Koppel Defends Iraq Coverage

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!.
July 29, 2004

Editor's Note: One of the opportunities these conventions provide is the chance to ask questions of people we normally don't have access to. And it's not just the politicians. There are some 15,000 journalists crammed into the FleetCenter. America"s most recognizable newspeople roam the halls. Some, like Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, have their own security details. Yesterday, we caught up with Ted Koppel, the host of ABC's NightLine. And we asked him about the Network news coverage of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the ABC and the other networks should apologize for providing an uncritical forum for the administration to lay out their unsubstantiated claims of weapons of mass destruction?

I am glad you phrased your question so nicely. No, I don't think an apology is due if what you are saying is could we all have been more critical? I think the answer is yes. I must tell you, I am going to be responsive in behalf of Nightline over which I do have some control. We did do a 90-minute town hall meeting, the title of which was Why Now? and the essence of which was: Where is the evidence that there's an immediate danger to the United States? Did we do enough programs like that? I concede we did not. But that's a function of perhaps incompetence on my part, but certainly not ill will and I will try and do better the next time, but I don't think I need to apologize for it.

A study of the two weeks around Colin Powell giving his address at the U.N. for war looked at the four major nightly news casts ABC, CBS, and NBC and the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Of the 393 interviews done around war, only three were with anti-war representatives. Now this was at a time when about half of the population was opposed to the invasion wanting more inspections and diplomacy. So that did not reflect mainstream America at all.

No, but I, you know, where is it written that it is a journalist's responsibility to go check the polls every day and see what mainstream America wants them to do?

No. But three of almost 400 interviews were anti-war representatives? That is so skewed to the pro-war voice.

Right. I agree with you. But I must ask you in return, what was, you know, what would you have looked to for evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction? There was evidence in 1998 that those weapons of mass destruction, not only existed, but were present in, just let me finish the plot – not only existed, but were present in Iraq. It did not make logical sense that Saddam Hussein, whose armies had been defeated once before by the United States and the Coalition, would be prepared to lose control over his country if all he had to do was say all right, U.N., come on in, check it out, I will show you, give you whatever evidence you want to have, let you interview whomever you want to interview. Logically at that time, it seemed as though weapons of mass destruction – did I believe at the time that there were weapons of mass destruction? Absolutely, I did.

Well let me look at September 2002. Bush and Blair have their news conference at Camp David. They say an I.A.E. report has just come out that alleges that Saddam Hussein will get nuclear weapons within six months.

Yeah.

This was six month away before the invasion.

Sure.

Almost no mainstream reporter in this country reported, there was no such report.

I can take you back to 1990 for example when the evidence from the CIA was that there was no indication that the Iraqis had any kind of a nuclear program. After the war, they found all kinds of evidence.

But they were citing an IAE report that didn't exist. Then what about the son-in-law of Saddam Hussein? He said, he was quoted repeatedly by the press when they like what had he said. When he was anti-establishment, when he said we have no – we destroyed the weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War, then the press did not pick up on this. I mean – if these kinds of issues were the voices they would cite for other issues.

I am saying to you – I mean we can go around this as often as you like.

Let me ask a bigger question.

Well if you are going to let me answer the first one before you ask me the next one.

Okay.

I am saying to you that it did not make any sense that Saddam Hussein would run the risk of being overthrown; of losing all the power that he had, if, indeed, in 2003 he had no weapons of mass destruction. Why in the heaven's name did he not permit the kinds of inspections and the kinds of interviews that would have demonstrated that to the world's satisfaction? I am not saying that now I believe there were weapons of mass destruction immediately before the war. But I can understand why our leaders and why many of us in the media were inclined to believe that at the time.

Do you support the networks policy, including ABC’s, of putting retired generals, other military officials on the payroll, yet not putting peace activists on the payroll?

Yes, I do.

Why?

I do. Because I think there's a certain level of expertise that comes with having been, for example, a four-star general where we have Richard Clark, let's say, is one of our paid consultants on ABC. I wish that we could go back to the days of, I guess about 10, 15 years ago, when it was network policy that we didn't pay anybody to come on and express his or her point of view. Unfortunately, we live in such a competitive environment that everybody now expects to be paid. Why should a peace advocate expect to be paid for expressing a point of view without any – I mean if you are talking about someone who has extraordinary expertise, in a particular area, but you would have to be a little more specific about who, for example you had in mind.

The Pentagon would put out their point of view for free. Why pay one side? Because more often than not the generals are commenting on whether or not we need to go from air war to ground troops moving in ...

Once a general, I mean my experience has been that once a general is out of uniform and no longer in the Pentagon, is he a little more free to discuss aspects of a policy than he was when he was within the pentagon. But if what you are saying to me is do I wish we know longer paid experts at all? You bet. I think everybody ought to come on television for free the way I’ve just done for you. All right?

But when you keep these kind of commentators on a regular basis, you end up with a pro-war – they are continually doing the play by play and you don't have the …

On the contrary, I think for example, and he's not within of our paid expert, but you have Wesley Clarke who quite clearly has opposed the war over the past few months.

Not quite clearly before the invasion.

Not quite clearly before the invasion. But again, I mean it's not necessarily always true. But because someone is a four-star or was a four-star general, that he opposes or supports war.

But three of almost 400 interviews done around war being pro-war, that's a serious problem.

As you told me.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program Democracy Now!

Bush Follows Demands of Donors on Global Warming

Source: The Daily MisLead
July 22, 2004

Southern Company, a company that has given almost a half million dollars to Republicans congressional candidates[5] since 2000; has given more than $1.1 million in soft money to the Republican Party;[6] and whose executives[7] and political action committee[8] have given more than $79,000 directly to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

American Electric Power Company, a company that has given more than $550,000 to Republican congressional candidates[9] since 2000 and whose executives[10] and political action committee[11] have given $24,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Cinergy Corporation, a company that has given almost $200,000 to Republican congressional candidates[12] since 2000; has given more than $360,000 in soft money to the Republican Party;[13] and whose executives[14] and political action committee[15] have given more than $27,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Report Junk E-Mail
Report and Block Sender



From : The Daily Mislead
Sent : Thursday, July 22, 2004 1:52 PM
To : mjsm@hotmail.com
Subject : Bush Follows Demands of Donors on Global Warming

_BLOG Inbox


===============================

THE DAILY MIS-LEAD

< u="1291765&l="47280">

===============================



BUSH FOLLOWS DEMANDS OF DONORS ON GLOBAL WARMING



In 2000, President Bush promised that, if elected, he would work to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global
warming.[1] Yet, upon taking office, he withdrew American support from the Kyoto Treaty to regulate carbon dioxide,[2] and he
dismissed a report from his own Environmental Protection Agency pointing out carbon dioxide's critical role in global warming.[3]
Now, with the White House having done nothing to address the growing problem, elected attorneys from New York City and eight states
filed a lawsuit this week to force five utilities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.[4]

Why has President Bush reversed his position on carbon dioxide/global warming, and why has he refused to confront these energy
companies himself? Because they are among the top donors to Republicans and the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Among the defendants in the case are:

Southern Company, a company that has given almost a half million dollars to Republicans congressional candidates[5] since 2000; has
given more than $1.1 million in soft money to the Republican Party;[6] and whose executives[7] and political action committee[8]
have given more than $79,000 directly to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

American Electric Power Company, a company that has given more than $550,000 to Republican congressional candidates[9] since 2000
and whose executives[10] and political action committee[11] have given $24,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Cinergy Corporation, a company that has given almost $200,000 to Republican congressional candidates[12] since 2000; has given more
than $360,000 in soft money to the Republican Party;[13] and whose executives[14] and political action committee[15] have given more
than $27,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Sources:

1. "Representative Tom Allen Criticizes Bush Broken Promise on CO2 Emissions from Power Plants," Representative Tom Allen, 03/14/01,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47281.
2. "USA withdraws from Kyoto protocol ," Directorate of Environmental Affairs, 3/29/01,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47282.
3. "Bush Disses Global Warming Report ," CBSnews.com, 06/04/02, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47283.
4. "Suit targets carbon dioxide emissions by utilities ," Indystar.com, 07/22/04,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47284.
5. "Southern Co 2004 PAC Summary Data," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47285.
6. "Soft money donors found for Southern Co.," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47286.
7. Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47287.
8. "Southern Co 2004 PAC Summary Data," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47285.
9. "American Electric Power 2004 PAC Summary Data ," Opensecrets.org,
www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.asp?strID=C00096842&cycle=2004.
10. Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47288 .
11. "American Electric Power 2004 PAC Summary Data," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47289.
12. "Cinergy Corp 2004 PAC Summary Data," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47290.
13. "Soft money donors found for Cinergy," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47291.
14. Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47292.
15. "Cinergy Corp 2004 PAC Summary Data," Opensecrets.org, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47290.

Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion.

# # #

Ashcroft Publicly Misleads 9/11 Commission

Source: The Daily MisLead
July 23, 2004

During his public testimony before the 9/11 commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft attempted to deflect criticism from his ownlackluster counterterrorism efforts by pinning the blame on a 1995 memo written by former deputy Attorney General (and current 9/11commissioner) Jamie Gorelick. Ashcroft said, "The 1995 guidelines and the procedures developed around them imposed draconianbarriers, barriers between the law enforcement and intelligence communities. The wall effectively excluded prosecutors fromintelligence investigations. The wall left intelligence agents afraid to talk with criminal prosecutors or agents."[1] Ashcroftcalled the memo "the single greatest structural cause for the September 11 problem." In their final report released yesterday, thebi-partisan 9/11 commission concluded that Ashcroft's public testimony was false and misleading.

The commission bluntly stated that Ashcroft's public testimony did not "fairly or accurately reflect the significance of the 1995documents and their relevance to the 2001 discussions."[2] Specifically, "The Gorelick memorandum applied to two particular criminalcases, neither of which was involved in the summer 2001 information-sharing discussions." Any barriers between the law enforcementand intelligence communities were not created from written guidelines by internal Justice Department conflicts which "neitherAttorney General [Ashcroft or Reno] acted to resolve" prior to 9/11.

Even Ashcroft himself has recently backed away from his April testimony before the commission. In a recent document released by theJustice Department, Ashcroft conceded that Gorelick's memo permitted "interaction and information sharing between prosecutors andintelligence officers" and allowed the FBI to use the fruits of an intelligence investigation "in a criminal prosecution."[3]Ashcroft failed to mention that guidelines issued by his own deputy Attorney General, Larry Thompson, were more restrictive becausethey affirmed the Gorelick memo and added additional requirements.[4]

Sources:

1. "Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearing," The Washington Post, 04/13/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47468.
2. 9/11 Commission Final Report, p. 539, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47469.
3. Report from the Field: The USA PATRIOT Act at Work, U.S. Department of Justice, July 2004,
http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47470.
4. "Thompson Memo," U.S. Department of Justice, 08/06/01, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=47471.

Visit www.Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion.

Sudan Genocide: Our Win in Congress Pressures Bush

Source:  True Majority
By Andrew Greenblatt, Online Organizer
July 27, 2004

Two weeks ago, TrueMajority members urged Congress to name the atrocities in Sudan “genocide” and call on the Bush administration to take strong action, including a military intervention if necessary, to stop it. Within days, we delivered over 150,000 messages, and just before they adjourned until September, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate both unanimously passed the resolutions.

This was an important win, because international treaties signed by the United States require serious responses to any identified genocide. Congress is now unanimously on record on this issue, putting pressure on the president to act and to act now. His attempts to get the Sudanese government to turn against the Janjuweed militia, which it armed and encouraged to kill, aren’t working and simply can’t work in time. But as every Member of Congress — including all of those from the President’s own party — agrees, we must take whatever action we can to stop this genocide. You can read the resolutions and relevant press coverage here: www.darfurgenocide.org/success.htm.

Over 160,000 people already have died; another 500,000 of our fellow humans are at grave risk of dying in the coming months unless this genocide is stopped.

We are now working with our partners on a fast plan to really push this issue and force Bush to do whatever it takes to stop the genocide. We’re trying to rescue some Sudanese leaders who can come to America for a media tour and describe firsthand the genocide that’s taking place beyond the media’s attention. Amazingly, the State Department is dragging its feet on issuing the necessary visas. While we put that together, we’re working to set up satellite video hookups in refugee camps so that refugee spokespeople can be interviewed directly by American television. And Ben and his old friend Jerry will join a long list of notable elected officials, entertainers, human rights activists and others who have chosen to get arrested outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington to protest the genocide. We all need to do what we can.

Once we have a full plan together, we’ll let you know what it is and how you can help. In the meantime, know that your pressure on Congress worked as a critical first step and that further opportunities for you to take action will be coming soon.

New Stats Show Bush's Deficit Dishonesty

Source: THE DAILY MIS-LEAD
July 28, 2004

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly promised America that they would get their record-deficits under control. Last year, President Bush said "My Administration firmly believes in controlling the deficit and reducing it."[1] Similarly, Vice President Cheney said "I am a deficit hawk. So is the president."[2] But according to congressional sources, the government is soon
expected to project a record federal budget deficit, even as President Bush demands more money for war in Iraq[3] , and a $1 trillion proposal for more tax cuts.[4]

The Associated Press reports the government will project "that this year's federal deficit will exceed $420 billion" - a record[5]. The President last year tried to deflect blame for the deficit, claiming that "This nation has got a deficit because we have been through a war.[6] " While it is true that the President has spent more than $166 billion on the war,[7] the statistics show that his failed economic policies and massive tax cuts for the wealthy are the largest factors contributing to the fiscal demise[8]. Even the White House budget director essentially acknowledged the President's dishonesty about the cause of the deficit, saying "even if we had never been attacked, and incurred no costs of war or recovery from September 11th, and no tax relief had become law, we still would have gone into deficit[9]."

Sources:
1. "The President's Budget Proposal," New York Times,2/04/03.
2. Transcript of Meet the Press, 9/14/03.
3. "Bush asks for $25 billion more for Iraq, Afghanistan ," CNN.com, 5/06/04.
4. "Bush wants tax cuts to stay," Washington Times, 1/20/04.
5. "White House to project record deficit," Seattle Post Intelligencer, 7/28/04.
6. President Discusses Plan for Economic Growth in Ohio, Whitehouse.gov, 4/28/03.
7. "$166 Billion and Counting",Mercury News 9/15/03.
8. "Deficit Picture Even Grimmer Than New CBO Projections Suggest",Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 8/26/03.
9. Testimony of Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. Director of Office of Management and Budget Before House Ways and Means, Whitehouse.gov,
2/4-5/03.

Visit http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1291765&l=48189 for more about Bush Administration distortion.

The Scaife Strategy: Smother Teresa

Source: AlterNet
By Max Blumenthal
July 29, 2004.

Colin McNickle, the political wife-beater for billionnaire Richard Mellon-Scaife's right-wing attack machine, has set his sights on Teresa Heinz-Kerry – good thing she's willing to stand up to it.

Colin McNickle did not enter the Democratic Convention as an ordinary reporter. As the editorial page editor for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a newspaper owned by eccentric rightist billionaire Richard Mellon-Scaife, McNickle came to Boston as an agent provocateur. "What happens when a conservative commentator infiltrates the Democratic National Convention?" the Tribune-Review asked in pre-convention promotion of McNickle's coverage. McNickle answered that question on Sunday, July 25 by provoking a spat with Teresa Heinz-Kerry.

The dustup occurred after Heinz-Kerry gave a speech to the Pennsylvania delegation denouncing "some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics." McNickle approached her and asked what she meant by "un-American activities," in effect accusing her of McCarthyism. Heinz-Kerry denied using the phrase "un-American activities" and stormed off. Yet when Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell pointed out to her that McNickle was a reporter from the Tribune-Review, Heinz-Kerry returned to him with a rebuke. "You're from the Tribune Review?" she asked McNickle with a face tightened with rage. "That's understandable. You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."

Most of the mainstream press characterized the incident as The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg did: another example of "Teresa being Teresa." For them, the dustup was a resounding confirmation that their hastily scrawled sketch of an incurable free spirit who was filling John Kerry's campaign coffers while draining his political fortunes was an accurate one. However, there is much more to it than that. McNickle's provocation of Heinz-Kerry represents the latest manifestation of a poisonous dirty tricks campaign Scaife has financed to undermine Heinz-Kerry, a fellow Western Pennsylvania philanthropist whom he considers his rival. And now that Heinz-Kerry has been thrust into the national spotlight by her husband's presidential candidacy, Scaife's smears are likely to intensify.

"The dust-up between Teresa Heinz-Kerry and Colin McNickle has a long history behind it that goes back a good 15 years before McNickle even worked there," said Dennis Roddy, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who has covered Pennsylvania politics for over 30 years. "Scaife has had it in for [Heinz Kerry] because she's not sufficiently conservative, she's a moderate voice. She has always felt badly treated by the Tribune-Review and it doesn't surprise me that her grievances finally came out."

The Tribune-Review routinely sniped at Teresa Heinz during her marriage to Pennsylvania's Republican former Senator John Heinz. When the senator died in 1991, and the Massachusetts Junior Senator John Kerry stole Teresa's heart, the paper's attacks grew increasingly slanderous. On December 28, 1997, the paper featured an anonymously penned cover story falsely insinuating that a woman named Sheila Lawrence had had affairs with both Bill Clinton and Kerry. "Far from giving all to Bill, there was still something left over for Sen. John Kerry," who had "a very private tete-a-tete" with "sexy Sheila," the columnist alleged. In another column, the Tribune-Review mocked John Kerry as "Mr. Teresa Heinz."

