Mark Twain once referred to the Gilded Age, that period after the Civil War in which the plutocrats of the late 19th century economically roasted the country in order to amass great wealth, as the "Great Barbeque." To be fair, these same plutocrats also created the modern industrial state. However, they were aided and abetted by venal members of Congress. But this roasting also led to great ineqaulities which weren't dealt with until the Great Depression of the 20th century.

Today, the Paulson plan, buying the toxic mortgages that's plaguing the nation's financial, capital and credit markets, is essentially the the Great Barbeque Part 2, in which the same malefactors of great wealth are allowed to in engage in socialism for the rich but  free enterprise for the poor.

This may be even the Great Barebque Part 3, if one considers that the general thrust of deregulation, initiated by th Reagan admininstration and followed through by succeeding Republican and Democratic administrations, has also allowed, as demonstrated by Thomas Frank in his recent tome, The Wrecking Crew, conservatives to make a buck off their own incompetency while destroying the nation's physical and financial infrastructure.

Glenn Greenwald's take on Times columnist David Brooks' new economic establishment goes to the heart of the matter: meet the new boss who's the same as the old boss.

But also examine the Roll Call list, as cited by Greenwald, of the richest politicians in the US Congress. Please note who comes in at number thirteen. "Mr. Populist" himself.

Please explain to me, America, how, as Gov. Sarah Palin explained to ABC News Charles Gibson, you can be "wired," ready to accept a job, say, the vice presidency, when you don't know what the job entails?

An inquiring mind wants to know.

Please explain to me, America, how, as Gov. Sarah Palin explained to ABC News Charles Gibson, you can be "wired," ready to accept a job, say, the vice presidency, when you don't know what the job entails?

An inquiring mind wants to know.

Last night I watched Zack Snyder's 2007 film version of Frank Miller's graphic novel, 300; an account of Sparta's King Leonidas and his brothers-in-arms defense of Sparta from Persia, led by Xerxes. (Persia, led by King Xerxes,  attacked Greece, which was made up numerous city-states, and King Leonidas and his personal bodygaurds of 300 men and others held them off at a narrow pass called Thermopylae in 480 BC for two days before being slaughtered to the man.)

What struck me was the sense of militarism and the unabashed Greco flag waving and the rhetoric of "free men" and "freedom." It was a highly testosterone affair with slightly racial overtones.

For instance,  ancient Persia, is the forerunner of moden day Iran (that's a problem right there). According to Wikipedia, Iran is a "cognate of the of Aryans, and means land of the Aryans." Now, Aryans have been mostly seen as "white people," aka "caucasians," but in the film Xerxes, the king of the Persian empire was "black," meaning he had bronze skin coloration. Put less graciously, the dude looked like a bona fide nigga with a serious bling-bling problem.

Now, I understand that this was a film based on a graphic novel, which means historical inaccuracy was a foregone conclusion. But one would think that the filmmaker would try to at least get the demographic right. Most, if not all of the Persians, looked to be "people of color." 

Not only was Xerxes "black" but also a less than flaming faggot while Leonidas, was the epitome of Spartan masculinity. In the film, Leonidas disparaged his fellow Greeks in Athens as being merely "philosophers" and "boy lovers" to an emissary of Persia.

As a matter of act, when Leonidas wife puts in  her two cents , the Persian emissary questions how is it that a Spartan woman can partakes in men-talk (affairs of the state)?

She replies that's due to the fact that Spartan women give birth to "real men." (Latter in the film she ably dispatches a Spartan politician who had abused and betrayed before the council of men.)

Where is this going? Well, read the last lines of John McCain's speech:

I’m going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I’m going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I’m an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.

Fight for what’s right for our country.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children’s future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history. 

Stating the obvious, McCain, as a former military man, is emblematic of the Spartan warrior ethos. Hence his stake in supporting the surge and using his past expericence as military man to become the commander in chief. McCain is known to be a hot head, which means to some degree he is a man of passion, however erratic.

