Author: Arianna Huffington

Faint the last month black. It’s been an orgy of mourning, a cornucopia of death. We’ve had Terri Schiavo, Pope John Paul II, Prince Rainier, and Charles and Camilla’s wedding — which felt as grim as any funeral. All brought to us in no-longer-living color. If nothing else, the media have outed themselves as the ultimate necrophiliacs. I expect CNN and Forest Lawn to announce a sponsorship agreement any day now.

The pope’s interminable interment was the magenta-colored cherry on the death sundae. The television coverage was so over-the-top and utterly uncritical, it was as if John Paul had been, well, the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that the last week should have been spent trashing the late pontiff. His many achievements — taking on communism, embracing the Third World, speaking out for the poor, and standing up against war — surely deserved recognition and praise. But you’d think the wall-to-wall coverage would have included some serious discussion of the two tragic failures of his reign: his woeful mishandling of the church’s child-molestation scandal and how his archaic position on condoms contributed to the deaths of millions of people, especially in Africa.

The molestation outrage is a black mark that can’t be whitewashed.

More than 11,000 children were abused and close to $1 billion in settlement money was paid out, but the pope did not go much beyond decrying “the sins of some of our brothers.” He didn’t meet with any victims or offer solutions to dealing with the problem or address the decades-long cover-up. He even rejected a “zero tolerance” policy calling for the immediate removal of molester-priests because of concern that it was too harsh.

Too harsh?! This is a man who wouldn’t allow a priest to become a bishop unless he was unequivocally opposed to masturbation, premarital sex, and condoms. So, in his perversion pecking order, priests had to be dead-set against “self-love,” but when it came to buggering little kids, there was some wiggle room.

And let’s not forget that John Paul appointed Cardinal Bernard Law, who was one of the architects of the sex-scandal cover-up and who even faced potential criminal prosecution for his role in the concealment. But instead of making an example out of Law, the pope gave him a cushy sinecure in the Vatican. Adding insult to the grievous injury suffered by abuse victims, Law was one of the nine cardinals specially chosen to preside over the pope’s funeral masses. It is a disgrace — and an indication of how detached the Vatican became under this pope.

The other stain on the pope’s legacy is his tireless opposition to the use of condoms — even in places like Africa, where AIDS killed 2.3 million people last year and where the disease has driven life expectancy below 40 years in many countries.

But even in the face of that kind of suffering, John Paul fought against condoms. Any time a church official even suggested that people infected with HIV should use condoms, they were either removed from office or censured.

On the other hand, the pope’s passing might have saved the political skin of one of his culture-of-life cohorts, House majority leader Tom DeLay. If you have a series of looming ethics scandals about to come crashing down on your head, having the media focused 24/7 on something else is a very lucky break indeed.

The presence of DeLay at the pope’s funeral in Rome, along with President Bush, the first lady, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and George Bush Sr., was a stark reminder of our perverted priorities. The pope dies, and it’s Must Holy See TV; 1,547 American soldiers die in Iraq, and President Bush has yet to attend a single one of their funerals. Not a single one. •

Arianna Huffington writes for AlterNet and Ariannaonline.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in Iraq. Yes, I know

we’re still fighting. But that’s just a formality. The war has

already been won. The conquering heroes are not generals in

fatigues but CEOs in suits, and the shock troops are not an

advance guard of commandos but legions of lobbyists.

The Bush administration is currently in the process of doling

out more than $1.5 billion in government contracts to American

companies lining up to cash in on the rebuilding of postwar Iraq.

So, bombs away! The more destruction the better at least for the

lucky few in the rebuilding business.

The United Nations has traditionally overseen the

reconstruction of war zones like Afghanistan or Kosovo. But in

keeping with its unilateral, the-world-is-our-sandbox approach to

this invasion, the White House has decided to nail a “Made in the

USA” sign on this Iraqi fixer-upper. Postwar Iraq will be rebuilt

using red, white, and blueprints.

