Jesus had plenty to say about rich men, whom he usually grouped with his two favorite targets ... Pharisees (who were also usually rich, as the power elite of their day) and hypocrites. In fact, to Jesus "Pharisee" was almost always uttered in close proximity to "hypocrite" (check out the 23rd chapter of Matthew, for a running sermon where Jesus repeatedly conflated the two as one).
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity." (Matt. 23:25)
Speaking of rapacity, just consider the example of one rich man/Pharisee/hypocrite, Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox network among other assets, whose Fox News has become the prime organ for keeping all the "values voters" in line. Murdoch's modus on Fox News is the incessant pushing of red state "moral values" on a gullible public while cashing in on the hated moral terpitude being attributed to Democrats.
"The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson's 'How to Make Love Like a Porn Star' and the Vivid Girls' 'How to Have a XXX Sex Life,' which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and, needless to say, Mr. [Bill] O'Reilly...." Another Fox TV product, "Married by America," was recently fined by the F.C.C. ($1.2 million!) for indency: "...one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which 'partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies,' and two female strippers 'playfully spank' a man on all fours in his underwear. 'Married by America' is gone now, but Fox remains the go-to network for Paris Hilton ('The Simple Life') and wife-swapping ('Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy')."
If the great Fox cheerleader for our uber-moral El Presidente can so blatantly violate decency in this way, not to mention community standards, with not a peep of dissent from the big fat Christian poohbahs of the Republican Party, do not Jesus's words on "hypocrites" apply here?
Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?," writes, "Values always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won."
Ah, money, the great god of Pharisees! "Under this perennial 'trick,' as [Frank] calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry 'to clean up its act' -- until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons -- from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) -- are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise."
The quotes above come from Frank Rich's column in today's NYTimes, and there's a good deal more in that column about hypocrisy that will be food for thought. Rich's main point is that the election just past was no more a triumph of "moral values" over a lack of values than a banker's religion is about faith in God.
"The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they scoffed at him [Jesus]. But he said to them, 'You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men in an abomination in the sight of God.' " (Luke 16:14-15)
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Who's Afraid of Virginia Foxx?
MARTHA (braying): I DON'T BRAY!
--Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Act 1
Ten years ago in 1994, when Virginia Foxx first ran for the North Carolina Senate, she came to a group I was working for to get our endorsement. The group had been started in Watauga County with the express purpose of raising money to help get women elected to local office -- expressly, pro-choice women. Virginia Foxx applied for support to our Endorsement Committee as a pro-choice woman, and we ended up giving her a little.
Our endorsement meeting with Virginia was memorable because ... Virginia wept. Shed tears in front of us. Just started crying. Said it was terrible how "the men" were treating her in her campaign. It was, as it turned out, my first and last lesson in how Virginia Foxx had learned to manipulate people by playing the poor put-upon victim of other people's prejudices.
That endorsement interview split our group pretty severely. Truth to tell, I was influenced by those tears, which of course is the whole purpose of tears on a face like Virginia's. Some of the women, wiser than I in the ways of manipulative people, were angry. In the end, we became victims of our own charter, since we had formed explicitly as a non-partisan political action committee intent on supporting pro-choice women of either party. So after much debate (one woman said, bitterly, "I feel like I've been screwed and not even kissed," though she didn't in point of fact say "screwed" but another word a good deal blunter), we ended up endorsing Virginia Foxx in her first campaign for the North Carolina Senate.
That endorsement cost us a lot more than $500. Several supporters quit their membership over it, and others expressed their outrage. Some had a past history with Virginia Foxx. They knew that whatever Virginia had told us, she was operating out of naked opportunism and damned expedience, and not out of high-minded principle.
In earlier years, Virginia Foxx's reputation in Watauga County had been born in what were considered "liberal" causes. She was an outspoken advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. She was an outspoken advocate for the reform of a backward and hide-bound county government and worked for zoning ordinances in the first tentative steps Watauga County ever took toward land-use planning and the regulation of subdivisions and mobile-home parks.
She was known as a tigress for her beliefs. As one of her associates in those early days of liberal activism told me, she seems to have felt that any opposition to her opinions was an affront to her, personally. She could turn on people with a savage fury that suggested an unresolved inferiority complex and a twisted personal history. She took no prisoners.
Those who followed this year's poisonous primary campaign between Virginia and Vernon Robinson will know that Vernon accused her of being a closet femi'Nazi and even used against her the very endorsement by "a radical feminist organization" that I had been involved with in 1994. Vernon's case against Virginia was that she was essentially a Foxx-in-sheep's-clothing, that once elected to the U.S. Congress, she would show her true liberal colors.