Perhaps the most spurious of the Tribune-Review's attacks came in December, 2003, when it ran a piece accusing Heinz-Kerry of secretly "funneling cash" from her Heinz Endowment to the Tides Foundation, a group that "supports extreme left wing groups... anti-war protests... unlimited abortion rights, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy, as well as and [sic] environmental extremism." The piece was based on research conducted by the right-wing think tank Capital Research Center, yet failed to mention that Scaife granted the center $240,000 in 2002 or that he was connected to it in any way. The article also omitted the fact that the Heinz Foundation's grants were all strictly earmarked for mainstream Western Pennsylvania environmental charities, an inexcusable omission that could have been avoided if the paper had bothered to call either the Heinz Foundation or the Tides Foundation to confirm its wild claims.

Despite the article's shoddy research, its accusations became a favorite tune on the right's Mighty Wurlitzer. FrontPageMagazine plugged it in a piece called, "Teresa Heinz-Kerry: Bag Lady of the Radical Left;" The New York Post followed with the headline, "Teresa Heinz's Cash Connection;" Rush Limbaugh promoted the claims; the Weekly Standard picked the story up. By the time FOX's Brit Hume reported the accusations, they had been brushed clean of Scaife's fingerprints.

For the past 10 years, the point man in Scaife's anti-Heinz attack campaign has been Colin McNickle, a brash ideologue who has shaped the Tribune-Review's editorial page into a forum for some of the most fanatical currents of right-wing thought. Characteristic examples of McNickle's work include the anonymous obituary he commissioned of Catherine Graham which implied she murdered her husband, Philip Graham, in order to seize control of The Washington Post; his endorsement of the anti-immigrant border-patrolling Arizona militia leader, Chris Simcox; his routine references to Gov. Ed Rendell as a "socialist;" his penchant for quoting the Austrian aristocrat and conservative intellectual pioneer, Friedrich Von Hayek (perhaps Hayek's ideas were the "un-American traits" Heinz-Kerry referred to in her speech on Sunday). And there is also the fact that the Tribune-Review is the only newspaper in America which publishes columns by White nationalist author Sam Francis, a self-avowed "racialist" whose views are so extreme he was fired by the Washington Times.

McNickle has also displayed a disregard for journalistic ethics throughout his career. His chronic carelessness was most apparent in his July, 2000, column, "Thus (Mis)Speaketh Al," a collection of imbecilic quotes by then-presidential candidate Al Gore. Though the article was laugh-out-loud funny, there was one small problem: the statements McNickle attributed to Gore were actually quotes by former Vice President Dan Quayle. Yet even after his mistake was exposed, McNickle refused to give an inch. "I'll stand by where we got the information from," McNickle told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Despite McNickle's dubious background, since his dustup with Heinz-Kerry he has managed to convince the networks and mainstream press that he is a humble, workaday reporter victimized by "an arrogant, contentious billionaire," in the words of CNN's Bob Novak. In an interview on CNN on July 26, Anderson Cooper allowed McNickle to describe the Tribune-Review as "a very objective, middle-of-the-road paper" without a challenge. Later that evening on MSNBC, The New York Daily News' ever-credulous gossip columnist Lloyd Grove described McNickle as "just a reporter who's toiled in the past for the newswires UPI and AP." The following day McNickle innocently told Grove, "I'm a little uncomfortable with all the attention I'm getting. I'm here to report the news, not make it." If Grove had only done a quick search for McNickle's clips, he may have discovered what an absurd statement that was.

Scaife's dirty tricks campaign against Teresa Heinz-Kerry is not without precedent. Indeed, it bears ominous echoes to the Arkansas Project, the $2.4 million dollar dirty tricks campaign Scaife financed during the 1990's to paint Bill and Hillary Clinton as drug dealers, thieves and murderers which included paying "sources" for information that turned out to be false. Then as now, the spurious accusations germinated in Scaife's smear factory are eagerly broadcast by the right-wing punditocracy and naively entertained by a gossip-starved mainstream press terrified of appearing to affect any liberal bias.

And just as Hillary was initially derided by the press for claiming she was the victim of "a vast right-wing conspiracy," Heinz-Kerry is ridiculed for standing up to one of Scaife's hatchet men. Nevertheless, Teresa Heinz Kerry's dustup with Colin McNickle is an encouraging sign. Because like Hillary, Teresa Heinz Kerry has a keen awareness of who her enemies are and by telling them to "shove it," she has demonstrated the courage to stand up to them.

Max Blumenthal is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. Read his blog at http://www.maxblumenthal.blogspot.com

Two Letters from the Unsilent Majority

Source: unitedforpeace.org
To: President Bush and Senator Kerry

Join Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Howard Zinn, and United for Peace and Justice in signing on to these letters—go to http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority

Dear Senator Kerry,

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

This is a question you asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, testifying against the Vietnam War. If you are elected President of the United States, you will have to answer it. Surely, the war against Iraq, and the escalating disaster of our military occupation, qualify as some of the worst "mistakes" in the history of our nation.

In fact, the invasion of Iraq is the most dangerous and immoral action taken by the U.S. government since the devastation and atrocity in Vietnam. This is a subject you know more about than most, because you were there. Having served, you came home to denounce the evil of that war in language that many still admire for its unsparing honesty.

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" you asked in your testimony to the Senate in 1971. Representing one thousand veterans, you spoke plainly about your "determination to undertake one last mission-to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that has driven this country the last ten years or more, so from when 30 years from now our brothers go down a street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say `Vietnam' and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning." Now your opponents use these words to pillory you, as they try to justify another barbaric war with more "lies and garbage," in the words of General Anthony Zinni, another Vietnam veteran.

In 1971, you showed courage. But now, in 2004, we wait, and the world waits, to see if you will denounce the grave damage that the occupation of Iraq is doing to the United States and the world: the thousands of young men and women in our Armed Forces killed and wounded, the much larger number of dead and injured Iraqis, all caught in a vicious cycle of popular resistance and intensifying repression. Just as in Vietnam, there is no way out of this swamp of violence other than to renounce it. So far, all we have heard from you are politically-calibrated platitudes about staying the course. This is caution, not courage; calculation, not leadership. To our dismay, you have even suggested sending more troops to Iraq, a policy that may require the reinstatement of the draft to sustain.

Senator Kerry, we call on you to show the same courage now that you did in 1971. Tell the people of this country the war was wrong, the occupation is disaster, and that we can have no future as a colonial power. Speak up for what's right, right now. Otherwise, if you are elected, you will have to tell some family, years from now, that their daughter or son was the last one to die defending not simply a "mistake," but a series of lies. You will be known as the president who dragged the U.S. further into a quagmire of countless needless deaths.

We urge you to speak as a winter soldier, not a summer patriot. As you know, a war begun for the wrong reasons cannot be made right. The only way forward is to end this war now.

Sincerely,

**********************************************

Dear President Bush,

In sending our young men and women to fight, to kill, and to die in Iraq, you have committed a grievous wrong and trampled international law. People from small towns and inner cities, for whom military service was a desperately-needed form of economic mobility, now suffer for your imperial fantasies. We know why you will not be seen in public with the coffins of our war-dead, with the grieving families: you cannot face them.

Instead of bringing freedom to the Iraqi people, you have imposed a colonial occupation. Thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives as "collateral damage" in this war built on lies. Do you think that Iraqi mothers and fathers care any less for their children than you do for yours? When their homes or mosques are rocketed or shelled, do you imagine they thank you? You call them "terrorists" for defending their country, but our troops know better. They understand this is a war of resistance, and that every day the occupation continues they will face more and more Iraqis united in their opposition to foreign domination. Our troops have committed war crimes inside the very prisons where Saddam Hussein tortured his prisoners. How long will it be before our Armed Forces are torn apart by an unjust war, as they were in Vietnam?

You claimed that this war was necessary to avert immediate threats from the government of Saddam Hussein. Now that government is gone, but we are more at risk than before. This war has done nothing to make the United States safer. It has made the world more dangerous. You lied to us and to the world.

The war against Iraq and the corrupt occupation have ruined our standing internationally. Evidently, that matters little to you or your small circle of advisors, but it matters greatly to the rest of us. We cannot function as a healthy democracy, we cannot contribute to peace, we cannot be safe from terrorism in a world community that regards the United States as an outlaw nation.

You have asserted that history does not matter, and that God wanted you to be President. We urge you, as people from every religious and ethical tradition who share a deep faith in democracy, to end this barbarism. Bring our troops home now, end the occupation, and give up your fantasy of permanent domination over the world.

