Writing from her home base in Chicago and covering events throughout the Upper Midwest, Julie Driscoll frequently presents her take on issues of the day in Politics Anonymous and is heavily involved with “boots on the ground” activism. For more from Julie, see her author page.

LA Progressive Most Read Articles
January 28 to February 4, 2012

1. Komen, We’re Not Done with You Yet, Julie Driscoll: Komen is between a rock and a hard place: Fund Planned Parenthood and the anti-choice zealots breathe fire; de-fund it and progressives who’ve firmly supported its cause withdraw support and trash it on Facebook and Twitter and blogs.

2. Teachers Demand Arne Duncan’s Removal, Mark Naison: We, the undersigned, a cross section of the nation’s teachers and their supporters, wish to express our extreme displeasure with the policies implemented during your administration by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Julie Driscoll

3. Newt Gingrich and What Black People Need: Intellectualizing Racism, Anthony Samad: By intellectualizing racism, Gingrich is leaving his signature card with Americans that still have a race problem with Obama. We can’t let it work.

4. Obama’s Free Trade Agreement: Backdoor Deal with Corporate America? Timothy Robertson and Matt Kavanagh: The Obama administration’s U.S. Trade Representative is gathering secretly in Los Angeles with negotiators from around the world for a session that could create a whole new set of international trade rules: rules that favor the wealthy 1% of corporate interests.

5. Are Black Conservatives Simply Useful Idiots? David Love: Now, when the GOP is tea party-owned and steeped in 100% pure corporatism, greed, intolerance and white supremacy, black conservatives are simply useful idiots.

6. Is Capitalism on Trial? Peter Dreier: The high unemployment rate among today’s youth, and the enormous increase in debt owed by college students and recent graduates, has something to do with their growing doubts about capitalism. So does their uncertainty about their own future and the country’s future.

7. California AG Kamala Harris Standing Firm Against Foreclosure Settlement, Sharon Kyle: Kamala Harris standing firm on decision to reject bank settlement that could garner the state $15 billion but would release bank liability.

Jackie Speier

8. Jackie Speier Drops Breast Cancer Foundation Support, Tanya Somanader: Wednesday, America’s most well-known breast cancer organization Susan G. Komen succumbed to right-wing pressure and ended its partnership with Planned Parenthood, causing Rep. Jackie Speier to drop her support.

9. LA Times: Layoffs, Sabotage and Suicides? Steve Mikulan: Ed Padgett was driving in the rain to a union meeting when the L.A. Times called to tell him he was fired. The pressman, a third-generation Times employee, listened in shock.

10. Mittens, You’re No Tom Paine, Dave Blake: What really bugs me is Romney going out of his way to quote Tom Paine, the most radical of the American revolutionary pamphleteers. Isn’t distorting Jesus enough for him? Is he going after Marx next?

Portia di Rossi and Ellen Degeneres

“Gen X” was popularized as an advertising term. Marketers used the label to describe the young people of the late ‘80s. The focus was on how to sell goods to the MTV generation.

Advertisements at that time, just as one example, started to feature unmarried couples to appeal to this group of consumers. This was a first and in the early ‘90s it was pushing the envelope. It apparently resonated. The advertisers gauged correctly: They successfully sold their products to Americans with the now documented lowest marriage rate in history.

The argument could be made (mainly by those who want to take us back to a mythical innocent time of the supposedly recent past) that it’s advertisers who’ve corrupted our culture and changed what’s socially acceptable through their manipulations. Or, if you have sold your proverbial soul to the gods of unfettered commerce – like the rightwing self-described Culture Warriors, or the (formerly) Moral (former) Majority – advertisements are the market speaking for the greater culture at large. And the greater culture, funny enough, largely disagrees with the rightwing.

Here’s how it works: Advertisers put out an image or an idea – the greater public concurs by buying those products. Successful ads equal agreed upon ideas. Marketing is, after all, the definitive pandering.