But the truth now appears much, much sadder than Robinson's burn-the-witch fantasy, for the once pro-choice Virginia Foxx has become a clone of the religious right, who had rather send a woman to an early grave than countenance any abortion for any one under any circumstances. This is her position now. God dictates her marching orders, and God evidently never had any use for female equality. The cognitive dissonance she must experience, saying the things the says!
Her stated positions currently include favoring a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, where once she advocated for the legal adoption of children by gay couples.
It's frankly sickening to see her maneuver through this past decade, selling out what might have actually been principled beliefs for the sake of rising in the North Carolina Republican Party. She's made her bed, and now she must lie down with the most anti-woman forces this side of the Taliban. So that, even if there remains in her some shriveled vestige of a pro-choice attitude, she cannot now ever give voice to it.
Which makes her even more like the Martha of Edward Albee's play, the woman self-aware of her own fatal compromises:
NICK: To you, everybody's a flop. Your husband's a flop, I'm a flop.
MARTHA: You're all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops. [To herself] I disgust me.
--Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Act 1
Ten years ago in 1994, when Virginia Foxx first ran for the North Carolina Senate, she came to a group I was working for to get our endorsement. The group had been started in Watauga County with the express purpose of raising money to help get women elected to local office -- expressly, pro-choice women. Virginia Foxx applied for support to our Endorsement Committee as a pro-choice woman, and we ended up giving her a little.
Our endorsement meeting with Virginia was memorable because ... Virginia wept. Shed tears in front of us. Just started crying. Said it was terrible how "the men" were treating her in her campaign. It was, as it turned out, my first and last lesson in how Virginia Foxx had learned to manipulate people by playing the poor put-upon victim of other people's prejudices.
That endorsement interview split our group pretty severely. Truth to tell, I was influenced by those tears, which of course is the whole purpose of tears on a face like Virginia's. Some of the women, wiser than I in the ways of manipulative people, were angry. In the end, we became victims of our own charter, since we had formed explicitly as a non-partisan political action committee intent on supporting pro-choice women of either party. So after much debate (one woman said, bitterly, "I feel like I've been screwed and not even kissed," though she didn't in point of fact say "screwed" but another word a good deal blunter), we ended up endorsing Virginia Foxx in her first campaign for the North Carolina Senate.
That endorsement cost us a lot more than $500. Several supporters quit their membership over it, and others expressed their outrage. Some had a past history with Virginia Foxx. They knew that whatever Virginia had told us, she was operating out of naked opportunism and damned expedience, and not out of high-minded principle.
In earlier years, Virginia Foxx's reputation in Watauga County had been born in what were considered "liberal" causes. She was an outspoken advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. She was an outspoken advocate for the reform of a backward and hide-bound county government and worked for zoning ordinances in the first tentative steps Watauga County ever took toward land-use planning and the regulation of subdivisions and mobile-home parks.
She was known as a tigress for her beliefs. As one of her associates in those early days of liberal activism told me, she seems to have felt that any opposition to her opinions was an affront to her, personally. She could turn on people with a savage fury that suggested an unresolved inferiority complex and a twisted personal history. She took no prisoners.
Those who followed this year's poisonous primary campaign between Virginia and Vernon Robinson will know that Vernon accused her of being a closet femi'Nazi and even used against her the very endorsement by "a radical feminist organization" that I had been involved with in 1994. Vernon's case against Virginia was that she was essentially a Foxx-in-sheep's-clothing, that once elected to the U.S. Congress, she would show her true liberal colors.
But the truth now appears much, much sadder than Robinson's burn-the-witch fantasy, for the once pro-choice Virginia Foxx has become a clone of the religious right, who had rather send a woman to an early grave than countenance any abortion for any one under any circumstances. This is her position now. God dictates her marching orders, and God evidently never had any use for female equality. The cognitive dissonance she must experience, saying the things the says!
Her stated positions currently include favoring a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, where once she advocated for the legal adoption of children by gay couples.
It's frankly sickening to see her maneuver through this past decade, selling out what might have actually been principled beliefs for the sake of rising in the North Carolina Republican Party. She's made her bed, and now she must lie down with the most anti-woman forces this side of the Taliban. So that, even if there remains in her some shriveled vestige of a pro-choice attitude, she cannot now ever give voice to it.
Which makes her even more like the Martha of Edward Albee's play, the woman self-aware of her own fatal compromises:
NICK: To you, everybody's a flop. Your husband's a flop, I'm a flop.
MARTHA: You're all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops. [To herself] I disgust me.
