Author: Kenneth Neill

The following tongue-in-cheek “open letter” is but the latest in a number of recent sallies posted by blogger Joshua Micah Marshall about the voting record and political intentions of 9th District U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. To link to Marshall’s complete treatment of the Ford issue, CLICK HERE. (Or go to www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_12_19.php#004297)

Dear Congressman Ford,

Look, yes, I know this may seem like a sort of public way of communicating. But my tech guy has set this up so only your home computer can access this post. No one else can see it. It’s set to your IP address. (I guess you’ve got a static IP address on your home hook-up?)

In any case, the consensus of the pols in your home state is that your angle on the Social Security privatization stuff is that you want to set yourself up for a Senate run in 2006 for Frist’s seat. And this’ll give you bipartisan cross-over cred with rural and conservative voters in the state that you need.

But look, if you’re going to be cynical, at least do it effectively, right? This may have been a pretty bad decade-and-a-half for the Dems in Tennessee. But it isn’t because Democrats support Social Security, believe me. Gay Marriage? Abortion? Guns? National Defense? Sure, probably all of them. But not excessive fealty to Social Security.

Think about it. Did Bush even get into Social Security during the campaign? Of course, not. Even Lieberman’s gotten off that train. And half the people in Connecticut work on Wall Street. What do you got compared to that? Right, I didn’t think so.If you’re trying to angle your way into the Senate and set yourself apart from the national Democrats, do it on abortion or the gay rights stuff. Not that I’m recommending it. But if you’re going to be cynical at least do it with an issue that’s going to do you some good.

If you want to pull up a seat with the real power players, being cynical ain’t enough. You’ve gotta be cynical and smart.

I was chatting with a friend of yours today. And he says he figures you’re probably just not with it enough to realize that this isn’t much of a way to appeal to Democrats-turned-Republicans in your state. But, dude, I’ve got your back. He may not be enough of a friend to tell you. But I am, whatever I may be saying about you in the public posts.

Like I said, gay marriage? Iraq? Even maybe the Oil-for-Food angle? (Coleman’s too big a doofus ever to carry that ball anywhere.) Those are some issues with some mileage in them. And like I said, if you’re going to be cynical, get some mileage out of it, right?

Picture this placard …

Harold Ford: Man Enough to Know That a Man Shouldn’t Marry a Man.

Right? Right? That’s great stuff.

Or maybe, this …

Harold Ford: Putting the ‘Christ’ back into Christmas.

Anyway, we can come up with various angles. But you get the idea. We’ll talk soon. And lemme know if you have any ideas for the database.

Best,

— Josh Marshall

Harold Ford Jr.:

November 3, 2004

Dear Congressman Ford:

Perhaps you have already seen William Safire’s column in today’s New York Times….

Actually, we at the Flyer were flattered that Mr. Safire endorsed our own Kerry as Senate Minority Leader idea, perhaps without even reading our current editorial.(www.memphisflyer.com/content.asp?ID=3060&onthefly=1 )

But seriously: I hope you will endorse the Flyer‘s and Mr. Safire’s idea. Ask your Democratic senatorial colleagues to draft John Kerry as Senate Minority Leader.

Senator Kerry is now a proven and widely-admired national leader. If the Democrats fail to make this patently-obvious choice, they deserve the possibly adverse consequences that will follow.

With all due respect to Senator Reid, appointing a relative unknown to that position will squander valuable momentum generated by this presidential campaign. Perhaps the congressional leadership doesn’t realize how close the national Democratic Party is to oblivion.

Business-as-usual in the Senate, Congressman, just won’t do. I know I speak for many committed Democrats — Democrats who donated blood, sweat, tears and dollars to the recent campaign — when I say that IT IS TIME FOR THE CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE. Continuity is essential if we are ever to get out of this pickle we presently find ourselves.

I am not suggesting for a moment that Senator Kerry should be the party’s standard-bearer in 2008; that decision is light years away at this point, and a thousand events will occur in the meantime. What we cannot afford, however, is to squander all the good work that has been accomplished during this recent campaign, in terms of organization, grass-roots involvment, and sheer enthusiasm, and return to business as usual within the halls of Congress.

Senator Kerry can and will be a powerful “leader of the opposition”; after today’s magnaminous concession speech, he is perhaps the most well-respected defeated presidential candidate of modern times. Give him the chance to maintain his position as de facto leader of our party during the challenging two years ahead of us.

Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might find the contents of interest. Thanks.

Good to see you at the game tonight; go Griz! All the best, Ken

Kenneth Neill

Publisher/CEO

THE MEMPHIS FLYER, Memphis, TN

PROFILES IN COURAGE

“This is no time for politics as usual, in which no one responsible admits responsibility, no one genuinely apologizes, no one resigns and everyone else is blamed.”

— from Theodore Sorensen,’s commencement address delivered at the New School University in New York City, May 21, 2004

Ted Sorenson, now 76, peaked too early. As a young man from long ago, he is best remembered as John F. Kennedy’s top speech writer, and, legend has it, the ghost writer of Senator Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning (1957) analysis of American political heroes, Profiles in Courage.

Since he’s not known for being much of a reader, George W. Bush may have missed this particular collection of essays, whoever wrote them. But let me assure you; Profiles was required reading for all of his generational peers, myself included. If President Bush were to re-read it, I think he’d be amazed, for example, that the future Democratic President devoted an entire chapter to the Senate’s Republican major-domo of his era, Robert Taft, Jr. He’d be astonished — and alas, appalled, I suspect — at Kennedy’s willingness to cross partisan divides in his search for heroes.