Sincerely,

(Your Name)

***********************************************

Initiated By: United for Peace and Justice
Go to http://www.unitedforpeace.org/UnsilentMajority to sign this letter and send it out to Kerry & Bush

The Democratic National Convention Concerts Political Activism Presidential Elections 2004 Rock Music Concerts Rock Music Presidential Elections 2004

Source: Times

By Geoff Boucher, Times Staff Writer

Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and a deep roster of other rockstars will unite for politically minded concerts this fall that will give voiceto dissatisfaction with the Bush administration.

The all-star rock shows, which are expected to begin in October and targetcampaign swing states, are in the planning stage but were confirmed by half adozen music industry sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Insiders disagree on the unifying rhythm of the celebrity coalition. Some say itis the promise of the John F. Kerry candidacy, but at least one emphasizes thefear of President Bush's reelection. "There is a range of feeling about Kerry,"the source said, "but a uniform belief that Bush must go."

The tour turns up the volume of the rock scene's role in politics, but it is notthe only example of an apparent surge of commentary among artists. Rockers seemvirtually unanimous in their anti-Bush stance, just as country music has seen awave of passionate patriotism and support for the president, exemplified by thesongs of Toby Keith.

MTV has been showing a video by the British dance-pop outfit Faithless thatfeatures a teen shipped off to Iraq only to return home wounded anddisillusioned. Representing a different generation, Tom Waits and John Fogertyhave recorded songs about Iraq. For Waits, it's the first political song of hisfour-decade career; for Fogerty, it's a return to his Vietnam-era songs such as"Who'll Stop the Rain."

Elsewhere, rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs is steering a new voter registrationdrive, and the usually bratty punk-pop band Green Day has said its next albumwill be a political concept piece. Steve Earle has a new album laced with songsabout Iraq and Bush and even a mocking valentine to national security advisorCondoleezza Rice. Blues player Keb Mo has an upcoming album of peace songs,including John Lennon's "Imagine" and Buffalo Springfield's "For What It'sWorth."
Introducing political commentary into music is sometimes a risky prospect * evenif it's just a passing reference.

Last weekend, Linda Ronstadt was booed in Las Vegas for praising a Bush nemesis,filmmaker Michael Moore, while Ozzy Osbourne relented to critics and removedconcert imagery that showed Bush and Hitler together on an overhead screen.

The countercultural mind-set and recklessness once at the core of rock music nowseem relegated to the distant past, Elton John told Interview magazine. He saidthat protest had often given way to strict careerism in this corporate age.

"There's an atmosphere of fear in America right now, and that is deadly," Johnsaid. "Everyone is too career-conscious. They're all too scared*. Things havechanged."

Tom Morello, guitarist with Rage Against the Machine and once a staffer to thelate California Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston, is a veteran ofpolitics-meets-rock. "I'm not surprised you're seeing this music being made, andI'm not surprised it's connecting with an audience," he said. "It's not justpeople who write songs * carpenters, teachers, everyone is ready for a regimechange."

Morello was cited by some sources as a probable participant in the concertseries, but he declined to confirm plans for the shows.

No album or song is likely to capture as much media attention as the concertsinvolving Springsteen in swing states, which are expected to take place inarenas.

Organizers have been tight-lipped since discussions of the idea caught the earsof some of the stars in April. At the end of last week, the formal announcementwas scheduled for Aug. 4 in New York.

Other artists expected to join the lineup include Earle, the Dave Matthews Band,the Dixie Chicks, Bright Eyes, Ani DiFranco, Death Cab for Cutie andInternational Noise Conspiracy. There also are reports that Bob Dylan and JamesTaylor may be part of the bill.

The shows reportedly will benefit several organizations, chief among themMoveOn.org, the advocacy group that champions a liberal agenda through Web-basedgrass-roots efforts.
All-star concerts to raise money for philanthropic or political causes havebecome a tradition. The template goes back to 1971 with George Harrison'sConcert for Bangladesh and the no-nukes shows of 1980 that featured Springsteenand such artists as Taylor, Jackson Browne and Carly Simon.

Organizers have tried to keep the fall shows under wraps to spotlight theofficial announcement. Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, declined to discussthe shows, and Young's manager, Elliot Roberts, did not return calls. WhenBertis Downs, who manages R.E.M., was asked about the band's fundraising plans,he replied, "I can't talk about that."

R.E.M became one of the first bands to criticize the war in Iraq when it posteda song on its website in March 2003, the month of the invasion.

Others now joining the critical chorus include the Beastie Boys, a PerfectCircle and Jay Farrar, the alternative-country rocker who said Saturday that heresisted political messages in the past because the topic didn't fit hissensibilities.

But now, he said, he would feel derelict if he didn't speak up. "And there willbe a lot more artists doing the same thing if Bush gets reelected."

Anger Management: Kerry's Put The Kibosh On Bashing Bush, But Can He Do Anything About The Outbreak Of Hotel Envy?

By Ariana Huffington
July 27, 2004

BOSTON -- Forget Disneyland, for the next few days, Beantown is thehappiest place on earth. Or at least the most civil.

The Kerry campaign has put the kibosh on Bush-bashing, preferring to maketheir candidate's positive vision for the country the overriding theme ofthe convention.

It's the Anger Management Platform -- and a very sensible strategy.

Unfettered rage at Bush, his corporate cronyism and his lies about Iraq (oops, I think that's one of the proscribed phrases; my bad) has fueledthe Democrats since a movement of outraged activists gave the party a muchneeded spine transplant during the primary season. Kerry picked up thebaton in Iowa and has run with it to great effect. At the moment, fifty-four percent of Americans feel that the country is moving in thewrong direction -- and nearly three-fifths say we need to change course.

Now it's time for Kerry to convince voters that he's the one to chart thenew direction, and to define just what that direction will be.

So everywhere you go here -- or, at least, everywhere the police allow youto go -- everyone is reading from the same positive playbook.

At a star-studded and jam-packed pre-convention event honoring Bill andHillary Clinton -- the A-list affair was so overbooked that many VIPs hadto hover outside the door, waiting for someone to leave before the firemarshals would let them in -- the former first couple was humble and onmessage, with Bill describing himself and Hillary as "foot soldiers for Kerry/Edwards". They had clearly gotten the anger management memo, andthe former president, in particular, avoided the more critical stance hehas recently adopted toward Bush. The only whiff of a dig at W. wasClinton's assurance that the one thing Democrats could count on was that,this time, "every vote will be counted" (this must be on the list ofpre-approved phrases; I've heard it a number of times since arriving inBoston -- and it never fails to draw a cheer).

As Tad Devine, Kerry's senior campaign strategist, described it to me: "Itell everyone, 'It's okay to throw the occasional elbow, just avoid theflagrant fouls'."

The harmonious vibe at the Clinton party was so strong that WilliamSafire, the New York Times op-ed page's conservative grise, turned to meafter scanning the room and said, "There's so much discipline and unityhere, it feels like a Republican Convention".

If there were one place where you would have expected the kid glovesapproach to fall by the wayside, it would have been at the tributehonoring the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, held at the Old West Church, onCambridge Street. The event was standing room only, and was attended bysome of the most progressive members of the Democratic Party, includingpanelists Jim Hightower, Al Franken, and Leo Gerard, president of theUnited Steelworkers of America. Four years ago, Wellstone had spoken atthe Shadow Convention in Los Angeles, delivering a fiery call to action toprogressive Democrats: "I'm tired of waiting… It's time for us to find ourown voice, to do our own organizing, to push forward on reform, to pushforward on issues of economic justice, and to make the United States ofAmerica, this good country, even better."

But even among this most passionately anti-Bush crowd, the wellspring ofrage bubbling just beneath the surface remained almost entirely bottledup.

You know that the Positivity Party is in full swing when Al Gore, who theL.A. Times' Ron Brownstein says has been "channeling the Democratic id inpodium-pounding speeches that seem designed to end with the distributionof pitchforks", takes to the Convention stage and delivers an unfailinglyupbeat message. One of his few discordant notes Monday night was, likeClinton, a dig at 2000: "Let's make sure," he said, "that the SupremeCourt does not pick the next president -- and that this president is notthe one who picks the next Supreme Court." The former VP was quick topoint out, however, that he's made peace with the contentious past: "Idon't want you to think that I lay awake at night counting and recountingsheep." He didn't say anything about lying in bed counting and recountingdangling chads, however.

Anger, and the wisdom of keeping it in check, were the subject of a pairof competing briefings I attended on Monday afternoon at the Four Seasonshotel, which is the hub of behind-the-scenes campaign activity away fromthe Fleet Center. One featured Harold Ickes of America Coming Together,which has now raised $80 million, a substantial chunk of which will bespent in August taking the whip to Bush's hide. The other featuredpollster Stan Greenberg discussing the mindset of potential Nader voters."Anger," he said, "is the defining characteristic of the Nader voter.They loathe Bush but they don't want to cast their vote for thelesser-of-two-evils. They want to vote on principle." In other words, ifKerry is going to convince them to pass on Nader and vote for him, he'sgoing to have to show them that he stands for more than just not beingBush.