Things to Warm & Chill the Heart Simultaneously
So having conceded the election too quickly, with all kinds of ballot irregularities still coming to light in Ohio and Florida, John Kerry breaks it in the WashPost this a.m. that he might just run for president again. Is it not enough, John, that you embraced defeat as though it were a life-raft? You intend to punish us all over again with another go-nowhere campaign? Puh-lese!
But he's got this huge fund-raising list, you say. "One well-known Democratic operative who worked with the Kerry campaign said opposition to Bush, not excitement about Kerry, was behind the senator's fundraising success. 'If he thinks he's going to capitalize on that going forward, he's in for a surprise,' said the operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity."
Get back in the Senate and act like a Democrat, John, and THEN we'll talk.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean, whose Democratic instincts and willingness to fight for them are not in doubt, is floating the notion that he might be interested in taking over the McAuliffe job at the Democratic National Committee, a move that would fire up the base out here. The chairman is elected by roughly 240 members of the national committee, and we're sure there's hardly ever any politics involved in who gets the job. The Clintons chose McAuliffe. Maybe Democrats could choose Dean. Let 'im clean house, we say.
But he's got this huge fund-raising list, you say. "One well-known Democratic operative who worked with the Kerry campaign said opposition to Bush, not excitement about Kerry, was behind the senator's fundraising success. 'If he thinks he's going to capitalize on that going forward, he's in for a surprise,' said the operative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity."
Get back in the Senate and act like a Democrat, John, and THEN we'll talk.
Meanwhile, Howard Dean, whose Democratic instincts and willingness to fight for them are not in doubt, is floating the notion that he might be interested in taking over the McAuliffe job at the Democratic National Committee, a move that would fire up the base out here. The chairman is elected by roughly 240 members of the national committee, and we're sure there's hardly ever any politics involved in who gets the job. The Clintons chose McAuliffe. Maybe Democrats could choose Dean. Let 'im clean house, we say.
THE RACE FOR N.C. SUPREME COURT (the Bob Orr seat, for which there were eight candidates on the ballot) was won by Paul Newby, the only candidate endorsed by the state Republican Party and heavily promoted as one of their kind. You may recall that Newby's yard signs prominently featured the word "Conservative."
The close identification of Newby with the Republican Party, in what was supposed to be a non-partisan race, brought a complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which in turn opened an investigation into whether Newby might be violating the Hatch Act.
Time out: The Hatch Act covers federal employees. Paul Newby is a federal employee, specifically a federal prosecutor in Raleigh. The Hatch Act forbids a federal employee from running in a partisan election, though non-partisan contests are okay. The question behind the Special Counsel's investigation was whether Newby was violating the Hatch Act by being endorsed heavily by the state's Republican Party and then campaigning on that endorsement.
Rachel Lea Hunter, fellow Republican candidate in the same race against Newby and a loose cannon if there ever was one, publicized the fact that Newby was under investigation. And now she's kicking up more fuss because Newby refuses to reveal what has happened with the federal investigation of his activities. Newby said, "I'm just not going to comment. I don't see that there's a reason to."
Odd.
"If you can break the Hatch Act and reap the rewards, what a worthless law that is!" said Christina Jeffrey, a visiting professor of political science and public administration at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. She is a friend of Hunter's who once ran a Georgia organization called Operation Integrity, which investigated public officials. "If we were serious," Jeffrey said, "the punishment would be loss of the ill-gotten gains -- to wit, the job one obtained by cheating." (Raleigh N&O coverage this morning here.)
The close identification of Newby with the Republican Party, in what was supposed to be a non-partisan race, brought a complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which in turn opened an investigation into whether Newby might be violating the Hatch Act.
Time out: The Hatch Act covers federal employees. Paul Newby is a federal employee, specifically a federal prosecutor in Raleigh. The Hatch Act forbids a federal employee from running in a partisan election, though non-partisan contests are okay. The question behind the Special Counsel's investigation was whether Newby was violating the Hatch Act by being endorsed heavily by the state's Republican Party and then campaigning on that endorsement.
Rachel Lea Hunter, fellow Republican candidate in the same race against Newby and a loose cannon if there ever was one, publicized the fact that Newby was under investigation. And now she's kicking up more fuss because Newby refuses to reveal what has happened with the federal investigation of his activities. Newby said, "I'm just not going to comment. I don't see that there's a reason to."
Odd.
"If you can break the Hatch Act and reap the rewards, what a worthless law that is!" said Christina Jeffrey, a visiting professor of political science and public administration at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C. She is a friend of Hunter's who once ran a Georgia organization called Operation Integrity, which investigated public officials. "If we were serious," Jeffrey said, "the punishment would be loss of the ill-gotten gains -- to wit, the job one obtained by cheating." (Raleigh N&O coverage this morning here.)