And here is what the culture is saying through advertisements: We like racial diversity. Why can I say that? Because commercials not only have racially diverse groups of friends and co-workers – they now regularly feature bi-racial couples in ads. In a Budweiser Super Bowl spot this year, there were black men flirting with white women sans scandal. If those spots are moving widgets it means consumers agree with the message. It’s a type of voting. Even if some viewers don’t notice or don’t have a visceral reaction one way or another – it’s an indicator of a new cultural norm.

Also Americans are okay with homosexuals. The American Family Association, an association for only pre-approved families, threatened JC Penney with a boycott after they hired Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson. Now, Degeneres, besides being a comedic genius, is also a successful talk show host and a popular pitchperson for brands like Covergirl and American Express. The market has spoken time after time, and Ellen is adored and sought after. She also happens to be a lesbian, which has made her the target of the AFA whose influence is clearly eroding.

What else does the market proclaim? Well, Americans widely approve of birth control. And yes, even legal abortion. In the dust-up last week between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood the market picked the winner. It was Planned Parenthood. The nonprofit health care provider saw a spike in private contributions after Komen announced they would no longer give Planned Parenthood a grant to screen for breast cancer. And Komen’s brand has been forever tarnished by putting politics before their cure-finding goal. It’s already resulted in one resignation of the Vice President of Public Policy, Karen Handel.

You can think of the market as a leading indicator of our social mores and the Republican primary as a lagging one.

Disgraced former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, has been trying to play the well-worn Nixon Southern Strategy to rile up the base. He calls Obama the food stamp president and said he wants to go talk to the NAACP about “why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” He also said immigrants should learn English and not use the “language of the ghetto.” That phrase hurt him in the Spanish-named (former Spanish colony) state of Florida. Why? Because the market has spoken, we have our first biracial president and we no longer care for these antiquated wedges Gingrich peddles.

The GOP-worshipped market has chosen the winner of the culture wars, and it hasn’t looked favorably on its most devout.

Of course, the market for Republicans is just like the Bible or the Constitution. They worship it piously as long as they believe it agrees with them.

If their deified market is all-knowing and all-powerful – it clearly favors a progressive social agenda…and not the GOP’s.

Yeah…tough sell.

Tina Dupuy
Taking Eternal Vigilance Too Far 

The crowds trashed the stadium when it was learned that a Komen higher-up, Karen Handel, had run for governor in Georgia on a campaign of anti-choice and anti-Planned Parenthood.  Pink ribbons were hung in effigy.  Celebrities tweeted their dismay.  NY Mayor Bloomberg pledged a quarter mil of his own money as a contribution to Planned Parenthood, as did a Texas couple.  Planned Parenthood’s coffers overflowed with public support – as well they should have.

Nancy Brinker

Komen reacted as many recent corporations who face the risk of losing oodles of money do when called on the carpet for wrongdoing – it caved.  Perhaps it feared an “Occupy Komen” in its future.  For whatever reason, Komen offered a limp apology to the public, changed its “investigation” criteria “to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair,” and announced the reinstatement of Planned Parenthood funding eligibility.

All is well with the world.  Well, no, it actually isn’t.

Karen Handel is still installed as Senior Vice President of Public Policy (I hope that’s nothing like “PR” – epic fail there) – and many of us believe she is the evil mastermind of the new Komen “guideline,” as well as the Stearns investigation, both of which were solely intended to de-fund Planned Parenthood.  This is a woman who ran a failed campaign for Georgia governor on an anti-choice platform, announcing, “since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.”  This is a woman who re-tweeted a Tweet in the midst of the firestorm which took a swipe at Planned Parenthood and sneered, “cry me a freaking river.”   (Though she tried to delete the tweet, she has now learned what a useful tool a screen grab is.)

Overall, it seems that Komen snuck Karen Handel in through the back door, all hush hush (either that, or progressives had so assumed the Komen brand to be one of integrity that we never questioned its inner workings), let her work her evil, and are now standing by her amidst a gathering cry for her ouster.  Thing is, they should oust Handel – but Komen probably realizes that, Handel or not, it’s lost its credibility in the marketplace of public opinion.  If it doesn’t pack Handel’s bags in speedy fashion, it may as well publicly ally itself with the anti-choice faction – but that’s not a good place to be for an organization that claims to fight for womens’ health.

