faith-based" policies that created the disaster of the past eight years.

This is the background you need to understand the successful McCain effort to cow the corporate media into submission in the final weeks before the election. Remember that McCain called the big-time media "his base" and there’s been a long love-fest between them. But the old fighter jock will now slap around and intimidate his love — and many Americans will approve. It will be the Rovian tactic that puts the race within stealing distance, if not produce an outright McCain victory.

1
Posted inPolitics: National

On the convention: Will Obama be FDR or Bryan?

Let me begin my convention observations by saying: I don’t trust the media. Whatever the Democrats and Obama do, it will be "the wrong thing" per the corporate media narrative. He still hasn’t "sealed the deal" and "closed the sale." He "lacks specifics" — a lie — and if he provided more, they would be instant red meat. If 75,000 people in the stadium hear one of the great speeches of our time — as happened in Philadelphia on the race issue — it will be swept away by the coiffed broomheads of television pundits.

As Michelle’s speech confirmed, the Obama’s have done everything the "conservatives" demand of black folks — and they’re still "foreign." He’s a celebrity — that’s bad. Americans "don’t know who he is" — as if they know who the hell John McCain is. He’s "not one of us" — as if that has any meaning in an America of diverse life paths, or that a former POW, longtime right-wing capo and rich consort of a beer heiress is "one of us." "One of us" is a stupid person, as the media would have it — because, after all, education and the ability to speak in complete sentences = elitism.

The best way to watch the convention is on CSPAN, so you hear all the speeches, not merely the prime-time ones that are filtered and "interpreted" by the bubbleheads. Of course, most Americans don’t do this. So they watch the prime-time spectacle as the Democrats try, again, to figure out how to beat the Republicans. Somehow eight years of misgovernment on an unprecedented scale isn’t enough. Nor is the obvious failure/scam that is "conservative ideas" in action. The right has wrecked the country and yet the presidential polls, if they are to be believed, show Obama struggling to stay even.

1
Posted inPolitics: National

Is it already over for Obama, IV?

Obama’s win in the Democratic primary showed him to potentially be one of the most gifted politicians in American history. Yes, he gives a good speech — something that is underrated, particularly after the embarrassingly inarticulate George W. Bush. If we’re to have any chance to address the historic challenges facing the country, we’re going to need an inspiring leader at the bully pulpit.

But he also ran a great ground game, outflanking Hillary’s admittedly badly run operation, and showed he could push back effectively against Rovian tactics. After the disaster of conservative government on display everywhere and every indication this should be a Democratic year, why can’t I come out an admit I was wrong about Obama?

I hope I can. Unfortunately, he has several things going against him, which may prove insurmountable. Remember, Michelle said, "this is it, one campaign and no more," or words to that effect. If Nancy  Reagan had said the same thing in 1976, no book would be called "The Age of Reagan," however gifted that orator and politician was.

9
Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

The strange media romance with John McCain

Breaking up is hard to do, particularly with a lover you’ve idealized to the point of pathology. So what if the reality is as jarring, even dangerous, odds with the ideal? So it is with the mainsteam media and John McCain.

We were treated to this once again in the Sunday New York Times. A front page story described how this "maverick," "insurgent," "one of the most disruptive figures in his party" and "rebel" is now trying to be a standard-bearer who can unite his party. There was mention of his "volcanic" blowups, but in an admiring way.

On the op-ed page, Nicholas Kristof writes, "Even for those of us who shudder at many of John McCain’s positions,
there is something refreshing about a man who wins so many votes
despite a major political shortcoming: he is abysmal at pandering."

Such is the scary fog of McCain worship that envelops even smart people writing for the best newspaper in America. The reality is quite different.

No Comments
Posted inPhoenix Politics: National

Who is this ‘maverick’ I keep hearing about?

Every time I hear the media say Sen. John McCain "of Arizona" it makes me crazy. McCain has done as little for Arizona as possible and it shows. The state is Mississippi in the Southwest, an Appalachia with golf courses, the epicenter of a brewing socio-environmental calamity. It is a place frighteningly behind in the competitive world of the 21st century, however much it provides a haven for a certain kind of rich person and, until recently, for real-estate players. Arizona was never anything but a national political platform for McCain.

If McCain had been governor, his apathy would be an especially tempting target. Even so, as a senator he has done as little as possible in education, research, transportation, health care, the environment…the list goes on and on. Most days one wondered if Arizona even had senators representing it, rather than trying to be national political figures.

2
Posted inPhoenix

What I didn’t write at the Arizona Republic

People kept telling me they couldn’t believe I got away with what I wrote as a columnist for the Arizona Republic. I identified and questioned the vast power of the Real Estate Industrial Complex. While most of the local media were mindless boosters, I discussed the serious challenges to the state’s economy (which are coming true) and indeed to its future as a quality place to live (ditto). How, hundreds of readers asked, did I keep my job?

In the end I didn’t, of course. But for nearly seven years, I offered one of the few alternatives to local cheerleading and media growthgasms. And I was the only one to keep a sustained focus on economic, social and environmental issues — and how they were all tied together.

And yet, dear readers, I pulled my punches nearly every time I wrote.

20