"Getting Commoners to Do the Dying"

Romney Brothers Volunteer for Fight in Iraq

At a hastily called news conference, Republican presidential hopeful Willard M. (“Mitt”) Romney’s five sons issued a joint announcement that they are volunteering en masse for combat missions overseas.

The brothers’ decision followed close on the heels of a highly-publicized exchange at one of Romney’s “Ask Mitt Anything” events in Bettendorf, Iowa.

Rachel Griffiths asked Romney at a campaign breakfast how many of his five adult sons were serving in the military. Romney responded that none of his sons had chosen to join the military, but they were serving in other ways. “One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I’d be a great president,” he explained.

More than one commentator has remarked that Romney seems to have confused self-promotion with serving the nation.

With obvious embarrassment, Tagg Romney, the candidate’s eldest son, said, “I’m sorry that it took a question at a campaign event to help us realize that we need to put our bodies where our mouths are. Dad has been supportive of the war and of President Bush’s ‘surge’ policy, and it was embarrassing to see him put on the spot like that. Other people’s sons and daughters are being blown up or mutilated by roadside bombs or poisoned by depleted uranium or hit with post-traumatic stress disorder, and here we are living the good life and chasing all the power and prestige of the presidency for our family, without making any sacrifice at all for our country. How self-centered does that sound?”

His brother Matt Romney spoke from a different perspective, but also emphasized the idea of service. “Dad and Mom are worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Maybe more. I haven’t checked with them lately on a precise amount, but I can tell you this: people all over the country are losing their homes every day because they can’t make mortgage payments, while our folks luxuriate in beautiful homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Utah. I’m a commercial real estate developer in San Diego, and I know what property is worth. This nation has been good to us, and we feel as if we ought to give it our combat service in return.” He added, “It’s funny how you don’t think of things like that when you’re so busy making millions. It’s time to shed our Gucci’s and hike a mile in somebody else’s combat boots.”

Josh Romney shared his brothers’ new convictions. “Traveling around the country to stage events on Dad’s behalf, wearing expensive suits, living in a Winnebago and hobnobbing with real string pullers and power brokers—this high living has suddenly lost all its attraction. My eyes have been opened. I’d much rather be living in a tent in the desert, halfway around the world from everybody I love, blistering under 120 degree heat, eating canned rations, and sweating under the constant threat of death. I can hardly wait to put on my uniform.”

Ben Romney sounded the same note. “If Dad wants to put other young men and women overseas, risking their lives to assure American corporations a grip on Iraqi oil, we think we ought to be risking our necks too. I’m sure Dad wouldn’t want it any other way. Medical school can be put on hold.”

Craig, the youngest of the five brothers, added, “We realized that we’re not alone in this. In fact, it’s not really about us at all. We’re just emblematic of a larger reality. The whole upper echelon of government—Congress, cabinet members, other people in the administration—virtually none of them have sons or daughters actually fighting the war our government started. We’re like a privileged class that gets commoners to do the dying for them.

“We intend not just to set an example, but actually to go out and act as volunteer recruiters among our peer group,” said Craig. “We expect to enlist an entire combat brigade to take some of the stress off those troops in Iraq who are doing their third or fourth tour of duty. I don’t know why we didn’t see the need to share the suffering before now. It’s almost as if we were brainwashed.”

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Crows in the Waning Years of a Second Term"

Crows in the Waning Years of a Second Term

Outsized birds, taking over the neighbors’ lawn—
slickly black from beak to heart,
as slick as if they’ve been dipped in oil
and thoroughly soaked.
With their dark sheen they mock
undertakers and churchgoers,
politicians mixing with the folk.
They have a good ear,
mimicking tunes
of gentler birds without effort,
but their natural song
is a jeer.
I watch them strut
and picture jackboots.
A warning: these creatures live to loot.
Prepare to protect your dog food bowl,
your garbage can, your bird feeder.
Lock your refrigerator door.
Their appetites are bottomless;
good times, bad times,
they always do well.
Public birds with public vices,
what do they really caw about,
except what they can devour?

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Make Us YOUR Candy Store"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Radio ad: Candy Company Commences Clearance Campaign

Directions: Read breathlessly, just below shouting pitch.

As they head into their August recess, the Congressional Candy Company is staging a once-in-a-lifetime sales event! Retiring members and those trailing badly in the polls have joined together to bring you this unprecedented clearance sale! Prices will never be lower! Pay just pennies on the dollar! Take advantage of these gigantic savings now!

Prices have been slashed to the bone on items such as:

· Sugar and tobacco subsidies!
· Highway construction funds!
· Timbering, drilling, and mining permits in national parks and forests!
· Tax breaks for your firm or industry!
· Grazing rights on range land!
· Water diversion for irrigation, development, and industrial expansion!
· Oil drilling in pristine areas and wildlife refuges!
· Defense contracts!
· Drainage and development of coastal wetlands!
· Deregulation!
· Maintaining high fuel consumption standards!
· Licenses for the emission or discharge of pollutants!
· Broadcast licenses and market monopolies!
· Unneeded military bases!
· Federal judgeships
· No-bid, no-risk construction contracts!
· Mercenary assignments in Iraq!

Yes, you heard me right! All of these things and more are for sale at unheard of low prices! This is just a sampling of the items available in our mammoth national warehouse! They won’t last long at these prices! Call our congressional offices today to see what is available in your area!

Is your accountant a nuisance about traceable purchases of influence?
Not to worry! No cash needed! We accept:

· Seats on your Board of Directors!
· Lobbying assignments for your industry!
· Positions at think tanks!
· Endowed chairs at colleges and universities!
· Jobs for our spouses and children ($60,000 minimum)!
· Use of yachts and private jets!
· Golf outings!
· Presidencies of foundations and universities
· Bulk orders of our memoirs!

And that’s only the beginning! Let your imagination run wild!. Surprise us with what you have to offer! Make us YOUR candy store—CONGRESS! “How sweet it is!”

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Political Poetry in Motion"

An Open Letter to Diane Berry and Rick Really:

I was disgusted after watching your TV show last week previewing the U.S. Diving Championships. You so-called experts batted around the names of numerous title contenders, and completely failed to mention John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee! That is like covering baseball without mentioning Barry Bonds! Or dog fighting without Michael Vick!

Already this year, Conyers has pulled off one of the most difficult dives in congressional history. It was immediately recognized as one of the ten most spectacular dives ever taken, and has been replayed over and over again on ESPN.

By now everyone has seen the video clip. YouTube reports more than two million hits. Conyers poses on the diving tower when Republicans control the House, screaming for impeachment of the president and vice president. He bounces on the board, and springs into the air. He launches a petition drive where citizens can add their names to the impeachment cause, and establishes a website devoted to the administration’s crimes and the case for impeachment. He sends out e-mails to those who signed the petition, urging them to greater effort on behalf of impeachment.

Then, in a stunning upset, Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, and Conyers becomes chair of the House Judiciary Committee, where impeachment proceedings are supposed to begin.

With breathtaking aplomb, he goes into a sensational back flip, announcing his decision that the committee he chairs will not take up impeachment. The audacity of this move alone would insure him a place in the Divers’ Hall of Fame!

But that was only the beginning! It is the next stage of the dive that has made this an instant classic: A group of pro-impeachment citizens who have signed Conyers’ petition, who have joined with him in his impeachment effort, and who have supported his campaign for office show up to protest his action. In a maneuver that still draws oohs and ahs, he has them arrested and hauled off to jail!

