MORE ON THE O'REILLY/GLICK EXCHANGE

Read the NION press release here. I would also like to point out that I have signed the Not In Our Name statement, as well.

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FREE THOUGHT IN THE CLASSROOM

At the fantastic Eschaton blog site, one can post comments on each of Atrios's blog posts. Last weekend, I got myself caught up in a bit of a debate about issues surrounding the racist comments by and subsequent firing of Missouri middle school teacher Jendra Loeffelman. Read about it here (they may move the story into their archives soon; if that's the case, there should be a link in the right margin). If you've been reading Real Art for a while, then you probably realize what some of my views on race and racism in the US are: we live in a very racist country but propaganda tends to make most whites not realize it. Anyway, because I am a teacher myself, I am a bit worried about the outright firing of an educator for expressing a controversial opinion, despite the fact that her opinion is abhorrent to me--to quote Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it." Such a point of view is absolutely crucial in the classroom: without it, critical thought is impossible.

Anyway, lots of liberals still tend toward the decidedly uncritical "politically correct" point of view. This was the point of conflict for the debate on Eschaton. I'm going to post my comments only; you ought to get the gist of what it is that I am responding to from context.

the Eschaton debate (Ron's statements)

my first comment:

I, too, am a high school teacher and I find that I've got to agree with Elias for the most part. The everyday reality of public education is that it is ultimately impossible to keep a "fair and balanced" kind of ideological neutrality on political and cultural issues. As Elias pointed out, students and teachers talk; this seems impossible to avoid, even if I wanted to. Avoidance of hot topic issues is a statement in and of itself: no, can't talk about sex; no, can't talk about dirty words; nope, not religion; drugs, just say no; shut up: do as I say!

Kids are smarter than that contrary to popular opinion.

Another problem is that teachers' spoutings of conventional political wisdoms, no matter how stupid, are often tolerated or encouraged. For instance, the school where I work in Texas has a government/economics teacher who openly wore an "impeach Clinton" button during the weeks of the impeachment and trial process; nobody seemed to be bothered by this.

Given this pathetic reality, there's no way I'm going to keep my mouth shut when teenagers ask me about condoms, for instance--Texas is, by law, an abstinence-only sex ed state. Personally, I do try to tell my students that I'm one of those "crazy liberals" and to take everything I say with a grain of salt. I've also, at the beginning of every school year, taken to reading University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen's teaching philosophy (posted on his homepage) to my classes to cover my tail; it's a good essay on critical thought, objectivity, and the classroom.

Actually, one could argue that, in many ways, the main thrust of public education is ENTIRELY ideological in nature.

School heirarchies are based on a 19th century Prussian military model (this is no joke; check it out!); that is, discipline and order almost always prevail, while the pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and civic responsibility take only a secondary role. In the most important ways, American public education is about indoctrinating children into the culture of authority and obedience. School is an ideological institution to begin with but nobody wants to admit this.

The real point to consider given the unreliability of "objectivity" is the ideology being taught, or what some have called the "unofficial curriculum." I bet that Loeffelman was not the only faculty member with such views; these views are understood by students whether openly spoken or not.

my second comment:

Dominion said, "a feature of Houston High Schools..." I teach in a community right outside of Houston and my experience is a bit different from Dominion's.

Dominion said, "'free speech' rights are curtailed all the time...that is exactly as it should be." This is just not true. The part of the Houston metro area where I work is arguably far more fundamentalist than Houston in general. Here, the reality is that teachers have all kinds of free speech rights as long as they parrot the prevailing community values. That is, teachers openly bash evolution, even biology teachers. Teachers openly advocate drilling for oil in the arctic. Teachers openly profess their Christian beliefs and speckle their talk with religious innuendo. "Student sponsored prayer" is actually just a facade for school sponsored prayer. The list goes on and on.

Given this circumstance and my own progressivism, I must be very careful about how I speak. But I do speak because teenagers are very concerned with precisely those issues that Dominion says we should not talk about. I must speak because nobody else at my school seems to lean leftward--my school's students are being deprived of alternatives to their community's extremely narrow point of view.

Granted, it would be suicide to push, say, the validity of evolution but it's pretty safe to say something like, "evolution is biology's organizing principle; you don't understand modern biology if you don't understand evolution--you don't have to believe it, but you do have to understand it." Or, "feminists believe that no woman can truly be socially equal to men unless she can choose the circumstances under which she has a child; pro-lifers, however, define a fetus to be a person and therefore abortion is murder--from that point of view, America is drowning in blood." I've got to kiss a few rings, but just getting the liberal view into consideration at all is subversive given the community.

