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[Take me to The Fictional Times!]  
 ...on the land and in the band... 
 ...welcoming the crowd and performing at the Peace & Freedom Party fundraiser, Powerhouse Theatre, Aug. 5, 2007... Novelist, Screenwriter, Musician, Songwriter, Travel writer, playwright, humorist, columnist Why Impeachment Won’t Happen by Gary Gordon, 9/24/07 I saw the remake of “3:10 To Yuma” last week, big movie, big stars, acclaimed western. It stars Cameron Crowe. He plays a moviemaker who used to be a writer for Rolling Stone who has to take Christian Brando, a killer, to the train station in Yuma so he can go to prison for killing Lana Turner at a record producer’s home—she was the actress who used to hang out at the Formosa Inn during the days of L.A. Confidential, you remember. She was married to Ted Turner, the Confederate Colonel who died in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg when the rebel soldiers ran headlong into the famous impenetrable Yankee line, the DiMaggio Line, named by General “Joltin’ Joe” DiMaggio who was a record-setting Yankee soldier before he became a Yankee ballplayer. DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe who later married Roger Miller, who was King of the Road, a songwriter who became a playwright who adapted Twain’s “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” into a musical starring John Goodman who went on to star in Farrelly Brothers movies like, “Oh Brother, You’re Dumber”. Miller was friends with Elia Kazan until they parted company when Kazan named names during the great Folk Music Scare of the early 60s when everyone feared Peter, Paul and Mary would dominate the charts for ten years. But the British finished in Iraq and then there was the British Invasion when the Beatles came over and they partied with Cassius Clay before he was Muhammed Ali and refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War and lost his title although he was still the greatest, then the Beatles partied with Elvis, who was drafted, leaving America with Bill Haley & The Comets. They saved rock n’ roll by recording “Rock Around The Clock” which became the theme song and soundtrack for “Blackboard Jungle”, a movie about juvenile delinquents played by Vic Morrow and Sidney Poitier who team up with right-wing evangelicals and Islamic fundamentalists and break all the music records their teacher brings to class to play for them—no music left behind. The teacher was played by Glenn Ford, who was the original bad guy in the original “3:10 to Yuma”—you thought this wasn’t all going to tie together— who is taken to jail by Van Heflin—not Van Halen, because that joke would be too easy-- when everyone else is too scared to escort the outlaw for fear of his murderous gang—“3:10 to Yuma”: was based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, who went on to write “West Side Story” about two gangs at war with one another, then a member of one gang falls in love with someone who’s part of the other gang’s neighborhood, you remember, Jenna Bush and Chelsea Clinton, so Jenna’s dad says “You can’t marry Chelsea Clinton, her dad was impeached!” and then the Clintons respond “Blow me!” Then George Clooney announced he would produce and star in the remake of the movie about the Clinton impeachment but the studio heads tell him he can’t make a remake of a movie that was never made so Clooney says well he was gonna update it anyway with the current president so the studio heads said well you can’t make that because George Bush never got a blowjob so there’s no historical precedent, there’s no grounds for impeachment. “You can’t impeach a president for mooning everyone,” they say. So Clooney decides to make a movie called “Blackwater’s Eleven” about eleven corporate and political cronies who plan a heist to steal billions from the American treasury, it’ll be slick and clever and they’ll get away with it because they’ll be played by popular, likeable actors and the audience always roots for bad guys like that. But Senators Daschle and Leahy hear about this and decide to hold hearings to investigate remakes because it looks to them like the Iraq War is a remake of the Vietnam War. But on the verge of their hearings, which will also be hearings on the proposed Patriot Act, they get mail delivered to their offices that contains Anthrax so Congress is adjourned for several days and the hearings are never held. So a lot of people are wondering why the Democrats aren’t working on impeaching Bush and Cheney but those people have forgotten about the anthrax (that came from Ft. Detrick) that was sent to party leaders who were planning hearings and they don’t know about the phone calls Senators and Congressmen and women get in the middle of the night where a menacing voice says “Remember the anthrax”. Why should they risk their lives when the only people who are risking their lives are the soldiers in Iraq and the people over there that oppose the occupation, and everyone here is just holding candlelight vigils, marching in the streets and enacting theatrical, symbolic civil “disobedience” at carefully choreographed events permitted by those who are the targets of the march—get it?