As a combination of showmanship and technical mastery, Conyers’ dive may never be equaled. Only a few divers are capable of Conyers’ contortions; none can match the betrayal at the end. That twist, with its marvelous screwing effect, is political poetry in motion.

And this is the man whom you fail to even mention in your broadcast. How can you begin to account for such a glaring omission? John Conyers has been to impeachment what Paul Wolfowitz was to Iraq—theoretician, cheerleader, advocate, and architect. He deserved the spotlight, and you left him in the darkness. You owe him and all the other divers he represents an enormous apology. I will continue to champion Mr. Conyers’ cause until he gets the recognition he so richly deserves.

Sincerely,

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Dear Senator X"

Dear Senator X:

I recently sent you an e-mail via your congressional website about U.S. involvement in Iraq. I asked whether you supported a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, or whether you supported a partial withdrawal with substantial forces left behind through the foreseeable future.

The directions on your website told me to select the topic of my e-mail from a drop-down menu, and I clicked “Iraq.” The letter I got from you did not give an answer to my question. It simply thanked me for sharing my thoughts on this topic and then went into talking points on Iraq that contained noble sentiments but remarkably few specifics.

I mention this because my neighbor also e-mailed you about Iraq. He wanted to know if multiple tours of duty were stretching our troops too thin. When he showed me the letter he received from you, we noticed that it didn’t address his question either. He compared his letter with mine, and they turned out to be identical, except for the name, address, and date.

My question is this: Does somebody actually read these e-mails, or is your website set up so that different form letters go out, depending on which topic the citizen clicks?

Sincerely,

Raymond Snodgrass


* * * * * *


Dear Senator X:

After my earlier experience with my e-mail on Iraq, I e-mailed you at your official website with my thoughts on immigration policy. Instead of clicking the “Immigration” tab on the drop-down menu, however, I clicked “Impeachment,” just to see what would happen.

Yesterday I received your letter thanking me for sharing my thoughts on impeachment, and assuring me that this was a subject of the gravest importance to you.

Actually, I do care about impeachment, but immigration policy was the real subject of my last e-mail. Did an actual human being ever look at it? I am clicking the “Global Warming” tab with this message as an experiment. I am curious to see what will result.

Sincerely,

Raymond Snodgrass


* * * * * *


Dear Senator X:

I believe your computerized answering system has a glitch in it, as my last e-mail to you dealt with your response to my ideas on immigration. However, I clicked the “Global Warming” tab at your website out of scientific curiosity. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find your letter in my mailbox today thanking me for sharing my thoughts on “Genetic Research and Stem Cells.” With this response, I am clicking the tab on “Gay Marriage,” and can hardly wait to see what comes back. Your letters have become one of the highlights of my day.

I must say that I admire the warm, personal touch at the end of each of your letters, where you thank me once again for taking the time to write, express the hope that I will continue to be an involved citizen, and assure me that you rely heavily on input from people like myself.

Sincerely,

Raymond Snodgrass


* * * * * *


Dear Senator X:

My neighbor suggested that the best way to get an actual person to read an e-mail sent to Washington would be to include words and phrases that would kick the message out of the system and trigger human involvement. He thought that putting words like assassinate and president close together would probably do the trick. As you can see, I have just done that. My question about your position on the continued deployment of troops in Iraq—which is where this all began—is attached.

Sincerely,

Raymond Snodgrass


* * * * * *


Dear Senator X:

Imagine my surprise when Secret Service agents showed up at my home only two hours after I sent my last e-mail to your website. I am presently being held in a federal detention facility, and desperately need your intervention here. I am clicking the “Request for Assistance” tab and hoping for your immediate attention.

Sincerely,

Raymond Snodgrass

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Congress Takes a Dive"

Of Principalities and Powers ~ “Congress Takes a Dive”


“Welcome to the U.S. Diving Championships. I’m your host, Diane Berry, and here with us today to add his unique perspective is four-time U.S. champion and sports columnist Rick Really. Rick, this shapes up to be a spectacular event, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does, Diane. Everybody has been pointing toward this one. The Republican team, which will be wearing red suits, has been taking dives for six years. The Democrats, who will wear blue, are playing catch up, but they’ve taken some incredible dives since winning a majority in both houses of Congress.”

“So we’re looking for close votes by the people who will serve as judges?”

“No question about it. At this point, Congress ranks even lower in the polls than the president, voters are depressed by how unrepresentative their “representatives” are, and turnout is on a steady decline. I look for the winner to be decided by a handful of votes among the few voters who show up.”

“Wonderful, Rick. Are there any divers we ought to keep our eyes on?”

“There sure are. In recent weeks we’ve seen some absolutely unbelievable dives taken by a group of Republican senators. They’ve been in panic mode with Mr. Bush’s unpopularity acting like a heavy anchor chained around their necks”

“Let’s take a look at some of those dives to show our viewers what you’re talking about, Rick.”

“Okay, Diane. Our first clip here is Susan Collins. After years of support for Bush’s war, she joins with Chuck Hagel in announcing here that she will back Democratic legislation ordering combat to end next spring.”

“Her timing is beautiful on that twist, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is. We’ll take a quick look here at Gordon Smith, Pete Domenici, John Warner, and Olympia Snowe, each talking about switching his or her position—and then, in most cases, ending up voting to back the president rather than support a change.
That’s a very difficult double flip technically, where the diver is actually rotating backward and forward at the same time.”

“The Republican divers look awfully impressive, Rick. How does the Democratic team match up?”

“Well, first up, take a look at Nancy Pelosi, shown here going into the tank on impeachment, immediately after being elected Speaker of the House.”

“Wow, that was mind boggling!”

“No question, Diane. But don’t think this is just a Pelosi show. The Democrats owed most of their resurgence in this last election to voters’ expectation that they would end the war in Iraq. Mr. Bush has just ignored them, as usual, and done as he pleased. There’s a simple solution: the Democrats in Congress could just refuse to vote more funds for the war. A simple majority vote. But they’ve taken a vast collective dive on the issue.”

“A collective dive?”

“You heard me right. Wait until you see this! This next clip here will knock your socks off! It’s really a stunning sight to see over two hundred Democratic members of Congress, hands joined, coming off the boards simultaneously and hitting the water without making a splash.”

“That’s fantastic! How did they do that?”

“Well, the trick is that instead of cutting off funds, they keep offering proposals to set timetables for beginning a withdrawal, modify tours of duty, and so forth, and then water them down by making them non-binding. They can’t get the votes to actually pass any of them, but they can pretend they tried to do something and then blame the Republicans for defeating the bills.”

“So the Democrats are picking up points with those dives?”

“Fewer than they expected. Republicans, on the other hand, use this trick: if the bill has no binding elements, they dismiss it as meaningless; if it has specifics, they reject it as tying the president’s hands.”

“They have beautifully controlled spin on that move, Rick.”

“They do. Their coach, Karl Rove, has made that one of his trademarks.”

“You know, watching them, I’m just amazed that these politicians do all their diving in the shallow end of the pool.”

“None of them want to get in over their heads, Diane, or go off the deep end, so they dive down here in the portion normally reserved for small children.”

“Let’s talk about the diving conditions, Rick. There have been complaints circulating that the water has been muddied.”