Monday, November 08, 2004
Taking It to the Streets
Some of us were half-joking before the election that if Kerry lost, there would be people "in the streets." It hardly took 24 hours for that to come true after the results were fully known last Wednesday morning. Thursday at noon a group of ASU students marched through downtown Boone and onto the ASU campus, where there was a bit of an ugly confrontation with students supporting El Presidente. That small eruption of civil unrest may well have been the last dying gasp of a losing campaign ... OR it may have been the first indication of a new dawn of militant opposition to The Littlest Angel and his policies. I tend to believe the latter.
For, witness this bit of street action from Seattle: about 500 protestors marched through downtown Seattle on Saturday, "venting" about Bush and the war and the President's evident need to pay off the Religious Right by tossing them a few homosexuals to bully-rag.
Let El Presidente get a couple of Supreme Court justices under his belt and start seriously threatening the right to abortion and see what happens. Forty-eight percent of the country is prime to explode.
For, witness this bit of street action from Seattle: about 500 protestors marched through downtown Seattle on Saturday, "venting" about Bush and the war and the President's evident need to pay off the Religious Right by tossing them a few homosexuals to bully-rag.
Let El Presidente get a couple of Supreme Court justices under his belt and start seriously threatening the right to abortion and see what happens. Forty-eight percent of the country is prime to explode.
The Environment Will Be Treated Like ... Democrats
With the environment non-existent as an issue in the election just past, El Presidente and his foot soldiers of the Right, unfettered by any need to appear "moderate," are poised to launch an unprecedented attack on environmental protections. Here's the lead paragraph in this a.m.'s NYTimes. Read the whole article if you can stomach it:
"With the elections over, Congress and the Bush administration are moving ahead with ambitious environmental agendas that include revamping signature laws on air pollution and endangered species and reviving a moribund energy bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration."
Screw the environment! The Bushies have a "mandate"!
"With the elections over, Congress and the Bush administration are moving ahead with ambitious environmental agendas that include revamping signature laws on air pollution and endangered species and reviving a moribund energy bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration."
Screw the environment! The Bushies have a "mandate"!
No Electronic Voting Machines!
Forget for the moment conspiratorial propositions that the election was stolen by "black box" jobs performed on electronic voting apparatuses by minions of Karl Rove. Consider, rather, verifiable and HUGE problems with touch-screen ballot machines right here in North Carolina.
The New Bern Sun Journal reported last Friday that a "glitch" in systems software in Craven County "swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast." Fixing the problem (supposedly) changed the outcome in one local race, reversing the loss of an incumbent Democratic county commissioner to a win.
The Sun Journal in that same article also reported that in nearby Carteret County, 4,530 early votes were "irretrievably lost." Say what? Irretrievably lost. And it was in early voting that Democrats did especially well state-wide, so we can only suppose that 4,530 irretrievably lost votes might have heavily favored Democrats.
When 4,530 votes can simply evaporate into the ether, and there's no existing paper trail to perform a recount on ... is this what we're willing to give our ballot access rights over to? Not this voter, not ever. We've got to fight the creeping technological voodoo of electronic balloting. When every PC in practically every home in America has multiple viruses holding a hootenanny with our personal data, why on earth would we turn over something as precious and as fragile as our right to vote to unseen forces in unknown software?
The New Bern Sun Journal reported last Friday that a "glitch" in systems software in Craven County "swelled the number of votes for president here by 11,283 more votes than the total number cast." Fixing the problem (supposedly) changed the outcome in one local race, reversing the loss of an incumbent Democratic county commissioner to a win.
The Sun Journal in that same article also reported that in nearby Carteret County, 4,530 early votes were "irretrievably lost." Say what? Irretrievably lost. And it was in early voting that Democrats did especially well state-wide, so we can only suppose that 4,530 irretrievably lost votes might have heavily favored Democrats.
When 4,530 votes can simply evaporate into the ether, and there's no existing paper trail to perform a recount on ... is this what we're willing to give our ballot access rights over to? Not this voter, not ever. We've got to fight the creeping technological voodoo of electronic balloting. When every PC in practically every home in America has multiple viruses holding a hootenanny with our personal data, why on earth would we turn over something as precious and as fragile as our right to vote to unseen forces in unknown software?
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Roe v. Wade, About to Go Out the Door?
A huge furor has erupted among Republicans because the likely new Republican Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, one of the few pro-choice Republicans in the known universe, warned right after the election that El Presidente had best not nominate an anti-choice judges to the Supreme Court. The wingnuts have been calling for his head ever since, or the very least, demanding he be denied the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee which will hold hearings and vote on any of Bush's court nominees.