I think Elias defends Loeffelman for the same reason that I do: stifling classroom discussion from the left also means stifling classroom discussion from the right. I totally disagree with Loeffelman's comments and I also believe that she should have taken the opportunity to have a larger, more wide-ranging classroom discussion (this was her true misdeed). But teachers must be allowed to state their opinions and challenge students' notions. This is how to teach "critical thinking." Refraining from controversy makes apathetic students who make C's into apathetic adults who do not vote.

Don't get me wrong, I do not hold up Loeffelman to be a paragon of critical thought. However, the ideas at stake here are hopelessly interwoven with the controversy her comments created. Is she being fired for stating her taboo opinion or for not allowing for dissenting points of view (or telling students about them if no one knows how to or that they should dissent)?

If she can be fired, maybe I can be fired for talking about condoms in my abstinence-only, high-teen-pregnancy-rate school. This is what's on the line. The real problem is that schools in general almost never allow for a diversity of opinion. Change that and things should be better: athiest teachers, Christian teachers, feminist teachers, neo-liberal teachers, etc. Everybody gets numerous points of view.

And finally, Dominion said, "It is not, never, ever the teachers job to supplant the morals that I teach my kids at home." Get over it. School is already and always has been an ideological institution of control and discipline; this is the main lesson that ALL children graduate with: follow orders when you are a subservient; give orders when you are a superior--you are on your own. Do you really want that taught to your children? Well, it is. Given that reality, I, for one, will continue to talk with my students about morals, culture, ethics, politics, sex, drugs, rock and roll and dirty words.

my third post:

Actually, I don't equate the value of left and right opinion at all. (I'm pretty far left and my personal view is that conservatism is quite evil.) Rather, I believe that conservatism as a philosophy has become so overwhelmingly dominant in the public discourse that the United States effectively no longer has a "marketplace of ideas" (if we ever truly had one at all...). No "marketplace of ideas" equals no democracy. This is a factual reality. Obviously, it's much worse in Houston.

My point is that if students don't get multiple views all the way across the political spectrum, they never learn how to think. Unfortunately, this is the situation the country is in: people don't think and this really frightening civic problem can be blamed squarely on the schools (and the corporate media, I suppose, as well). Public education is far more about "do it because I told you to or else" than about debate and thought; questioning authority is seen as the worst thing a student can do, worse, even, than fighting. Even the major teachers' unions (unions are supposed to be liberal, right?) want more classroom discipline. The entire educational system is in on the racket. There is seemingly no hope for the situation changing.

Furthermore, in order to understand the importance of liberal philosophies, students must understand conservative philosophies. I might even venture to say that most adult conservatives don't fully understand their own points of view, ditto for liberals. That's why there is effectively no real debate in this country at the political level: political beliefs are, for most people, simply strong, emotionally image-laden slogans. Rarely do I ever encounter a true clash of ideas in the public realm.

I stand for real debate because I believe that on a fair playing field, liberal views will win. But the public is unaccustomed to true debate, to a true clash of ideas, and is, therefore, wary of that which truly enables democracy.

Just because I think that conservative views should be heard does not mean that I equate right and left thinking. In fact, I always tell my students what my opinion is on almost any subject and that I believe I'm right--I also admit that there are lots of other seemingly intelligent people who disagree with me. But my point gets across and recognizing that there are other points of view besides my own makes me all the more credible.

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GREAT GAME!

Play Gulf War 2 online.

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FUN, FRIGHTENING LINKS FOR THE WEEKEND:

Patriot Act II: "You are a rebel traitor and a spy!"

Bill Moyers exposes the latest Darth Vader empowerment bill.

Love George W. Bush!

He's so dreamy...

Hate George W. Bush!

Let's impeach the fucker.

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CONSERVATIVES ADMIT IT! THEY KNOW THERE'S NO "LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS"

Check it out here.

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TOM TOMORROW SEZ:

And a more-important-than-usual Unscientific Poll Watch: some jackasses are trying to rev up the good old days of McCarthyism and blacklists. Go here, right now, and vote in favor of actor David Clennon's right to speak his damn mind. (It's one vote per logged IP, and you have to give an email address. I know that sort of thing is likely to bother some of you, but there's always Hotmail. I think this one matters. Given the cowardice of the networks, this guy's career might well be on the line here.)