“You’ll get that in any political contest, Diane. The divers are not only used to it, but they actually prefer it that way. There does seem to be an abnormal amount of money being laundered in the pool, however, and that has raised concerns. Some critics have charged that it has a toxic effect on the level of democracy. But the Supreme Court just recently gave the go-ahead, saying all that corporate money was allowable, so it looks as if we’re all set to go. In fact, millions of dollars more are being pumped into the system even as we speak.”

“Does the money have any effect on the divers themselves?”

“There’s no medical evidence to that effect, Diane. People around the divers have sometimes talked about the money ‘going to their heads’ or ‘rotting their souls,’ but that’s just anecdotal. There are no double-blind studies to confirm it. As you can see in this next clip, most of them actually enjoy having so much money in the pool. Look at them wallow in it!”

© Tony Russell, 2007









A

"A Wonderful Assortment of Pastries"

Of Principalities and Powers ~ “A Wonderful Assortment of Pastries”


“Ace, I’ve never been so embarrassed! Your stomach kept rumbling all through dinner. I’ve heard jackhammers that made less racket!”

“I’m sorry, Patty. When the Pelosis invited us to the victory dinner, I decided to skip lunch. I figured they’d lay out a big spread, and I wanted to save a lot of room for the banquet. When we walked in and I saw everything spread out there, my mouth started to water. Then when Nancy began to take things off the table, I just couldn’t believe it. My stomach went into panic.”

“Don’t be silly, Ace. All she took off the table was the impeachment. That wasn’t even the main course.”

“You must have been too busy swapping recipes with Nancy to watch what she was doing. When she carried the impeachment back to the kitchen, all kinds of other things went with it.”

“Leave it to you to have eyes for nothing but the table. Men!”

“Well, I thought there were some things you would have liked to try, too, but she just whisked them away.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Patty, when she took away the impeachment, the meat dishes all went too. Torture, kidnapping, illegal wiretapping, election rigging, lying to start a war… all the meaty items were there for just a minute, and then they disappeared, before I could stick a fork in them.”

“Is that what happened? Darn, I was really looking forward to trying them. I’ve heard they were the genuine article.”

“Well, I guess we’ll never know. I’m just so hungry for something substantial that I can’t wait to get home and see what’s in the fridge.”

“Ace, there is absolutely no excuse for your still being hungry. You were there when Nancy said, ‘Let them eat cake,’ and they brought out a wonderful assortment of pastries. You ate more than anybody else. I kept hoping nobody else was counting how many times you went back to the table.”

“Patty, if nobody is supposed to notice everything that went back into the kitchen, surely they can pretend they didn’t see how much cake I ate.”

“I’ll bet Nancy was counting, even if she was too polite to say anything.”

“Look, Patty, can we talk about something besides my appetite?”

“Oh, all right, Ace. Say, did you notice that pretty blue dress Monica was wearing?”

“Are you kidding? How could I miss it? It’s the same dress she was wearing a few years ago when they put her on the table to sing and dance!”

© Tony Russell, 2007

"The Floodwall"

Of Principalities and Powers ~ “The Floodwall”


I spent many hours during my boyhood along the Ohio River, exploring land that lay behind a floodwall. On one side of the wall was the city, busy with people and traffic; on the other side, the strange fecund world of a waste wilderness. I loved the river side of the wall—the rank vegetation, the strange fungi, the groundhog burrows, the driftwood and debris tossed up on the shore, the sheer freedom to roam. I could stand on the sandy bank of the river, watching its oily surface and an occasional barge float by, and hear, at the same time, behind me, cars and truck streaming along the avenue on the other side of the wall. Our national discussion on Iraq has that same feeling of a strict, partitioned duality.

Debate in Congress, and on corporate radio and television, has turned—albeit slowly and reluctantly—to a consideration of how we can pull ourselves out of the disaster in Iraq. Yet several things are so thoroughly taken for granted in this debate that the imperial audacity of the assumptions is well nigh invisible.

Off the top of my head, here is a list of the controlling assumptions: The assumption that the time and pace for a U.S draw down is entirely a U.S. matter. The assumption that we will leave only when western energy companies are handed the keys to the oil fields. The assumption that a large U.S. force will be permanently garrisoned in Iraq at five huge bases under construction. The assumption that, if the present government of Iraq can’t deliver, the U.S. will have to make changes in the Iraqi government. The assumption that the Iraqi police and army can be developed into an effective force responsive to U.S. priorities and loyal to U.S. aims. The assumptions that we are the “good guys” here, just trying to spread a little democracy around the world, and the “bad guys” hate freedom. The assumption that any outcome which doesn’t operate with the other prior assumptions will lead to a vast “bloodbath” and an unacceptable U.S “defeat.” The assumption that operating with these assumptions will avoid a “bloodbath” and will salvage some kind of American victory.

Those are the continuous assumptions on talk shows and in our corporate news. They are the traffic you hear on the other side when you stand on the bank of the river. And it is startling, once you focus on it, how these assumptions frame the entire official public conversation on Iraq. There is nothing else. Any “debate” revolves around details confined by those assumptions, details such as the date for starting our pullout, the timetable for the Iraqi government to sign off on our oil arrangement, and the size of the U.S. contingent which will remain behind. That’s it. There is nothing more.

In fact, it might be a healthful awareness technique to sit in front of your television, or open a news magazine, or scan the editorial page of your newspaper, with a little checklist of these assumptions, and see how many you can tick off each time Iraq comes up.

On the river side of the wall, where millions of ordinary citizens stand, is a broad stream of consciousness which challenges those assumptions at every turn. On this side of the wall is knowledge that the U.S. invaded Iraq on the basis of lies which had already been exposed as lies in Europe and on the Internet prior to the invasion. Knowledge that the invasion violated international law, basic morality, and human decency. In short, an awareness that we shouldn’t have been there to begin with, are an occupying army despised by the people we pretend to be helping (confirmed by all Iraqi polling data), and don’t belong there now.

On this side of the wall, we see transparently manipulative attempts to sell the U.S. invasion by portraying soldiers as lovable heroes, first with Jessica Lynch, then with Pat Tillman. Both stories turn out to have been sheer fabrications, with the strands of lies going right up the chain of command. There’s no question about this; documentation is readily available.

We see, too, the undemocratic control of reporting on the war. The “embedding” of reporters within U.S. forces. The prohibitions on travel. The murder of numerous reporters, photographers, and members of news teams. The withholding of images of death and suffering and destruction unless they were the result of enemy action. The return of bodies of U.S. soldiers at odd hours of the night in out of the way corners of airports. The alarming effectiveness of efforts to render this an invisible war.

On this side of the wall, we see statistics revealing that a “bloodbath” has already been drawn and is ongoing—close to 700,000 excess deaths in Iraq since the war started, the majority of them children. On this side of the wall we see that the deaths of U.S. military personnel (now nearing four thousand) are mourned, while the deaths of fifteen to twenty times as many Iraqis, most of them entirely innocent, go unlamented and unregretted.

On this side of the wall, we see the murderous ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and towns where Shi’ites and Sunnis once lived together peaceably, and recognize that this tragedy is a direct consequence of our invasion and our policies after the invasion. We see daily reports of car bombings and suicide bombings, with ghastly carnage, all of that set into motion by our assault and occupation.

On this side of the wall, we see millions of Iraqis uprooted from their homes and set adrift as refugees, having lost nearly everything they own and everything that gave them a familiar place in the world, at the same time we claim the war is to give Iraqis a better life.