Of course, Komen is between a rock and a hard place:  Fund Planned Parenthood and the anti-choice zealots breathe fire; de-fund it and progressives who’ve firmly supported its cause withdraw support and trash it on Facebook and Twitter and blogs.

What I want to see is Komen brought to its knees financially, Karen Handel fired, Nancy Brinker demoted by the Board to something less than a clerk – and I want to see progressives reject Komen anyway, and spend their time, energy, money and public support on bolstering Planned Parenthood.

Poetic justice, yes . . . and justice delayed is justice denied.

Julie Driscoll
Politics Anonymous 

Sign the Petition — Resign and REfocus the Susan G. Komen Foundation – Click Here

Ed Padgett

Ed Padgett was driving in the rain to a union meeting when the L.A. Times called to tell him he was fired. The pressman, a third-generation Times employee, listened in shock last December to an HR woman’s voice explain he was being dismissed for “safety violations, dishonesty and suspicion of sabotage.”

That last charge had a bittersweet irony. Padgett had been at the paper for more than 39 years and had done everything he could to help it prosper – even as members of the corporate wrecking crew that drove the paper into bankruptcy were still counting their money.

“It was similar to jumping into an icy cold pool of water,” Padgett recalls. “I felt like crying because I’d been there so damn long, but I soon got over it.” He drove on to his meeting in  La Mirada, but hasn’t been back to the Times printing plant on Olympic Boulevard to clean out his locker.

“I just have my work boots in it,” he says, “and a knife I use to trim newsprint rolls when they get twisted up — it saves a lot of money.” Padgett filed a grievance through Teamster Local 140-N, a process that may take another month. His case is complicated because the Times fired him the day his union was to ratify a new contract.

Padgett is no ordinary Times employee, but a union activist and a blogger whose Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20-Year Club site has chronicled working conditions at the Times, as well as its financial decline. This has made him a lightning rod for disciplinary actions – and the recipient of insider news. A well-placed staffer, he says, recently told him that between 20 and 25 writers are about to be terminated.

“You’ll be hearing about it soon,” he says.

(L.A. Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan declined to comment on this and other statements contained in this article, other than to say, “Ed Padgett served as a pressman for the Times and is not a spokesperson for the company nor did his position provide him with access to overall company operations.”)

That news, if true, underscores problems the country’s fifth-largest paper has been having, including plunging circulation.

“Circulation has been way down,” Padgett says. “I asked a guy in the circulation department how many papers don’t get sold and he said, ‘At least 25 percent,’ without blinking an eye.”

Shortly after Padgett’s firing there was a “Christmas purge” of workers, followed by a “New Years Purge.”

“Those folks each got $20,000 in severance,” Padgett claims. “Two of the fellows were let go two weeks early because they were worried about sabotage. They’re so paranoid, because it’s not just my department — it includes editorial.”

Padgett believes it’s possible there’s some reality behind the company’s fears. A Teamster email he posted on his blog in December warned members against engaging in sabotage — while denying such behavior. But what does that ultimately say about a company that its employees would harm the source of their livelihoods?

This all comes against a backdrop of increasing workplace despair created by the economic outlook for print publications, one deepened by the suicides of two former colleagues.

“One was 61 and the other 52,” Padgett says. “The first was right after Thanksgiving and the second before Christmas.” He explained that one worked in the operations plant while the other was a company truck driver. Padgett credits his large family and good friends for keeping him upbeat now that he’s suddenly found himself without work.

He adds that he’s not going to become a suicide statistic.

“I won’t do it,” he says. “It might hurt.”

Steve Mikulan
The Frying Pan 

Joseph Palermo

Joseph Palermo is an Associate Professor of American History at Cal State Sacramento, who has authored two books on Robert F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and the Death of American Idealism and In His Own Right: The Political Odyssey of Robert Kennedy.

His new book, “The Eighties,” will be available in February. We have discussed hosting a reading for him this spring here in Los Angeles.