-- shouting at buildings, watching movies and ballgames and moaning and wailing? So Clooney thinks about doing a movie called “Good Night and Fat Chance” but opts instead to do a remake of “3:10 to Yuma” in which a country has to escort a killer to jail but they choose not to because they’re too scared, so the killer gets away. Michael Moore’s “Sicko”, a review by Gary Gordon, 7/9/07 (Published in the L.A. Free Press) It is difficult to review a Michael Moore film without reviewing Michael Moore. He is the upstart troublemaker, activist, trickster, vaudevillian, the sore spot on the ass of the official story; celebrated, vilified, studied by anthropologists. Oh, and he’s popular. In “Roger & Me” he documented the economic collapse of Flint, Michigan as General Motors reorganized and the local Chamber of Commerce simultaneously denied the collapse and concocted bizarre and unsuccessful plans to revitalize the place. In “Fahrenheit 9/11” he argued that the “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq were based on lies. Now, in “Sicko”, he declares the healthcare system in the United States is broken, owned and operated by a greedy and often corrupt insurance industry and their servile politicians in both major parties, and there has to be a better way. Through heartbreaking interviews with healthcare system victims, including 9/11 heroes who worked ground zero, and those in middle-management who once perpetuated the system and have since defected, Moore clearly documents the problems created by the for-profit health industry. Through interviews with citizens of Canada, England, France and Cuba, Moore presents exciting aspects of their national health systems and maintains this kind of socialized approach is a solution for us to grab. To detractors of socialized systems, he points to long-socialized American institutions: medicare, our police and fire departments, our post office, public schools and libraries. Critics of Moore often pick over his films the way vultures devour roadkill, finding fault and what they argue is deception and manipulation. Unfortunately, by some reputable accounts, Moore leaves himself open to these attacks because there are times when his use of narrative and moving images slights the truth of a more complex situation. His celebration of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s health care plans, as if her call for a national health plan was not a colossal deception designed to maintain the insurance industry’s grip speaks to his occasional naiveté. To his credit, he points out her rank as senator and presidential candidate among recipients of health insurance industry donations: she is number two. The thing is, Flint, Michigan’s economy did collapse when General Motors shifted facilities and tens of thousands of jobs to Mexico and the Chamber’s schemes flopped, the “war on terror” and the invasion and occupation of Iraq were and are based on lies, and the US healthcare system is broken. In other words, despite Moore’s faults and his critic’s best efforts, Moore gets it right. CBS Anchorman Walter Cronkite once observed that anyone who got their news solely from him was a fool, that many sources should be sought and considered. Moore’s is not the first nor final word on the healthcare debate, but his film “Sicko” is a brilliant, devastating and at times an oddly entertaining and humorous portrait of a sick system and a poignant draft of a possible solution. "Hoax", Nixon, and George Tenet's Book of Revelations by Gary Gordon, 4/29/07 There was a brief moment when I was two degrees from President Nixon. I met the father of the girl I was dating in 1972; he was a friend of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who, he assured me, was a smart, funny, decent man. I didn't believe him and convinced his daughter to vote for George McGovern, noting that if McGovern won by one vote, she'd be in real trouble. When the truth came out, as we're often told it often does, my girlfriend's father turned out to be one of the Maryland contractors who had bribed Agnew, which led to Agnew's resignation and jail for the bribers. A few months later the Congress was considering a binding impeachment of the president and Nixon resigned. The nail in his coffin was not the particulars featured in the bill of impeachment, which included his invasion of Cambodia, but instead was the Watergate break-in, now featured as part of the story of the fake Howard Hughes biography by Clifford Irving, as told in the new movie "Hoax" starring Richard Gere. Nixon, now dead, plays himself. When the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters became news despite Nixon's toad Ronald Ziegler's dismissal of it as a third-rate burglary, and when it became the linchpin in what became the Watergate scandal (and gave us the suffix "gate" to mean scandal), many of us wondered along with journalists, pundits and politicos, why did Nixon authorize such an insane act? (A similar question resulted from a similar mystery: Why did he tape himself?) Of course, we have come to know that Nixon was both arrogant and paranoid, suffering delusions of grandeur and bouts of fear that he would not be thought of as great. He hated to be hated as much as Bill Clinton loved to be loved. Many theories surfaced to explain the burglary. One, advanced in Oliver Stone's "Nixon," was that the Democrats had found out some sensitive information involving Nixon's part in the planning of the US-sponsored invasion of Cuba and how some of those CIA assets were also involved in other nefarious covert operations too explosive to be revealed. Another was that the Democrats had information in their safe tying Nixon to organized crime through the Teamsters and, again, the CIA; another was that the Democrats' safe had information tying Nixon to Nazi war criminals, some of whom allegedly moved to Orange County and became part of the Republican machine that combined with the Dulles brothers to advance Nixon's political career. The theory advanced in "Hoax" is that Nixon feared Democrats had damning information about his longtime relationship with Howard Hughes, dating back to Hughes' $200,000 loan to Nixon's brother Donald in 1956, setting Nixon up as Hughes' boy, or one of them, in D.C. The movie asserts White House aides (unnamed) confirmed this was Nixon's real motivation to order the break-in, but is that true? In a movie about a book written by the man