Kennedy found Taft especially courageous, as he did such unlikely fellows as John Quincy Adams and Sam Houston. Ted Sorensen has been honorably discreet on the subject of the book’s authorship, but if you’ve never read Profiles, you probably should; it is more than a little appropriate for our “age.”

Ah, yes, our age. I fear our current President has probably never even heard of Edmund G. Ross, one of Kennedy/Sorensen’s heroes, a Republican senator from Kansas in 1868, when he cast an unexpected deciding — and poltically suicidal — vote against the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, thus, by the margin of a single vote, keeping Johnson in office for his full term.

For some reason, Kennedy/Sorensen’s account of Ross’ act of courage — standing up to the witch-hunters of his age who were determined to “out” Andrew Johnson (an accidental president who took office only because of Lincoln’s assassination) because pf his overly sympathetic (some might say reasonable) attitudes to his fellow defeated Southerners — has always stuck in my mind, as, yes, a profile in courage. Here was a staunch Kansas Republican, counted upon by his party to “do the right thing,” at the last minute committing hari-kari on the floor of the Senate. Even at 15, I knew political high-drama when I read about it.

If Ross is misplaced in Profiles, then I’m a frog. Kennedy/Sorensen describe a packed Senate gallery, and how all eyes are on this man, whose vote is expected to be the forgone conclusion of the process. The Chief Justice tensely asks, “Mr. Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent Andrew Johnson guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this Article?”

As Senator Ross later recalled (with words that have stuck in my mind for forty years): “I almost literally looked down into my open grave. Friendships, position, fortune, everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man were about to be swept away by the breath of my mouth, perhaps forever. It is not strange that my answer was carried waveringly over the air and failed to reach the limits of the audience, or that repetition was called for by distant Senators on the opposite side of the Chamber. ”

Historian Nathan Bierma tells us what happened next: “Ross cleared his throat and declared his vote again: “Not guilty.” Everyone heard it this time. People recoiled in disbelief and disgust, slamming into the backs of their chairs. The article had failed…The Senate took ten days off to overhaul the remaining articles and to try to admit new states to the Union who could produce “guilty”-voting Senators. But when the Senate reconvened, there were still 54 Senators. The rest of the articles failed, all by one vote — [the] Impeachment had failed. Andrew Johnson would stay in office by one vote.”

(Wonder why Ross voted to preserve Johnson? Here’s what Kennedy/Sorensen had to say on the subject five decades ago: “Why did Ross, whose dislike for Johnson continued, vote “Not guilty”? His motives appear clearly from his own writings on the subject years later in articles contributed to Scribner’s and Forum magazines:

“In a large sense, the independence of the executive office as a coordinate branch of the government was on trial…If…the President must step down…a disgraced man and a political outcast…upon insufficient proofs and from partisan considerations, the office of President would be degraded, cease to be a coordinate branch of the government, and ever after subordinated to the legislative will. It would practically have revolutionized our splendid political fabric into a partisan Congressional autocracy…This government had never faced so insidious a danger…control by the worst element of American politics…If Andrew Johnson were acquitted by a non-partisan vote…America would pass the danger point of partisan rule and that intolerance which so often characterizes the sway of great majorities and makes them dangerous.”)

Edmund G. Ross, as we say today, was toast; he didn’t even bother to run for re-election. What a remarkable contrast his career offers to that of people like George W. Bush , Dick Cheney, and, well, you get the idea. In his New College speech, Ted Sorensen speaks clearly about how he thinks times have changed. “The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us. The stain on our credibility, our reputation for decency and integrity, will not quickly wash away.”

Last night, in my Chicago hotel room, I found myself thinking about Ted Sorensen (you can read his New College speech in full at www.newschool.edu/commencement/2004/sorensent.html) while I watched George W. Bush on the evening news. The President was in Oak Ridge, TN, talking about our “victory” in Iraq. saying:

“We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”

Very clever words from this stupid-like-a-fox President. Note that however badly he usually mangles the English language, Mr. Bush is careful to get the syntax just right when discussing “sensitive” subjects. So it was with his comments in Oak Ridge yesterday.

Don’t get it yet? Well, read his remarks again, with my caps below:

“We removed a declared enemy of America who HAD the capability of producing weapons of mass murder …

Note that this statement is, strictly speaking, true; Saddam Hussein, it is true, HAD the capability to produce weapons of mass murder, back in pre-Gulf War times. No one questions that. But as all credible observers also now agree, Saddam did not HAVE the capability in 2003, when the Bushies launched their invasion of an already-shackled Iraq.

“In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take,” Bush said.” Well, I would hate to call our President a liar, so let’s just say that this is sophistry of the highest order. Whatever problem the Iraqis were in 1991, Hussein and Iraq did not pose a bonafide threat to the USA after 9/11; the country had no WMDs and no conspiratorial links with Al Qaeda.

These are the facts. But who needs facts if you can build a re-election campaign around the power of innuendo? Between half-truths and exaggerations, between using the word “had” but taking care to blur the distinction between the pluperfect 1991 and less-pluperfect 2003, the Bushies managed then to convince most and still convince many Americans that Saddam Husein was a full-fledged boogie man.