– The Editors

LA Progressive 10 Most Read Articles
January 21-28, 2012

1. Stephen Colbert Befuddles Even “Liberal” Chuck Todd, Joseph Palermo: If someone like Todd who represents a “liberal” network can’t see Colbert’s parody for what it is then it truly illustrates how disconnected the corporate media have become. ”

2. Who Is Sheldon Adelson and What Has Newt Promised Him?, Robert Reich: Never before in the history of American politics has a single couple given more money to a single candidate and had a bigger impact than Sheldon Adelson and his wife – all courtesy of the Supreme Court and its grotesque decisions that speech is money.

3. Do Republican Candidates Like Most Americans? Steve Hochstadt: The Republican presidential candidates were talking to a minority of Americans, telling them they were the only true patriots. The rest of us, poor, gay, black, unionized, believers in science, supporters of a fair tax system, we were disdained.

4. Apple’s Labor Pool: Job Market or Slave Auction? Steve Mikulan: Everything about Apple (from the mocking irony of Jobs’ name to the outsourcing of its employees’ livelihoods to factories in a totalitarian police state) epitomizes big business’s attitude of contempt – not only for American workers but for America itself.

5. Awkward Family Photos: Mitt Laundry, Tina Dupuy: First Romney outsourced American jobs, destroyed companies while the CEO at Bain Capital – now his quirky down-homeness is denying a gig to a professional fluff and folder.

6. How Obama Can Win Big, Brent Budowsky: Obama 2.0 is singing on key to the real America, talking about matters they care about, battling for policies that will better their lives, championing the American notion of fair play and taking to voters a narrative that is clear, consistent and compelling.

7. Will Obama Administration Now Go After Massive Mortgage Banking Frauds? Ellen Brown: In his State of the Union, President Obama announced that he would be creating a mortgage crisis unit to investigate wrongdoing related to real estate lending.

8. Republicans Ramp Up War on Women, Tanya Somanader: Republicans in Congress and across the country are introducing a variety pack of extreme anti-abortion bills — including personhood initiatives, heartbeat bills, and fetal pain bills — that saw some success last year.

9. Stephen Colbert and Chuck Todd: Mocking the Mockery, Berry Craig: What Colbert is doing is far more edifying and far more informative than any interview Chuck Todd has offered. I suspect that’s mostly what got Todd’s goat.

10. Keynes and Hayek, Obama and the Republicans, Walter Moss: From the Reagan years to the present, conservatives have been fond of quoting Friedman and Hayek. Their influence can be seen in such documents as the Republican Party’s 1994 “Contract with America.”
‎

On CNN, West demanded that a skeptical host Soledad O’Brien to view the entire speech an realize that “he was simply trying to draw attention to the decline of a country” at the hands of people who hold values that are “not in concert with our constitutional republic.” “And if you can’t understand that,” he added, ” please come down to South Florida, you and I can read the Federalist Papers.” Later on Fox and Friends, West told host Steve Doocy, “I did not refer to any person leaving”:

WEST: The other thing is that I did not refer to any person leaving. If you go back and read the transcript of the message that I gave, it was about equality of achievement, it was about economic dependence, it was about enslaving the American entrepreneur’s will and spirit. That message needs to leave this country. And that was what I was referring to. And I think that anyone that sat back and looked at the entirety of that 12 minute, 45 second speech would understand that we’re talking about a contrast of visions of this country.

Watch both interviews:

Looking back at the transcript as requested, it’s pretty clear that West specifically named “President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and my dear friend, the chairman of the Democrat National Committee [Debbie Wasserman-Schultz]” to “take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States.”

Nonetheless, West has made a practice of lobbing incendiary rhetoric across the aisle and then blaming the news media for the resulting backlash.

Reacting to Fox pundit Bob Beckel’s demand that West apologize, a somewhat thin-skinned West shot back, “I think Bob Beckel owes me an apology for saying that he would not refer to me as a Congressional representative nor as a lieutenant colonel, retired.”