On this side of the wall, we see that the sizable U.S. forces slated to remain in Iraq after our “withdrawal” make a mockery of Iraqi sovereignty and provide an ongoing insult and provocation to Islamic believers. The claim that U.S. forces are present only to “provide security for Iraq’s fledgling democracy” is a transparent falsehood. U.S forces are there to insure American dominance over the Iraqi oil industry and to hold a powerful military threat over the heads of other nations in the region.

The huge new bases we have raced to construct in Iraq also represent a tradeoff with the bin Ladens. The U.S. closed its bases in Saudi Arabia, where Osama bin Laden and many others regarded them as an affront to the holiness of their homeland. The new bases in Iraq are to be their replacement.

On this side of the wall, we see the president of the United States asserting repeatedly that we are locked in a struggle with al Qaeda in Iraq, while our own intelligence estimates say that our primary opposition is from Iraqi nationalists resisting the occupation and from Shi’ite militia, with a small al Qaeda force far down on the list of enemies. We see the president’s absurd distortions reported as straight news, without challenge or contradiction.

On this side of the wall, we see that victory in Iraq, by any normal standard, is impossible. Powerful empires repeatedly overestimate their capacity to control the world around them. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. assault on Viet Nam, and now the U.S. invasion of Iraq, were all based on imperial hubris, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq will fail as the others failed. Placing hope on a “surge” and the development of Iraqi forces as reliable surrogates are fantasies familiar to anyone who lived through the Vietnam War.

On this side of the wall, we see that our supposed effort to “spread democracy” has been undertaken in the most undemocratic way possible, with contempt for the public will, with state-sanctioned torture and kidnappings, with secret prisons, the denial of legal representation and rights to the accused, and numerous other attacks on fundamental liberties.

We also see that the undermining of our own democracy and the loss of our own liberties are not even issues in what passes for political debate among the collection of candidates currently campaigning for president. An authentic patriot would be campaigning on an end to torture, an end to secret wiretappings, an end to wild claims of executive privilege, an end to denial of habeas corpus, and an end to imperialism. Those would be major issues in the campaign to lead a genuine democracy.

Now, why is it that the views I’ve described on the “river side” of the wall never make it into the official public discussions of policy? Some, after all, are indisputable, based on easily-found polling data, historical data, our own government’s reports, eyewitness accounts, et cetera. Some are arguable, but at least legitimate alternative views, as plausible and in accordance with the facts as the views publicly circulated. All are steeped in the love of liberty, the mistrust of rulers, and the passion for democracy that characterize our history at its best. Why are they walled off?

Beyond that, why do people who want peacefulness, wisdom, and compassion get a government that is bellicose, foolish, and unfeeling? Why is the electoral system so near-totally devoid of candidates who address our hopes and our deepest beliefs?

One world, with a division separating two viewpoints as effectively as the earthen levees and concrete barriers of the floodwall separated the worlds of my boyhood. What is the floodwall cutting through our country, separating an official public world reliant on force, lies, coercion, and manipulation on the one side from an alienated private world left adrift and unrepresented on the other? Who built the wall? How is it maintained? Why is the wall invisible?

It flabbergasts me that William Greider’s wonderful book Who Will Tell the People, which raised and addressed all of those questions, is now fifteen years old and largely forgotten. Current polling data, reported in the vaguest possible terms, says that a substantial majority of Americans believe the country is “on the wrong track.” That “wrong track” was Greider’s starting point in the introduction to Who Will Tell the People. Mind you, this was written in 1992!

…a climate of stagnant doubt has enveloped contemporary politics, a generalized sense of disappointment that is too diffuse and intangible to be easily confronted. The things that Americans were taught and still wish to believe about self-government…no longer seem to fit the present reality. …American democracy is in much deeper trouble than most people wish to acknowledge. …The substantive meaning of self-government has been hollowed out. What exists behind the formal shell is a systemic breakdown of the shared civic values we call democracy.

“On the wrong track” indeed! Greider’s analysis of the “floodwall” I’ve alluded to was prophetic; it is even more relevant now than the year it was written. It is an original, highly recommended study of the unraveling of our democracy, a process only accelerated by the war in Iraq and the current administration.

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Bootlickers and Lickspittles"

Of Principalities and Powers ~ “Bootlickers, and Lickspittles”


“What’s the matter, honey? You’ve got me worried. You look so tired all the time.”

“It’s all this fuss over the firing of federal prosecutors, Linda. Won’t it ever die down?”

“But why would you be upset, sweetheart? You didn’t get fired. The president and the attorney general are really happy with your work.”

“That’s just it, Linda. Everybody treats the attorneys who got fired as heroes because they insisted on doing what was right rather than what Karl Rove wanted. And those of us who kept our jobs are looked down on as bootlickers and lickspittles.”

“Surely people wouldn’t think that about you, darling!”

[Bitterly] “When I enter the office in the morning, it gets as quiet as a mausoleum. Suddenly everybody has to sharpen a pencil or stare at his or her computer screen. When I invite people out to lunch, they all tell me they have other commitments. I’ve been referred to as a ‘loyal Bushie’ four times this week, Linda, and it wasn’t intended as a compliment.”

“It just doesn’t seem right, darn it! You headed up President Bush’s re-election campaign in this state, you personally rounded up more than $5,000,000 for his war chest, and you were given this job to build up your résumé for a run at a seat in Congress! And now people want to sweep all that aside, just because you’re loyal?”

“It’s not just that, Linda. You remember those three staff attorneys who resigned when I wouldn’t pursue that bribery investigation with the defense contractor? They’ve all been subpoenaed by the Senate. And I know those three. They’re going to go in there and claim that I dropped the investigation because the House members involved were Republicans and the election was just a few months away.”

“But that’s not true, is it?”

“Of course not. It’s just that I was so busy trying to find voter fraud by the Democrats that I didn’t have time to devote to another major case.”

“Why couldn’t they see that, honey? Why do people always put the worst interpretation on perfectly reasonable acts? It must be partisan politics. I’ll bet all three of them are Democrats!”

“Unfortunately, that’s the bad part. Two of them are registered as Independents, and the third is actually a lifelong Republican. They were career attorneys with the department, and together they had over fifty years of experience.”

“Well, see there? That’s the problem, isn’t it? They were stuck in old habits. They weren’t able to adapt to this administration’s new approaches.”

“You see that, and I see that. But 80% of the country has decided it doesn’t like those new approaches. They keep telling pollsters they think the country is on the wrong track.”

“If this is all so hard on you, honey, maybe you ought to resign.”

“I already tried, Linda. But they won’t let me. They say not only would it look bad right now, but the media would be all over me, wanting to know why I quit. Karl said he’d have the president issue a statement that he has complete confidence in me and is behind me 100%.”

“And?”

“I told him he didn’t have to threaten me like that. I’d stay.”

© Tony Russell, 2007

"Thinking About My Lobotomy"

Charles McCarry penned a series of espionage thrillers several decades ago. His reputation seems to have vanished into thin air, but at the time there were reviewers who praised him as a writer surpassing John Le Carré. I hadn’t thought of McCarry’s work for years, until events of the last two election campaigns triggered a faint memory, sending me rummaging through dusty shelves in search of The Better Angels.

Published in 1979, McCarry’s The Better Angels is set “in the last decade of the twentieth century.” Like Orwell’s 1984, it appears to have been bleakly prescient about the near-future, if slightly off mark with its calendar.