Here’s the bottom line: We went to war because of what Saddam HAD before the Gulf War, not because of what he HAD in 2003. Got it? That’s what Ted Sorensen might call a lie. And when we lie, we lose street cred. As Sorensen points out: “We are no longer the world’s leaders on matters of international law and peace. After we stopped listening to others, they stopped listening to us. A nation without credibility and moral authority cannot lead, because no one will follow.”

Without putting words in his mouth, I think I can safely say that Mr. Sorensen agrees with me: Saddam Hussein was not a threat to America in 2003, and probably had not been for many years previous. Sadly, thousands of Americans and Iraqis had to die in advance of the proving of this fact (I think the legal term for this is “discovery”). And so we fought this obscene war that will end up being counted as a monumental defeat, yes, for “our side” in the war on terrorism. We abandoned our traditional allies, in the process came down unilaterally on the side of Israel in the Palestinian crisis, took our eyes off the prize (Al Qaeda) and weakened our national security, for perhaps decades to come.

And yet this man, this President Bush has the unmitigated gall to run for re-election, bending words to his purpose: glossing over his foreign policy failures, inciting fear among the electorate, raising little red herrings like gay marriage where and when politically appropriate, making sure, always, that as little attention as possible is focused on his “record.”

Because this is now, not then, few Americans are aware that George W. Bush’s campaign for re-election is very special, perhaps unprecedented in American history. With the possible exception of Herbert Hoover — who was so dead a political duck in 1932 that no Republican in his right mind wanted to challenge him — we have never had a President so thoroughly disgraced run for re-election. Never before has a man whose administration has been such an abject failure had the unmitigated gall to ask the American people for “four more years.” Folks like Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce knew better; George W. Bush does not. The historians will someday marvel at this.

God-willing, Americans will put the Bush the Younger Era behind us come November. Some days I get downright cocky about that prospect; tonight, in fact, I met a waiter who wanted to bet me $100 that Kerry would win. (I declined; bad luck to bet on what you fervently desire.)

Yes, there are days when Bush’s re-election drive looks like an accident waiting to happen. Then I realize that there’s so much more to the Bush cartel than simply greed, stupidity and delusion. The President’s speech Monday in Oak Ridge — and its little “depends on your meaning of the word Ôhad’” — drove that point home to me, loud and clear.

There are times when this administration’s continued shameless bending of truth and its intentional fogging of the line between fact and fiction make me realize what we’re up against. The Bushies will NOT go gently into the night, much as sensible, sentient beings might find such a prospect inevitable.

Much as it shocks Ted Sorensen, probably, as well as myself, I think the Bush cartel will do whatever needs doing to “win” in November. And it might just succeed. That’s the truly scary part.

I came to that conclusion after seeing how cleverly W used the word “had” rather than “have” yesterday, knowing of course that the media would hardly call him on it and that the great mass of Americans wouldn’t even notice the difference. Now that he’s gotten fired up about exploiting the gay-marriage issue (as if this is the greatest “crisis” facing our republic right now!), I am more than ever convinced that the Bushies intend to win at all costs.

Sorensen ends his New College speech with some direct advice for the Class of 2004: “If we can but tear the blindfold of self-deception from our eyes and loosen the gag of self-denial from our voices, we can restore our country to greatness. In particular, you–the Class of 2004–have the wisdom and energy to do it. Start soon.”

He’s right, my friends. We may not be the Class of 2004, but we’re all in this together. The future is now.

K.N. (July 13, 2004)

AN OPEN LETTER TO MICHAEL MOORE

Dear Mr. Moore:

I know you have used this approach a time or two in the past when communicating with prominent public figures — and with not-so-prominent Americans like myself who are on your e-mail list — so I hope you won’t mind being on the receiving end, just this once. I’ve got a favor to ask.

Let me start by pointing out how we two have something in common. Long ago, back in the 1970s, you were the founding publisher of an alternative weekly newspaper in your hometown of Flint, Michigan. A little bit more recently (in 1989), I founded an alternative weekly in Memphis, Tennessee. I believe your paper went bust, but you seem to have done alright for yourself, all the same. Our paper, The Memphis Flyer, is fifteen years old now, so I’ve done okay, too. We’ve both been blessed.

Like tens of thousands of other Americans, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this past weekend. It was some kind of event, let me tell you. I myself saw the film smack dab in the middle of “red” America, deep in the heart of Texas, in a matinee at a packed mall theatre in suburban San Antonio. The place was packed to the rafters, and when we left the 4:10 screening, the line waiting for the next one stretched out the door into the parking lot.

I left the mall emotionally drained, yes, but also relieved that, finally, someone (you) had produced a cogent negative statement on the war writ large enough to get everyone’s attention. No, your powerful piece of docu-drama won’t quite drown out the bombastic misrepresentations of truth that intellectual thugs like Limbaugh and Hannity present as “fact” on a daily basis. But F9/11 will at least draw attention to the fundamental obscenity behind the war in Iraq, in ways that even the most myopic American “patriot” might understand.

Most important of all — and I think this was your intent — the film will resonate mightily, I expect, with its true heroes, the mostly ordinary folks paying the highest price for Bush’s Folly: the troops called upon to fight the feckless war that has resulted from what former Reagan Secretary of the Navy James Webb recently called “the greatest American foreign-policy blunder of modern times.”