Talk about advance planning: Even as the people of Iraq gird

themselves for the thousands of bombs raining down on them, the

administration is already picking and choosing who will be given

the lucrative job of cleaning up the rubble. Postwar rebuilding

is a solitary bright spot in our own carpet-bombed economy.

To further expedite matters, the war-powers-that-be invoked

“urgent circumstances” clauses that allowed them to subvert the

requisite competitive bidding process the free market be damned

and invited a select group of companies to bid on the rebuilding

projects. No British companies were included, which has left many

of them seething and meeting with government officials in London

to find out where they stand.

So just which companies were given first crack at the

post-Saddam spoils?

Well, given Team Bush’s track record, it will probably not

fill you with “shock and awe” to learn that the common

denominator among the chosen few is a proven willingness to make

large campaign donations to the Grand Old Party. Between them,

the bidders a quartet of well-connected corporate consortiums

that includes the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp., and, of course,

Vice President Cheney’s old cronies at Halliburton have donated a

combined $2.8 million over the past two election cycles, 68

percent of which went to Republicans.

The insider track given these fat-cat donors proves afresh

that splurging on a politician is one of the soundest and safest

investments you can make. Where else will a $2.8 million ante

offer you a one-in-four shot at raking in a $1.5 billion

payoff?

And that $1.5 billion is just for starters. The president is

planning to give post-Saddam Iraq an extreme makeover a

wide-ranging overhaul that will include the transformation of the

country’s educational, health-care, and banking systems all

funded by taxpayer dollars and administered by private U.S.

contractors. Think of it as a Marshall Plan for profit.

“The administration’s goal,” reads one of the reconstruction

contracts that are up for bids, “is to provide tangible evidence

to the people of Iraq that the U.S. will support efforts to bring

the country to political security and economic prosperity.”

As a first step toward Iraqi prosperity, the president’s

ambitious postwar plan earmarks $100 million to ensure that

Iraq’s 25,000 schools have all the supplies and support necessary

to “function at a standard level of quality” including books and

supplies for 4.1 million Iraqi schoolchildren.

I’m sure those schools in Oregon that are being forced to shut

down a month early due to inadequate funding or the low-income

students in California who are suing the state in a desperate

effort to obtain adequate textbooks and qualified teachers of

their own would love to see the same kind of “tangible evidence”

of President Bush’s support.

The same goes for our flat-lining public health-care system.

While more than a million poor Americans are about to lose their

access to publicly funded medical care, the president is in the

market for a corporate contractor to oversee a $100 million

upgrade of Iraq’s hospitals and clinics.

And the White House has announced its intention to redesign

Iraq’s financial rules and banking system after it bombs the

country halfway to oblivion. Too bad the administration keeps

watering down reforms for the banking system here at home.

That’s another way corporate America is profiting from the

war. With all eyes on Iraq, few are paying attention to how

little is being done to reform and redesign our own financial

rules.

The new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission,

for instance, is getting away with an enforcement regime every

bit as limp as that of his predecessor, the supremely spineless

Harvey Pitt.

Last week, in his first congressional testimony since assuming

control of the watchdog agency, William Donaldson made it clear

that, despite a massive increase in the SEC’s budget, we

shouldn’t expect too much in the way of fundamental reform

stressing that one of his top priorities would be boosting the

morale of the agency.

I don’t know about you, but I would feel a whole lot better if

he’d made boosting the morale of a badly burned public “Job No.

1.” Tossing a slew of corporate crooks in the slammer would be a

good start.

Maybe America’s beleaguered investors should band together

with this country’s “left behind” schoolchildren and start

stockpiling a couple of plywood drones with overly long

wingspans, some high-strength aluminum tubes, and a few discarded

canisters of chemical gas.

Apparently, that’s the only way to get this administration’s

attention.

Arianna Huffington is the author of Pigs at the Trough:

How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining

America.

I feel nothing but sympathy and concern for Noelle Bush. Her latest stumble on the rocky road to recovery — being caught with crack cocaine at a drug-rehab center — shows that she is in desperate need of help. As a parent, I can also empathize with the anguish Noelle’s father, Florida governor Jeb Bush, must be experiencing. And I’m in total agreement with his insistence that his daughter’s substance-abuse problem is “a private issue.”