Mr. Cool, Obama, is a lawyer, and constitutional one, embodies the Athenian ethos: deliberative, reasonable, and contemplative. One example of this is his response to aquestion at  Rick Warren's Saddleback Church.

When asked about when does life begin, Obama replied "...That's above my pay grade." Cool. Rationale.

As as matter of fact, Washinton Post columnist Richard Cohen wonders if  Obama is "Too Cool to Fight?:
 

Stephanopoulos vainly tried for some genuine reaction [from Obama]. In choosing Palin, did John McCain get someone who met the minimum test of being "capable of being president"? Everyone in America knows the answer to that. They know McCain picked someone so unqualified she has been hiding from the media because a question to her is like kryptonite to what's-his-name. But did Obama say anything like that? Here are his exact words: "Well, you know, I'll let you ask John McCain when he's on ABC." Boy, Palin will never get over that.

This has generally been Obama's response: calm, cool, and collected. However, it is that very sort of lack of obvious passion when not giving a speech that makes some people believe if he won't do battle in the campaign, how will he do battle if the wins the White House? This is the general view of most voters who watched as John Kerry allowed his record to be torn to shreds.

As Cohen notes:

What Obama does not understand is that he is being Swift-boated. The term does not apply to a mere smear. It is bolder, more outrageous than that. It means going straight at your opponent's strength and maligning it. This is what was done in 2004 to John Kerry, who had commanded a Swift boat in Vietnam. Kerry had won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star and emerged from the war a certified hero. It was that record that his opponents attacked, a tactic Kerry thought so ludicrous that he at first ignored it. The record shows that he lost the election.

As is stands now, the "maverick" label appeals to people who want a leader(s) to fight and buck the system. Or, the McCain/Palin ticket is now appealing to base conservatives who believe they now have a ticket worth believing in.

Perhaps, we should keep the faith that Team Obama knows the real deal; he's sticking to his game plan and organizing in key electoral states. Perhaps this is the "new kind of politics" that Obama is talking about: a kind of bloodless politics that is more cerebal than visceral.

Perhaps. But people want a "leader," a man or woman who will plant the standard of their hopes,  dreams and principles in the earth and say: "This is what I stand for, and this is what I will die for."

Politics doesn't have to be bloody, but is should have some passion.

Although McCain was a navy aviator you can tell he knows how to maneuver the war-torn USS Straight-Talker. Remember when Obama came back from his successful European and Mid-East jaunt? He dazzled the world and gave a brilliant speech, which McCain took issue with at the American Legion. He said that Obama’s speech was confident about himself but not about America.

Senator McCain, speaking before the Legion audience, took Senator Obama to task for his Berlin speech for it displaying “confidence in oneself” and but not “confidence in one’s country” regarding the Cold War.

What was Mr. Obama’s near treasonous utterance in the eyes of Mr. McCain?

“…there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”

For the Arizonian, “The Cold War ended not because the world stood ‘as one,’ but because the great democracies came together, bound together by sustained and decisive American leadership.”

Yes, and the instruments by which the U.S. expressed its “decisive leadership” were the Marshall Plan and NATO, which Mr. Obama mentioned the latter three times in his speech.

“Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security,” said Obama.

Then the presumptive GOP nominee took to task, once again, the presumptive Democratic nominee for mentioning the US “failure to lead” in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Georgia.

If “…America somehow set a bad example that invited Russia to invade a small, peaceful, and democratic nation, then he should state it outright,” said Sen. McCain.

This critique by McCain is tied up with his general view he has of Obama: no experience. Hence, Obama’s greatest strength is that he is popular, meaning a mere celebrity like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. In other words, Obama is a frivolous waif.

But something changed…something really changed. The USS Straight-Talker did a mid-course correction after lobbing numerous video artillery charges at the USS Change, chasing it around as a celebrity cruise ship. The charge was no longer about experience, especially about McCain’s; it’s now about personality. In other words, the USS Straight-Talker deployed the USS Palin.