Tanya Somanader
Think Progress 

Ed Rampell

Ed is our colleague on Hollywood Progressive, the companion to LA Progressive that we publish to cover cultural issues from a progressive standpoint. Ed is an LA-based film critic and historian whose play and film reviews regularly appear in Hollywood Progressive. A native New Yorker, he also spent decades living in a series of Pacific Island — Hawaii, Samoa, Palau, and Tahiti, among them. Ed has also written Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United State.

Kathleen Peine

We also draw your attention to Kathleen Peine, a newcomer to our pages whose “Just Not Enough Water”  cracked this week’s top ten. Kathleen came to us through Gary Corseri, another fine literary writer who occasionally graces our pages. We’re delighted by Kathleen’s work and hopes she contributes more.

– The Editors

LA Progressive 10 Most Read Articles
Published January 14-21

1. The Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement, Ed Rampell: A century after the deposing of Queen Liliuokalani, these Polynesians have become an oppressed, landless, and often homeless, minority in their own ancestral homeland. Yet, a revived Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement is fighting for native land and cultural rights.

2. How Attacks on Teachers Will Impact All Our Lives, Mark Naison: The attack on Teachers Unions has been driven by foundations and funding sources traditionally associated with the Democratic Party and has been enthusiastically endorsed by the Obama Administration.

3. Progressives Support for Obama Substantial, Not Overwhelming, Dick Price: As we gear up for the long march to November’s election, many of us are struggling with this choice about the Obama campaign, prompting us to launch our LA Progressive survey last Saturday.

4. Just Not Enough Water, Kathleen Piene: Every comment from the parade of jackals running for executive office this year, every hypocritical utterance makes me wish the hot water in my shower could run for hours because that’s the only way I can think of to wash the rank nasty off me after being exposed to such filth.

5. UN Parties While Congolese Villagers Suffer, Georgianne Nienaber: The fact-finding report from the United Nations documents the atrocities. Rapes and brutilizations designed to terrify the civilian populations in the remote region of Walikale have succeeded brilliantly.

6. Reconstructing King: Justice Is Not Everything to Everybody, Anthony Samad: We posture King and prostitute his memory wearing t-shirts in parades and attending chicken dinners. We run from the very things he stood for. We run from economic subjugation.

7. Free Enterprise on Trial, Robert Reich: The Right’s blather about free enterprise risk-taking has it upside down. The higher you go in the economy, the easier it is to make money without taking any personal financial risk at all. The lower you go, the bigger the risks.

8. Michelle, Hillary, Elizabeth, Brent Budowsky: Elizabeth Warren is the honorable, principled, unbought, unbossed and incorruptible champion of the men and women of the 99 percent.

9. Most Vulnerable Angelenos at Risk, Stephen Box: Dying young is a tragedy, but it pales in comparison to the real tragedy which is growing old in a city that takes you for granted and doesn’t have a plan for you in case of an emergency.

10. Buy Local: Eat at BJ’s, Steve Hochstadt: The lesson for all of us is that we do better for ourselves and our communities if we patronize small businesses and use local tax dollars to encourage local entrepreneurs, not big boxes.

Definition two was close: “A very temperamental person with an inflated view of their [sic] own talent or importance.”

Todd is an NBC TV celebrity news hound. He is in high dudgeon over popular TV comic Stephen Colbert’s fake run for president.

“He is making a mockery of the system,” Todd recently complained at a college forum. He added that Colbert and Jon Stewart, Colbert’s sidekick in satire, are “….mocking what we’re doing.” By “we” he meant the media.

This old newspaper reporter hopes Colbert and Stewart keep pouring it on.

Neither is mocking the system. They are mocking what’s mocking the system: super PACs and the gazillions of dollars they are lavishing on candidates – most of them Republicans.

I guess Todd wanted to show he was a “fair and balanced” journalist by conceding that the “process” of choosing presidential candidates is “a mess.”

But he also is bothered that Colbert’s “agenda…may be anti-Republican.” Never mind that Herman Cain, the former GOP presidential candidate, played along with Colbert’s spoof.