But when I think about the heartless stance the governor has taken toward the drug problems of those less fortunate and less well connected than his daughter, my empathy turns to outrage.

While Noelle has been given every break in the book — and then some — her father has made it harder for others in her position to get the help they need by cutting the budgets of drug-treatment and drug-court programs in his state. He has also actively opposed a proposed ballot initiative that would send an estimated 10,000 nonviolent drug offenders into treatment instead of jail. I guess what’s good for the goose gets the gander locked away.

Of course, Jeb’s wildly inconsistent attitude on the issue — treatment and privacy for his daughter, incarceration and public humiliation for everyone else — is part and parcel of the galling hypocrisy that infects America’s insane drug war on every level.

The latest example of this madness is last week’s early-morning DEA raid on a medical-marijuana club in Santa Cruz, California, that caters to terminally ill patients. Although the hospice-style operation has been lauded by local law-enforcement officials for its caring and ethical approach, federal agents stormed the place with guns drawn and chainsaws whirring — leveling its pot garden, handcuffing ailing patients (including a paraplegic), and carting off its founder and director, Valerie Corral, a woman who has been called the Florence Nightingale of the medical-marijuana movement.

So much for the Bush administration’s compassionate conservatism. And its conservative consistency. Back when he was running for president, candidate George W. Bush declared that medical marijuana is a states’-rights issue. “I believe,” he said, “each state can choose that decision as they so choose.” Although the mangled syntax makes it a little hard to tell exactly what the president was getting at, is it consistent with allowing John Ashcroft to order a holy-roller war against cannabis clubs in California even though it is one of 12 states that have decriminalized the use of pot for medical purposes?

Surely, there has got to be a better use of our limited law-enforcement resources than busting grievously ill cancer and AIDS patients searching for relief from their suffering.

And the White House continues to bombard us with TV spots implying that youthful drug users like Noelle Bush are the moral equivalent of Mohammed Atta. Maybe her Uncle George can get her an audition for the next round of taxpayer-funded ads. Show her pulling some crack out of her shoe while saying, “I helped blow up buildings.”

Or does that kind of overheated and stigmatizing rhetoric only apply to those other, non-Bush-family youthful drug users? After all, a glaring double standard has been a hallmark of our nation’s drug policy for decades. It’s why African Americans make up only 13 percent of the country’s drug users but 55 percent of those convicted of drug possession and 74 percent of those sent to jail on possession charges. And why the youthful indiscretions of the rich are routinely treated with a slap on the wrist and a ticket to rehab while poor kids are shipped off to prison.

If America’s drug laws were applied consistently, Jeb Bush and his family would be evicted from their publicly funded digs, just as people living in public housing can be thrown out of their homes if any household member or guest is found using drugs — even if the drug use happened someplace other than in the housing project. And Noelle could find herself joining the tens of thousands of young people unable to get a college education because of a provision in the Higher Education Act that denies financial aid to students convicted of possessing illegal drugs.

But the rich and powerful are judged by a very different set of rules. That’s why the staff at Noelle’s rehab center tore up a sworn statement incriminating Noelle even though the facility’s standard policy is to turn all such matters over to the police.

If, through her pain, Noelle Bush can help open her family’s minds as well as their hearts and force them to rethink their disastrous drug policy, the nation — and millions of young Americans, in particular — will owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.

I wish her much luck.

The last episode of Politically Incorrect will be broadcast June 28th. I’m going to be on it one last time, and I’ve promised myself I won’t cry on the air. Once the cameras go off — well, that’s another story.

You see, the show has been a touchstone for me over the last nine years — both in the evolution of my political ideas and the changes in my personal life.

My first appearance was in November 1993, when the show was on Comedy Central and taping in New York. I was on with Harry Shearer, Rep. Jim Traficant, and Dr. Peter Kramer, who had just published Listening To Prozac. Since then, Shearer — the brilliant satirist and voice of half the Simpsons characters — has become a close friend and co-conspirator, Traficant has been convicted of racketeering, and I’ve gone on to launch a mini-crusade disagreeing with Dr. Kramer’s rosy assessment of the miraculous effects of Prozac.