What must have shaken the commander of the USS Straight-Talker was the sight of Obama giving his acceptance speech before 80,000 fired-up Democrats. Perhaps the sight of the waif taking command and putting on a masterful albeit scripted nomination convention and unifying the party’s faction really gave officers of the USS Straight-Talker something to think about.

They needed a game-changer, and Gov. Sarah Palin appears to be that for the base. Without stating her obvious conservative creds, she is basically someone who’s attractive, vivacious and can give “good speech.” She’s a “hockey mom,” a regular American.

Palin, articulate, attractive, poised, hitting Obama with sarcastic remarks à la Ann Coulter, is the perfect, sleek missile cruiser. And she's only been cruising in Alaskan waters, at the command level, for two years.

Just as traditional family values and abstinence education no longer means anything to the party’s base since Gov. Palin’s 17-year old daughter is great with child, experience doesn’t matter now. A good example of that criterion’s irrelevance evidenced by the exchange between a CNN reporter was unable to get a straight answer from the McCain campaign regarding Gov. Palin’s foreign policy experience.

This is about course correction. Now, the liberal media elite, McCain’s original “base” before Christian fundamentalists mattered, is now the evil empire that dares to question an unknown politico for the office of the vice presidency. But by questioning the ship worthiness of the USS Palin, the media is essentially questioning the judgment of Commander John McCain.

It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters now is the will to win, not putting the country first.

Listening to the events of how Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman and her colleagues were arrested in St. Paul during the GOP convention while credentialed, and looking at videos of Glenn Greenwald who spoke to St. Paul residents whose home was stormed-trooped clearly shows that America has whole heartedly accepted the “terror regime” at home that has been the hallmark of the Bush Administration.

Not only has the country accepted the more security is more freedom paradigm, but one virtually sees no and reads no reporting of it in the media. The prime motive of the police seems to be to intimidate the media from reporting on police actions and to prevent the press from reporting on the march in St. Paul before the Republican Party convention.

When the Chinese government, however, arrested six Americans in during Beijing the Olympics that was covered and editorialized. However, the police intimidation tactic in St. Paul is hardly a blip in the media, except for photo in the Washington Post GOP convention coverage section, they was virtually mentioning.

However, there was an article in the Post about a Chinese protestor whose mother was being harassed by Chinese officials because his family are pursuing financial claims against the government, and did so during the Beijing games.

But any corresponding reporting by the major organs of the established media on questionable police actions aimed at intimidating freedom of the press and the right of the people to peacefully assemble? Not much...

With warrant less spying, torture, Guantanamo, never ending encroachment on the Constitution, the land of the free and the home of the brave is becoming high-tech, consumer police state with the shell of a democratic republic.

Before turning to the local Pacifica affiliate station, NPR was cheerily babbling about how to watch the fall line-up of the television shows.

Which begs the questions, is NPR really a news-oriented station anymore or merely an audio brand of smugly packaged life-style shows?

Add this to the list of stupid media. A reporter for ABC stated that Obama had a black father from Kenya and a white father from Kansas. There's nothing like keep the public duly informed.

Year ago Nation columnist Katha Politt made astute observation regarding social conservatives and Republican Party public policy. They decried feminism’s influence on the family, arguing that it caused women to leave their homes for work and neglected child rearing; however when lower-income women did so, stayed home, especially on AFDC, those women were decried as lazy and shiftless.

The current edition of the “mommy wars,” the “campaign edition,” underscores this same double-standard thinking that’s become a hallmark of conservative thinking. This all has to do with Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination as Sen. John McCain’s vice president, and the fact that she has five children.

Conservatives who have touted stay-at-home moms now revel in the fact that she is a working mother and one who has decided not to abort her recent child, a son with Downs Syndrome. Even more interesting is listening to and reading how conservatives find compassion for Palin’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol, who is five-months pregnant. For years conservatives have railed against out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy when it happened to lower-income families of colored.  