who wrote the fake biography of Howard Hughes, how is truth to be determined? Truth is a valued commodity in our society, almost as valued as our celebration of rascals who practice romantic outlawry. It is now evident that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice et al lied about almost everything having to do with the war on Iraq, so evident that even Dan Rather and Hillary Clinton are admitting they were fooled. Of course, they could be lying. Isn't it possible, given Rather's historic skepticism and cynicism and Hillary's vaunted knowledge of the way politics and power works, that both of them, and many others, knew all along that the Bush War Machine Players were lying, but chose to go along with it anyway? It's too bad that Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton managed to erase the Vietnam-Watergate era cynicism such that they all got away with lie upon lie upon lie—too many to count. If they hadn't managed this, no one would've even considered believing this Bush when he swore to get bin Laden and get to the bottom of the leak that outed Plame then shifted to the Iraq/WMD/Niger Yellowcake/Hussein-Al Qaeda link bullshit. "Hoax" is a fun movie, a fun story about a rascal, well-acted, well-directed, but not nearly strong enough to enter the pantheon of movies that raise lingering questions and create doubts among a heretofore gullible public. Therefore it is hoped former CIA Director George Tenet's new book of revelations will convince that gullible public that they were, in the word of Malcolm X, "bamboozled." (This is not the same bamboozled as is in the title of Angela McGlowan's book condemning liberals and celebrating the Republican Party.) Tenet's book, ghost-written by Irving and Gere and using the title of O.J. Simpson's 1995 book, "I Want To Tell You", is as poetic as the Koran and Eliot's "Wasteland", and reveals much about the inner workings of Bush's White House. Among his revelations, Tenet argues in the introduction that neither Bush nor Cheney is the Alpha or the Omega, and insists the stories about Bush in college wearing his cheerleader costume, a golden lampshade on his head and a golden sash around his chest, shouting "Don't be afraid, I am the first and the last," don't bear up to scrutiny. "The CIA investigated these charges and found no evidence," Tenet writes. He does confirm that Bush used to refer to his father as "a sharp two-edged sword," and often criticized his father's failure to take Baghdad in the 1991 Gulf War as a failure to know the toil and perseverance of Americans, as evidenced by his father's lack of knowledge of grocery store scanners at check-out counters, along with a failure that lead to "a toleration of evil men." Tenet writes that Bush often ignored or manufactured intelligence findings in order to perpetuate his agenda of war on Iraq, aware that American soldiers and the American economy would suffer, arguing that Americans should not "be afraid of the things which you are about to suffer." Bush, Tenet reports, declared these sufferings were a test and if Americans passed the test they would be given what Bush referred to as "the Crown of Life," which Tenet took to mean a medal similar to the Medal of Freedom. Tenet confirmed previously published reports that Bush once declared to Rumsfeld and Rice in the Oval Office that he would vomit on the people who were lukewarm in their support of his efforts. In what became the most controversial moment of Tenet's service during the build-up to the Iraq War, Tenet's comment to Bush that deposing Saddam would be a "slam dunk", he insists, was taken entirely out of context. From his book: "When I met with the president, there was a rainbow around his desk, and around his desk there were twenty-four chairs, and in those chairs were twenty-four advisors dressed in dark suits with red power ties and American flag lapel buttons. Cheney, bellicose, reminded me of a lion; Rice, quietly pleasant, reminded me of a calf; Powell, an African-American, reminded me of a White man, and Rumsfeld, restlessly perched at the edge of his seat, reminded me of a flying eagle. "And Bush said 'I am the man on the white horse. Saddam rides a red horse. He has the power to take peace from the earth.'" Tenet said Bush asked if he agreed that Saddam had the power to take peace from the earth and Tenet says he replied with an old CIA saying, "Don't damage the oil and the wine," which Bush took to mean that the evidence was apparent, a "slam dunk" but that in actuality, Tenet was suggesting that military action must be taken with forethought. Near the end of the conversation, Tenet reports that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took turns describing to him the "Shock and Awe" strategy, Bush saying, "It will be like an earthquake," Cheney saying "The sun will be as black as sackcloth and the whole moon will become red as blood," Rumsfeld saying "The stars of the sky will seem to fall like figs dropping unripe fruit as if shaken by a great wind," Bush saying "Every mountain and island will move out of their places." Tenet reports Cheney said the first attack would be "hail and fire, mixed with blood. One third of the earth and trees and grass will be burnt up. The second attack will throw mountains into the sea and cause the sea to run red with blood." He writes Rumsfeld declared "the key to the pit of the abyss was given to him, and he intended to use it, saying what he would say later to the media, 'We know where the weapons of mass destruction are, they're near Tirkut.'" "And let me tell you," Rumsfeld continued, "when I open that pit of the abyss, there's going to be smoke like smoke from a burning furnace, and the sun and air will be darkened. Our weapons will be like locusts and scorpions seeking out not everyone, only those who