I had my own Close Encounter of the Newly Unified Kind when I shared astage with Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe at a raucous rally ofover a thousand College Democrats. It was less than two years ago, afterthe Democrats' November 2002 debacle, that I wrote a column entitled"Bring Me the Head of Terry McAuliffe!" Now here we were hugging, himsaying some nice things about me, and me giving him my ancient Greeksecrets for helping his battle-ravaged voice to heal ("Don't forget thecayenne pepper!").

It just goes to show you what four years of George Bush in the White Housecan do to bring people together. I suppose he really is a uniter, not adivider.

With trashing Bush all-but-verboten, the Dems' natural feistiness has beenrouted into other directions. The most conspicuous of these is theoutbreak of Hotel Envy that has swept across Fortress Boston. At thisconvention, you are where you stay.

Here's the local pecking order: staying at the Four Seasons means you area serious power player. Chad Griffin, the Los Angeles-based politicalstrategist is staying there, as is Rob Reiner, as is real-estate developerand early Kerry fundraiser Richard Ziman, as is Jonathan Lewis, a majorDemocratic donor and fundraiser for America Coming Together, as aremultiple big-time New York Kerry donors.

"We got numerous calls," Chad Griffin told me, "offering any price for usto vacate our rooms." And someone inside the Kerry campaign informed mewith mounting irritation that they had received a tidal wave of calls frombig donors complaining that they were given rooms at the new Ritz, and notat the Four Seasons -- even though "You can throw a sandwich from one tothe other", as the exasperated Kerry staffer put it.

The distinction between the old Ritz on Newbury and the new Ritz on AveryStreet, across the park, is a whole other story, worthy of a PhD thesis.For the moment, suffice it to say that the old Ritz is considered muchhotter than the new Ritz, and that Larry King is staying there.

As bad as Hotel Envy is, Skybox Envy is even worse. There are so few ofthem at the Fleet Center that even super-high-end contributors Ron Burkleand Steve Bing have been a
sked to share one.

Job One of this convention is moving the party faithful from Anybody ButBush backers to out-and-out Kerry enthusiasts. On the surface at least,that task seems to be Mission Accomplished (although such a referencewould probably be vetoed by the powers that be for having too much of ananti-Bush subtext).

The vital next step is winning over the majority of Americans who haveturned away from Bush but who are not yet comfortable turning control ofthe ship of state over to Kerry. Thursday night's acceptance speech willgo a long way toward determining his ability to sway those undecidedvoters.

David Thorne is convinced he will succeed with flying colors. Thorne isone of Kerry's closest friends and the twin brother of Kerry's first wife-- they were together at Yale and joined the Navy at the same time. He'salso the mastermind behind Kerry's highly successful Internet operation.I ran into Thorne, who has seen The Speech, at the New York Times party atthe Gamble Mansion, and he gave me a preview not of its content but of itscharacter.

"Have you seen the letters that John wrote to me when we were in theservice?" he asked. "They show what a passionate, thoughtful, committedperson he was -- and that's the guy you'll be seeing on Thursday night."

The flip side to the Democrats' Anger Management strategy is thewidespread anxiety over whether Kerry will deliver in his big moment.Absent the anger, will he be able to convey his passion and his vision forthe country?

And no strategy has yet been invented to manage this anxiety. Only akick-ass speech on Thursday will put an end to it.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.http://www.ariannaonline.com/blog/

Michael Moore/O'Reilly Showdown at Convention

Source: Drudge Report
By Matt Drudge
Tue Jul 27 2004 16:51:50 ET

FOX NEWS is planning to air a redhot interview between Bill O'Reilly and boxoffice sensation Michael Moore on Tuesday.

The DRUDGE REPORT has obtained an embargoed transcript of the session:

Moore: That’s fair, we’ll just stick to the issues

O’Reilly: The issues… alright good, now, one of the issues is you because you’ve been calling Bush a liar on weapons of mass destruction, the senate intelligence committee, Lord Butler’s investigation in Britain, and now the 911 Commission have all come out and said there was no lying on the part of President Bush. Plus, Gladimir Putin has said his intelligence told Bush there were weapons of mass destruction. Wanna apologize to the president now or later?

M: He didn’t tell the truth, he said there were weapons of mass destruction.

O: Yeah, but he didn’t lie, he was misinformed by - all of those investigations come to the same conclusion, that’s not a lie.

M: uh huh, so in other words if I told you right now that nothing was going on down here on the stage…

O: That would be a lie because we could see that wasn’t the truth

M: Well, I’d have to turn around to see it, and then I would realize, oh, Bill, I just told you something that wasn’t true… actually it’s president Bush that needs to apologize to the nation for telling an entire country that there were weapons of mass destruction, that they had evidence of this, and that there was some sort of connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11th, and he used that as a –

O: Ok, He never said that, but back to the other thing, if you, if Michael Moore is president –

M: I thought you said you saw the movie, I show all that in the movie

O: Which may happen if Hollywood, yeah, OK, fine –

M: But that was your question –

O: Just the issues. You’ve got three separate investigations plus the president of Russia all saying… British intelligence, US intelligence, Russian intelligence, told the president there were weapons of mass destruction, you say, “he lied.” This is not a lie if you believe it to be true, now he may have made a mistake, which is obvious –

M: Well, that’s almost pathological – I mean, many criminals believe what they say is true, they could pass a lie detector test –

O: Alright, now you’re dancing around a question –

M: No I’m not, there’s no dancing

O: He didn’t lie

M: He said something that wasn’t true

O: Based upon bad information given to him by legitimate sources

M: Now you know that they went to the CIA, Cheney went to the CIA, they wanted that information, they wouldn’t listen to anybody

O: They wouldn’t go by Russian intelligence and Blair’s intelligence too

M: His own people told him, I mean he went to Richard Clarke the day after September 11th and said “What you got on Iraq?” and Richard Clarke’s going “Oh well this wasn’t Iraq that did this sir, this was Al Qaeda.”

O: You’re diverting the issue…did you read Woodward’s book?

M: No, I haven’t read his book.

O: Woodward’s a good reporter, right? Good guy, you know who he is right?

M: I know who he is.

O: Ok, he says in his book George Tenet looked the president in the eye, like how I am looking you in the eye right now and said “President, weapons of mass destruction are a quote, end quote, “slam dunk” if you’re the president, you ignore all that?

M: Yeah, I would say that the CIA had done a pretty poor job.

O: I agree. The lieutenant was fired.

M: Yeah, but not before they took us to war based on his intelligence. This is a man who ran the CIA, a CIA that was so poorly organized and run that it wouldn’t communicate with the FBI before September 11th and as a result in part we didn’t have a very good intelligence system set up before September 11th

O: Nobody disputes that

M: Ok, so he screws up September 11th. Why would you then listen to him, he says this is a “slam dunk” and your going to go to war.

O: You’ve got MI-6 and Russian intelligence because they’re all saying the same thing that’s why. You’re not going to apologize to Bush, you are going to continue to call him a liar.

M: Oh, he lied to the nation, Bill, I can’t think of a worse thing to do for a president to lie to a country to take them to war, I mean, I don’t know a worse –

O: It wasn’t a lie

M: He did not tell the truth, what do you call that?

O: I call that bad information, acting on bad information – not a lie

M: A seven year old can get away with that –

O: Alright, your turn to ask me a question—

M: ‘Mom and Dad it was just bad information’—

O: I’m not going to get you to admit it wasn’t a lie, go ahead

M: It was a lie, and now, which leads us to my question

O: OK

M: Over 900 of our brave soldiers are dead. What do you say to their parents?

O: What do I say to their parents? I say what every patriotic American would say. We are proud of your sons and daughters. They answered the call that their country gave them. We respect them and we feel terrible that they were killed.

M: And, but what were they killed for?

O: They were removing a brutal dictator who himself killed hundreds of thousands of people

M: Um, but that was not the reason that was given to them to go to war, to remove a brutal dictator

O: Well we’re back to the weapons of mass destruction

M: But that was the reason

O: The weapons of mass destruction

M: That we were told we were under some sort of imminent threat

O: That’s right

M: And there was no threat, was there?

O: It was a mistake

M: Oh, just a mistake, and that’s what you tell all the parents with a deceased child, “We’re sorry.” I don’t think that is good enough.

O: I don’t think its good enough either for those parents

M: So we agree on that

O: but that is the historical nature of what happened

M: Bill, if I made a mistake and I said something or did something as a result of my mistake but it resulted in the death of your child, how would you feel towards me?