I especially enjoyed your skewering of the mainstream media, clearly the Bush Administration’s partner in crime, and, as an alternative-weekly publisher, found myself wishing that you’d done more to hammer that point home. Indeed, I left the theatre thinking how Dan Rather and Wolf Blitzer need to be flown off to The Hague in handcuffs right alongside Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. And I was particularly struck by your almost elegaic three-minute treatment of the actual 9/11 NYC event itself early on in the film. Bravo! What a marvelous tribute to your cinematic skills, something that often gets lost in the shuffle these days, now that you’re almost more popular than Jesus, as John Lennon might say. You’re not just a dude with a camera.

But as often has been the case with your films, you’re once again a little heavy-handed in F9/11. I was somewhat surprised that you were not as visually absent from the film as some of the preliminary reviewers had suggested you were. And yet again, I find myself from time to time irritated by your in-your-face approach to “interviewing” sometimes hostile and/or but sometimes innocent subjects. There’s just a little too much Geraldo Rivera about all that for my taste.

Moreover, your “ambush interview” technique doesn’t always do justice to your (our) cause. Take this example from F9/11. After going into how the legislators who voted to “bring it on” (war) in Iraq do not themselves have any of their own children fighting in it, you charge up Capitol Hill armed with enlistment forms, a sympathetic Marine, and, of course, your cameras. Among the first congressmen you encounter — and the one you choose to zoom in on — is Representative John Tanner, a Tennessee congressman whose district is just up the road here from Memphis. Taken completely off guard, Mr. Tanner hems and haws, says nothing very sensible, and shuffles off awkwardly.

The insinuation is clear; Tanner is “one of them”: legislators who support the Iraq war without making their children available to fight in it. Pity you didn’t do a little more homework before running this clip, though. John Tanner, a Democrat, has been anything but a devout supporter of the current administration. Just consider what he had to say about the Bushies, as quoted in the pages of our newspaper back in 2002, in the aftermath of the Republican mid-term election landslide:

“Those people ought to be arrested and tried for fraudulence,” said Tanner. “They took our minds off what was important, the economy, and sold us a bill of goods about Iraq. The idea, trying to convince us that a two-bit tinhorn dictator with 20 million starving people was a threat like Adolf Hitler! They don’t have any weapons to bother us with! The whole thing was an election fraud. Nothing but!”

Sounds like an ally to me, not an enemy. Maybe you owe Congressman Tanner a note of apology for using him to make your point. It’s a good point, to be sure, but a little bit like attacking Iraq to punish Al Qaeda, isn’t it? (Since Congress is not in session, here’s Representative Tanner’s home office address: PO Box 629, Union City, TN 38281. Or you can just call him directly at 731-885-7070.)

But this isn’t the favor I mentioned I wanted to ask. Or at least not the only one.

No, this may sound a little weird, and more than a little presumptuous, but I want you to pull out one particular film clip from Fahrenheit 9/11.

The one I have in mind comes towards the end of the movie, sandwiched among four or five in rapid succession, if memory serves me correctly. It’s more than a little grainy, but it shows President Bush at the podium of what appears to be a fundraiser, decked out in white dinner-jacket. The camera catches his opening remarks: “This is an impressive crowd of the haves and have mores,” he says. “Some people call you the elite, I call you my base.” The crowd roars with delight.

The message the viewer is expected to take from this clip and its neighbors is clear: George W. Bush panders to the rich. Not a novel or particularly difficult-to-prove premise, to be sure, but that’s obviously the message. Those nasty selfish Republicans are indeed the Bush “base.”

But surely you know where this particular clip came from. Surely, as a former newspaper dude yourself, you have fact-checkers. Surely you know as much about the circumstances of this particular film clip as my friend here in Memphis, Steve Denegri.

Actually, Steve’s a new friend, not an old one. He’s my friend because he kept me from making a complete fool of myself in print, writing about your movie. Let me explain.

You see, our weekly paper has a daily website, where on Saturday I posted an early version of a Fahrenheit 9/11 review I had written immediately after seeing the film. In that review, I wrote specifically about this clip, speaking about how powerfully it described the venality of the current administration, even suggesting that John Kerry use it in his own campaign. The “haves/have-mores” image, I suggested, was among the most powerful in the whole movie.

Fortunately for me, Steve Denegri saw my on-line review within an hour of its posting, and informed ignorant me of where exactly “President” Bush made this “haves/have mores” speech. “I watched this speech take place live as carried by the Fox News Channel on October 19, 2000, just a few weeks before the presidential election,” Steve told me via e-mail, “and there was a speaker that preceeded George W. Bush that evening: Al Gore. And among those in the crowd roaring with glee was Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

Steve went on to explain: “You see, both Bush and Gore were invited to speak at this fundraiser, one which put no money in either party’s pocket. That event was the 55th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, which that year raised $1.6 million, thanks to the appearances of then-candidates Bush and Gore. The Al Smith dinner has the very noble cause of health care at New York Catholic hospitals as its key fundraising theme, not the political agenda of an elite crowd of Bush supporters. Money raised that evening went toward care for the elderly, AIDS victims, unborn children, and unwed teenage mothers.”

Boy, did I ever feel stupid. You see, Michael, that remark came from what was basically a roast. It was made in self-deprecating jest. And George W. Bush wasn’t even President when he made it!

