“B” Is For Bullshit

In an official statement the McCain campaign says: “We’re shaken up by this. It’s sick and disgusting.”

- KDKA.com – 10/23/08

It certainly is! Indeed, everything about the stupid hoax perpetrated by Ashley Todd, a McCain campaign worker from Texas temporarily based in Pennsylvania — in which she claimed that a six-foot-four black man robbed her at an ATM and then, when he saw the McCain sticker on her car, beat her, held her down and carved a “B” into her right cheek — reeks of the hysterical tabloid idiocy so typical of American public discourse whenever race is concerned.

Even more disturbing is the role of the McCain campaign in all this. Instead of keeping Ms. Todd at arm’s length until the facts of the “crime” could be verified, the campaign — and the candidate and his running mate themselves — jumped in feet first. McCain provided the quote above in an official statement, and Palin reportedly called the (apparently mentally ill) young woman herself to commiserate with her on the heinous attack that wasn’t. Neither candidate so much as questioned a tall tale that evoked the most blatantly racist stereotypes of black males as violent, out-of-control thieves and attackers. It makes one wonder if, in the screening room of McCain’s and Palin’s minds, an old D. W. Griffith movie of sweet white flesh assaulted by bestial ex-slaves runs in an endless tape loop.

But it gets better. The McCain campaign’s Pennsylvania Communications Director, Peter Feldman, according to Raw Story, deliberately pitched an “inflammatory” version of Todd’s hoax to reporters that was far worse than the version released by police (who, it turns out, never believed Todd’s story in the first place). According to Feldman, Todd’s mythical attacker told her, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.” Apparently, the brute was endowed with psychic powers, as he was able to figure out that Todd was a campaign volunteer from the mere fact of her car sporting a McCain sticker. Feldman even claimed that the “B” carved into her face (which she created herself, using a mirror) stood for “Barack” – a claim Todd herself apparently never made. Feldman, of course, was never asked by reporters to explain why the “B” was carved backwards.

This incident ennobles no one. Matt Drudge’s decision to run a “teaser story” about the fictional assault demonstrates yet again his poisonous influence on American Journalism. Although some reporters claim never to have bought into the story, they ran it anyway — so much for the liberal media. The McCain camp, by beieving the story uncritically, has disgraced itself, and will surely be dealing with the foul odor from this scandal from now until Election Day. Even the Obama camp is not untouched. Obama seemed a bit too eager to believe the outrageous story and sent his condolences to the young woman while condemning the “crime.”

Only Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party Presidential candiate, has directly and responsibly addressed the issue of race in this campaign. But her run for the presidency has been completly ignored by a media establishment that would rather print or broadcast false stories that appeal to people’s worst instincts and fears than discuss soberly the relationship of government to race. Details about Cynthia’s positions on race belong to another post. But once again she has risen above the political mire in which the corporate press and both mainstream political parties seem permanently trapped.

A final note: everyone involved might have done well to recall that “Todd” (“tod”), in German, means “dead.” As in “dead presidential campaign” — McCain’s.

A Reply to “An Appeal to Third Party Voters, Make the Difference for Obama” by Tom Hayden (Huffington Post)

Tom,

For a very long time, I have admired your work for civil rights and for peace. Therefore, I feel that you have the right to know why I cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama.
It is simply not true that George W. Bush won the 2000 election, or that all but a few “thousand” people believe this. The evidence proves that, if all the votes cast in Florida that year had been counted, Gore would have won. The Greens were scapegoated by a Democratic Party that supported most of the Bush agenda.
Though Obama allegedly opposes the Iraq War, he will leave troops to defend our “national interest” — oil — and will *expand* the war in Afghanistan. To vote for Obama, a war candidate masquerading as a peace candidate, would betray my most cherished beliefs.
In the very near future, if political trends continue, the human race will either become extinct, or will exist in such wretchedness that extinction would be preferable. The Green Party advocates new ways of dealing with these crises. Both the Democratic and Republican parties are ideologically exhausted.
If Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party gets just five percent of the vote on November 4th, the Greens will gain ballot access and funding and become a powerful force for progressive values. Therefore, I challenge you, Tom Hayden, to be true to the convictions of your youth, and pull the lever for Cynthia McKinney on Election Day for *real* change.
More on Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Black Friday and the Shame of Wall Street… and Congress

Giving Wall Street $800 Billion in taxpayer’s money — over $2000 for every man, woman and child in America — was supposed to free up credit markets and stabilize the economy, right? Yeah, right!

Perhaps the most shocking political episode in my lifetime has been the completely cynical and corrupt surrender of the Democratically-controlled Congress to the Wall Street speculators (aka, thieves), whose almost unbelievably reckless policies brought this gigantic mess upon us. And the punchline of this sick joke is that this criminal act of base thievery has not brought us economic security as advertised, but utter chaos. An entire country, Iceland, is on the verge of going under! From Britain to Australia, all is turmoil, confusion, FEAR. And everyone is saying or thinking: this can’t go on, the market’s going to bottom out soon… isn’t it?

I’m convinced that this has happened because the Left doesn’t exist in America as a political force. Progressive people meeting, talking, demonstrating, writing blogs (like this one)… all that means nothing. All the talk and good intentions of good people can be cancelled literally at the stroke of Bush’s pen, or at the whim of the utterly cynical Nancy Pelosi, whose only thought is not, “How can we public servants help the people?” but “How can we political hacks avoid damage and gain power?” The only reason the bailout took a week to get through Congress was because of the resistance of wingnut Ayn Rand Republicans! The Democratic leadership were completely okay with giving away the people’s money to their buddies in the financial services industry. The Party that refused to impeach the sociopath George Bush and the truly evil Dick Cheney, ostensibly on the grounds that they were lame ducks and couldn’t do any more harm, have now allowed those two criminals to start one last war: the war against the  American taxpayer!

Have Bush/Pelosi gone too far? Will the American people stand for this? I was coming home on the subway tonight and all I saw around me were people napping, reading bad newspapers, nodding out… oblivious. Yet the events of the past few weeks might ultimately cause more misery — more starvation, more homelessness, more hopelessness – than America has seen since the Great Depression. 

Who wins the election almost doesn’t matter. (Yes, McCain/Palin might attack Iran, and that does matter.) President Obama is not going to pull us out of this mess. (Somebody has rightly written that, if Barack wins, his new slogan might well be, “No, we can’t,” as in “no, we can’t have any more social services because there’s no more money.”) President McCain definitely won’t pull us out of it. Only We the People can pull us out of this.

If Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party gets 5% of the national vote, that would at least be a beginning, because it would raise the Greens to major party status and give Progressives a voice in government. But whether McKinney succeeds or not, it’s up to the people to get mad and fight back, by doing direct action, by organizing strikes, by never letting our lying, traitorous “representatives” off the hook. As Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young once sang, “We’re finally on our own.”