O: It depends on whether the mistake was unintentional

M: No, not intentional, it was a mistake

O: Then if it was an unintentional mistake I cannot hold you morally responsible for that

M: Really, I’m driving down the road and I hit your child and your child is dead

O: If it were unintentional and you weren’t impaired or anything like that

M: So that’s all it is, if it was alcohol, even though it was a mistake – how would you feel towards me

O: Ok, now we are wandering

M: No, but my point is –

O: I saw what your point is and I answered your question

M: But why? What did they die for?

O: They died to remove a brutal dictator who had killed hundreds of thousands of people –

M: No, that was not the reason –

O: That’s what they died for

M: -they were given –

O: The weapons of mass destruction was a mistake

M: Well there were 30 other brutal dictators in this world –

O: Alright, I’ve got anther question—

M: Would you sacrifice—just finish on this. Would you sacrifice your child to remove one of the other 30 brutal dictators on this planet?

O: Depends what the circumstances were.

M: You would sacrifice your child?

O: I would sacrifice myself—I’m not talking for any children—to remove the Taliban. Would you?

M: Uh huh.

O: Would you? That’s my next question. Would you sacrifice yourself to remove the Taliban?

M: I would be willing to sacrifice my life to track down the people that killed 3,000 people on our soil.

O: Al Qeada was given refuge by the Taliban.

M: But we didn’t go after them—did we?

O: We removed the Taliban and killed three quarters of Al Qeada.

M: That’s why the Taliban are still killing our soldiers there.

O: OK, well look you cant kill everybody. You wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan—you wouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan, would you?

M: No, I would have gone after the man that killed 3,000 people.

O: How?

M: As Richard Clarke says, our special forces were prohibited for two months from going to the area that we believed Osama was—

O: Why was that?

M: That’s my question.

O: Because Pakistan didn’t want its territory of sovereignty violated.

M: Not his was in Afghanistan, on the border, we didn’t go there. He got a two month head start.

O: Alright, you would not have removed the Taliban. You would not have removed that government?

M: No, unless it is a threat to us.

O: Any government? Hitler, in Germany, not a threat to us the beginning but over there executing people all day long—you would have let him go?

M: That’s not true. Hitler with Japan, attacked the United States.

O: Before—from 33-until 41 he wasn’t an imminent threat to the United States.

M: There’s a lot of things we should have done.

O: You wouldn’t have removed him.

M: I wouldn’t have even allowed him to come to power.

O: That was a preemption from Michael Moore—you would have invaded.

M: If we’d done our job, you want to get into to talking about what happened before WWI, woah, I’m trying to stop this war right now.

O: I know you are but—

M: Are you against that? Stopping this war?

O: No we cannot leave Iraq right now, we have to—

M: So you would sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah? I want to hear you say that.

O: I would sacrifice myself—

M: Your child—Its Bush sending the children there.

O: I would sacrifice myself.

M: You and I don’t go to war, because we’re too old—

O: Because if we back down, there will be more deaths and you know it.

M: Say ‘I Bill O’Reilly would sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah’

O: I’m not going to say what you say, you’re a, that’s ridiculous

M: You don’t believe that. Why should Bush sacrifice the children of people across America for this?

O: Look it’s a worldwide terrorism—I know that escapes you—

M: Wait a minute, terrorism? Iraq?

O: Yes. There are terrorist in Iraq.

M: Oh really? So Iraq now is responsible for the terrorism here?

O: Iraq aided terrorist—don’t you know anything about any of that?

M: So you’re saying Iraq is responsible for what?

O: I’m saying that Saddam Hussein aided all day long.

M: You’re not going to get me to defend Saddam Hussein.

O: I’m not? You’re his biggest defender in the media.

M: Now come on.

O: Look, if you were running he would still be sitting there.

M: How do you know that?

O: If you were running the country, he’d still be sitting there.

M: How do you know that?

O: You wouldn’t have removed him.

M: Look let me tell you something in the 1990s look at all the brutal dictators that were removed. Things were done, you take any of a number of countries whether its Eastern Europe, the people rose up. South Africa the whole world boycotted---

O: When Reagan was building up the arms, you were against that.

M: And the dictators were gone. Building up the arms did not cause the fall of Eastern Europe.

O: Of course it did, it bankrupted the Soviet Union and then it collapsed.

M: The people rose up.

O: why? Because they went bankrupt.

M: the same way we did in our country, the way we had our revolution. People rose up—

O: Alright alright.

M:--that’s how you, let me ask you this question.

O: One more.

M: How do you deliver democracy to a country? You don’t do it down the barrel of a gun. That’s not how you deliver it.

O: You give the people some kind of self-determination, which they never would have had under Saddam—

M: Why didn’t they rise up?

O: Because they couldn’t, it was a Gestapo-led place where they got their heads cut off—

M: well that’s true in many countries throughout the world__

O: It is, it’s a shame—

M:--and you know what people have done, they’ve risen up. You can do it in a number of ways . You can do it our way through a violent revolution, which we won, the French did it that way. You can do it by boycotting South Africa, they overthrew the dictator there. There’s many ways—

O: I’m glad we’ve had this discussion because it just shows you that I see the world my way, you see the world your way, alright—and the audience is watching us here and they can decide who is right and who is wrong and that’s the fair way to do it. Right?

M: Right, I would not sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah and you would?

O: I would sacrifice myself.

M: You wouldn’t send another child, another parents child to Fallujah, would you? You would sacrifice your life to secure Fallujah?

O: I would.

M: Can we sign him up? Can we sign him up right now?

O: That’s right.

M: Where’s the recruiter?

O: You’d love to get rid of me.

M: No I don’t want—I want you to live. I want you to live.

O: I appreciate that. Michael Moore everybody. There he is…

END

-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004
Not for reproduction without permission of the author

My Beef With Big Media

Source: Washington Monthly
By Ted Turner
July 26, 2004

In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy ocean racing, a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 a month and its programs were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market.

I acquired it.

When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte – this one worse than the first – my accountant quit in protest, and the company's board vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into the Superstation; the Charlotte purchase – when I sold it 10 years later – gave me the capital to launch CNN.

Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. Both required a streak of independence and a taste for risk. And neither could happen today. In the current climate of consolidation, independent broadcasters simply don't survive for long. That's why we haven't seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch – independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change.
It's not that there aren't entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in America, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures. The difference is that Washington has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission's mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks – CBS, ABC, NBC – wouldn't forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition.

So when the FCC received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago. Congress also passed a law in 1962 requiring that TVs be equipped to receive both UHF and VHF channels. That's how I was able to compete as a UHF station, although it was never easy. (I used to tell potential advertisers that our UHF viewers were smarter than the rest, because you had to be a genius just to figure out how to tune us in.) And in 1972, the FCC ruled that cable TV operators could import distant signals. That's how we were able to beam our Atlanta station to homes throughout the South. Five years later, with the help of an RCA satellite, we were sending our signal across the nation, and the Superstation was born.

That was then.

Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by Washington. The media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies that pipe in the signals of their competitors and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavor of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox – fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new series they aired. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent.

In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favor the biggest players. Last summer, the FCC passed another round of sweeping pro-consolidation rules that, among other things, further raised the cap on the number of TV stations a company can own.

In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can't compete by imitating the big guys – they have to innovate, so they're less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It's called capitalism.

But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies, and that is what's happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse. They often kill local programming because it's expensive, and they push national programming because it's cheap – even if their decisions run counter to local interests and community values. Their managers are more averse to innovation because they're afraid of being fired for an idea that fails. They prefer to sit on the sidelines, waiting to buy the businesses of the risk-takers who succeed.

Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see – and what we don't see – will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn't have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it's like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they're already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces.

The big squeeze
In the 1970s, I became convinced that a 24-hour all-news network could make money, and perhaps even change the world. But when I invited two large media corporations to invest in the launch of CNN, they turned me down. I couldn't believe it. Together we could have launched the network for a fraction of what it would have taken me alone; they had all the infrastructure, contacts, experience, knowledge. When no one would go in with me, I risked my personal wealth to start CNN. Soon after our launch in 1980, our expenses were twice what we had expected and revenues half what we had projected. Our losses were so high that our loans were called in. I refinanced at 18 percent interest, up from 9, and stayed just a step ahead of the bankers. Eventually, we not only became profitable, but also changed the nature of news – from watching something that happened to watching it as it happened.

But even as CNN was getting its start, the climate for independent broadcasting was turning hostile. This trend began in 1984, when the FCC raised the number of stations a single entity could own from seven – where it had been capped since the 1950s – to 12. A year later, it revised its rule again, adding a national audience-reach cap of 25 percent to the 12 station limit – meaning media companies were prohibited from owning TV stations that together reached more than 25 percent of the national audience. In 1996, the FCC did away with numerical caps altogether and raised the audience-reach cap to 35 percent. This wasn't necessarily bad for Turner Broadcasting; we had already achieved scale. But seeing these rules changed was like watching someone knock down the ladder I had already climbed.

