SavvySugar

Top Talker

lilkimbo — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:59:47 -0700

A little birdie told me that Top Talker will be announced over on Citizen at 2:15 today! Everyone needs to check it out!

What a match-up! America's new most-admired women -- Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton

Grandpa — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:45:02 -0800

What a match-up! America's new most-admired women -- Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton

December 30, 2009 | 2:22 am

At the end of the 21st century's first decade, Americans have decided on the women they admire the most -- and their picks might surprise some. (Although probably not if they're looking at these photos.)
One is a woman who once lived in the White House -- Hillary Rodham Clinton. And the other is a woman suspected of harboring ambitions of living there someday -- Sarah Palin.
A Democrat and a Republican. A former senator and a former governor. Two polarizing politicians, both moms, both bestselling authors, both who lost their bids for one of the nation's top elected offices last year.
Are American voters dropping a hint here?
According to a new survey just released by USA Today and the Gallup Poll, the 62-year-old Clinton barely beat out the 45-year-old Palin as the most admired female -- 16% to 15% in a poll of 1,025 adult Americans.
However, because the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, it's statistically a P-C draw. The survey was ...

... open-ended, meaning men and women respondents had to provide the names by themselves.
Not that public admiration necessarily translates to votes. But the results have to set off any political spectator's eager imagination about a future presidential ballot match-up between the pair who, though politically polar opposites, are both outspoken, both often underestimated and both beloved by their respective bases.
Clinton's 17 straight years as most- or second-most-admired woman is unprecedented since Gallup began asking the question in 1948 (when presidential daughter Margaret Truman and then-Princess, now Queen Elizabeth II were in the top 10.)
Clinton first headed the list in 1993 as the new first lady in the White House.
And she remained highly admired as first lady throughout the public and private turmoils of her husband's two terms, then as a senator from New York and now as the nation's 67th secretary of State, only the third woman to hold the post.
All this despite -- or actually perhaps because of -- her brutal, toe-to-toe, sometimes bitter Democratic presidential primary contests against Barack Obama in 2008.
Palin, on the other hand, burst onto the national political scene -- and this year's list -- thanks to Sen. John McCain plucking her from the political obscurity of the Alaskan permafrost as his 2008 running mate and the first woman on a presidential ticket of the party of Lincoln.
The latest new first lady, Michelle Obama, trailed on this year's most-admired-women list.
She ended up back at No. 4. As The Ticket reported here Monday, in a separate poll, Mrs. Obama is also mirroring her husband's plunge in approval ratings. From November to December, her approval numbers dropped seven points, down to 55, still higher than the president's.
(On the other hand, the favorable ratings of the equally unemployed Palin have risen into the 40s now.)
Just ahead of Mrs. O in the poll's third place was another Illinois African American female, who helped get the Obamas into the White House: the billionaire businesswoman and TV talker Oprah Winfrey.
Predictably, among admired males, the incumbent president easily tops the list as usual. This year, he was followed by, less predictably, his immediate predecessor, Republican ex-President George W. Bush, and then by former South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Someone named Glenn Beck -- completely unknown to us here in the predictably liberal, MSNBC-watching and indubitably elite media -- is the No. 4 most-admired male, despite -- or perhaps because of -- his 1950s haircut.
Pope Benedict XVI is fifth and the Rev. Billy Graham is No. 6, putting him in the top 10 most admired males for the 54th consecutive year. The Rev. Al Sharpton did not make the top 10 cut. Neither did David Letterman.
However, just squeaking into the top 10 males most admired by Americans is Democratic ex-President Bill Clinton. Well, actually, he tied for 10th place with the notorious cellphone texter Tiger Woods.
-- Andrew Malcolm

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/12/sarah-palin-hillary-c...

Lessons reporters need to learn from recent fiascos like the Van Jones coverage.

Grandpa — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:13:12 -0700

The Sorry State of Journalism
Lessons reporters need to learn from recent fiascos like the Van Jones coverage.

September 9, 2009 - by Christian Toto
I’ve spent the last decade writing articles for daily newspapers, national magazines, and the web. But I never graduated from journalism school, a fact that haunted me for years. I used to feel as if I didn’t belong in the newsroom even though the modest paychecks kept coming my way.

Not anymore.

The sorry state of journalism circa 2009 shouldn’t leave any writer, university-trained or otherwise, feeling inferior. I earned three arts degrees during my protracted college career, but even a recovering art major can share a little wisdom with today’s working reporters:

1. Hypocrisy works both ways. It’s hypocritical for a family values proponent to step out on his wife. That same standard applies to global warming advocates who leave carbon footprints that would dwarf Godzilla’s instep.

Or, for a more recent example, it’s hypocritical for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to label boisterous town hall protesters “un-American” even though she applauded liberal activists who spoke out just as loudly a few years back.