And let’s be clear about this point. If this had happened to, say, Obama's 17 year-old daughter, this would have been been proof-positive that Obama was unfit for office. That if he couldn't control his own daughter, how could he be steward of the nation? When you read how Republicans spin this, it really truly underscores the GOP's sense of "traditional family values." 

Those people are always having children out of wedlock. However, when the right sort of people have children out of wedlock, it's just a "personal family problem."

But now that it has happened to one of their own? Republicans collectively shrug their shoulders as if saying, “Shit happens.”

However, what makes this even more interesting is that upon reading the Times’ article by Jodi Kantor, “A New Twist in the Debate on Mothers .” One pivotal actor wasn’t even mentioned in the Palin family drama: Todd Palin, Alaska’s “First Dude,” the governor's husband.

As a matter of fact when the Today Show did its sophomoric take on the “mommy wars,” Todd Palin was seen but wasn’t even mentioned as possible helpmate in child rearing.  The basic, generic assumption, once again, is that real men don't engage in child rearing. They are not seen as doing their 50 percent. In the Times article and the Today Show segment, fathers were missing in action. All the responsibility of child rearing is solely in the realm of women, who are no longer respected or exalted as MOTHERS but have been reduced to being mere "moms" or "mommies, " the latest metric of domestic consumption. "Five out of ten moms like Momex because..." 

Once again, the obliviousness to society's double standard goes by the way side. When Obama gave a speech on fathers being missing in their children's lives on Father's Day, he was upbraided by some, especially Jesse Jackson, for talking down to black people, but other saw it as a message that applied to all fathers.

In his Democratic Party convention acceptance speech, he said this about fathers: 

Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents,  that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework, that fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children. 

However, when reading and listening to the tracts of the so-called mommy wars, Todd Palin seems to be missing in action while in plain and obvious sight. 

In the eyes of some, the public function of black intellectuals has changed from speaking truth to power to turning away from the kind of social justice activism that was the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Houston A. Baker, Jr., Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt University, has turned his critical eyes on this transformation in his book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008).

Baker looks across the spectrum of black intellectualism—left, right, and center. One of the founders of Black Studies, forty years ago, we talked about the role of black intellectuals, the good, bad and the ugly. We spoke days before Barack Obama accepted the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s heralded speech at the 1963 March on Washington. Below is an edited version of our conversation.


Norman Kelley: Your book echoes Julian Benda’s “The Treason of the Intellectuals” (Les Trahison des Clercs). Benda argued that intellectuals of his era­–the modern era–were increasingly responsible for inflaming the passions of nationalism, racism, and war. He wrote: “Now, at the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental change had occurred: the “clerks” [his word for intellectuals] began to play the game of political passions. The men who had acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as it stimulators.”

If I understand you correctly, your book pivots off his central thesis but in a different direction. You see a betrayal in black intellectuals not fulfilling their public intellectual role.

Houston Baker: That’s right. I had a section in an earlier draft of the manuscript that addressed the treatment of the “clercs” directly, and I remember saying that at least a direct reversal, a mirror image. I remember saying that the situation would find the intellectual outside the grand salon, the dining table that uses them in a public way. While in the present economy black intellectuals are invited to the grand salon and are asked to sit down at the table, and discuss the next issue of neoconservative declaration of bad black behavior. It’s kind of astonishing from a perspective of intellectual history.

Kelley: Now, you cited Martin Luther King as the model of an engaged black public intellectual while most people would see him as a moralistic preacher rather than as a public intellectual, although he did write books.

Baker: Historically, one of the chief institutions of the black public sphere has been the church. I would use an example of an engaging analysis of the public sphere Du Bois’s essay in The Souls of Black Folk, “The Faith of the Fathers.” Du Bois’s claim—well, he doesn’t say it directly but it’s true—because black folks are excluded from politics, from the social policy of the country that suppose to be their native land, he kind of sees that they have had to develop a microcosm within the church and the development of spirituals. So, King’s legacy, heritage, geneology, through generations of black preachers is the start of his unconscious and conscious engagement; made to go to youth groups and prayer meetings during the week; being the preacher’s son.