Meanwhile, the forces of consolidation focused their attention on another rule, one that restricted ownership of content. Throughout the 1980s, network lobbyists worked to overturn the so-called Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, or fin-syn, which had been put in place in 1970, after federal officials became alarmed at the networks' growing control over programming. As the FCC wrote in the fin-syn decision: "The power to determine form and content rests only in the three networks and is exercised extensively and exclusively by them, hourly and daily." In 1957, the commission pointed out, independent companies had produced a third of all network shows; by 1968, that number had dropped to 4 percent. The rules essentially forbade networks from profiting from reselling programs that they had already aired.

This had the result of forcing networks to sell off their syndication arms, as CBS did with Viacom in 1973. Once networks no longer produced their own content, new competition was launched, creating fresh opportunities for independents.

For a time, Hollywood and its production studios were politically strong enough to keep the fin-syn rules in place. But by the early 1990s, the networks began arguing that their dominance had been undercut by the rise of independent broadcasters, cable networks, and even videocassettes, which they claimed gave viewers enough choice to make fin-syn unnecessary. The FCC ultimately agreed – and suddenly the broadcast networks could tell independent production studios, "We won't air it unless we own it." The networks then bought up the weakened studios or were bought out by their own syndication arms, the way Viacom turned the tables on CBS, buying the network in 2000. This silenced the major political opponents of consolidation.

Even before the repeal of fin-syn, I could see that the trend toward consolidation spelled trouble for independents like me. In a climate of consolidation, there would be only one sure way to win: bring a broadcast network, production studios, and cable and satellite systems under one roof. If you didn't have it inside, you'd have to get it outside – and that meant, increasingly, from a large corporation that was competing with you. It's difficult to survive when your suppliers are owned by your competitors. I had tried and failed to buy a major broadcast network, but the repeal of fin-syn turned up the pressure. Since I couldn't buy a network, I bought MGM to bring more content in-house, and I kept looking for other ways to gain scale. In the end, I found the only way to stay competitive was to merge with Time Warner and relinquish control of my companies.

Today, the only way for media companies to survive is to own everything up and down the media chain – from broadcast and cable networks to the sitcoms, movies, and news broadcasts you see on those stations; to the production studios that make them; to the cable, satellite, and broadcast systems that bring the programs to your television set; to the Web sites you visit to read about those programs; to the way you log on to the Internet to view those pages. Big media today wants to own the faucet, pipeline, water, and the reservoir. The rain clouds come next.

Supersizing networks
Throughout the 1990s, media mergers were celebrated in the press and otherwise seemingly ignored by the American public. So, it was easy to assume that media consolidation was neither controversial nor problematic. But then a funny thing happened.

In the summer of 2003, the FCC raised the national audience-reach cap from 35 percent to 45 percent. The FCC also allowed corporations to own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market and permitted corporations to own three TV stations in the largest markets, up from two, and two stations in medium-sized markets, up from one. Unexpectedly, the public rebelled. Hundreds of thousands of citizens complained to the FCC. Groups from the National Organization for Women to the National Rifle Association demanded that Congress reverse the ruling. And like-minded lawmakers, including many long-time opponents of media consolidation, took action, pushing the cap back down to 35, until – under strong White House pressure – it was revised back up to 39 percent. This June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit threw out the rules that would have allowed corporations to own more television and radio stations in a single market, let stand the higher 39 percent cap, and also upheld the rule permitting a corporation to own a TV station and a newspaper in the same market; then, it sent the issues back to the same FCC that had pushed through the pro-consolidation rules in the first place.

In reaching its 2003 decision, the FCC did not argue that its policies would advance its core objectives of diversity, competition, and localism. Instead, it justified its decision by saying that there was already a lot of diversity, competition, and localism in the media – so it wouldn't hurt if the rules were changed to allow more consolidation. Their decision reads: "Our current rules inadequately account for the competitive presence of cable, ignore the diversity-enhancing value of the Internet, and lack any sound bases for a national audience reach cap." Let's pick that assertion apart.

First, the "competitive presence of cable" is a mirage. Broadcast networks have for years pointed to their loss of prime-time viewers to cable networks – but they are losing viewers to cable networks that they themselves own. Ninety percent of the top 50 cable TV stations are owned by the same parent companies that own the broadcast networks. Yes, Disney's ABC network has lost viewers to cable networks. But it's losing viewers to cable networks like Disney's ESPN, Disney's ESPN2, and Disney's Disney Channel. The media giants are getting a deal from Congress and the FCC because their broadcast networks are losing share to their own cable networks. It's a scam.

Second, the decision cites the "diversity-enhancing value of the Internet." The FCC is confusing diversity with variety. The top 20 Internet news sites are owned by the same media conglomerates that control the broadcast and cable networks. Sure, a hundred-person choir gives you a choice of voices, but they're all singing the same song.

The FCC says that we have more media choices than ever before. But only a few corporations decide what we can choose. That is not choice. That's like a dictator deciding what candidates are allowed to stand for parliamentary elections, and then claiming that the people choose their leaders. Different voices do not mean different viewpoints, and these huge corporations all have the same viewpoint – they want to shape government policy in a way that helps them maximize profits, drive out competition, and keep getting bigger.

Because the new technologies have not fundamentally changed the market, it's wrong for the FCC to say that there are no "sound bases for a national audience-reach cap." The rationale for such a cap is the same as it has always been. If there is a limit to the number of TV stations a corporation can own, then the chance exists that after all the corporations have reached this limit, there may still be some stations left over to be bought and run by independents. A lower limit would encourage the entry of independents and promote competition. A higher limit does the opposite.

Triple blight
The loss of independent operators hurts both the media business and its citizen-customers. When the ownership of these firms passes to people under pressure to show quick financial results in order to justify the purchase, the corporate emphasis instantly shifts from taking risks to taking profits. When that happens, quality suffers, localism suffers, and democracy itself suffers.

Loss of Quality
The Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans exerts a negative influence on society, because it discourages people who want to climb up the list from giving more money to charity. The Nielsen ratings are dangerous in a similar way – because they scare companies away from good shows that don't produce immediate blockbuster ratings. The producer Norman Lear once asked, "You know what ruined television?" His answer: when The New York Times began publishing the Nielsen ratings. "That list every week became all anyone cared about."

When all companies are quarterly earnings-obsessed, the market starts punishing companies that aren't yielding an instant return. This not only creates a big incentive for bogus accounting, but also it inhibits the kind of investment that builds economic value. America used to know this. We used to be a nation of farmers. You can't plant something today and harvest tomorrow. Had Turner Communications been required to show earnings growth every quarter, we never would have purchased those first two TV stations.

When CNN reported to me, if we needed more money for Kosovo or Baghdad, we'd find it. If we had to bust the budget, we busted the budget. We put journalism first, and that's how we built CNN into something the world wanted to watch. I had the power to make these budget decisions because they were my companies. I was an independent entrepreneur who controlled the majority of the votes and could run my company for the long term. Top managers in these huge media conglomerates run their companies for the short term. After we sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, we came under such earnings pressure that we had to cut our promotion budget every year at CNN to make our numbers. Media mega-mergers inevitably lead to an overemphasis on short-term earnings.

You can see this overemphasis in the spread of reality television. Shows like "Fear Factor" cost little to produce – there are no actors to pay and no sets to maintain – and they get big ratings. Thus, American television has moved away from expensive sitcoms and on to cheap thrills. We've gone from "Father Knows Best" to "Who Wants to Marry My Dad?", and from "My Three Sons" to "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance."

The story of Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore's production studio, MTM, helps illustrate the point. When the company was founded in 1969, Tinker and Moore hired the best writers they could find and then left them alone – and were rewarded with some of the best shows of the 1970s. But eventually, MTM was bought by a company that imposed budget ceilings and laid off employees. That company was later purchased by Rev. Pat Robertson; then, he was bought out by Fox. Exit "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Enter "The Littlest Groom."

Loss of localism
Consolidation has also meant a decline in the local focus of both news and programming. After analyzing 23,000 stories on 172 news programs over five years, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that big media news organizations relied more on syndicated feeds and were more likely to air national stories with no local connection.

That's not surprising. Local coverage is expensive, and thus will tend be a casualty in the quest for short-term earnings. In 2002, Fox Television bought Chicago's Channel 50 and eliminated all of the station's locally produced shows. One of the cancelled programs (which targeted pre-teens) had scored a perfect rating for educational content in a 1999 University of Pennsylvania study, according to The Chicago Tribune. That accolade wasn't enough to save the program. Once the station's ownership changed, so did its mission and programming.

Loss of localism also undercuts the public-service mission of the media, and this can have dangerous consequences. In early 2002, when a freight train derailed near Minot, N.D., releasing a cloud of anhydrous ammonia over the town, police tried to call local radio stations, six of which are owned by radio mammoth Clear Channel Communications. According to news reports, it took them over an hour to reach anyone – no one was answering the Clear Channel phone. By the next day, 300 people had been hospitalized, many partially blinded by the ammonia. Pets and livestock died. And Clear Channel continued beaming its signal from headquarters in San Antonio, Texas – some 1,600 miles away.