2. Don’t take your marching orders from Media Matters. Two organizations scour the media for bias and misinformation - Media Matters for America from the left and Newsbusters from the right. Read both daily and you’ll be a better, more informed reporter. But please don’t take Media Matters’ talking points as gospel. That group occasionally overplays its hand - just witness its silly assault on Rush Limbaugh over the faux “phony soldiers” scandal.

3. Read both right and left political blogs (and Andrew Sullivan‘s site doesn’t count as conservative). Blogs can be silly, full of misinformation, and downright deceitful, but the best of the best offer savvy insights into politicians and the reporters who cover them.

4. Hold the powerful accountable, even if they echo your views. Michael Moore’s upcoming film, Capitalism: A Love Story, hits theaters this fall. It’s a lock to earn rave reviews and countless softball interviews. Try questioning the tactics used in the film, the facts on the display, and Moore himself.

5. Give Rush a listen. Instead of demonizing Limbaugh, the most powerful radio talker on the right, why not tune him in for an hour or three? Limbaugh’s shtick is seriously one-sided, but his analysis routinely trumps conventional wisdom, and his assaults on media bias should be on the tips of every journalism school professor‘s tongue. There’s a reason he’s survived two decades in the business and remains on top.

And speaking of hypocrisy, if a reporter wants to slam Limbaugh for saying he wants President Obama to fail, then he or she should slam Senator Harry Reid for declaring the “surge” a failure before it even had time to work.

6. Read - and respond to - your critics. If a reader accuses you of bias or any other journalistic indiscretion, consider the argument. And assuming the e-mail or letter didn’t devolve into name calling or obscenities, write back with a personal note. You’ll improve the reporter-reader relationship, which has been severely damaged over time due to arrogance, and let them know you take their views seriously. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with their critique.

7. Stop with the phony self-defense measures. If I hear one more journalist cry: “Well, I get hate mail from the left and the right, so I must be doing my job,” I’ll scream. There’s a very good reason bias-spotting sites like Newsbusters.org are updated virtually ‘round the clock.

8. Label, label label. Ever read a newspaper account of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly that didn’t label him “conservative”? Didn’t think so. So why don’t Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and Bill Maher get plastered with the “liberal“ label? Reporters need to be more fair and more consistent with how they present sources so the audience knows where each person or group is coming from. And that also goes for the folks behind various polls and research efforts - the Southern Poverty Law Center is a left-leaning outfit, but that fact is routinely left out of media accounts.

And just because Bill Maher calls himself a libertarian doesn’t mean that’s the proper label. The same goes for the so-called King of All Media, Howard Stern. Deion Sanders got away with calling himself “Prime Time,” and the name stuck. You’re a journalist. Try harder.

9. View press releases with suspicion. That press release that just landed in your e-mail could be the spark that ignites a terrific story. Or it could just be another group trying to spin the news of the day to its liking. Find out which is the case before filing your story.

10. Stop slamming Bernard Goldberg. It must feel good for journalists to call the former CBS newsman and author of Bias a hack - or worse. But he’s no Ann Coulter. He’s an Emmy-winning reporter who cares plenty about journalism. Discount his wisdom at your own peril.

11. Watch Fox News and take notes. The cable channel’s ratings continue to climb, while CNN and MSNBC keep falling. Find out why. Check out the stories they cover and consider whether your publication should do the same.

Consider the case of Van Jones, the former “green jobs” czar. for President Obama. His radical past forced him to resign. Fox News covered Jones’ outrageous comments in the days leading up to his resignation, while nearly every major media outlet snoozed. Aren’t reporters supposed to be grumpy when they’re beat to a story?

12. Acknowledge that the news needs a reboot. Journalism today is broken. Blame media bias, the internet, reader apathy … what have you. Ultimately, the public wants something different.

So be different, before the last newspaper rolls off the presses

Christian Toto is a freelance writer and film critic for The Washington Times. His work has appeared in People magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Scripps Howard News Service. He also contributes movie radio commentary to three stations as well as the nationally syndicated Dennis Miller Show and runs the blog What Would Toto Watch?

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/for-j-school-grads-its-time-for-introspecti...

Obama the Weak The perils of a sycophantic administration.

Grandpa — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:29:47 -0700

Obama the Weak
The perils of a sycophantic administration.
by Fred Barnes

There are three President Obamas. There's the Obama who defers, the one who dithers, and the one who's out of touch. The Obama presidencies have one thing in common. They're all weak.

Obama is a great talker. He's also what used to be called a "press hound." That's a politician who can't go a single day without lavish attention from the media. But talking and availability aren't the same as leading. Nearly eight months into his presidency, Obama has yet to offer strong leadership, on anything.