You can actually still find the full video on the Web (there’s a nice print summary of the event at http://cny.org/archive/ld/ld102600.htm). Right after Governor Bush talks about his “base,” he goes on to poke fun at someone else on dais alongside him: conservative critic William F. Buckley, Jr. “We have a lot in common,” smiles the Republican presidential candidate, gesturing at Buckley. “Bill wrote a book at Yale; I read one. He started the Conservative Party: I started a few parties myself.”

Thanks to Steve Denegri’s eagle eye, I was able to pull that draft review offline before it hit the actual newspaper. Don’t worry; I’ve still been able to use a lot of the same lines, in this letter to you, even. But since you probably don’t read The Memphis Flyer either on the web or in print, I thought I should call your attention to this gaffe directly.

Maybe this was just an honest mistake. If that’s the case, you probably owe George W. Bush an apology for taking his remarks in that “haves/have-mores” clip completely out of context. I know, I know: the idea of admitting a mistake to this guy who’s made more mistakes than any of us can count — and admitted nary a one — sort of sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? But fair is fair, don’t you think?

One way or the other, that clip needs to go from the movie. God knows, the crackpots on the right slam us every day on the basis of things we anti-war types haven’t even done, let alone done wrong. Let’s not give the suckers any free ammunition, ok? As it is, the presence of this particular clip in Fahrenheit 9/11 makes it the Mother of All Cheap Shots. It needs to go. Now.

And it’s not like the film will suffer by its removal. The dozens of other Bush clips you feature (by the way, is the President eligible to win a Best Actor award for his role in F9/11?) restate the obvious, in powerful terms: this man is simply not up to the job of being President of the United States. Whether it’s his goofy “now watch this drive…” line uttered after speaking resolutely about terrorism, or landing his jet on that aircraft carrier with the “Mission Accomplished” banner, or staring off into space, yes, for those remarkable seven minutes in that Florida classroom on the morning of September 11th, 2001, the clips you select for our re-viewing pleasure leave movie-goers convinced not only of the error of his ways, but in total bewilderment at how this second-rate buffoon ever got elected (sorry, selected) to be President of the United States. Good job.

But get rid of the “haves/have-mores” clip. Yes, as a filmmaker, you’re entitled to take a little artistic license in the making of your point. But when taking that license shoots loose and fast with the truth, aren’t you doing your own cause and mine a complete disservice?

All the best,

K.N.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen firing from a car killed Iraq’s deputy foreign minister Saturday in the first assassination of a senior official since the new interim government was announced this month. Iraqi authorities blamed Saddam Hussein loyalists.

— Lead story on the AP wire, 11 pm EDT, 12 June 2004

I’m sorry. I don’t really want to speak harshly about the media so soon after the historic events of this past week, at a time when the editorial leaders of the American press are no doubt still recovering from the stress of covering, 24/7, the Mother of All Funerals. The adjustment back to “hard” news (dare we call it reality?) should be expected to be a little jarring.

But the above report deserves comment. It left me wondering if the anonymous AP writer who wrote this story about Saturday’s assassination of Bassam Salih Kubah in Baghdad had taken complete leave of his senses.

Take a close look at the second sentence above. It’s simple enough, just six words. “Iraqi authorities” (read: the just-appointed government of Iraq working inside the Green Zone under the watchful eye of the American “authorities”) are blaming today’s sad incident upon “Saddam Hussein loyalists.”

Really? On whose authority do the authorities make this assertion? Are the authorities neither Iraqi nor American, but creatures from another planet? Martian, perhaps?

I have been watching, reading, and observing this sad little war of ours for fifteen months now, and not once have I seen a statement from an insurgent organization, in which that group takes responsibility for some horrid destructive act with language like this: “We did this because we are followers of Saddam Hussein, and we will keep doing nasty things like this until he is returned to power.”

Nope, and not once have I seen any one of the dozens of incidents that get oh-so-frequently attributed — at least at first — to “Saddam Hussein loyalists” proven eventually to have been the work of dastardly fellows who fit this job description. Whoever they are, “Saddam Hussein loyalists” seem as ethereal and as hard to find as the once-famous Weapons of Mass Destruction. Not even within the walls of Abu Ghraib, apparently, have there been any sightings of SHL’s.

Who are they, these ghost-like apparitions, these “Saddam Hussein loyalists”? Where do they live? Do they all have lookalike mustaches? Do they have secret handshakes? And who’s in charge of them now, now that the Main Man is safely behind bars at some Cheney-esque “undisclosed location”?

Tough questions. Questions somebody in the American media should present to the “authorities” before the next catastrophic event gets attributed to spectres.

There can be little doubt that some of the Bad Boys perpetrating outrages like today’s assassination are former Saddam-regime employees; Saddam after all had a liking for thugs. But, please, somebody buy dictionaries for the Associated Press staff. Calling the perps in today’s incident “thugs” and/or “scoundrels” is one thing; calling them “Saddam Hussein loyalists” suggests something different altogether.

After all, loyalists are, well, loyal. Just ask our President, who purportedly seeks out exactly that quality in his key employees. Loyalists are attached to a cause, and in this case, as the connective phrase AP uses suggests, a man. And not just any ordinary man. In this case, they’re loyal to a man whose destruction we orchestrated because of the threat he posed to our very existence.