That would be the beginning of the engagement, and then the other institution, which has fallen upon hard times in many instances but was glorious at the time that King was coming along, would be historically black colleges and universities; his Morehouse years in Atlanta; his father the preacher of the church. I would say his formative years found him in a black public sphere because of segregation through housing. The move into Montgomery, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church would not have been, I think, at all disconcerting to King. This is all speculation, but it would have been seen as a destination church, a destination city, a destination region in the South.

What was unknown to him when he moved in Montgomery was the long history of building a counter public sphere, a black resistance movement, a black liberation impulse that was there and that was rolling through a middle age generation, and I use the middle age advisedly, of Rosa Parks. Bourgeois, wonderfully situated in Montgomery, and as they would say, “You are the chosen one. You are chosen to lead us: you got the look, you got the education, you got the eloquence to do it.”

And I think what was astonishing the kind of background, formative work in the public sphere, the kind of coming together of the public sphere, the ideology, the population, the demographics, the social interconnections of Montgomery; it was an almost natural, organic connection that took place between King and “the people,” although King considered himself one of the people. He was empathetic; he had compassion to go with it.

I have to say people have said this to me, and quite rightly, how can you use King as a model? Those are shoes no one can fill and we have moved temporally to a different plane completely unlike what was going on at the time when he assumed a leadership role. That is true, but as you have pointed out in your book the fact that Leo Strauss as quirky and dead has not stopped Harvey Mansfield from trying to be Strauss. The model is there. You are required to do your own kind of spatial-temporal adjustment. What is critical is that King was so engaged through his entire life that he realized that the stake was his life. “This is really dangerous work, my house has been bombed. I’ve been thrown into jail. I’ve been hit with bricks and so forth.” He’s engagement was full tilt. He lived his life in the midst of American violence, contrarianism. And as you have said, he wrote books.

Kelley: I’ve often mused to myself how things might have been different if he had taken some time off after 1965 or 1968, to think things through. He kept doing the same things he had been doing for the last thirteen years.

Baker: …Even had King delivered on bringing people into the purview of the community, with an effective strategy, it still would have been comprador, brokerage kind of politics. People also have to keep in mind the John Henry syndrome….King was clinically depressed; he was a sick, ill man. People said that he was muttering to himself; all the sexual activity going on; now he’s coming out with all these radical statements… I guess this is particularly true with men in general and specifically with black men. How many of us would admit that we are in therapy and medication?

Kelley: With King as that model—as an engaged black public intellectual-- what is the role of today’s black intelligentsia?

Baker: I think a person like Angela Davis is amazing. The fact that she is not on television all the time is understandable. The fact that she doesn’t get op-ed New York Times pieces is understandable. I think it was Z magazine some fifteen years ago, in an article by Ed Hermann, had counted up—and I’m going to be broad here—the neoconservative spokespersons’ op-ed as seventy, and then he looked over specifically at Cornel West and Manning Marable and they were, like, five [articles] in the same period of time. So we know we have a closed media, but never the less when Angela shows up it’s always SRO; it’s always a mixed audience of people. For example, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts in the prison-industrial complex. It’s scholars; it’s community organizers. I think she’s an example of somebody who has decided “This is what my life is going to be dedicated to.”

I think of Lani Guinier working out of Harvard Law School, and with her father working out of Harvard; it was a generational thing. He was the first director of Afro-American studies there. So, here’s Lani in combination with Charles Ogletree and Henry Louis Gates situated at the pyramid of the academy saying, “I’m sorry, How are you guys counting the black population here? Shouldn’t we think whether or not that the people who you are calling black or Afro American here were slaves or whose grandfathers had been slaves?” Let’s break the statistics down. I’m sorry, but shouldn’t we be talking of insurance companies and their complicity in slavery and see if we can find a way to do a class action suit, which replicated what [President] Ruth Simmons of Brown [University] did. I think the eradication and identification of social amnesia, which America takes great pleasure in, is a function of the contemporary, productive, dedicated and committed black intelligentsia.