What's more, Obama is a liberal who's surrounded himself with liberals. His weakness makes his liberal domestic policies more vulnerable than they otherwise would be. For a moment after Obama's inauguration, Republicans were fearful of him. They quickly found that opposing him is safe and fruitful.

But presidential weakness is dangerous in foreign affairs. Obama has been deferential to adversaries and tough on allies. He's pretended problems with Russia are as much America's fault as Russia's, taken human rights off the table with China, begged Iran to talk with him. This hasn't been productive. He's come down hard on Israel and Honduras. That hasn't been productive either.

Obama's tendency to defer has been most dramatic in his relationship with congressional Democrats, perhaps the most unswervingly liberal and partisan group in the nation. "If the president leads the way, his party can hardly resist him," Woodrow Wilson wrote. Obama has flipped that notion. His party in Congress leads, and he hardly resists at all.

The deference started early.

Last December, weeks before the president took office, House speaker Nancy Pelosi set sharp limits on the role of Obama and his aides on Capitol Hill. A few days later, Democrats ignored the Obama team's desire for a tax credit for small businesses in the "stimulus" bill. It might have attracted Republican support and fulfilled the president's promise to be bipartisan.

Post-inauguration, Senate and House Democrats embarrassed the new president by sending him an omnibus spending bill studded with thousands of earmarks. Though he'd criticized earmarks, Obama knuckled under and signed the measure. On the cap-and-trade environmental legislation, House Democrats threw out Obama's cherished plan to raise revenue by auctioning off emission rights. They decided to give most of the rights away, mainly to political allies.

And after Obama reached a deal with pharmaceutical companies--they pledged $80 billion in cut-rate drugs for seniors in exchange for favored treatment in health care legislation--congressional leaders dismissed the deal as not binding on them. This prompted Obama to declare it nonbinding on him, too.

His biggest concession to congressional Democrats, though, has been to let them write the legislation on his three biggest initiatives: the stimulus, health care reform, and cap and trade. I can't think of another president--not one of the previous 43--who willingly yielded so much power to Congress.

Presidential scholar Charles Dunn of Regent University characterizes Obama as "a leader who's not leading. He's like a coach of a football team who says to go out and call your own plays while I watch from the sidelines. So things are chaotic."

Presidential dithering has abetted the chaos. When Obama addresses Congress and the nation this week, he intends to spell out "in clear, understandable terms what our administration wants to happen with regard to health care," according to Vice President Biden. Well, it's about time. The president has been unclear for months as four congressional committees approved health care bills in his name. Only now, weeks after his own deadline for final passage, is Obama prepared to reveal his bottom line on Obamacare--that is, unless he balks.

The president has dithered in another sense, too, actually hiding his views on matters inside his administration. As the war in Afghanistan has worsened, Obama has said practically nothing on the subject. (He did call it "a war of necessity.") When Attorney General Eric Holder decided to hire a special prosecutor to investigate CIA officials who interrogated captured terrorists--a step the president had earlier opposed--the White House claimed it was solely Holder's call.

But is Obama really out of touch with the country? Yes, indeed, and it's self-inflicted. In The Age of Reagan, his new book on the Reagan presidency, Steven Hayward argues that administrations rife with factional infighting over policies are more successful than what he calls "sycophantic" administrations. "Fractiousness in an administration is a sign of health," Hayward writes, citing Reagan's feuding but successful White House. He thinks serious disputes over issues lead to better policies.

Maybe they do. I suspect they have a more important value. Different factions help an administration stay attuned to grass-roots

opinion outside Washington in a way the Obama White House hasn't been. Obama and his advisers, for example, were the last to learn that the proposed government-run health insurance plan is a deal-killer for many millions of Americans.

By "sycophantic," Hayward means an administration with one view of the big issues, little dissent, and an inflated sense of the president's appeal. That's the Obama administration: pretty much all liberalism, all Obama, all the time. The one real disagreement among the president's top advisers is whether to deploy more troops to Afghanistan. And this quarrel has only recently erupted.

What the Obama team doesn't understand is the limit of the president's appeal. His base is the liberal wing of the Democratic party, which is less than one-quarter of the voting public. Yet his aides believe he's able to captivate and convince a far larger audience. That he's been failing at this for months hasn't stopped the White House from trotting the president out again and again with nothing new to say, as if it's the only option. Perhaps, in a sycophantic administration, it is.

Camille Paglia ans. letters on Obama, talk radio, gay rights, abortion.

Grandpa — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:36:02 -0700

Bow-ow-ow: Obama's painful missteps
Let the new president grow into the job -- but he'd better do it fast!