In brief, the story turns on a presidential election in the United States and a terrorist plot launched from the Middle East. The election, close and bitterly contested, pits a hard-right conservative against a liberal populist. The conservative candidate, former president Franklin Mallory, had installed centralized computer voting in his first term, using conventional telephone circuits. Although the network is incomplete, the largest cities in key states such as New York, Michigan, and California are on board.

Horace Hubbard, whose half-brother is chief aide to Lockwood, the current president and other candidate, has a lover who is a computer expert with U.S. intelligence. He sounds her out on the possibility of using her access and skill to swing the election. She approaches it as an intellectual challenge.

“It’s possible, then?” he said. “I mean, possible with no
conceivable trace being left?”
“I’ve already said so.”
“You don’t mind using the machines for this?”
Rose laughed. “It’ll do them good. They’ll have to stretch a
little.”

When Rose’s computerized analysis of polling data shows that Lockwood is going to lose the election, they set out to steal it—and succeed. As voting returns are routed through her computer, a small percentage in key precincts is switched from Mallory to Lockwood. The total number of votes cast remains the same, matching the number of voters who went to the polls. There are no false voters, and there is no paper trail. “At the instant the polls closed, Rose would erase from the memory of the election computers all traces of her invasion. ‘A lobotomy,’ Rose said, smiling.”

In a Rolling Stone article in June of this year [picked up on a number of Internet sites, including truthout.org], Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. lays out the case—exhaustively researched and thoroughly documented—that the 2004 election was claimed by George Bush not only through a systematic process of vote suppression and voter disenfranchisement in key states, but also through just the kind of electronic vote shifting that The Better Angels had depicted a quarter of a century earlier.

Exit polls the night of the 2004 election showed Kerry winning in a landslide. He was ahead in ten out of the eleven battleground states and—most importantly—held a commanding lead in the pivotal states of Ohio and Florida. The statistical odds for a Bush victory, based on the exit polls, were 1 in 450,000.

But when the official vote tallies began to come in, they varied widely from the exit polls. Kennedy’s sources document that in precincts where Bush was credited with winning at least 80% of the vote, exit polls showed Bush receiving, on the average, 10% fewer votes than the official tally. In precincts where John Kerry was credited with winning at least 80% of the vote, exit polls matched the official tally within 3/10 of 1%. Discrepancies were highest in battleground states and states where there were Republican governors.

Ohio, home of Diebold, is the most flagrant example. In almost half of the Ohio precincts where exit polls were conducted, they were wildly at odds with the official results—the most egregious being a precinct where exit polls showed Kerry receiving 67% of the vote, while the official total awarded him only 38%.

All of this is electronic. No paper trail. “A lobotomy.”

Kennedy ends this portion of his article by quoting Ron Baiman, a public policy analyst at Loyola University in Chicago. "No rigorous statistical explanation," says Baiman, can account for the "completely nonrandom" disparities between exit polls and official vote counts. Baiman concludes that results in which the discrepancies almost invariably show votes transferred to Bush are "completely consistent with election fraud - specifically vote shifting."

Charges like these must have been alarming for Bush forces. If you are trying to steal an election, and the disparity between exit polls and official vote counts is a telltale sign of the theft, what should your next step be? Clearly, the task is to eliminate exit polls, or make them so difficult to conduct that they lose their validity. And in light of the discussion above, what states would you target to curb exit polls? Bingo! Ohio and Florida!

In 2004, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, attempted to bar exit pollsters from operating within 100 feet of a polling place. Florida tried the same thing in 2005. The reason supplied? Exit polling was “annoying to voters,” so it would be restricted to make voting a more enjoyable experience, thus encouraging voter turnout. Paul Huck, the District Court judge who ruled against the state, found that the restriction violated the Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of the press. He also noted, after a review of 5,000 current complaints about harassment at the polls, that not a single one was because of exit polling. Huck’s point, implicitly, is that there may indeed be someone annoyed by the exit polls, but it’s not the voters.

In a separate study, one which turns not on exit polls but on vote projections, a research team at the University of California-Berkeley examined the 2004 Florida presidential election results. They used voter demographic and turnout data to project vote totals in Florida counties. In counties using various traditional voting methods, the projected votes matched the reported votes almost exactly. But in the 15 counties using electronic voting machines, Bush’s reported votes significantly exceeded the projected vote, especially in large, heavily Democratic counties like Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach.

And 2004 was not the end of oddness in the Sunshine State. Christine Jennings is going to court to challenge her “loss” in FL-13, the Congressional district in Florida where Republican Vern Buchanan defeated her by 369 votes.

That’s “loss” in quotation marks because, oddly enough, in the Democratic-leaning city of Sarasota, where Jennings could be expected to have done well, a whopping 15% of voters—we are asked to believe—faithfully ticked off their votes for agriculture commissioner and governor and county commissioners and so on, but somehow decided to skip entering a choice for this intense, hard-fought, much-publicized race. Not only that, but the huge undervote was entirely confined to Sarasota. A comparison of precinct results shows the undervote there was more than 6 times the “undervote” in the remainder of the district.

These voting machines, it should be noted, were supplied by a company called Election Systems and Software, not Diebold. But, again, there’s no paper trail. Another lobotomy.

In The Better Angels, you will remember, Hubbard presses Rose: “It’s possible then?” We ask the same question, not in the pages of fiction, but in a flesh and blood election: “Could this happen? Can our voting machines actually be used with to turn a loser into a winner?”

From a technical standpoint, it turns out, it’s not only feasible, but much simpler than depicted in McCarry’s work.

This past spring, computer scientists found a gaping security hole in Diebold Election Systems’ touch-screen voting machines. Ian Hoffman, writing in Inside Bay Area, says, “The hole allows someone with a common computer component [think “memory card”] and knowledge of Diebold systems to load almost any software without a password or proof of authenticity and potentially without leaving telltale signs of the change.” Hoffman quotes Michael Shamos, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and electronic voting expert, as saying, "It's the most serious security breach that's ever been discovered in a voting system. On this one, the probability of success is extremely high because there's no residue.... Any kind of cursory inspection of the machine would not reveal it." We have found the locus of our “lobotomy.”


So far as getting inside the machines is concerned, computer scientists at Princeton University discovered that the access panel door on a Dielbold AccuVote-TS machine can be opened with the standard key that many companies supply to open office desks, file cabinets, computers, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars! If you don’t happen to have a key already that opens the voting machines, you can buy one at your local office furniture store. Or order one online. Once a machine is breached, the hacker can install a program that will impact not only the results of that machine, but act as a virus, spreading from one machine to another.

Diebold’s assurances to the contrary, we now know that it is possible—even disturbingly simple—to hack the voting machines. There is a way to steal our elections. (Read the Princeton report online at http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/.)

Once we know there is a way, it is almost beside the point to ask ourselves if there is a will. How many bankers leave the entrance to their institution unlocked overnight, with the vault door standing open, and rely on the honesty of passersby to assure that nothing will be stolen? Given the disparity between exit polls and machine totals in ’04 and ‘06, there are compelling reasons to think about the will of our politicians. Would they commit the ultimate sin against democracy by predetermining an election’s outcome?