Loss of democratic debate
When media companies dominate their markets, it undercuts our democracy. Justice Hugo Black, in a landmark media-ownership case in 1945, wrote: "The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public."

These big companies are not antagonistic; they do billions of dollars in business with each other. They don't compete; they cooperate to inhibit competition. You and I have both felt the impact. I felt it in 1981, when CBS, NBC, and ABC all came together to try to keep CNN from covering the White House. You've felt the impact over the past two years, as you saw little news from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, or CNN on the FCC's actions. In early 2003, the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Americans had heard "nothing at all" about the proposed FCC rule changes. Why? One never knows for sure, but it must have been clear to news directors that the more they covered this issue, the harder it would be for their corporate bosses to get the policy result they wanted.

A few media conglomerates now exercise a near-monopoly over television news. There is always a risk that news organizations can emphasize or ignore stories to serve their corporate purpose. But the risk is far greater when there are no independent competitors to air the side of the story the corporation wants to ignore. More consolidation has often meant more news-sharing. But closing bureaus and downsizing staff have more than economic consequences. A smaller press is less capable of holding our leaders accountable. When Viacom merged two news stations it owned in Los Angeles, reports The American Journalism Review, "field reporters began carrying microphones labeled KCBS on one side and KCAL on the other." This was no accident. As the Viacom executive in charge told The Los Angeles Business Journal: "In this duopoly, we should be able to control the news in the marketplace."

This ability to control the news is especially worrisome when a large media organization is itself the subject of a news story. Disney's boss, after buying ABC in 1995, was quoted in LA Weekly as saying, "I would prefer ABC not cover Disney." A few days later, ABC killed a "20/20" story critical of the parent company.

But networks have also been compromised when it comes to non-news programs which involve their corporate parent's business interests. General Electric subsidiary NBC Sports raised eyebrows by apologizing to the Chinese government for Bob Costas's reference to China's "problems with human rights" during a telecast of the Atlanta Olympic Games. China, of course, is a huge market for GE products.

Consolidation has given big media companies new power over what is said not just on the air, but off it as well. Cumulus Media banned the Dixie Chicks on its 42 country music stations for 30 days after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush for the war in Iraq. It's hard to imagine Cumulus would have been so bold if its listeners had more of a choice in country music stations. And Disney recently provoked an uproar when it prevented its subsidiary Miramax from distributing Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. As a senior Disney executive told The New York Times: "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle." Follow the logic, and you can see what lies ahead: If the only media companies are major corporations, controversial and dissenting views may not be aired at all.

Naturally, corporations say they would never suppress speech. But it's not their intentions that matter; it's their capabilities. Consolidation gives them more power to tilt the news and cut important ideas out of the public debate. And it's precisely that power that the rules should prevent.

Independents' day
This is a fight about freedom – the freedom of independent entrepreneurs to start and run a media business, and the freedom of citizens to get news, information, and entertainment from a wide variety of sources, at least some of which are truly independent and not run by people facing the pressure of quarterly earnings reports. No one should underestimate the danger. Big media companies want to eliminate all ownership limits. With the removal of these limits, immense media power will pass into the hands of a very few corporations and individuals.
What will programming be like when it's produced for no other purpose than profit? What will news be like when there are no independent news organizations to go after stories the big corporations avoid? Who really wants to find out? Safeguarding the welfare of the public cannot be the first concern of a large publicly traded media company. Its job is to seek profits. But if the government writes the rules in a way that encourages the entry into the market of entrepreneurs – men and women with big dreams, new ideas, and a willingness to take long-term risks – the economy will be stronger, and the country will be better off.

I freely admit: When I was in the media business, especially after the federal government changed the rules to favor large companies, I tried to sweep the board, and I came within one move of owning every link up and down the media chain. Yet I felt then, as I do now, that the government was not doing its job. The role of the government ought to be like the role of a referee in boxing, keeping the big guys from killing the little guys. If the little guy gets knocked down, the referee should send the big guy to his corner, count the little guy out, and then help him back up. But today the government has cast down its duty, and media competition is less like boxing and more like professional wrestling: The wrestler and the referee are both kicking the guy on the canvas.

At this late stage, media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: Bust up the big conglomerates. We've done this before: to the railroad trusts in the first part of the 20th century, to Ma Bell more recently. Indeed, big media itself was cut down to size in the 1970s, and a period of staggering innovation and growth followed. Breaking up the reconstituted media conglomerates may seem like an impossible task when their grip on the policy-making process in Washington seems so sure. But the public's broad and bipartisan rebellion against the FCC's pro-consolidation decisions suggests something different. Politically, big media may again be on the wrong side of history – and up against a country unwilling to lose its independents.

Ted Turner is founder of CNN and chairman of Turner Enterprises.

COMMENTARY: Race and Roughness

By Debra J. Dickerson
July 23, 2004

As racism causes his life to unravel despite his attempts to play by the rules,Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man walks the streets of Harlem reduced to humiliatingoveralls and penury. As an act of both rebellion and resignation, he publiclyeats yams dripping with butter and thinks: "What a group of people we were. Youcould cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with somethingwe liked."

Another way to humiliate black Americans is by confronting them with an obviouselement of black physiognomy, like hair texture. A white docent at the J. PaulGetty Museum in Los Angeles recently did just that when she rubbed two youngblack students' heads to illustrate rough textures in a comparison between roughand smooth.

So far, the museum's florid apologies and newly hired sensitivity trainers havenot sufficed; smart money says that "Mary," the otherwise unidentified docent,shall not long grace the Getty's sinuous, and probably quite smooth, walls. Butone may legitimately wonder whether it is necessarily racist to talk about thecalibrations between superficial differences in racial physiognomy. Wise?Certainly not. But racist?

Wouldn't we need to know whether the students' hair actually was rough or not?Protesters have charged the Getty with "invoking racial stereotypes" * a charge,it would seem, that could be settled by inspection of the children themselves.If their hair was not, in fact, "rough," then Mary has no defense; she's guiltyof stereotyping. (Often, unprocessed black hair that looks rough is quite soft.And many blacks, from a very young age, religiously employ hair care productsprecisely to avoid the condition in question.)

But what if their hair was rough? In a more mature society, commenting (as blackcomedians routinely do) that some blacks have rough hair ought to be about ascontroversial as noticing that the NBA is extremely well integrated.

Certainly, strangers should rarely single out children or touch them withoutpermission and oversight, admonitions that take on greater weight acrosscultures. Also, what planet is Mary from that she doesn't know that it is neverappropriate for whites to touch blacks' heads? It's patronizing, juvenilizingand harks back to the bad old days of Jim Crow; pat the average black person onthe head and you'll draw back a nub. Still, one wonders whether Mary shouldn'tskip the racial reeducation camp the protesters have in store for her andinstead tour a few museums herself * black history institutions where she mightlearn something about the effort her race put into making others'self-conscious, self-hating and unsure of themselves. After that, charm school.

But though she is no doubt a clueless clod, there's no reason to suspect Mary isa racist capable of "ripping the students' spirit out," as their teacherclaimed. On the contrary, it is much more likely that the well-intentionedoverreaction of the parents and school district has accomplished that byteaching the children to crumble psychologically at the slightest perception ofracial insult or ill-mannered comment.

Rather than give in to racial apoplexy, the teacher in attendance could haveturned a potential disaster into a teachable moment with an impromptu lesson onthe dermatology of racial hair types (something someone with such a racial hairtrigger should know) as well as on the etiquette of interaction betweenstrangers. Instead, she helped teach her charges to be self-conscious,self-hating and unsure of themselves because, in the protesters' scenario, onlywhites need look in the mirror. The unspoken message to blacks is to be afraidto.

For too many blacks, "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud" is, alas, just asong lyric, something to scream at whites and hope they believe it (even if theblacks themselves do not). If black truly were beautiful, if blacks truly lovedtheir wide-hipped, big-lipped, nappy-headed selves, the issue at the Getty wouldhave been boorishness, not racism.

For the sake of symmetry, let's end with a quote that blacks love to invokebecause it "proves" that Jesus was black: Revelations 1, 14-15: "His head andhis hairs were white like wool, * and his feet like unto fine brass, as if theyburned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters." Hair of wool?Feet like brass? Great voice? Sounds like James Earl Jones to me. Still, it'sgoing to be hard to get the world to accept that Jesus was a brother if we can'tadmit that his hair, in the millenniums before moisturizers, might have been"rough."
*
Debra J. Dickerson is the author of "The End of Blackness" (Pantheon, 2004). Shecan be reached at debradickerson.com.