Saddam’s loyalists must keep to themselves, though. How else do you explain why we’ve heard so little weeping and gnashing of teeth from Iraqis about their former tyrant? I’ve yet to see a sound bite in which some Arab man-on-the-street is caught on camera saying, “Good old Saddam, what a helluva guy! We sure do miss him in these parts.”

Many, many Iraqis have spoken out against the American invasion and occupation, but unless I’ve missed it, none has ever spoken wistfully about turning back the clock. Not one. Saddam Hussein would seem to be just about as popular in contemporary Iraq as I would be at a Tom Delay church picnic. Maybe even less.

So what gives? What does the AP reporter who filed this lead paragraph have in his head in place of brains? Does he intend, along, sadly, with so many of his colleagues, to continue parroting whatever he is told by the “authorities”? Even when what they’re telling him makes no sense whatsoever?

It’s bad enough that the war in Iraq has gotten mighty difficult for the “authorities.” Maybe our American faux-reporters should simply get out of the way, and remove themselves from Iraq, a country that they surely aren’t coming any closer to understanding.

They’d be doing everybody a favor. That way we could get ALL our news straight from the authorities. Eliminate unnecessary middlemen, for efficiency’s sake. And hey, if reporting the news ends up eating up too much of their time, the authorities can always “privatize.”

Halliburton, I feel certain, would be happy to help.

WHEN THE TREES FALLING IN THE FOREST STOP MAKING NOISE, CALL ON MICHAEL MOORE

The last thing journalists like to do is borrow from their peers. That’s why we’re such cantankerous folks. That’s why, I submit, Tuesday night’s Presidential Press Conference went so well, despite the fact that the Principal was reciting gibberish…

That’s why IÕm including Michael Moore’s latest column at the end of this one.

Let me explain. As many of you know, I am not particularly a Michael Moore fan. I think he’s a bit boorish, and, like myself many times, so shrill with his message that it can only be heard by dogs, creatures whom Nature has endowed with the ability to respond to high-frequency transmissions. I think he speaks for effect sometimes when he should be quiet, and let events speak for themselves. He’s eerily similar, in this regard, to someone else I know…

Ah, but if only the assembled talking-heads — the White House “press corps,” to use an oxymoron of the first order — at last night’s press conference, for example, had had the courage to write what Moore has written below. Alas, yet again, for the umpteenth time, they did not…

Not that Moore is “great”; on the contrary, all this has nothing to do with Michael Moore, whose only fault today was to state the obvious. No, it’s not Michael Moore’s fault that this window of opportunity presented itself, and that the timidity of our best “journalists” (oh, how it pains me to dignify this crowd that “covers” the White House with that honorific) manifested itself so boldly that, when, face-to-face with raw power, in the person of this President, chose last night to ignore the incoherence and unprecedented abject stupidity he displayed, for one and all to see, and chose instead to simply slam that window shut, returning to their cell phones and laptops, filing “fair and balanced” reports that ignored the pure Queegish-ness of the entire event.

Fair and balanced. My goodness: the poor man George cannot put together a cogent idea, let alone a grammatical sentence. And yet our “journalists” are so concerned with fairness that they missed the point entirely.

To wit: if a building were burning to the ground, and the semi-survivors were fleeing, themselves inflamed, these are the kinds of “journalists” who would be telling readers/viewers the hair color of all the walking corpses.

They are a disgrace — repeat:, a disgrace; if any of you who were there should read this, please, contact me; I’ll be happy to exchange correspondence. These guys are an utter disgrace to our profession. They are part of the problem, and have nothing to do with anything remotely resembling a solution…

The journalist “pool” sat there for an hour plus, all dressed to the nines (well, as well-dressed as journalists can get), listening to utter drivel, focusing not upon this remarkable Presidential nadir (no pun intended) but upon “looking good” when they got their “chance” to shine, i.e. by asking a question.

A special spot in Hades is reserved for NPR’s Don Ganyae; when given a chance to ask the last question, he chose to ask Bush something amorphous, instead of restating the obvious: “Mr. President, I have no new question, but will simply repeat the five you have thus far no answered tonight, and ask you, sir, please, in the limited time left, to answer the one of your choosing.”

Instead, Don gave Mr. Bush a waffle-iron, and the rest is history. Shame!

No, like poor Don, all the questioners were focused on what was important: to/for themselves. Ask the right question; make it sound good; and most of all, don’t do anything that will ever, ever, let your employer suspect you’re not “good” for the position. My god, is there anyone left in journalistic America who cares more for their conscience than their job?

God save America, most especially from these gutless fools and, yes, the even Greater Fool now occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…

k

PS Full disclosure; I have to admit to a bias towards the Moore piece below, because, well, you know, I love the “you closed down a friggin’ weekly newspaper” line.

Moore started out in life, as many of you know, by launching a free alternative weekly in Flint, Michigan. Understand that — as someone who did the same dumb thing, in Memphis, not Flint — my view of him is thus somewhat skewed.

After all, if he was stupid enough to do that in Flint, Michigan, he was a hell of a lot smarter than I am, ever was, or ever will be. And yet still; note his e-mail address…

PPS Read or re-read The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman, 1988.

Heads Up

April 14, 2004

Friends, I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the “news conference” given by George W. Bush. He’s still talking about finding “weapons of mass destruction” — this time on Saddam’s “turkey farm.”

Turkey indeed. Clearly the White House believes there are enough idiots in the 17 swing states who will buy this. I think they are in for a rude awakening.