The iVoteValues crowd intends nothing short of the outlawing of all abortion. Sen. Specter is now seen to stand in their way. For that, Sen. Specter may be toast as chair of that Senate committee.
Young women in particular might want to pay attention. The agenda of the "values" voters is not just a war on sex but a war on female equality, which ain't, you know, in the Bible.
The iVoteValues crowd intends nothing short of the outlawing of all abortion. Sen. Specter is now seen to stand in their way. For that, Sen. Specter may be toast as chair of that Senate committee.
Young women in particular might want to pay attention. The agenda of the "values" voters is not just a war on sex but a war on female equality, which ain't, you know, in the Bible.
Watauga County Notes II
As we well know, Democrat wins in Watauga County came on the strength of "early voting." Some 10,500 registered voters turned out prior to election day, and in those early-vote tallies our County Commissioner candidates out-polled most other Democrat candidates, including John Kerry, and wa-a-ay out-polled their Republican opponents. In early voting, Jim Deal out-polled every other Democrat on the ballot, including Elaine Marshall (who herself out-polled everyone of both parties in early voting and out-polled all candidates of both parties in general overall county voting, except for George Bush and Virginia Foxx, the latter who out-polled God).
(Having Virginia Foxx and God inadvertently show up in the same sentence is like divine inspiration, since Ms. Foxx seems to have completed her full transmogrification into a Bible-thumping Baptist, even though she's a Catholic in point of fact. But she plays a Baptist on the campaign trail. In her post-election interview in the Watauga Democrat, she said, "I did a lot of praying during the campaign and felt I was doing what God intended me to do. Every day in the campaign, something happened that was an answer to a prayer. I said to God, 'I have lots of energy and a commitment to serve -- please put me where I can use my talents the best.' " Having a Republican candidate profess to talk to God on a daily basis is, like, de rigueur (which is French for "bo-o-oring"). Gag me, as they say in the hills, with a dipper! If Virginia's protestations of prayerfulness don't ring as phony to you as a Playskool toy telephone, then you deserve the "values" this fake Protestant takes to D.C. with her.)
But the Republican Party is apparently looking for scapegoats to blame for their stunning loss of the Watauga County Commission. At first they blamed "the students" (spoken with the same disdain one might use when saying "the flu"), who they believe should not be allowed to vote here because they don't own property. But owning property as a qualification to vote went out with the American Revolution, if you follow history even a tad, so they've apparently now decided to blame the sheriff, who it seems made no huge secret that he voted across party lines for the Democrats. And well he should. He got only begrudging support from the Republican incumbents now kicked out, and the Democrats will do better by him. They should. He's the best and most effective sheriff we've had in this county in years.
But save me a ring-side seat if the Watauga County Republican Party decides to declare war on their most popular Republican Party office-holder because of his disloyalty. (Even Virginia Touched-by-an-Angel Foxx gets her picture taken with Mark Shook!) Our money's on the Sheriff!
(Having Virginia Foxx and God inadvertently show up in the same sentence is like divine inspiration, since Ms. Foxx seems to have completed her full transmogrification into a Bible-thumping Baptist, even though she's a Catholic in point of fact. But she plays a Baptist on the campaign trail. In her post-election interview in the Watauga Democrat, she said, "I did a lot of praying during the campaign and felt I was doing what God intended me to do. Every day in the campaign, something happened that was an answer to a prayer. I said to God, 'I have lots of energy and a commitment to serve -- please put me where I can use my talents the best.' " Having a Republican candidate profess to talk to God on a daily basis is, like, de rigueur (which is French for "bo-o-oring"). Gag me, as they say in the hills, with a dipper! If Virginia's protestations of prayerfulness don't ring as phony to you as a Playskool toy telephone, then you deserve the "values" this fake Protestant takes to D.C. with her.)
But the Republican Party is apparently looking for scapegoats to blame for their stunning loss of the Watauga County Commission. At first they blamed "the students" (spoken with the same disdain one might use when saying "the flu"), who they believe should not be allowed to vote here because they don't own property. But owning property as a qualification to vote went out with the American Revolution, if you follow history even a tad, so they've apparently now decided to blame the sheriff, who it seems made no huge secret that he voted across party lines for the Democrats. And well he should. He got only begrudging support from the Republican incumbents now kicked out, and the Democrats will do better by him. They should. He's the best and most effective sheriff we've had in this county in years.
But save me a ring-side seat if the Watauga County Republican Party decides to declare war on their most popular Republican Party office-holder because of his disloyalty. (Even Virginia Touched-by-an-Angel Foxx gets her picture taken with Mark Shook!) Our money's on the Sheriff!
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