Afterthought from a reader: "Please suggest that readers not only vote, but that they add posts to their own blogs to get their readers to vote. Right now it's 2:1 for firing him. Gotta do all we can. First amendment and all that..."

Consider yourselves asked.

This is your mission should you decide to accept it...

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update to the update:

I just watched O'Reilly answering viewer email on last night's exchange with Glick. He was utterly unashamed and unapologetic, proud, even. This is "fair and balanced" in 2003, a real "no spin zone." Heh. Heh.



PSYCHO O'REILLY UPDATE

I found a link to some streaming audio of the fiery exchange. This is VERY enjoyable.

Thanks to the Hamster for the link.

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EVERYBODY'S GOTTA HEAR THIS

Thank you, thank you, thank you Tom Tomorrow for getting this transcript! These days there's nothing much more pleasing to me than a conservative asshole being made to look like an asshole. In this case, it's Smarmy Bunghole B-team starting tight end Bill O'Reilly:

Bully Bill

I caught a bit of the O'Reilly Factor during dinner last night, during which Bill berated Jeremy Glick, a signatory of the Not in Our Name ad whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. I couldn't find a transcript on the Fox site, but happily, one came in over the transom (probably pulled off Lexis, so no link available).

This is how Bill O'Reilly behaves when faced with genuine disagreement:


O'REILLY: You are mouthing a far left position that is a marginal position in this society, which you're entitled to.

GLICK: It's marginal -- right.

O'REILLY: You're entitled to it, all right, but you're -- you see, even --I'm sure your beliefs are sincere, but what upsets me is I don't think your father would be approving of this.

GLICK: Well, actually, my father thought that Bush's presidency was illegitimate.

O'REILLY: Maybe he did, but...

GLICK: I also didn't think that Bush...

O'REILLY: ... I don't think he'd be equating this country as a terrorist nation as you are.

GLICK: Well, I wasn't saying that it was necessarily like that.

O'REILLY: Yes, you are. You signed...

GLICK: What I'm saying is...

O'REILLY: ... this, and that absolutely said that.

GLICK: ... is that in -- six months before the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, starting in the Carter administration and continuing and escalating while Bush's father was head of the CIA, we recruited a hundred thousand radical mujahadeens to combat a democratic government in Afghanistan, the Turaki government.

O'REILLY: All right. I don't want to...

GLICK: Maybe...

O'REILLY: I don't want to debate world politics with you.

GLICK: Well, why not? This is about world politics.

O'REILLY: Because, No. 1, I don't really care what you think.

GLICK: Well, OK.

O'REILLY: You're -- I want to...

GLICK: But you do care because you...

O'REILLY: No, no. Look...

GLICK: The reason why you care is because you evoke 9/11...

O'REILLY: Here's why I care.

GLICK: ... to rationalize...

O'REILLY: Here's why I care...

GLICK: Let me finish. You evoke 9/11 to rationalize everything from domestic plunder to imperialistic aggression worldwide.

O'REILLY: OK. That's a bunch...

GLICK: You evoke sympathy with the 9/11 families.

O'REILLY: That's a bunch of crap. I've done more for the 9/11 families by their own admission -- I've done more for them than you will ever hope to do.

GLICK: OK.

O'REILLY: So you keep your mouth shut when you sit here exploiting those people.

GLICK: Well, you're not representing me. You're not representing me.

O'REILLY: And I'd never represent you. You know why?

GLICK: Why?

O'REILLY: Because you have a warped view of this world and a warped view of this country.

GLICK: Well, explain that. Let me give you an example of a parallel...

O'REILLY: No, I'm not going to debate this with you, all right.

GLICK: Well, let me give you an example of parallel experience. On September 14...

O'REILLY: No, no. Here's -- here's the...

GLICK: On September 14...

O'REILLY: Here's the record.

GLICK: OK.

O'REILLY: All right. You didn't support the action against Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. You were against it, OK.

GLICK: Why would I want to brutalize and further punish the people in Afghanistan...

O'REILLY: Who killed your father!

GLICK: The people in Afghanistan...

O'REILLY: Who killed your father.

GLICK: ... didn't kill my father.

O'REILLY: Sure they did. The al Qaeda people were trained there.

GLICK: The al Qaeda people? What about the Afghan people?

O'REILLY: See, I'm more angry about it than you are!

GLICK: So what about George Bush?

O'REILLY: What about George Bush? He had nothing to do with it.

GLICK: The director -- senior as director of the CIA.

O'REILLY: He had nothing to do with it.

GLICK: So the people that trained a hundred thousand Mujahadeen who were...