Plus: Readers ask about everything from talk radio, morality
By Camille Paglia

Dear Camille,
In your column, you say, "President Obama has been ill-served by his advisors and staff."
The primary job requirement of a good senior executive is the ability to judge character and ability, in order to be able to select people to whom responsibilities may be safely delegated. If these advisors and staff are inadequate, the responsibility for their failures should be laid at the feet of the person who was ultimately responsible for their selection and placement.
Charles
Pennsylvania

ans:
You are absolutely correct! The buck stops with the top executive. But we all know how little executive experience Barack Obama has had. He was elected for his vision and his steady, deliberative character, not his résumé. For better or worse, Obama is learning as he goes -- and surely most fair-minded people would grant him reasonable leeway as he grows into the presidency, one of the hardest jobs in the world.

At a certain point, however, Obama will face an inescapable administrative crux. Arriving at the White House, he understandably stayed in his comfort zone by bringing old friends and allies with him -- a team that had had a fabulous success in devising the hard-as-nails strategy that toppled the Clintons, like crumbling colossi, into yesterday's news. But these comrades may not have the practical skills or broad perspective to help Obama govern. Like Shakespeare's Prince Hal ascending the throne, Obama may have to steel his heart and banish Falstaff and the whole frat-house crew.

Obama's staffing problems are blatant -- from that bleating boy of a treasury secretary to what appears to be a total vacuum where a chief of protocol should be. There has been one needless gaffe after another -- from the president's tacky appearance on a late-night comedy show to the kitsch gifts given to the British prime minister, followed by the sweater-clad first lady's over-familiarity with the queen and culminating in the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Why was protest about the latter indignity confined to conservatives? The silence of the major media was a disgrace. But I attribute that embarrassing incident not to Obama's sinister or naive appeasement of the Muslim world but to a simple if costly breakdown in basic command of protocol.

Enough already! These slips are worsening the anti-Obama backlash, which began with the administration's bungled handling of the grotesquely swollen stimulus package. Conservatives seem deliriously drunk with their cartoon picture of Obama, to whom is glibly attributed every pathology in the book. Yes, there were ambiguities about Obama's birth certificate that have never been satisfactorily resolved. And the embargo on Obama's educational records remains troubling. But I am still waiting for hard evidence about the host of other charges that are continually being hammered against him -- from his alleged fidelity to the crypto-tactics of Chicago leftist Saul Alinsky to the questions raised by right-wingers about the production of Obama's two memoirs. Out of respect for the presidency, conservatives need to put up or shut up about these issues.

I still strongly believe in Obama's promise as a world leader. I was thrilled, for example, by his call this week for an end to nuclear weapons -- a goal that he frankly admitted would not be attained in his lifetime. We have waited a long time for an American president who dreams big. Yes, there are bitter cells of fanatics everywhere who hate America and want a repeat of 9/11. And yes, there will always be petty dictators who covet the bomb and conspire to get it. But the mass of people around the world want to be inspired to a higher good. Whether the Obama presidency succeeds or fails will depend on his ability to sustain his ideals in the face of the testing crises that will inevitably erupt in far-flung regions where ethnic or religious strife has been a way of life for thousands of years. And closer to home, Obama will need to cut the umbilical to his hometown posse, whose inefficiency and poor decision-making took the shine off his honeymoon and brought the dispirited Republicans back from the dead.
================================================================================================

As a former lover of talk radio, I too have wondered why programs with a liberal bent have fared so poorly in the free market. There are two specific factors that may be responsible for the disparity.

1) The vast majority of the talk radio audience listens in their car or from home. People driving around during the day and listening to the radio are probably demographically skewed toward the self-employed or people in some sort of sales. Admittedly, there are a large number of service jobs that require drive time, but I would bet those people are not interested in politics. The entrepreneur or six-figure sales professional is far more likely to be a conservative. People listening from home would either be stay-at-home parents or people working from home. These groups would also tend to be much more likely to listen to Laura Schlessinger than Al Franken.

2) The liberal talk shows I've listened to are not really all that entertaining. The jokes tend to be mean-spirited personal attacks and are rarely as clever as what I have heard on Rush Limbaugh's program. I think if the left wants to have a successful talk radio platform, they should be asking people like Jon Stewart for ideas and quit trying to silence the opposition.
Marty Grant
New York City

Ans:
Your theories about the talk radio audience are intriguing. The most rewarding aspect of talk radio for me is the callers, whose voices are heard nowhere else in the culture -- the feisty, super-organized home-schooling moms, the gruffly stoical transcontinental truckers, and the fiercely independent and self-reliant small-business owners, outraged by Washington's tilt toward bailing out corrupt, top-heavy corporations.

