i'm starting late tonight but for a good reason. cedric wanted to read a post he was working on so i listened to it and we stayed on the phone for about an hour after just talking.
make a point to read cedric's 'Thoughts on Michael Jackson and heroes.' when he called, he had to fill me in 1st because i hadn't even heard any michael jackson news today.
so let's get the bad news out of the way. bully boy's signed the reauthorization of the patriot act and tenneessee's state senate is moving to overturn abortion. every right wing controlled state will probably follow this pattern as they attempt to create the 'perfect' test case to get the supreme court to overturn roe v. wade.
here's kim gandy, president of now, from 'the attack has begun:'
The attack has begun. Women are counting on us and we must not lose this fight.
This week South Dakota enacted a ban on all abortions except to save the life of the woman. Her health and future fertility do not matter to the South Dakota legislature or Governor Rounds. The fact that a woman has survived rape or incest does not matter to them. Because THEY know what is best for her and for her family, and they intend to force their will on her. Will your state be next?
roberts and alito's confirmations mattered, even though democrats didn't seem to think so. not enough to filibuster. and i'm also recalling all the gas bags taking up time prior to each confirmation whining that 'abortion isn't the only issue.' no, it wasn't. and all the law professors stating that usually went on to make a bad case for their own pet issue. too bad because abortion is concrete and every 1 can grasp it. too bad that a lot of them dismissed concerns about abortion.
more bad news. add in that the efforts to privatize the irs continue. following up on 2004 legislation, the irs has selected 3 private companies to help them collect debts. how much fun that will be for the people who owe taxes.
from my e-mail inbox, danny schechter's 'Academy Awards Showcase Hollywood's Progressive Turn:'
New York, March 7: Jon Stewart gave it that old college try as the host of this year's Academy Awards. He got off a few on-target one-liners but could not light the place on fire. If, as the old song has it, "you can't put a tuxedo on the funky blues," you also can't take a TV comic that works in the controlled television culture and assume that because he's popular in one medium, he will knock the socks off of another.
Jon is in the attitude business, not the news business. He's ridiculing news media and political pretensions every day and, as a result, has become a counter-cultural hero and an anti-establishment figure.
The Academy Awards is an establishment function, the annual spectacle of the movie business and culture. It is deliberately star-studded and packaged to sell the dream machine and with it the fashions and personalities of the day.
Putting it down while pumping it up is a contradiction that is hard to resolve.
That could be one reason the ratings were down this year.
But what we also saw this year is that a concerned Hollywood is itself taking on the shallow Hollywood, challenging mindless entertainment with films that matter. That's why we were treated to that montage of social issue movies that Stewart smugly joked about. Jon knows that his own company Viacom, which owns CBS, would never have made a tough film about the network's glory years. (Notice how many stars plugging movies show up on his show and how few media activists there are promoting change. His Comedy Channel is there to keep us laughing -- not struggling for change.)
Those socially conscious films all took battles to make and offered the kind of creative commentary we rarely see on TV. "Network" was about TV, not a product of it, and far more radical than the Daily Show because it appeals to its viewers not just to smirk or smile but to shout "I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." (In some ways that's what media activists are doing today with the upcoming protests against the coverage of the war.)
also from the inbox, fair's 'Brian Ross "Completely Aware" of WMD Context: So why weren't ABC viewers allowed to know?:'
Two recent reports on ABC raised the possibility that 10-year-old tapes of Saddam Hussein might show that he "did hide weapons of mass destruction"--giving the White House's rationale for the March 2003 invasion a boost.But as a February 17 FAIR action alert pointed out, ABC's reporting omitted evidence that undermined this argument. The tapes seem to show Hussein Kamel, Iraq's weapons chief at the time, talking about information about weapons programs that Iraq had concealed from U.N. inspectors. But when Kamel defected--soon after these tapes were recorded--he not only told CIA and U.N. investigators about this concealment, he at the same time insisted that Iraq had destroyed all its unconventional weapons stockpiles. FAIR's alert questioned why ABC failed to inform its viewers about this key information.
2 more things i want to note. first c.i.'s 'NYT: 'G.O.P. Plan Would Allow Spying Without Warrants' (Shane and Kirkpatrick)' which i'm going to lobby hard for to get it spotlighted at the third estate sunday review. (lobbying means taking on c.i. who always says, 'go with some 1 else.') 2nd, "Washington nonprofit where Abramoff was director wrote articles favoring Abramoff clients" which is an abramoff story by john byrne and ron brynaert (why are we back in iraq?). oops, got a 3rd 1, betty's got a new chapter up, 'Club Membership: One.'
between ann richards cancer and the attacks on abortion, it didn't feel like much of an international women's day yesterday to me. ann richards is a strong woman and i'm sure she's in there fighting and i pray it turns out well. but between the 2 blows, it didn't feel much like a day of celebration.
democracy now wraps up their broadcasts from london so make sure to check that out tomorrow.
oh, elaine said i quoted her last night. she did make that statement. after the woman left. my statement, before that, was what caused 'perky' to leave. i don't remember making it but it sounds like me, unfortunately, it's too lewd to put up here. so i did remember right that elaine said what i remembered. i just didn't remember that i had said something prior and that after perky left, we all riffed on what i'd said (with cleaner versions).