Doing PI was always a stimulating two-way street. Sometimes, it gave me the chance to mount my soapbox and sound off on subjects I care passionately about, and sometimes, it opened my mind to new topics and ideas that I then went on to write about.

For that initial appearance, I had flown up from Washington, where I was living with my Republican congressman husband and our two preschool daughters. When I do the last PI next week, it will be from Los Angeles, where, after a divorce from my husband and the Republican Party, I now live as a registered independent with my teenage daughter and her tweener sister.

In between, I made a few dozen appearances on PI, crossing swords — sometimes playfully, sometimes earnestly — with everyone from Michael Douglas to Jesse Jackson to Cindy Crawford to Chevy Chase to G. Gordon Liddy to Tom Arnold to Coolio. PI’s appeal has always been the simple notion of bringing together eclectic groups of pundits, politicians, and performers and letting the fur fly.

In the process, the show challenged the larger shibboleths of “proper” comment and debate in America. People tend to talk mostly to like-minded people who communicate in the same way. We naturally tend to fall into clichés. PI was about breaking those clichés, and the best moments came from unexpected juxtapositions: when a comedian popped the balloon of a pontificating politico, when a rapper had the last word on campaign-finance reform, or when Jerry Falwell revealed — yes, it’s true — a playful sense of humor.

In fact, the show was responsible for unleashing my own long-suppressed inner clown. In bed, no less. In 1996, during the Republican and Democratic national conventions, host Bill Maher lured Al Franken and me between the sheets to do political commentary from a specially constructed bed for a segment called “Strange Bedfellows.” It was the beginning of an oddball act of the same name that Al and I took on the road, trading barbs and double entendres at colleges, conventions, and trade shows. As an added bonus, I was probably the only woman in my profession to claim a tax deduction for lingerie. (I’m not sure whether Al deducted for his or not.)

Another thing I’ll miss is traveling around the country — to places like New Orleans, San Francisco, Aspen, and San Diego — to tape special on-location editions of PI. It was on one of these road shows that Chris Rock and I covered an Al Sharpton rally in Chicago, chanting “No justice, no peace” in our Greek accents. (Okay, maybe that was just me.)

For nine years, PI has been the best place on television to find edgy, political satire. But, because it’s a comedy show, people often forget the fact that it also offered a rare forum for certain “orphan issues” — important topics overlooked by the mainstream media.

PI delved into such knotty matters as the ongoing madness of the war on drugs and the destructive role of money in politics not just once in a blue moon but night in and night out. I regularly marveled at the ardor and wonkish knowledge Maher brought to these issues. In fact, he gave two rousing speeches on these topics at the 2000 Shadow Conventions that rivaled the experts in detail and far exceeded them in entertainment value. It is this blend of skills that makes him a first-class satirist in the tradition of Jonathan Swift, wielding his savage wit in the service of passionate conviction.

For some weird reason, I always ended up doing PI on emotionally charged days in my life, including the show we taped the day I moved into my post-divorce home in L.A. The movers were still carting in boxes when I hurried off to the studio. Then there was the now-infamous show I did a few days after September 11th. It was the first post-attack PI and showed Maher at his best: respectful of what truly mattered but courageously challenging everything else.

As Politically Incorrect ends its remarkable 1,600-plus show run, the appropriate farewell is not a eulogy but a 21-pun salute to a man and a show that encapsulate what our culture needs now more than ever: independence, fearlessness, and an increasingly rare willingness to speak truth to power.

On the personal side, it’s also a time to celebrate a treasured friendship that, thankfully, isn’t at the mercy of the whims of skittish sponsors and network executives.

Maher has said that he considers his last show not so much an end as a new beginning — “kind of like being transferred to another diocese.” Well, my friend, you can count on me to sing in your choir, whatever parish you wind up in.