And so what if Colbert’s agenda is “anti-Republican?” Any GOP-friendly comedian-satirist – evolution-doubting Ben Stein, say – is free to make a bogus bid (or a real run) for the Oval Office and trot out an “anti-Democratic agenda.”

On the other hand, Todd’s on the money when he said Colbert is mooning the Fourth Estate. I suspect that’s mostly what got Todd’s goat.

Colbert, who pretends to be another vapid, right-wing Fox News-style TV talking head, has been at it for years. He famously fricasseed capital city media VIPs like Todd at the 2006 White House press corps dinner. It was while George W. Bush was commander in chief.

Colbert didn’t just roast Bush. He damned the media glitterati with feigned praise:

“Over the last five years you people were so good — over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.”

The dinner was not a good time for the news worthies. The Washington Post said Colbert’s shtick “fell flat” and The New York Times didn’t even report the parody, according to Times Columnist Frank Rich.

“But to the Beltway’s bafflement, Colbert’s riff went viral overnight, ultimately to have a marathon run as the most popular video on iTunes,” Rich added. “The cultural disconnect between the journalism establishment and the public it aspires to serve could not have been more vividly dramatized.”

Anyway, I imagine much of the public thinks Colbert’s satire is spot on, too. But could it be that Todd is still steamed at Colbert for daring to suggest that media luminaries like him might be more lapdog than watchdog?

“By all means let’s mock the old mainstream media as they preen and party on in a Washington ballroom,” Rich also wrote of the big-time media’s close encounter of the worst kind with Colbert in ’06.

And let’s mock them in ’12 and as long as they, like Todd, continue to sizzle with clueless self-righteousness.

“What Colbert is doing is far more edifying and far more informative than any interview Chuck Todd has offered,” Nicole Belle suggested on the Crooks & Liars Internet website. “But because it’s not from a Very Serious Villager, like Todd, it’s dismissed summarily.”

While Todd dismisses — and disses — Colbert’s sassy send up of the media, John and Jane Q Public don’t seem to be sharing his umbrage.

Berry Craig

The TV political reporter, Chuck Todd, doesn’t get what Stephen Colbert is doing because he’s blinded by his position as a corporate media conduit (even on “liberal” MSNBC). Colbert and Jon Stewart, of that prestigious political organization Comedy Central, are playing the roles that Mark Twain or Will Rogers or Pat Paulson played in earlier periods: public foils and jokesters exposing deeper truths about the corruption and dysfunction of our nation’s money-drenched politics.

If someone like Todd who represents a “liberal” network can’t see this parody for what it is then it truly illustrates how disconnected the corporate media have become. Todd got the story backwards. He faults Colbert for “making a mockery” out of our nation’s politics. Remember it was just four short years ago when 43 percent of American voters believed Sarah Palin was qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. And the recent spectacle of the Republican primaries — with Donald Trump’s “birtherism,” Herman Cain’s “the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother,” and Rick Perry’s “Oops,” and with the burlesque that has become the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court’s small-minded and partisan Citizens United ruling, and the metastasizing of SuperPACs and the corruption all around us – Colbert and Stewart are merely parodying the parody that already is our nation’s politics.

I found it interesting that MSNBC’s anchors felt compelled recently to disclose to viewers when reporting on Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital days that General Electric (GE), MSNBC’s parent company, is co-owner of the Weather Channel with Bain. I only wish they would have shown the same sense of propriety during the run up to the Iraq War and tell their viewers that GE is also a major military contractor and that many of the retired military officers and other “experts” they had on the air were in a position to personally profit from the outbreak of war.

The real mockery comes from the terrible ideas we’ve heard spewed forth from the GOP candidates: zero taxes for corporations, huge increases in military spending, attacking Iran, putting poor kids to work as janitors at their schools, breaking up labor unions, another round of tax cuts for the richest Americans, eliminating entire federal departments without explaining what the country would look like without them, slavishly serving an imaginary group they call “job creators,” pimping for TransCanada’s XL pipeline, calling for the repeal of every environmental regulation on the books, denouncing Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” and so on. None of their public policy prescriptions make a lick of sense yet do we hear Chuck Todd or CNN’s John King calling them out on the substance of what these rich white men are proposing?