O'REILLY: Man, I hope your mom isn't watching this.

GLICK: Well, I hope she is.

O'REILLY: I hope your mother is not watching this because you -- that's it. I'm not going to say anymore.

GLICK: OK.

O'REILLY: In respect for your father...

GLICK: On September 14, do you want to know what I'm doing?

O'REILLY: Shut up! Shut up!

GLICK: Oh, please don't tell me to shut up.

O'REILLY: As respect -- as respect -- in respect for your father, who was a Port Authority worker, a fine American, who got killed unnecessarily by barbarians...

GLICK: By radical extremists who were trained by this government...

O'REILLY: Out of respect for him...

GLICK: ... not the people of America.

O'REILLY: ... I'm not going to...

GLICK: ... The people of the ruling class, the small minority.

O'REILLY: Cut his mic. I'm not going to dress you down anymore, out of respect for your father.

We will be back in a moment with more of THE FACTOR.

GLICK: That means we're done?

O'REILLY: We're done.


The last few seconds of that exchange were really something to watch. I don't think I've ever seen a shouting head actually tell his guest to "Shut up! Shut up!" or to tell his producer to "cut his mic."

Thanks again to Tom Tomorrow and his ever wise pen!

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TO GO BOLDLY

Here is an excerpt from the introduction to Susan Faludi’s seminal work (at least, I hope it will be ten years from now) on the social construction of American masculinity, “Stiffed” (so I guess that “seminal” is the right word one way or the other); it is a sort of composite account of a father and his son in the late 1950s sharing an important bonding-moment of reverence, astonishment, and awe while watching an early American satellite fly overhead:

The father touches the boy’s shoulder and directs his vision to a faraway glimmer. The boy looks up, knowing that his father is pointing out more than just an object; it is a beacon of pride and secret knowledge, a paternal gift rocketing him into a future his father had helped him to launch. At first, all he sees is the blanket of stars spreading out cold and vast between the trees. But then, there it is at last, a pinpoint of light crawling across the firmament, infinitesimally tiny, impossibly bright.

She really nailed it for me. That is, when I read this passage for the first time, I thought, “that’s me and Dad,” even though my moment was in the early 1970s instead of the 50s, and we were most likely watching TV rather than looking at the sky, coverage of Skylab or of a later moonshot or some such.

NASA, for at least two generations of Americans, probably three or four, has been symbolic of everything about our country that is good. It has meant and, for many, still means knowledge, science, bravery, exploration in an old world sense, international cooperation and friendly competition, racial harmony, hope. NASA means working toward the uplifting future offered by Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.

I am very cynical, disillusioned about much that was taught to me about America when I was a boy. But space exploration, in principle, remains unsullied to me. NASA, while certainly imperfect, still makes my heart swell with humanistic pride. I know how silly it sounds, but I still believe it with every ounce of my being: man’s destiny is in space; man’s destiny is to understand the universe.

I know that there are reasonable criticisms of NASA. Project Censored has shown how every shuttle launch is an environmental disaster. Singer/poet Gil Scott-Heron best articulates another major criticism, that space money should be better used, in his poem “Whitey on the Moon." Also, the military brass and other hawks hungrily eye space technology and the strategic advantages of space flight (a tension that has existed since NASA’s early days).

These problems, however, can and hopefully will be solved. Space exploration as a concept is not a problem in and of itself. Scientists and engineers can overcome the ecological issues. There is plenty of money in America for the sick, hungry, and homeless: take it from the military, not from NASA. And speaking of the military, they will use ANY suitable technology to make killing more efficient—war is the evil, not space.

When I woke up last Saturday and heard the awful news, all I could think of was what happened seventeen years ago. I was a senior in high school and I had to cut class to watch news coverage of the Challenger disaster. The cluttered and cramped audio-visual storage room of our school’s library had a television showing the explosion again and again and again. There were seven or eight of us watching, a crowd in the small room. I was stunned, unable to know what to think or feel, much like I had been five years earlier when I had heard about John Lennon’s murder.

But my close friend, Matt, standing beside me, understood immediately. He cried. He knew.

This is how I have always remembered the loss of the Challenger. This memory, not the loss of the Columbia itself, is what made me cry last Saturday. It is truly sad to lose such brave, hard-working, brilliant individuals. Their deaths, however, are charged with symbolic importance that exceeds the value of any individual American life. When our astronauts die in the line of duty, optimism and hope, as aspects of national identity, are dealt a savage, brutal blow.