I’ve been holed up for weeks in the editing room finishing my film (“Fahrenheit 911”). That’s why you haven’t heard from me lately. But after last night’s Lyndon Johnson impersonation from the East Room — essentially promising to send even more troops into the Iraq sinkhole — I had to write you all a note.

First, can we stop the Orwellian language and start using the proper names for things?

Those are not ÒcontractorsÓ in Iraq. They are not there to fix a roof or to pour concrete in a driveway. They are MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. They are there for the money, and the money is very good if you live long enough to spend it.

Halliburton is not a “company” doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested — or worse.

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not “insurgents” or “terrorists” or “The Enemy.” They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win.

Get it, Mr. Bush? You closed down a friggin’ weekly newspaper, you great giver of freedom and democracy! Then all hell broke loose. The paper only had 10,000 readers! Why are you smirking?

One year after we wiped the face of the Saddam statue with our American flag before yanking him down, it is now too dangerous for a single media person to go to that square in Baghdad and file a report on the wonderful one-year anniversary celebration. Of course, there is no celebration, and those brave blow-dried “embeds” can’t even leave the safety of the fort in downtown Baghdad.

They never actually SEE what is taking place across Iraq (most of the pictures we see on TV are shot by Arab media and some Europeans). When you watch a report “from Iraq” what you are getting is the press release handed out by the U.S. occupation force and repeated to you as “news.”

I currently have two cameramen/reporters doing work for me in Iraq for my movie (unbeknownst to the Army). They are talking to soldiers and gathering the true sentiment about what is really going on. They Fed Ex the footage back to me each week.

That’s right, Fed Ex. Who said we haven’t brought freedom to Iraq!

The funniest story my guys tell me is how when they fly into Baghdad, they don’t have to show a passport or go through immigration. Why not? Because they have not traveled from a foreign country — they’re coming from America TO America, a place that is ours, a new American territory called Iraq.

There is a lot of talk amongst Bush’s opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess?

I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I’m sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.

Until then, enjoy the “pacification” of Falluja, the “containment” of Sadr City, and the next Tet Offensive Ð oops, I mean, “terrorist attack by a small group of Baathist loyalists” (Hahaha! I love writing those words, Baathist loyalists, it makes me sound so Peter Jennings!) — followed by a “news conference” where we will be told that we must “stay the course” because we are “winning the hearts and minds of the people.”

I’ll write again soon. Don’t despair. Remember, the American people are not that stupid. Sure, we can be frightened into a war, but we always come around sooner or later — and the one way this is NOT like Vietnam is that it hasn’t taken the public four long years to figure out they were lied to.

Now if Bush would just quit speaking in public and giving me more free material for my movie, I can get back to work and get it done. I’ve got four weeks left ’til completion. Yours, Michael Moore

mmflint@aol.com

www.michaelmoore.com

POST-SCRIPT:I am sorry. I do not mean to be so, well, intrusive.

But after Tuesday night’s debacle of a press conference, our befuddled Leader Wednesday, without warning, decided unilaterally — without reference to his Republican congressional toadies, even — to lock in place his alliance with the Israeli right wing…

This is not a matter of supporting Israel, many of whose citizens find Sharon’s policies as despicable as most of the rest of the world does. Not, this is dementia; madness, plain and simple. George W. Bush is a child who enjoys playing with matches. And after planting today a keg of dynamite underneath a 100-ton wooden vat of oil, he’s wondering — just for fun? out of malice? because he likes loud noises? — what might happen if we put a match to the fuse…

Decades of American foreign policy have been tossed by the wayside, overnight, as if they had never existed. I will be very surprised if there are not a few resignations tomorrow from the State Department, no doubt departures unlamented by the White House…

Cry the beloved country. Imagine what we these United States have just done. We now have made the ultimate declaration of war: right-wing America and right-wing Israel, united against the world! Let none dare stand in our way…..

It is utter, complete madness. How Colin Powell, the man who advised Bush pere of the dangers of an Iraqi invasion, can look himself in the mirror, God only knows….

And mark these words: if we think we have inflamed the Islamic world before now, just wait a week. We are about to inherit the wind….

k

(Kenneth Heill is CEO of Contemporary Media Inc., which publishes The Memphis Flyer, Memphis Magazine, and a variety of other Memphis-area publications. Michael Moore is, of course, the well-known author, social critic, and Academy Award-winning documentarian.)

SPANISH LESSON

A tragic week in Spain came to an end Sunday with the resounding defeat at the polls of Jose Maria Aznar’s Popular Party, and his replacement as prime minister by the Socialist Worker’s Party leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. A phenomenal 77% of registered Spanish voters turned out in the aftermath of the Madrid outrage, directly rebuking Aznar for supporting the Bush Administration’s Iraq invasion a year ago this month.

Despite the horror of the past week, Spain can legitimately call itself one of the world’s great democracies. What a pity that the United States of America — despite all of our current government’s flag-waving and patriotic posturing — cannot do the same.

Why not, you say? Before you choke on your apple pie, remember that the last time we had a 77% voter turnout in a national election, Babe Ruth was still in pinstripes. For decades, our country’s levels of voter turnout have been abysmal, well below international averages. When it comes to participatory democracy, we’re lower than pond scum. Seriously.

Outside our own borders, everybody knows what charlatans we are in this regard. Only rarely does an American election attract the attention of even half of our registered voters. Far more common are state and municipal elections decided by mere fractions of the potential electorate.