The flaccid exchanges between the debate moderators and the candidates that flare up now and again, which the cable news shows cover as being confrontations worthy of an Edward R. Murrow, drive home just how inadequately political “news” is spoon-fed to the American people. For example, John King let Newt Gingrich divert his question about his ex-wife’s recent ABC interview. The only question that matters is not what Newt did in private with “Little Newtie,” but the hypocrisy involved in denouncing President Bill Clinton and trumpeting his commitment to “family values” while carrying on an adulterous affair himself – that is the issue. At the very least King could have asked Gingrich to clarify whether or not he was calling his ex wife a liar? The racist stuff that has already come out of Newt’s mouth about President Obama being the “food stamp president” and poor children scrubbing toilets and cleaning up vomit at their schools as a way of teaching them “work habits” should already disqualify him for the nation’s highest office. But the corporate political media is expert at one thing: swaddling corporate hacks like Newt in raiment befitting an emperor.

It’s the media system Chuck Todd and John King serve that has become a closed circle of opinion and ideas that snuffs out or marginalizes opposing views that stray too far from orthodoxy. This circumscribing of our political debate wouldn’t matter much if it did not severely limit our capacity as a nation to respond to the daunting challenges confronting us (from the financial sector thievery to global climate change).

Klepto-capitalism appears to have prevailed with the nation’s political “representatives” openly shilling for giant corporations or industry trade groups. This wholesale corruption violates a hidden feeling in many of us that is still capable of discerning between right and wrong. Most figures inside the corporate news media have lost this sense, because, as Upton Sinclair pointed out a century ago: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

With this kind of toxic media context it’s a miracle that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261), didn’t sail through the U.S. Congress unopposed. The SOPA/ Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968), deal was all set to glide right through greased by the millions of dollars in lobbying money by giant media conglomerates, yet people power (with a heroic effort by the tech sector – thank you Google and Wikipedia!) slowed it down. The same is true with TransCanada’s XL pipeline; it too was all set to glide through the Congress until people came out in massive protest.

With hope, the Occupy Wall Street movement will reemerge even bigger going into the 2012 elections and people power might begin to finally move the federal machinery away from its servitude to the top 1 percent and give the victims of the big banks a way forward to seek some modicum of justice. But don’t expect corporate media personalities to recognize these efforts for what they are — if they can’t challenge Newt Gingrich or even comprehend the antics of Stephen Colbert don’t expect them to be guiding lights in the life-and-death struggles that lie ahead.

Joseph Palermo
Joseph Palermo’s Blog

"Jose Antonio Vargas Speaks" Photo by Campus Progress

On Monday night, January 23rd, NBC will host the 18th candidate debate of this Republican primary season. It will be moderated by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, and include panelists Adam C. Smith of the Tampa Bay Times and Beth Reinhard of National Journal.

Presumably these panelists have the journalistic skills to interrogate convincingly, even entertainingly, considering Williams’ comic flair. But while they promise to be well-prepared after ferreting through ample campaign notes and candidate bios, once all is said and done, they will still lack key elements to do the best job; key elements here being the right demographics. To put it bluntly, just like the candidates they are questioning, these panelists represent the privileged white majority.

And for this American, after all the insensitivity and prejudices these candidates have shown – that demographic – my own demographic – just doesn’t work.

Throughout much of this already tawdry campaign, these candidates have insulted each other. But no matter how many insults they land, these men of privilege are never the victims. The true victims are those Americans who are not physically onstage at debates; those fitting the demographics these candidates have belittled and assailed from the start. Blacks, lesbians, gays, immigrants and women. The poor, the hungry, the ill, the working class and the middle class are who these candidates seek to criminalize and deprive – which is why a representative panel is needed.

In last Monday’s South Carolina Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate (#16 for those who are counting), Fox News panelist Juan Williams, a black man, took what many consider a racial flogging from Newt Gingrich, which upset civil rights proponents, but thrilled the white audience in attendance. The time has come for another black panelist to step up where Juan Williams left off. Though panelists aren’t present as debaters, they’re not present as whipping “boys” either.