However, the popularity of conservative radio shows is a round-the-clock phenomenon. There are flamboyant evening hosts as well as night replays of the major daytime shows, extending well past midnight to dawn. Clearly, conservative hosts have an instinctive rapport with AM radio, which I have been arguing for years is a populist medium (an idea that finally seems to have taken wing in its invocation by other commentators).
================================================================================================

Salon reader Cecil W. Powell writes: "The failure of talkers on liberal radio is in large part due to an absolute inability to poke fun at themselves." How true! Liberal hosts like to snap and snip and chortle snidely, but they are weighed down by a complacent superiority complex, a paralyzing sanctimony. They mistake irony for wit. The conservative hosts love to rant and stomp and bring down the house. They're doing breakneck vaudeville while liberal hosts are primly stirring their non-caffeine green tea.

Why do you and others in the press keep misattributing this "magic Negro" comment to Rush Limbaugh? My understanding from listening to his radio program is that the phrase you are referring to from Rush's parody song was first brought to light in an article by David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times. Why didn't you mention this in your column? Rush merely ran with it in one of his many parodies, which he is notably famous for. Often he takes comments made in the press or by politicians and parodies them -- most often to expose their hypocrisy.

The press has tied Rush to "magic Negro" as if he were the originator or instigator. Thus Rush is unfairly and routinely condemned for it.
L. Bryan
Columbus, Ga.

ans:
"Barack the Magic Negro" was a song parody by a longtime contributor to the Rush Limbaugh Show, Paul Shanklin, whom I consider to be one of the most brilliant satirists of our time. Shanklin has an analytic erudition about popular music, a genius for mimicry, and an astounding gift for creative rapid-response to hard news. The widespread and vitriolic misjudgments about what goes on during Rush's show could and should have been dispelled a decade ago had Shanklin's fiendishly clever parodies been released into general circulation. Yes, they can be purchased in CD collections, and they are also available online to subscribers to the Limbaugh Web site, but that draconian limitation has unfairly confined Shanklin's work to conservative partisans. My all-time favorite in the Shanklin oeuvre is "I Can't Recall," a parody of "Try to Remember" (from "The Fantasticks") with an air-headed Hillary on the witness stand claiming that she just can't remember a single darn thing about that silly old Whitewater deal because her mind has turned to Jell-O ... Jello-O ... Jello-O (fading off in echoes).
When I first heard "Barack the Magic Negro" shortly after the March 2007 publication of the Ehrenstein article (which was partly inspired by a term used by director Spike Lee), I found it very daring and funny. It was timely and had the shock of the new -- exactly like Lenny Bruce's violation of conventional proprieties. But Rush kept playing it and playing it well beyond its shelf date, and after a while it felt gratuitous and dismayingly oblivious to racial realities and sensitivities in the U.S. Although I'm a longtime fan of Rush's show, I started turning the radio off when this skit came on.
Here's the main point: The vocal in "Barack the Magic Negro" mimics grandstanding black ac
tivist Al Sharpton, while the namby-pamby melody is borrowed from "Puff the Magic Dragon," a children's song that when originally performed by folkies Peter, Paul and Mary was widely assumed to be an allegory for marijuana smoking. So the Shanklin parody went well beyond the Ehrenstein article in what was being implied about Obama as well as the turf wars of African-American politics. There are so many other wonderful parodies in the Shanklin collection that more richly deserve repeated airplay. And for heaven's sake, they all belong on YouTube. Unlock the vaults!
================================================================================================

Regarding your observations about the rehabilitation of Sarah Palin and the insufferable snottiness of Dick Cavett and other good liberals: Is it possible that there might be something really ugly at the core of contemporary liberalism? You call yourself a liberal, and you vote liberal, yet you are under constant attack by your liberal compatriots. Why? Because of your open-mindedness and your "real feminism" (as opposed to faux leftist feminism).
In the meantime, the torching of Sarah Palin's church in Alaska (children were inside when the fire with accelerant was set) evokes a collective shrug in the mainstream media and other liberal precincts (if you can find any reference to the event at all). Why the all-too-frequent and downright nasty face of contemporary liberalism?
Timothy Condon
Tampa, Fla.

ans.
Yes, something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power.
The problems on the American left were already manifest by the late 1960s, as college-educated liberals began to lose contact with the working class for whom they claimed to speak. (A superb 1990 documentary, "Berkeley in the Sixties," chronicles the arguments and misjudgments about tactics that alienated the national electorate and led to the election of Richard Nixon.) For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I'm not kidding -- there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It's a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Conservatives these days are more geared to facts than emotions, and as individuals they seem to have a more ethical, perhaps sports-based sense of fair play.