So the real question here is not, “does this mean that we should abandon space exploration?” Rather, the question should be, “when are we going to get really, really serious about traveling to the stars?” I am happy to note that most polls are indicating that the national will is to continue exploring space.

But I say it’s time to expand, not simply continue, mankind’s greatest quest.

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Fucking shit. Not again.

STATE OF THE UNION

You know, I thought about giving a sort of point by point analysis of King George's speech for a while: "can you believe that bullshit?" or "like that's going to happen," or "oh, my god, this is getting creepy," or some such. But the more I reflected on our monarch's call to arms, the more I thought about a moment in one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek (the original series, of course). "Patterns of Force" has always and still is known affectionately in my mind as "the Nazi episode." It's one of those parallel Earth stories that were so common during the second season: an Earth anthropologist named John Gill goes to study a race of people on the planet Ekos and somehow, in a forbidden social experiment gone terribly wrong, ends up as the leader of a world wide fascist government, complete with jack boots and swastikas. When I located the teleplay on the internet, I quickly found the climactic scene of which last night's SOTU address reminded me. The parallels are almost too amusing (or too creepy) to be true. The scene centers around a demagoguery-laden speech made by Gill-as-fuher; a crowd watches and cheers while Kirk, Spock, and McCoy observe and comment:

The Fuhrer's speech.

- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!
- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!
- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!
- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!

Ekosians ...the job ahead is difficult. It requires courage and dedication. It requires faith.

(Applause)

The Zeon colony has existed for nearly--

Watch his mouth.

If we fulfill our own greatness, that will all be ended. Working together --

Captain, the speech follows no logical pattern. Random sentences strung together.

He looks drugged, Jim, almost in a cataleptic state.

...reach our goal, And we will reach that goal.

- Yay! - Yay!

I've got to have a close look at him.

...must be decisive. Every thought...directed toward a goal. This planet ...can become a paradise, if we are willing to pay the price. As each cell in the body ...works with discipline and harmony for the good ...of the entire being –

Gentlemen, I want a picture of you two with the Hero of the Fatherland listening to the Fuhrer's speech. Get that light over there, please. Get this light around here. Smile, gentlemen. Turn around, smile, and -- Now.

- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!

Hail Fuhrer!

- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!
- Hail Fuhrer! - Hail Fuhrer!

The Fuhrer has given us our orders, and we pledge him our lives in this sacred task. Death to Zeon!

- Death to Zeon! - Death to Zeon!
- Death to Zeon! - Death to Zeon!
- Death to Zeon! - Death to Zeon!
- Death to Zeon! - Death to Zeon!

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Unfortunately, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy do not seem to be waiting in the wings ready to perform a Prime-Directive-friendly coup d'etat. Big drag...

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the truth about cats and dogs...

You know, I don't think that Janeane Garofalo is a very funny comedian--she rarely makes me laugh. But I love her, anyway. Firstly, she is very clever, and clever goes a long way with me. Secondly, she is far more attractive than Uma Thurman. That movie they were in together where Janeane was supposed to be the homely one just didn't work for me. But it's always nice to look at her cute face...

The real reason I love her, however, is that she is an extremely articulate spokesman for progressive causes, and she doesn't have the stink of the hypocritical Hollywood liberalism embraced by Barbara Streisand and her slimy ilk. She's even managed to put it to one of the grand, high-profile FOX assholes, Bill O'Reilly, live on his show. She's just plain cool. Check out this CNN Talkback transcript to see what I mean.

Thanks to the fantastic Eschaton blog for the link.

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GO RAIDERS!!!!!!!!

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AN OPEN LETTER TO FRANCE AND GERMANY FROM AN AMERICAN

To whom it may concern:

My government's executive branch has been illegally seized by power hungry, war mongering fools who are every bit as fundamentalist in their Christian views as their Islamic counterparts are. I fear these machiavellian madmen are leading the United States down the path of self-destruction, and my fellow countrymen are either too anesthetized by television, religion, and material comforts, or too blinded by the most effective propaganda system ever devised to do anything to stop it.

Insanity reigns in America. We desperately need your help.

In World War II, many Americans sacrificed their lives to help end fascism's tight grip on the European continent; to do so was not only altruistic and just but also self-serving. Now, as a very frightened United States citizen, I beg you to help us. To do so would not only be altruistic and just but would also greatly serve your interests: I assume that Europeans have no desire to fall under American hegemony--if the White House continues with its imperialist designs, such a thought is not inconceivable.