We had just such a lame excuse for an election right here in Memphis last December 16th, a primary for a vacancy in the Tennessee State House of Representatives. The event was so popular that it drew the attention of just over 5% of registered Democratic voters; in this case, less people than show up at a medium-sized Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon.

The victor that day, Beverly Marrero (an excellent candidate, by the way) won the right to run for the seat in a heavily-Democratic district with — are you ready? — 750 votes out of the total 1,235 ballots cast. Her opponent got a mere 485 votes, and was thus soundly thrashed.

It’s a bit self-serving to say this, but, honestly, a good party at the Flyer‘s offices — we are somewhat famous for these, truth be told — could have made all the difference in this “election.” That, my friends, is an extremely frightening thought.

Ms. Marrero is now a legislator in Nashville, representing the state’s 85th district, elected to her office by a tiny sliver of the total electorate. No offense to Beverly, who, I am sure, will represent her district well, but as Lee Iaccoca might say, is this any way to run a government?

In 2000, the last time we had a chance to elect a new president, 63.8% of America’s registered voters participated. That sounds more reasonable, yes? But keep in mind that that figure doesn’t include the tens of millions of our fellow Americans who have never — not once ever in their lifetimes — bothered registering to vote.

The sad truth is that less than half of all adult Americans actually voted in the 2000 Presidential elections, an election which was hotly contested, an election for which turnout was higher than in 1996. For us, it was a statistical victory; for truly democratic countries like Brazil or New Zealand, it would have been a national disgrace.

This is reality: No other democratic country in the developed word treats the concept of elections as flippantly as we do. We are truly special: almost every government we ever elect, at every level, is a minority government. Over half of us are mere sheep, being led wherever the government the rest of us chooses. When it comes to getting out and voting, half of us would rather have a Gatorade.

Just how bad are we? Well, just using the registered-voter figure, our country’s 63.8% turnout in 2000 was good enough for 148th place on the chart of 200 national elections held in democracies around the world over the past decade. (You can check all this data out, and more, at www.nationmaster.com.)

Compare our performance to countries like Australia (95.4% turnout in their 2001 elections) and Belgium (90.6% in 1999), and you’ll quickly realize that we perennially win the gold-medal competition in the Olympic voter-apathy category. As large a threat as “terrorism” poses to our democracy, it is a mere bagatelle, when compared to the enormous danger we pose to ourselves by countenancing an electorate that wants nothing to do with electing.

So what should we do, now especially, when we have a critical Presidential election just over the horizon? Bear with me a moment, and ask yourself the same question I asked myself last Sunday, after seeing how many Spaniards went to the polls to determine their country’s future.

What’s to prevent George W. Bush and John Kerry, under the auspices of an organization like the League of Women Voters, from getting personally involved in addressing this problem? What’s to keep Bush and Kerry from STANDING TOGETHER in a series of television ads, campaigning together for what’s truly important: encouraging Americans to get out and vote in November?

Answer: Absolutely nothing. I feel certain the money could be found to make and screen these commercials, taking nary a dollar from either candidate’s war chest. Consider this potential sixty-second script, written, of course, by a complete PR amateur, yours truly:

Kerry: Mr. President, it’s a national disgrace…

Bush: Senator, I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s something I lay awake at night thinking about…

Kerry: Me, too. Makes me wonder sometimes why we bother, at allÉ

Bush: Yep. We’ve gotta put a stop to it…

Kerry: Or a start.

Bush (turning to camera): You know, the Senator and I will be competing in the months ahead for the Presidency of this great country…

Kerry: And it’ll be up to you to make the pivotal decision as to which of us should serve in our nation’s highest office these next four years…

Bush: That’s a big decision, but it’s not ours to make…

Kerry: Nope…

Bush and Kerry, in unison: It’s yours…

Bush: Our country has one of the democratic world’s lowest voter turnout percentages…

Kerry: And that’s an embarrassment to both of us, and should be for all Americans…

Bush: So this November 9th, do the right thing…

Kerry (camera on Bush): Vote for him, if you prefer his policiesÉ

Bush (camera on Kerry): Or if you prefer, vote for him.

Kerry: But whatever you do…

Bush: Don’t stay home.

Kerry: Get out and vote…

Bush: The future of America is in your hands…

Kerry and Bush (in unison): Not ours…..

Think about it. The impact of such a joint get-out-the-vote campaign might well be extraordinary; it could actually make voting “cool.” At the very least, the political talk shows would have grist for their mills, for days on ends. The talking heads would talk, the magazines would have dynamite covers, the buzz would get buzzing. And we Americans would send an unmistakable message to the rest of the world: we as a nation intend to do more than pay lip-service to the ideals that we keep talking about, ad nauseum, to everyone else.

I would hope that both President Bush and Senator Kerry could embrace this idea wholeheartedly. Actually, they’d be fools not to; if either of them refused, the other could harvest massive quantities of political hay, simply by contrasting his own willingness to get out the vote with his opponent’s reluctance to do so.

But all this isn’t about political advantage; it’s about dry rot in our body politic. It’s time to address the problem, before it’s too late. Let’s make America a real democracy, instead of the hollow shell that passes for reality today.

(Kenneth Neill is CEO of Contemporary Media Inc., the parent company of The Memphis Flyer.)