Probably the main reason for my unorthodox view of politics (as in my instant approval of Sarah Palin) is that I had much more childhood contact with working-class life than appears to be the norm among current American columnists. One of my grandfathers was a barber, and the other was a leather worker at the Endicott-Johnson shoe factory in upstate New York. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, my father was able to attend college, the only one in his large family to do so. I was born while he was still in college and mopping floors in the cafeteria. Years later, he became a high-school teacher and then a professor at a Jesuit college, but we never left our immigrant family roots in industrial Endicott. To this day, I have more rapport with campus infrastructure staffers (maintenance, security) than I do with other professors or, for that matter, writers. Don't get me started on the hermetic bourgeois arrogance of American literati!
=================================================================================================

Friends of mine and I have found ourselves at the crossroads of the Washington, D.C., media, gay press and the murder of a straight man at the home of a noted gay rights and marriage attorney. Print may be morbid, but maybe citizen journalism/investigation may fill the void. There is a three-year-old unsolved murder of a straight man who was drugged, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, suffocated, then stabbed in the home of three gay men, one of them being an old college friend. One of the defendants -- not charged with murder, however -- is noted K Street attorney Joe Price, who is active in Lambda legal circles.

The crime scene in Dupont Circle is just a few blocks from where I, my partner and two close friends live. The murder of Robert Wone had all the ingredients of a D.C. scandal: sex, drugs and murder. Yet there is almost zero buzz on the streets about this. The D.C. mainstream print media gave minimal coverage, and you can guess how few column inches or how little airtime the TV guys gave it. The four of us launched a blog, and we've broken news.

Why does the death of a straight man in the home of three gay guys not become "news" à la Chandra Levy? The four of us gay Washingtonians are all plugged into the media in some capacity, yet we can't figure this out. Another question is why the gay media avoids this crime and issue. Some coverage, yet only a little.
The Web site dc.bilerico gave us space for a guest post. A recent Fox 5 / WTTG piece. And finally our site.

Craig Brownstein
Washington, D.C.

ans:
From your description of the appalling news blackout on this crime, it appears to be a blatant case of politically correct censorship. The 11th commandment of the liberal mainstream media is that no evil shalt be spoken of any gay persons, who have been sanctified by their precious victim status, without which liberalism would implode. You and your gay friends are to be congratulated for your passionate truth-seeking. I am very glad for the opportunity to publicize the facts in Salon. Please keep me informed of future developments.
================================================================================================

I'm confused. You say you are an atheist. It seems to me that if there is no God, then we are all simply pieces of animated dirt. To pieces of animated dirt, on what basis can something be considered right or wrong, ethical or unethical? Of what value is life except that which animated pieces of dirt place on it? What would it matter if some place absolutely no value on life?

Abortion is "murder"? That has moral connotations. What is wrong with the "murder of a child"? All pieces of animated dirt eventually become lifeless. What does it matter when or how? Morality is just an invention of animated dirt. What if humans managed to destroy all life on earth? What would it matter? Surely, some other form of animated dirt would evolve to replace us. I certainly don't know there is a God, but I choose to believe there is, because, for one, I don't want to believe that I am just animated dirt.
Bob Ryden

ans.
The ancient Greeks, whose art and thought deeply influenced me in my youth, created ethics as a branch of secular philosophy, detached from religion and its moral imperatives. Like artworks, codes of law and ethics are uniquely human constructs -- conceptual environments that separate us from animals, who are governed by biological instinct. It is rational to debate and define the rules by which any society exists. As a cultural relativist and atheist, I believe that values change over time and that there is no transcendent God who generates and enforces them. But societies have a right to require reasonable compliance from those who enjoy their material benefits.

Your vast panorama of "animated dirt" rising and sinking is actually closer to the Buddhist view of the cosmos -- which I also find inspiring for its contemplative acceptance of things as they are. The operations of the life force have inherent majesty. Human consciousness, when fully expanded, is for me the ultimate value. As Heracleitus said, "All things flow." To demand permanence or personal survival beyond death seems to me a tragically doomed quest. But by power of imagination, we each have the right to live in our own universe. All gods exist -- because thinking makes it so.
================================================================================================
In "Vamps & Tramps" you said that sex "reawakens and heals the 'family romance' of our personal biography." I was wondering if you could elaborate a little on what you meant by "heals." Do you mean that people who had a bad family life can, through their sex life, overcome the negative consequences this had for their psyche? I thought that because sexuality springs from the subconscious one couldn't change anything about it and therefore that no amount of awareness and observation and analysis of one's sexuality could change it. Is sexuality the only language the subconscious understands, a sexual act the only way to "talk" to one's subconscious and, possibly, change it?
Mariana Pinheiro