American culture descends from European culture. We are kinsmen, brothers. Please help us.

France has a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council; I understand that Germany will soon be rotating onto the Council as its Chair. The British are of no use; their government seems to be suffering a dementia similar to our own. Your two nations, therefore, have the ability to forestall the coming invasion of Iraq for a period of time. This is vital; once the war starts, if history is any indicator, the American public will push aside any questions of peace in order to rally behind our flag. Once the bombs start to drop, blind patriotism and blind support for the carnage and slaughter will embolden our bloodthirsty leaders to ever-higher levels of violence and arrogance. That's why the blatantly imperialist invasion of Iraq by the United States must be held off for as long as possible: the American peace movement grows, but is not yet powerful enough to stop those who Bob Dylan once called the "Masters of War."

Do not be bullied by George W. Bush; he's not as tough as he wants everybody to think he is and I believe that he will back down in the face of overwhelming resistance. That is, after all, what one does to a bully: stand up to him.

But the American peace movement needs more time. We are not yet overwhelming.

Please help us. Please help everybody. Right now, you may be the world's only hope.

Sincerely,

Ron $$$$$$
United States citizen
Harris County, Texas resident ("The Execution Capitol of the World")

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Now I've just got to figure out who I'm supposed to send this to. I guess I'll do a web search or something. Any suggestions? Just email me at the address in the upper left corner.

And, what the hell, I guess I'll post this, too:

"General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone
Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire.
I regret that I am unable to present my father's request to you in
person, but my ship has fallen under attack and I'm afraid my mission
to bring you to Alderaan has failed. I have placed information vital
to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2
unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid
safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour.
Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."

I guess it's hard to shake my influences.

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MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. 2003: A WARM AND FRIENDLY MUPPET OF A MAN

If you pay close attention to the usual MLK day media hype, you'll probably see some film clips of the great march on Washington, hear bits of the "I have a dream" speech, and hear pundits, politicians, and other leaders give bland, inspecific praise to the great civil rights leader. It's even worse in the world of public education: here he is something of a warm, fuzzy, uplifting, friendly muppet that says nice things about black children and white children; his "dream" becomes mingled with and therefore indistinguishable from the more abstract and fictional "American Dream." Let's face it, in 2003, MLK is now far more of a symbol used by the establishment to make us all feel good about race relations than he is a martyred revolutionary.

While King was no doubt friendly, warm, and uplifting, progressives must make sure to firmly stress what he actually was, a scathing critic of the American racist, classist, imperialist, capitalist, elitist establishment. It seems that the powers that be were willing to tolerate his charismatic leadership as long as he kept his fiery rhetoric confined to simple understandings of race relations; he was assasinated within months of his speech coming out against the Vietnam war, a speech that linked American racism to militarism, materialism, and capitalism.

This MLK day, do yourself a favor and remember him not with a millionth rehearing of the "I have a dream" speech; rather, read the text of his anti-Vietnam war speech. You won't regret it.

TO ANYBODY THAT READ THE LAST POST BEFORE 4:30 P.M. CST:

I wasn't happy with the clarity of the final section as originally posted so I reworked it and reposted it earlier today. Please indulge me by rereading that section; I think it states what I think a bit more clearly now.

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CULTURE OF SWINE: WHY COPS REALLY ARE PIGS

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.

Christmas Eve, 1988

One of my favorite rituals during my college days was getting the hell out of my parents’ house whenever I was home for the holidays. I spent many Christmas Eves driving around my old suburban environment with good friends, talking, bonding, and smoking cigarettes.

One particular Christmas Eve, instead of driving around, I ended up hanging out with my pals in my parents’ backyard (which was open to the streets behind and to the side of the house with a heavily forested vacant lot to the back and public easement to the other side) at, say, 11:30 or so. We were not doing drugs, drinking, worshipping Satan, joining the Communist Party, or supporting Michael Dukakis.

But that didn’t matter to the pissed off cop. We were just standing there in my parents’ backyard talking about music or movies or something: the cop had an immediate suspicious attitude and demanded to see all our driver’s licenses. All of our “yes, sir” and “no, sir” appeasements did nothing for his Christmas disposition.

“Where do you live?” he commanded more than he asked.

“There,” I said as I pointed to my parents’ house less than thirty yards away.

“Do your parents know where you are?”

“Yes, sir. They know I’m in the backyard,” I said while mentally noting the sense of surrealism that almost always accompanies my conversations with cops.