Let’s look at the record. This is an administration that lied to launch an invasion of Iraq. That brought waterboarding into the mainstream. That sicced attack dogs on naked prisoners. That held suspects indefinitely, without charge, with no chance to see an attorney or contact their families. That created a network of secret overseas prisons to hide and torture suspects. That kidnapped people off the streets. That monitors the library books you read. That illegally eavesdrops on your conversations and rummages through your e-mails. That withheld information from Congress. That gutted government agencies to install yes-men and –women at the top. That fed huge no-bid contracts to corporations that supported it. That coerced lobbying firms to donate exclusively to Republicans, on pain of losing all access. That systematically suppressed voting among African-Americans.

Is there any reason to believe, given the will to absolute power evident in these acts, that these same people would hesitate to fix an election? That they would torture human beings but not tamper with voting machines?

Heading into Election Day 2006, Karl Rove had an eerie confidence about him, while other Republicans were wringing their hands. The media’s polls were wrong, he said. Republicans would confound the experts by holding on to both houses of Congress. He had his own internal polling data, he claimed, his own secret recipe. You have to wonder if his confidence was encoded on a memory chip.

And if it did, what went wrong? If the election was rigged, how did Democrats pick up enough seats to take over both the House and the Senate?

The explanation offered by an organization called Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is plausible. When you rig an election, they point out, you want to switch just enough votes to win; otherwise things look too fishy. Organizing tampering nationwide takes time, so the voting machines had to be programmed several weeks prior to November 7. And during those weeks leading up to this year’s election, everything went south for the administration. Republican poll numbers fell over a cliff, and the thin margin needed for victory a few weeks earlier was suddenly ancient history.

The Mark Foley scandal exposed House Republican leaders’ collusion in concealing Foley’s lust for congressional pages. Ken Adelman, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Frank Gaffney—all early cheerleaders for the war—blamed Rumsfeld and Bush for the mess in Iraq. Daily corpse counts from Baghdad were staggering. David Kuo’s book Tempting Faith showed party leaders’ private contempt for the religious right. Kathleen Harris, Kenneth Blackwell, and George Allen tripped over their own tongues, committing gaffe after ugly gaffe.

Come election night, Democrats were winners. But in the House, especially, they lost a number of races by thin margins. Jonathan Simon, co-founder of EDA, compared the unadjusted National Election Pool (NEP) exit polling data with final vote counts, and found that 3,000,000 votes had been mysteriously shifted—almost 4% of the total votes cast. If those votes had not been shifted, what would the House look like? Or the Senate?

Even the Republican political consultant Dick Morris declared, shortly after the 2004 election, that the pattern of “mistaken” exit polls in battleground state after battleground state was “virtually inconceivable.” “Exit polls are almost never wrong," he wrote. "So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries....”

One wonders why the media, the Democratic Party, or we, as citizens, hasn’t taken the next logical step, which would be to conclude, “If exit polls are that reliable, and are routinely used to gauge the honesty of elections, then we are being ruled by an illegitimate government, installed in a fraudulent election.”

Part of the answer may be that, for all of our national macho posturing, we’ve become a timid bunch. The simple threat of being labeled “paranoid” or a “conspiracy theorist” is enough to bring us to heel. Someone sets the boundaries for the thinkable, and we obey them like a dog trained to stay in the yard, confined by an invisible fence. Stolen elections? That’s crazy talk!

And part of the answer may be that we’re a victim of our own self-image. We’re not some former Soviet republic or Latin American loony bin, for cryin’ out loud, we’re the United States! We’re spreading democracy abroad, not squandering it at home.

When Rose refers to a “lobotomy” in The Better Angels, she is signifying a scrubbing of the machine’s memory, or history. But the most powerful effect of the actual medical procedure is on affect, not memory. The lobotomist P. MacDonald Tow’s summary may be more apt—and more chilling—as a description of our political situation: "Possibly the truest and most accurate way of describing the net effect [of a lobotomy] on the total personality is to say that he is more simple; and being more simple he has rather less insight into his own performance. The mental impairment is greater in the higher and more peculiarly human functions. Deprived of their autonomy, initiative, or willpower, their performance is considerably better in a structured situation.” -Personality Changes Following Frontal Leukotomy

“Structured situation” indeed. And growing more “structured” all the time. Contrast our own indifferent response to fraud in the last presidential election with the behavior of one of those former Soviet republics, Ukraine, likewise in that November of ‘04.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens braved bitter cold to gather day after day in the main square of Kiev. They came to protest voter intimidation, disenfranchisement, and electoral fraud in their presidential election. Viktor Yushchenko, the candidate trailing in the “official” vote, claimed victory, called for international recognition, and launched a civil disobedience campaign. The opposition organized sit-ins and general strikes. Their resistance came to be called “the Orange Revolution,” and it culminated with the inauguration of Yushchenko on January 23, 2005.

Here in the U.S., John Kerry conceded defeat. George Bush declared that he had political capital and was going to spend it. Americans starving for change concluded that the nation had changed under their feet, “moved in the wrong direction,” and turned dispiritedly to distraction or talk of emigration.

In an odd, roundabout way, the dark forces manipulating elections may have been lucky this time around. Democrats won enough to celebrate, so show little inclination to question the election’s outcome. And they didn’t win enough to force any change through Congress that the administration doesn’t want. Like the release valve on a pressure canner, Democratic victories took the steam out of election reform. Victory became yet another lobotomy.

© Tony Russell, 2006

"Some Thoughts on the 2006 Election"

We live in a Ten Percent Democracy. Despite national revulsion against a host of horrors—the war, corruption, hypocrisy, and the whole posturing, bragging, macho nature of this administration—only ten percent of House seats were actually in play. Ten percent—approximately 40 out of 435. The other 405 seats (90%) were safely out of the voters’ reach. Victory in that 90% was automatic, those House seats as secure as a seat on the Supreme Court. The House has been so gerrymandered that it comes close to being democracy-proof.

Consider this: In the 40 seats where there was a meaningful election, Democrats won 75%. In the Senate, which can’t be gerrymandered, 33 seats were up for election, and Democrats (including the two Independents who will caucus with them), won 24, or 72%. That’s the real scope of the rejection of right wing government, a rejection masked by the gerrymandering in the House, and by the fact that only a third of the Senate had to face the voters.

* * * * *

Democrats remain hopelessly inept at countering Republican attacks. Bush and company yell that Democrats have no exit plan for Iraq. That’s like a guy who insists he can drive his new pickup through a swampy stretch of red clay road, jeering at warnings about how deep the water is and how thick the mud. He plows full speed ahead, pigheadedly ignoring the advice and pleas of his wife and kids. When the truck begins to bog down, he says “No problem,” gives it the gas, spins his wheels, guns the engine again, tries to rock back and forth (“changing his tactics”}, digs himself deeper and deeper, and buries the truck to the hubs. He wades out to look things over, and discovers that the truck’s frame is resting on the ground. Then he turns around and screams at everybody sitting in the truck because they can’t tell him how to get out?

* * * * *

The election was an overwhelming rejection of “rubber stamp Republicans.” It must have seemed like a great deal once: Take your marching orders from the White House, and climb aboard the Gravy Train. Every lobbyist in Washington wants to stuff dollar bills in your pocket, and your destination is Permanent Power. All you have to do is close your ears to the lies, your eyes to the torture, your faith to the poor, and your patriotism to the loss of liberties. A classic Faustian bargain—and the Devil came around to collect.