[If interested in reading the full interview, go to http://www.devilsadvocatedivision.blogspot.com/]

I'm not going to attack or engage in classic schadenfreude regaring the news about Bristol Palin, the daughter of the GOP's veep nominee. However, I must note, for the record, that if this had happened to, say, Obama's 17 year-old daughter, this would have been been proof-positive that Obama was unfit for office. That if he couldn't control his own daughter, how could he be steward of the nation. When you read how Republicans spin this, it really truly underscores the GOP's sense of "traditional family values."

Those people are always having children out of wedlock, but when the right sort of people have children out of wedlock, it's just a "personal family problem."

Intersting....

Fear of the dark is a primordial one, and just as Time magazine ran an infamous one darkening OJ Simpson during his darkest hours, Barack Obama is getting the same skin-tone treatment as he embarks on the question to the become the 44th POTUS.

Contrast and compare a 2006 cover of Time  of Obama with its 2008 DNC edition. Back then he was light, bright, and damn near white. Now he's...Well, you decide.

Doing a post-mortem on Michelle Obama's DNC speech, Fox News' Megyn Kelly did a neat trick with Mrs. Obama's statement: "The world as it is just won't do."

Kelly said: "If you replace 'world' with 'country', you are back to the same debate, arguably, that you have been having about Michelle Obama's feelings about the country."
Huh?

Let's take Kelly's argument at "face value." Even if she wants to exchange "world" for "country," according to a USA Today poll, Mrs. Obama would be in good company:

"The electorate remains deeply pessimistic. Eight in 10 say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the USA, and even more rate the economy as "only fair" or poor. Seven in 10 say it's getting worse."

This is Fox News, which means the record as distorted is more important that what was actually stated.

Is it a naive belief that if an organization, or organizations, is constantly reporting on race or using race as a prism for understanding the nation's politics, shouldn't that organization also fairly reflect the nation? After all, the media, traditionally called "the press," acts in the public's interest.

The media's mission is often to gauge the state of race in America, but often doesn't reflect the fact that it has a tremendously bad record in reflecting that American reality. As Media Matters has noted in one of its reports, media racial and gender equity has gotten somewhat better but not by much.

If one watched the major broadcast networks' coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, hardly a black, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian face appeared as a reporter or news analyst.

On NBC there was Brian Williams as anchor, along with Ann Curry, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, Savannah Gutherie, and Tom Brokaw.

On ABC Charles Gibson served as the anchor with Diane Sawyer, Jack Tapper, Kate Snow, and George Stephanopoulos.

CBS, with Katie Couric as anchor, had Bob Schieffer, Jeff Greenfield and Byron Pitts, the lone reporter of color.
A week ago, Michelle Martin posted a concern on the Root.com about the selection of PBS's Jim Lehrer, CBS's Bob Schieffer and NBC's Tom Brokaw to host the three 2008 presidential debates. To state the obvious, it's the same color and gender scheme despite the fact that a white woman and black man waged an epic battle for the Democratic Party's nomination.
While the rest of the nation is given a critical examination or taken to task if it doesn't live up to the nation's ideals about equality of opportunity, equal rights or diversity, the nation's media doesn't hold itself to the same standards.

As matter of fact, if an intelligent, articulate, gay woman gets her own show on a TV, as has Rachel Maddow, some of the purported liberal intellegentsia will have a bigger problem with that than if a black commentator trafficks in spurious assertions about a black candidate's wife.

What does say about a society where its armed forces are more integrated than its own Fourth Estate?

On Super Tuesday, last February, this pallor color scheme was in effect. The only major difference between then and now was that Tim Russert was alive. Now his son, Luke Russert, is "reporting" from Denver, along with Brian Williams' own daughter, Allison, who is also "on the NBC payroll."