After detaining (or was it harassing?) us for another ten minutes or so, the grumpy cop was on his way. I had the good feeling of knowing that our county constabulary was on the job, protecting us all from dangerous societal elements, a sort of strong, kindly big brother figure looking out for our well being.

Not.

Two Or Three Springtimes Ago

I am a high school theater teacher in a large, working class petrochemical town near Houston. Teachers are pillars of the community, very respectable generally. Right? Right?

Not to cops it seems.

A chair, a somewhat valuable property of the theater department, had turned up missing after an inventory. The gossip was that a former student who had graduated a couple of years earlier had snagged it. The chairman of the department had been putting up with student theft for years and decided that enough was enough. She called the police.

I actually believed that the girl who was the suspected thief either didn’t have the chair or believed that she had permission to take it, a misunderstanding. But whatever. There had been many props, costumes, and set pieces stolen over the years. So I didn’t complain about involving the cops.

Bad move on my part.

Even though I knew absolutely nothing about the missing chair, a local plain-clothes detective sent a message asking me to meet him in the front office that day after school. Being the good citizen and role model that I now pretend to be, I went straight there when the final bell rang. Then, I waited. After ten minutes, I figured that he must have ended up in another office by mistake, so I went hunting for him. No such luck. I asked around and nobody had seen him. I kept waiting. After thirty minutes, I thought to myself that I was waiting for a guy who I had never spoken to and may never show up. I went home.

The next morning, Sergeant Stedanko, as I now think of him (remember the Stacey Keach character in Cheech and Chong’s “Up in Smoke”?), and a uniformed cop came to my classroom during first period and ordered me to step into the hallway. So I left twenty-five students hanging during the middle of a lecture to go play my part in the mystery of the missing chair. I was annoyed, but then my interactions with the armed security agents of the state are always annoying.

Things got worse.

“Now, why weren’t you in the front office waiting for me after school yesterday?” Stedanko angrily asked.

Twilight Zone time. “Um, I waited for you for thirty minutes…” I said.

“No, you didn’t. I was there,” Stedanko retorted.

“Well, I was there.”

“No, you weren’t.”

I shrugged. Stedanko continued, “Now, I want you to tell me why an innocent girl’s reputation needs to be destroyed.”

“Uh…Well, I don’t really think that’s a good idea, actually.”

“So why are you accusing this sweet girl of stealing that chair?”

“Well, I’m not accusing her of anything, to tell the truth…”

“Then what do you think should be done?” he asked and glared.

I chose my words carefully, “I guess…if she’s guilty, she needs to be punished and if she’s innocent, her name needs to be cleared.”

Sergeant Stedanko just stared at me and then turned around and walked away. No “thank you.” No good byes. Just a foul taste of cop in my mouth.

So much for being a pillar of the community.

(As it turned out, the whole thing was, in fact, a big misunderstanding that I had absolutely nothing to do with. But I guess cops need no justification to harass.)

Last July, 7 a.m.

My wife and I were sound asleep. We were going to get up around eleven or so and drive to New Orleans for a few days of merry making and revelry in the French Quarter. Then, bam, bam, bam! Bam, bam, bam! “Ugh, I think somebody’s at the door,” I sleepily said. My wife got up to see what all of the ruckus was about.

“Hey, don’t you need a warrant?” I heard her yell.

I got up and was standing next to the bed in my underwear when three sheriff’s deputies, weapons in hand, entered our bedroom. “Keep you hands where we can see them!” one of them shouted.

“…Uh, okay,” I said. I hadn’t heard that hands phrase directed at me for over ten years.

The cops searched our apartment, apparently for some fugitive, and left without explanation. Becky and I were, needless to say, shaken. She said, “Ron, look out the window.” Twenty cop cars were in the parking lot. Numerous deputies ran to and fro. A helicopter circled overhead.

“This is big,” I thought, “it’s gotta be on TV.” Sure enough, we turned on the set and saw a local reporter at the entrance to our apartments. It turned out that a deputy had been shot in the leg while trying to apprehend a car thief on the property. The cops told the reporter that they believed that the suspect was holed up in one of the apartments and that they were “canvassing” all residences. I guess that “canvassing” now means “wantonly violating the Fourth Amendment.”

It is important to note that my apartment complex is about 90% African-American and Hispanic. I don’t think this would have happened at a white complex.

As it turned out, the thief was caught elsewhere, blocks away. The wounded deputy was hit by friendly fire, an accidentally discharged cop gun. The police were not in “hot pursuit;” the incident had happened seven hours earlier. In short, the illegal door-to-door search was an absolute outrage, a total abuse of police power.