* * * * *

Can it be that folks have finally seen through Karl Rove’s use of smear, fear, queer, and racial prejudice? (Granted, however, that racist ads may have tipped the scales in Tennessee.) Polls consistently showed voters worried the country was “headed in the wrong direction,” and Rove’s brand of putrid politics gets a lot of credit for that perception. This election wasn’t ideological; it was visceral. Millions of people couldn’t stomach this administration any longer, and in the election booth, they did what they could to vomit it out.

* * * * *

Evangelicals have finally lost their faith—in Republican politicians. For more than two decades, the Republican party has been building victory on three bases—first, corporate support (including most major media); second, the well-to-do and people who aspire to be well-to-do (Bush: “I call you ‘my base.’”); and third, evangelicals and fundamentalists of all stripes. To put it plainly, evangelicals were useful dupes for the other two groups, voting—can we say it?—religiously for Republicans. Mention abortion or gay marriage, and they salivated like Pavlov’s dog—then yanked the Republican lever at the polls. Believing that Mr. Bush and his cronies shared and would act on their vision, zealous Christians swallowed an unjust war, ignored the assault on Creation by corporate predators, and blinked at the abandonment of the common good for policies to fatten the rich. (Don’t forget abortion and gay marriage!) But in the last couple of months, as revelations of corruption and hypocrisy and the contempt Republican insiders felt for the ‘religious nuts’ flooded out, many evangelicals became independent thinkers. Bless them.

* * * * *

On a related note, Democratic candidates benefited from the flare-up of a dying faith—faith that ordinary people can still bring about a response to their strongest hopes for their country; faith that liberties already traded away can be regained; faith that a planet in peril can yet be saved; faith that the right to vote and have your vote counted will be guaranteed; faith that light will be shone in dark places, and hidden crimes will be revealed; faith that we can find our way back from an illegal, immoral, unwinnable war. That is the faith that lifted Democrats, deserving and undeserving alike, to victory last Tuesday. The victory was given in hope, not out of trust. Democrats have to earn that.

© Tony Russell, 2006

“Moral Values”

“Hello. You’ve reached the Moral Values Speakers Bureau, specializing in providing moral leaders and keynote speakers for your church rallies, political fundraisers, business conventions, and get-out-the-vote drives. This is Jason. How may I help you?”

“Jason, this is Martha Billingsgate from Ohio. I hate to call on such short notice, but we’re looking for a dynamic speaker Friday night to kick off the last month of the Congressman’s campaign. Who do you have available?”

“Give me a second while I check our bookings on the computer here, Martha. Let’s see…. You’re in luck. I can get you Tom DeLay. He’s the whole package! A born-again Christian, staunch supporter of the conservative agenda, and one of the most powerful men in Washington. But shoot, you know all that. A lot of your big givers already have a history with him, and he has an opening this weekend.”

“I’m sure he does. The man is under indictment for laundering corporate money, Jason. Once upon a time Tom was golden, but we’d prefer to avoid his Midas touch at this point.”

“After all the cash Mr. DeLay raised for the Congressman in the past?”

“Jason, I will forget you said that, and I suggest you forget that inconvenient fact as well. Do I make myself clear?”

“Sure, sure. Sorry, Martha. Look, let’s go with Ralph Reed. The shining star of the party’s moral values agenda. Former leader of the Christian Coalition, currently running for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. I think I can get him booked on a flight into Columbus, if you can pick him up there.”

“The man has a suit against him charging that he ran a fake moral crusade to squeeze out an Indian tribe competing against one of Jack Abramoff’s clients, for Christ’s sake! He took millions of dollars in fees and scammed the churches who trusted him. The Congressman already has enough hanging over him; do you think he wants Ralph Reed coming to town? Where is your head?”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the information, Martha. I’ll just jot myself a note here to update Ralph’s bio. We can substitute Grover Norquist. He’s the genius behind the party’s economic platform. Your base loves to hear him talk about cutting taxes and ‘starving the government beast.’ He’ll really draw a crowd for you.”

“I’ll bet he will. A crowd of auditors and investigators. A Senate committee just reported that Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform appear to have laundered money for Jack Abramoff. The Congressman has enough problems of his own, Jason, without importing new ones.”

“Come on, Martha, that’s just business as usual! It’s not like Grover’s been indicted yet. But if you’re going to be squeamish, let’s see who else we have. Hmmm…. I can get you a real stemwinder! Duke Cunningham. Recently resigned from the House of Representatives. The guy’s a former hotshot pilot, and a real red meat conservative.”

“Who also admitted he sold his vote and influence to the highest bidder, betrayed his oath and office, and brought disgrace on himself and his family. Don’t you even read the news, Jason?”

“Was that Duke? I wondered why his fee had dropped. Oh, I see that Don Sherwood, one of your guy’s fellow Congressmen from Pennsylvania, could make it that night.”

“When he could be out abusing his mistress?”

“They reached a settlement on that choking thing, Martha. No legal action pending that I know of.”

“Just the same, Jason….”

“Okay, okay. Let me scroll down here. Say, why don’t you use Bob Ney? He’s a Buckeye too, and he and your guy have been good buddies since Bob did him a few favors as chair of the House Administration Committee. Bob would probably cut you a good deal on the speaker’s fee, too.”

“We’re already paying Bob Ney to stay away from the campaign, Jason, and shredding every photo we can find that shows him standing on a golf course with his arm around our candidate.”

“Personally, I think Bob should have fought those charges rather than pleading guilty, Martha.”

“Your legal opinions are noted, Jason, but if we could move along….”

“What about Mark Foley, Martha? He’s a hell of a fundraiser, and the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.”

“That’s ‘former chairman,’ Jason. And when the person charged with watching out for young people is actually sending them smutty e-mails and asking for their photos….”

“Hey, don’t blame me. How was I to know?”

“What are you, out of the loop? It looks as if everybody else in Washington knew about Foley for years.”

“To be honest, Martha, there’s such a demand for lecturers on moral values that I have a hard time keeping up with the news.”

© Tony Russell, 2006

"Movie Review: Election 2000"

There is a grand tradition of “heist films”—classics like The Sting, Heist, Three Kings, and The Thomas Crown Affair, and lesser fare like Femme Fatale and Oceans Twelve. Add somewhere in the middle of that list a new blockbuster, Election 2000.

Election 2000, like other “heist films,” turns on a few staple ingredients—a larcenous but likeable central figure (or two); a hugely valuable or precious article to be stolen; and a complex scheme which dazzles the viewer with its ingenuity as it unfolds. Here, the moviemakers lay out a seemingly-impossible task: George W. Bush and his cronies attempt to steal a presidential election in plain view of more than two hundred million Americans, under round-the-clock media coverage.

This premise doesn’t disturb us, because the entire “heist” genre is essentially amoral. We are asked to disregard a conventional societal viewpoint, which takes a dim view of theft, and instead admire the thieves’ guile and audacity as sheer entertainment. No surprise here: the strategy works. Ever since sly Odysseus got Polyphemus drunk, drove a stake into his eye, and stole his sheep, audiences have traded in their moral yardsticks for marvelous yarns. Election 2000, by the latter standard, succeeds admirably, holding the audience enrapt for more than eight days—an unprecedented length for a feature film.

At the peak of the genre, our appreciation of the cleverness of the thieves is heightened by the intelligence of those they must outwit, and it is here that Election 2000 falls short. We expect the antagonists to be watchful, organized, sophisticated, even cunning—worthy opponents whose eventual defeat magnifies the achievement of the successful thief. The Democrats in this film—Al Gore and the mucilaginous Joe Lieberman— are befuddled and passionless, with Lieberman actually enabling the heist at each turn.