ans.
When human beings were scrabbling for survival in the nomadic and agrarian eras, sex was a reproductive necessity, a drive as basic and primal as hunger and thirst. However, as civilization developed, personality became more complex, and along with it the pageantry of courtship and romance. Freud's analyses of "family romance" were keyed to the hothouse environment of the bourgeois home. With the new intimacy of parents and children as well as the protraction of adolescent dependence (Shakespeare's Juliet got married at 14), sex became freighted with symbolism that it may never have had in the pre-industrial and pre-Romantic period.
The issue is not an atypical "bad family life" but a universal bourgeois problem of ambivalent over-involvement. Modern identity has gotten far too intertwined with unrealistic ideals of love as well as the embattled theatrics of sexual orientation. However, we're stuck with it, and it's given us a hundred years of fabulous Hollywood movies! My point is simply that the love life of everyone I've known from my baby-boom generation and afterward is a chess board ruled by shadowy forces that long predate puberty. Erotic choices yearningly follow or rebelliously diverge from a cast list imprinted on us in childhood. Changing the template may be virtually impossible. Self-knowledge is the most that we can hope for. But for that we need poetry and art -- not the rigid, sterile political ideology that still paralyzes gender studies.

Lieberman singing a new tune on Obama

bellaressa — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:19:52 -0700

The Associated Press
Mon., March. 9, 2009

WASHINGTON - Sen. Joe Lieberman has changed his tune on Barack Obama.

After campaigning across the country for Republican John McCain in 2008 and attacking Obama as naive, untested and unwilling to take on powerful special interests, Lieberman now showers praise on the popular new Democratic president.

"He's shown real leadership," Lieberman told The Associated Press in an interview. "Bottom line: I think Barack Obama, president of the United States, is off to a very good start."

The Connecticut independent, who faces re-election in 2012 in a state where Obama is popular, is eager to mend fences with Democrats still fuming over his criticism of Obama during the general election campaign.

Lieberman has applauded Obama's national security team. He gushed over Obama's "inspirational and unifying" inaugural. Lieberman even played a key role helping Obama win Senate passage of the economic stimulus plan.

As if to underscore the point, Lieberman has even clashed on the Senate floor with his pal McCain over the stimulus plan and a District of Columbia voting rights bill.

"I don't think of Joe as the independent, I really think of Joe as a Democrat," said Lieberman's home state colleague, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

It's a striking turnaround from the days when Lieberman was a fixture at McCain's side during campaign stops. McCain had even considered making Lieberman, who nearly won the vice presidency on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000, his running mate.

"Do I think it is more principle or politics?" said Quinnipiac University Poll director Doug Schwartz of Lieberman's moves. "It is a tough question."

Lieberman's campaigning for McCain hurt him with Connecticut voters, particularly Democrats, Schwartz said.

Connecticut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is mentioned as a possible 2012 Senate Democratic candidate, would beat Lieberman by 28 points in a hypothetical matchup, a recent Quinnipiac poll showed.

Lieberman scoffed at any suggestion his embrace of Obama is more about political expediency than principle.

"I haven't changed ... I've always had a voting record that is more with the Democrats than with the Republicans," he said.

Many Democrats still chafe at how Lieberman needled Obama during his Republican National Convention speech with the line "eloquence is no substitute for a record."

Or when Lieberman cast the race as a choice between "one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not. Between one candidate who's a talker, and the other candidate who's the leader America needs as our next president."

Lieberman said he understands why he struck a nerve with Obama's backers.

"We were in the middle of a campaign and we just plain disagreed ... When I said those things not only did I believe them, but I believe looking at the records of the two people then, they were right," Lieberman said.

Lieberman said he never meant to suggest that Obama did not put his country first. Lieberman said his words were "too subject" to that interpretation and that he wishes he had spoken more clearly.

After the election at Obama's urging, Senate Democrats decided not to punish Lieberman. They voted to let him keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Obama was eager to strike a bipartisan tone for his presidency.

"President Obama played a very important role, he was very gracious," said Lieberman, who has since called Obama to thank him. "That obviously sealed the deal and I appreciated it a lot."

Democratic response
Liberal bloggers fumed. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, called it a "slap in the face" for millions of Americans who backed Obama.

But Democrats need Lieberman's support in a chamber where it takes 60 of the 100 senators to overcome the threat of a Republican filibuster. They feared punishing Lieberman could drive him to the GOP. Lieberman remains a registered Democrat and caucuses with Senate Democrats.

Lieberman was re-elected in 2006 as an independent after losing his state's Democratic primary to wealthy businessman Ned Lamont, an anti-war candidate.

Top Democrats like Dodd and Obama who had supported Lieberman in the primary instead backed party nominee Lamont in the fall race. Lieberman was disappointed that some old friends weren't loyal to him.

"Joe is gonna do what's in his interest politically because he had a near-death experience," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who advised Lieberman in 2000. "Losing the party nomination has given him enormous freedom to think and to do as he wants."

The Only Thing We Have to Fear . . .