Why is it that candidate Barack Obama has to constantly answer questions about affirmative action when the questionable affirmative action practice of hiring Luke Russert or Allison Williams goes unquestioned?

It was interesting watching the Olympics. The Team USA won a total of 110 medals; of that number, 36 were gold medals. The host nation, China, won 100 medals; of that total number, 51 were gold. Now, we do recognize that China, formally the People’s Republic of China is a police state; a Communist police state at that. The America media, including Bob Costas at NBC, constantly reminded people that China has problems despite putting on a spectacular show and hosting the event, and beating the Red, White and Blue in the total number of gold medals won. We all know that China does not brook dissent, mostly in regard to issues like Tibet and Darfur, etc. It has allowed its people to get rich but not have an overt say in the affairs that govern them. For example the New York Times said this about China in a post-Olympics editorial: Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention. As stated above, China, after all, is a police state. Given that the United States, the leader of the free world, is dedicated to liberty, freedom and basic democratic and human rights, an openness to a diverse array of people, how is it that NBC neglected to mention that a gold medal-winning swimmer was gay? No, not Michael Phelps who has ADHD, but Australian diver Matthew Mitcham, who won the gold in the 10m platform diving event, scoring an upset over the Chinese team. NBC, taking a page for China’s Thought Police, seems to have screened that out from its broadcast. Censorship has its uses here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Rick Perlstein's seminal Before the Storm chronicles the fall and rise of the Republican Party before and during the 1964 presidential election. What made Before the Storm an interesting history was to note that what later made the conservative movement successful was the routing of liberal/moderate conservatives like Nelson Rockefeller, and how conservatives like William Buckley led a movement to kick out the crazies: the anti-Semites, rabid race-haters, and other crazies that made conservatism a backwater joke since the New Deal and up to the election of Ronald Reagan.

But a funny thing happened to the conservative movement/Republican Party: it picked up some new crazies if not exactly the same ones. While conservatism and the Republican Party had become the so-called party of ideas, it had also picked up allies--fundamentalists/anti-civil rights Southerners--and an unholy whole host of those who have essentially used their assocation with the GOP to spout hate and contempt for all their enemies. I won't bore you with the odious wit and wisdom of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, but the chickens have come home to roost with Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation tome.
Just as Buckley sought to kick out the crazies from the GOP/conservative movement, there now appears to be a knot of like-minded conservatives who refuse to any association with the kind of work that Corsi has produced. Huffington Post's Tom Edsall has cited four who have denounced Corsi's work: Peter Wehner, Ross Douthat, Jon Henke and John Hawkins.
Edsall writes :
"All four make the case that Corsi presents a greater danger to the conservative movement and the Republican Party than to Barack Obama -- that for the right to take Corsi under its collective wing represents a moral and intellectual failing. This breakaway faction does not pull its punches as it challenges."
Edsall also quotes Wehner writing at Wehner's Commentary blog as saying:
"Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt."
Interesting, but Corsi doesn't seem to be a friend of the GOP; he has stated that he's more likely to vote for the Constitutional Party rather than for the Republican Party. Corsi claims that he's even been critical of John McCain. What's even more interesting is that the imprint for Corsi's book, Threshold, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, is headed by a well-known GOP operative, Mary Matalin. However, books like Corsi's makes it seem questionable if conservatives were ever really concerned with the movement's "moral and intellectual" foundation. The rise of the conservative/GOP foundation has often rested on pure power politics and strategic thinking, and marketing.
If this dissent is truly the case, as Edsall has written, then the Republican Party has come full circle:the crazies like Corsi have returned; it doesn't matter if someone like Corsi isn't a member of the GOP. He engages in the same kind of smear tactics that McCarthy, Limbaugh, Coulter and others have trucked in for years. The contempt for the truth and facts is so palpable, the hatred so thick that is no small wonder that recent shoots have focused on "liberals" at the Universal Unitarian Church in Knockville, or the Democrat Party chairman in Little Rock.
The crazies have come back, locked and loaded.