My older brother, an archconservative, pro-cop business lawyer urged us to sue. He was pretty pissed about it. We didn’t sue; he wouldn’t represent us…

Last Week

Tennessee cops gunned down a tail-wagging family dog on the side of the road while the kneeling, handcuffed mother, father, and son watched, shrieked, and cried. Read about it here. This story really kicked me in the gut. It was as though Hitler’s brownshirts invaded a Norman Rockwell painting and started busting heads.

In fact, it’s hard not to cry as I write this.

I now realize that when I read about police brutality toward humans (that is, as opposed to dogs) I get angrier in my head than I do in my heart. I suppose the image of uniformed men with guns blowing away a family pet while the helpless family freaks out is, at the very least, difficult to digest. But what about the countless individuals, human beings, most of them ethnic minorities, that have been brutalized, harassed, and beaten by the police? Things are much, much worse than the sadistic killing of a dog might suggest. I ought to be angrier in my heart.

Increasingly, I am.

American police culture is out of control. (I say “culture” because I believe that there are lots of well-meaning, good individuals that are cops. But many of those “good cops” end up doing bad things or remaining silent when they witness acts of corruption and brutality performed by their less well-meaning cop brothers.) Newspapers report HUNDREDS of instances of police misconduct every year but miss the big story: THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF KNOWN INSTANCES OF POLICE MISCONDUCT EVERY YEAR! How many Richard Jewells and David Koreshes must it take? How many murdered dogs? When will mainstream (that is, white) America wake up and realize that it is no longer such a gross, radical exaggeration to say that we’re not too far from Nazi Germany? (That is to say, Arayans equal whites; Jews equal non-whites...hey, there really is a comparison there!) The only thing out of the ordinary about the killing of the Smoak family dog is that the Smoaks are white. People of color know the score but lack enough clout and power to address the injustices. Whites, for the most part, live in ignorant bliss—when a white American gets screwed by the cops it is viewed as an “isolated incident” that is not representative of the overall situation.

Of course, that’s a lie. Authoritarianism and violence are simply a big part of what cops are. I hate cops. Because, you see, cops really are pigs.

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(Well, most cops, anyway. In all fairness, I ought to be willing to change my point of view on a case by case basis or the like, but I really think that each individual cop I meet would need to prove to me that he can be trusted first. That's only common sense given the circumstances.)

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THE STATE OF ART

Michael Ventura's thoughtful essays published every other week in the Austin Chronicle first came to my attention in the mid 1990's. Here is his latest essay. It deals with the situation of the artist and art in 2003 and I think it's pretty poignant. Enjoy.

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I don't even know what to think about this.

By the way, I got the link from a weird web site that features a strange combination of political news and essay links, surrealistic art, and naked girl pictures.

If you're brave and/or curious, surf here.

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Probably the most well known and influential intellectual guru of the neo-liberal movement is a really old guy named Milton Friedman. This founder of the "Chicago School" of economics layed the intellectual groundwork for the monetary policy and Reaganomics that are taken for granted today--Friedman had already become so influential by the mid 1970's, in fact, that when Henry Kissenger arranged the coup that installed the bloodthirsty Augusto Pinochet as the Doctor Doom figure of Argentina, Friedman and his team of conservative economic homies were allowed to head on down south of the border to put their new theories to test under tightly controlled circumstances and eventually claimed success: the Argentine wealthy got wealthier. (I must mention Friedman's well known book "Capitalism and Freedom" here; the book argues that democracy and capitalism are naturally linked somehow and that's why it's the best system for all--so I don't really know how they could have claimed "success" in junta land, but I guess that's just how logic has worked for the last fifty years or so.) Several years after their South American miracle, Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. The rest is history.

A little known theory of Friedman's is that conservative legislators ought to cut as many taxes as they can such that legislatures have no choice but to eventually cut programs and social services--in Friedman's view, the government should have an extremely limited role: roads, military, protection from monopoly, and that's about it. Cutting social programs is unpopular. Therefore, taxes should be used as legislative extortion.

That's why the President's HUGE tax cut for the wealthy that was announced today got me thinking. It was two times larger than what what most Republicans were shooting for.

I wonder...

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Just a thought...

When hawks say that going to war with Iraq isn't about oil, I'm reminded of southerners that are nostalgic about the Confederacy saying that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. Of course, the Civil War was about slavery and going to war with Iraq is about oil. But let's not be confused by the facts.

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