Grandpa — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:32:36 -0800

The Only Thing We Have to Fear . . .
is Obama.
by Fred Barnes

Barack Obama is the apostle of hope. But he also arouses the flipside of hope--fear. And while the fear he stirs may turn out to be unfounded, it's not irrational. People don't know who Obama really is or where his ideological center of gravity rests, to the extent it rests anywhere. He was a liberal in the Senate and the campaign, a centrist in the transition, and who knows what he'll be as president. He's elusive.

I count four separate fears. Whether he's a crypto-Marxist is not one of them. Neither is the absurd fear that he's secretly a Muslim, even a closet jihadist. Nor is the groundless claim Obama was actually born outside the United States and isn't really an American citizen. Forget all those. They're nonstarters.

He doesn't know what he's talking about. This is a legitimate fear. Obama throws around numbers like confetti. In the campaign, he said he would create 1 million jobs. After the election, he put out a plan he said would produce up to 3 million jobs. Then in a radio address on January 10, he said the number could reach 4.1 million and said 500,000 would be jobs in the alternative energy field, 200,000 in health care. Does he really believe he can achieve this? The fear is that he might.

"Social Security, we can solve," he told the Washington Post last week. Really? President Bush, freshly reelected, promoted Social Security reform in 2005 and got nowhere. Certainly Obama was no help. Obama "said his administration
will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market," the Post reported. When will this happen? Not next year or next summer but next month when he convenes a "fiscal responsibility summit."

Obama is smart, Ivy League-educated, and able to discuss issues knowledgeably and intelligently. He's put together a strong staff. The same was often said of Bill Clinton. Brains and advanced degrees, though they thrill Washington's journalistic elite, aren't enough. Clinton didn't have a magic wand and neither does Obama. True, reality often creeps in. Obama initially aimed to shut down Guantánamo instantly. Later his aides said it might take a year. Last week, Obama told the Post he'd consider it a failure if the prison hadn't been closed by the end of his first term.

He's a pushover. Who's tougher, Senate majority leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or Obama? The fear is that Reid and Pelosi are. Indeed they act like they are. Reid told ex-senator Joe Biden, Obama's vice president, he's not welcome at meetings of the Senate Democratic caucus. Neither Reid nor Pelosi is cautious about ramming the liberal agenda through Congress. Pelosi wants to raise taxes now, in the teeth of the recession.

As a senator, Obama never bucked his party, its leaders, or a single liberal interest group. In the 2007 debate over immigration reform, Obama voted for every amendment pushed by liberal lobbyists, though if they'd passed, the amendments would have jeopardized the emergence of a bipartisan majority. The legislation died for other reasons.Obama's allegiance to organized labor has been unflagging. He co-sponsored "card check" legislation allowing labor to set up unions without winning elections by secret ballot. He's still for it, despite its unpopularity and diminished prospects of passage. When he met last week with Mexican president Felipe Calderón, Obama said he wants to "upgrade" the North American Free Trade Agreement. Renegotiating NAFTA is a top priority of labor leaders, but Mexico, Canada, and most economists fear it would reduce trade and stir alarm about a wave of protectionism.

He's another Jimmy Carter on foreign and national security policy. Carter had misplaced confidence in his ability to bend anyone, including dictators, to his view through persuasion. He was a talker, not a doer. A year after he met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Carter was shocked when Brezhnev ordered an invasion of Afghanistan. His talks with North Korea led to a treaty on nuclear weapons that the North Koreans soon violated. Carter was surprised again.

Obama's willingness to meet with dictators or other anti-American leaders has raised the Carter fear. He sometimes talks about diplomacy as if it's a panacea, a surefire way to solve the world's problems. On the other hand, Obama is committed to sending more American troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda. And he's backed away from a rapid withdrawal from Iraq now that a status of forces agreement has been reached. Perhaps the fear of Carter redux is exaggerated.

Obama has nerves of jello. This fear may be unfair,
since there's no evidence one way or other as to how he might react in a crisis. David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that Obama "possesses an enviable inner calm." Maybe, maybe not. What Obama does have is an enviable outer calm. Inside, he may be wracked with doubts and anxiety as he takes over the presidency. We don't know. The problem is he's never had to make a truly tough decision.

Presidents with strong nerves are decisive. They don't balk at unpopular decisions. They are willing to make people angry. President Bush had strong nerves. President Clinton, who passed up a chance to eliminate Osama bin Laden, did not. Obama is a people pleaser, a trait not normally associated with nerves of steel.

We'll soon discover if any of these fears has merit. Obama made a series of clever moves during the transition, reaching out to conservatives and picking evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration. But these were cost-free, ephemeral, and didn't reveal much. What Obama does as president will tell us all we need to know.