Egregiously, Newt Gingrich isn’t the only Republican candidate of the remaining four (Gingrich, Romney, Santorum, Paul) who’s been racially insensitive. Ron Paul has been criticized for numerous racist statements published in his earlier newsletters, outlined here by the Christian Science Monitor.

On the stump through South Carolina, touting the praises of segregationist Strom Thurman, Rick Santorum insinuated that a President Romney would be a “paler shade” of President Obama. And in an act some perceived as condescending, Mitt Romney gave fifty dollars to an unemployed black woman at a South Carolina campaign stop.

With actions ranging from blatant disdain for black Americans to perceived condescension, all four current GOP candidates have proved themselves unacceptable as President to black Americans – nearly 13% of the population.

Black Americans aren’t the only demographic under attack by these privileged white men. Immigrants, primarily hispanics, and their American children, are being assailed as criminals or lesser Americans. Lesbian and gay citizens are being vilified for seeking full equality, including military service and the right to marry. Women are being patronized by men who claim the right to legislate women’s bodies.

After seventeen debates, all led by journalists, who for the most part don’t represent the populations at-risk if any of these four are elected, isn’t it time to have a representative panel do the grilling?

I realize that in our “democratic” electoral process candidates aren’t mandated to appear at debates, and there is no guarantee they’ll appear if asked to face a field they perceive as unfriendly. But it’s still worth a try. I also realize there is no guarantee that the more representative panel will be more capable than the less representative panel, but again, it’s worth a try.

Thus, NBC, I would like to offer substitutes for Mr. Williams, Mr. Smith and Ms. Reinhard for Monday’s Florida debate. For the sake of consistency, I’ll make them all journalists. And for greater ease, I’ll make two your own employees.

To begin with, I suggest Melissa Harris Perry, contributor to The Nation and soon to be host on MSNBC to represent the black American demographic. I suggest either of MSNBC’s hosts Rachel Maddow or Thomas Roberts to represent the gay and lesbian community. Finally I suggest Filipino born Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas, who’s come out publicly as a gay man who’s written extensively on HIV, and an illegal immigrant who advocates for The DREAM Act.

Melissa Harris-Perry

Vargas would make an excellent debate panelist. In fact, serendipitously, he was recently kicked out of a Mitt Romney campaign event for holding a sign that read “I Am An American W/O Papers.”

These are my choices for panelists. There are those who will counter my call for representative panelists claiming fair questioning should take place regardless of the panelists’ race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

I agree. It should. But this creates the opportunity to personalize the issues. It’s one thing to attack a group in its absence. It’s quite another to attack that same group in its presence. Believe me, I have no delusions that any of these four candidates will suddenly become humane, but at least they’ll need to change pronouns. Instead of “they,” they’ll use “you.” And in this case, the “you” sitting on the panel is more invested in the truth.

There are those who will say my suggested panelists are ideological.

Yes they are. And so are the candidates.

So why not have a REAL go at it, rather than the theatrical badminton witnessed in the last debate (#17, again for those who are counting), hosted by CNN’s John King. How can anyone forget King’s opening salvo to Gingrich – the question on ex-wife Mary Ann’s accusations of open marriage – facilely tagged with “Would you like to take some time to respond to that?”

Let’s get real. Anyone who’d seen Gingrich knew he’d salivate over that question. Red meat for the predator. King wasn’t delivering journalism. King was delivering the gripping opening scene designed to capture his audience. This was CNN theatre. And it was absurd.

I do respect Brian Williams, and while Williams, Adams and Reinhard are well-regarded, their demographic isn’t needed in this debate. What’s needed in this debate are journalists who represent the very demographics these candidates have been assailing; journalists who understand the damage these candidates are doing; journalists willing to confront these candidates about the hurt and divisiveness they are causing.

And what’s truly needed in this debate are the images of a diverse blended America – not more monochromatic mirror images of the candidates themselves.

Linda Milazzo