The name ‘George W. Bush’ hardly carries the star power of a Redford or Newman, or even a Pierce Brosnan. But Bush puts on a believable performance as a would-be President of the United States, aided by a powerful supporting cast which includes Jeb Bush as the Florida governor and Katherine Harris as his loyal secretary of state, who conspire together to suppress the black vote, disenfranchise voters in predominantly Democratic districts, and include dubious military votes. Jim Baker operates as the deus ex machina.

Most of the key scenes in Election 2000 were shot in Florida, a novel location for a film with politics at its center. As fans of Wag the Dog know, the real political center of the United States is a studio in Hollywood.

I won’t reveal the torturous twists of the plot, or its outcome. Viewers’ suspense is somewhat abated, however, by widespread reports that a sequel was in production before the first film was even released. Filmmakers being the opportunists they are, and fans the ever-gullible optimists they are, a second film was inevitable. The follow-up—tentatively titled (what else?) Election 2004—also stars Bush, with the surly Dick Cheney once again cast as his sidekick, “the Veep.” Can 2008 be far behind?

© Tony Russell, 2006

“You Make Me Ashamed of Myself”

I looked over the fence to see what all the hammering and sawing was about in my neighbor’s backyard. “Hey Tom!” I called. “What’re you up to?”

“Come on over and take a look!” he hollered.

I let myself through the gate and went to inspect his work. “Whadya think?” he said, with typical handyman’s pride.

“Looks like you’re remodeling the kid’s teeter-totter,” I offered.

“Come on, Ace,” he said with a grin. “You’ve got to do better than that. This is cutting edge stuff here. We’re ahead of the curve.”

I was baffled. It still looked like a teeter-totter, but he’d added some straps and hinged supports on the bottom of each end. “Why did you move the kids’ wading pool under this end, and mount a holder for your water hose over here?” I asked.

“It’s a waterboard,” he said impatiently. “Don’t you keep up with the news?”

“Guess not,” I admitted. “What’s a waterboard?”

“It’s one of the favorite tortures—I’m sorry, one of the favorite interrogation methods the CIA uses,” he said. “You just strap somebody to a board, cover his face with a thin plastic film, lower his head, and then flood him with water. It’s like drowning and suffocating at the same time! People can’t stand it. They’ll tell you anything after just a few minutes.”

“And you’ve been able to duplicate that with these simple materials you have in your own backyard!” I said admiringly.

“That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “I’m almost done. I’m anxious to have Timmy and Tina try it out on their friends.”

“Gosh, aren’t you afraid somebody will get hurt?” I worried.

He looked at me, dumbfounded. “Well duh! That’s the whole idea, Ace.”

“But they seem like such nice kids,” I said. “It’s hard to picture them waterboarding their friends.”

“Well, you have to work at it,” he admitted. “But I think they’ll come around. I promised Timmy a new video game if he got good at it, and Bev told Tina she’d send her to soccer camp if she mastered the waterboard.”

“What got you started on this anyway?” I asked.

“If you’d been following the debate in Congress, Ace, you’d know that the President insisted Congress had to give him the power to torture—I mean, combat terrorism with aggressive interrogation techniques. And Congress gave him the thumbs up. Isn’t that great!”

“So you’re going to teach Timmy and Tina how it’s done?”

“Right. We’ll start with the waterboard and then move on to some other techniques.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I’ve been reading up on this stuff. One thing that caught my eye was when right wingers overthrew the government of Chile. A favorite of theirs was just to smash somebody in the mouth with a hammer, splitting and breaking off a bunch of teeth.”

“That’s even simpler than a waterboard,” I said. “‘Do-it-yourself torture: Only tool required is a hammer.’ But don’t you think the other parents in the neighborhood would object?”

“I don’t know. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than braces. But seriously, it’s my job as a parent to prepare my kids to serve their country, and if the neighbors have a patriotic bone in their body, they’ll be glad to see Timmy and Tina getting the practice.”

“You really take your duty as a parent seriously,” I said.

“My duty as a parent, and as a citizen,” he said. “I’ve talked with Timmy’s scoutmaster about getting the Boy Scouts to offer a Citizenship merit badge for aggressive interrogation techniques. He likes the idea. Not only would kids be learning new American values, but they’d be mastering skills their country can use when they become adults.”

“You make me ashamed of myself, Tom,” I said. “I wish I’d been following the news more closely. “

“Hey, it’s not too late to jump on the bandwagon,” he said.

© Tony Russell, 2006

“Accent”

Excited linguists have been poring over the president’s latest Fourth of July speech at Fort Bragg. “He’s been giving the same speech, year after year, about Iraq, saying he’s ‘not gonna cut and run,’ says Reg Watson of Marshall University’s Language and Rhetoric Institute. “That provides an extraordinary opportunity to compare his language patterns over a period of time.”

Watson has detected what he calls “a strange inverse relationship” in the president’s speech. “The longer Bush stays in Washington,” he says, “the more he sounds like he’s from the backwoods. As he repeats the same phrases and slogans, you can just hear his grammar deteriorate, and notice his dropping more and more ‘g’s’ from the end of words.”

Researchers are still trying to pinpoint the exact nature of the president’s accent. “It’s not Texas,” said one. “More like a Texas accent as spoken at a costume party in Kennebunkport, Maine.”

One school of thought is that the president spent too many formative years watching “The Andy Griffith Show.” Another is that he is being privately tutored by a “speech coach” of the sort who work with country and western singers from Canada, California, and New Jersey.

The tutoring theory has come under fire from Horace Bradley of Shepherd University, who contends that the president is self-taught. “Did you ever hear Ramblin’ Jack Elliot?” he asks. “There he is, a Jew from New York City, who’s remade himself into a big plains drifter. Or Bob Dylan, a Jewish kid from Minnesota, who adopted what he understood to be the speech of the ‘folk.’ George W. Bush did the same thing—repackaged himself as ‘the common man.’ Nobody taught them; they just put an accent together on their own. Reinventing yourself is more American than apple pie.”

Linguists aren’t the only ones puzzled by the president’s patois. “Where did he learn to talk like that?” wonders Percy Phillips III, who has known Bush since their prep school days. “He didn’t sound like that when we were together at Andover, or when we were inducted into Skull and Bones at Yale, or even when we were classmates in Harvard Business School.” Phillips notes that Bush’s younger brother Jeb speaks perfectly grammatical English with a standard American accent.

Bonnie Weiler, chair of the linguistics department at Potomac State, suggests that Bush is employing a generic “shitkicker” accent similar to that used for years by long-haul truckers over their CBs. “I’ve filed a Freedom of Information request to find out if he has a pickup with a CB mounted in it,” she says in frustration, “but so far they’re stonewalling me.”

It jars some to hear Bush, the multimillionaire son of a U.S. president and grandson of Prescott Bush, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, inveigh against “elites” in a cornpone accent implying that his parents could have been a long haul trucker and a truck stop waitress.

Although his accent has been derided by some of his fellow performers, it continues to serve Bush well in his political career. “When he speaks extemporaneously, using that accent,” says Weiler, “it’s a tour de force—vapid, inane, clumsy, almost devoid of logic and coherence. Millions of voters, desensitized to language and ideas by years of television, connect with it in a visceral way.”

© Tony Russell, 2006