reject our seal and bear the mark of Al Qaeda." At that moment Tenet says Bush signaled Rumsfeld to return to his perch, then turned to him and said, "Saddam is a tyrant, an abomination of the Earth. And I'm the President of the United States, and thus Iraq will be thrown down and I will make all things new. Not that I'm the Alpha and the Omega, but I am the President." Tenet has announced he is working on another book, a biography of Michael Jordan, tentatively titled "Putting The Ball Through The Hoop From A Height That Allows A Downward Thrust." Vonnegut, Halberstam, Imus, and the Good Germans by Gary Gordon, 4/29/07 Published on the Impractical Proposals blog When I was growing up I was taught, among other things, one of the worst things a person could be was “a good German”. By that it was meant a citizen of a country engaged in war crimes who either knew about the crimes and ignored them, or was actively complicit. Now, decades later, after actively opposing the Vietnam War and Reagan’s military exploits in Nicaragua and Grenada and Bush I’s aggressions in the Gulf War, I have become that worst thing. I am a “good German.” My country commits war crimes and I work to earn enough to afford health insurance, I read books, go to movies, hear music, watch too much TV, and write—but I do not, in the words of Mario Savio, reckon with the odiousness of the machine such that I put my body “upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus… to make it stop.” I have not, other than with words spoken and written, and votes, indicated “to the people who run the machine, to the people who own it, that unless (we’re) free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” If I were an Iraqi and somehow emerged victorious such that I could convene or participate in a War Crimes trial, I would try the leadership of the United States, then I would try the American people, and I would say, “Didn’t you know? Why didn’t you do all you could to stop it?” I met and interviewed Vine DeLoria in April 1973, as the American Indian Movement seizure of Wounded Knee continued, and he said “We used to think if we showed the White man what he had done, he would care and do something. Now we know he just doesn’t care.” That was almost a year after I met Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at the Republican convention in 1972 in Miami Beach. It was on the last evening of the convention, demonstrators were trying to pull off very intricate mobile civil disobedience actions all around the convention hall, and I found myself inside the fence, outside the hall, with Yippie activist Jerry Rubin, who was asking me if he had the right credentials. “Jerry, how’d you get these? I heard they weren’t going to let you and Abbie in.” "Are these the right ones?” I compared them with mine. “They look right to me. Moments later we were joined by Vonnegut and Peter Schrag of Saturday Review. Vonnegut was taken with the size of the cops’ riot batons, longer than baseball bats. “Look at the size of those,” he said as police and military choppers flew overhead and faint whiffs of tear gas began to infiltrate the yard. Then we turned to watch a confrontation between a Miami Beach councilman and Rubin. The councilman had run up to us, furious, frustrated, demanding to know how things had gotten out of hand. “I voted to let you camp in the park,” he said. “Now they’re slashing tires. Why?” Rubin shot him a cold look and answered, “In your heart you know they’re right.” The councilman left, still furious and talk briefly turned to the demonstrations. Vonnegut asked what Rubin thought about the demonstrations; Rubin replied they had no power. Vonnegut was about to follow up when we were hit with pepper gas. The group broke up, fleeing into the convention hall. In his November 1972 Harper’s Magazine piece on those political conventions in Miami Beach, Vonnegut imagined a visitor from another planet would observe: “The two real parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people do not acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and Democrats, instead.” He notes the Winner’s axiom: Ignore agony. And later in the piece he notes: “The Winners are at war with the Losers, and the fix is in.” In a graduation speech he gave a two years earlier, he advocated keeping ROTC on campus, with their guns and tanks, so student activists could see what they’re up against. His wisdom had its moments of humor and pessimism, or his pessimism had its moments of wisdom and humor, or his humor had its moments of pessimism and wisdom. Take your pick. On April 21, another wise man died, David Halberstam, author of one of the most profound books on the Vietnam War, The Best And The Brightest, a seasoned reporter and author who got his training in skepticism and thick skin covering Civil Rights in the South, then covering Vietnam. John Kennedy wanted him fired, his reporting of the truth versus the official line was that good. There is a section, a wrenching, heartbreaking, frustrating, mind-bending, twisted moment near the end of Halberstam’s “The Best And The Brightest” when he tells of two chance meetings between Walt Rostow, a national security advisor to Kennedy and Johnson and fervent supporter of the Vietnam War, and Daniel Ellsberg, who had doubts in 1965 and after returning in 1967 was sure the Vietnam misadventure was a failure, found on pages 773 and 774 of my dog-eared 1973 paperback edition: (Rostow) made his predictions and nothing bothered him. He could grab Daniel Ellsberg in 1965 and excitedly pass on the news about the bombing (which to most experts in the CIA had already proven itself to be a failure): “Dan, it looks very good. The Vietcong are going to collapse within weeks. Not months but weeks. What we hear is that they’re already coming apart under the bombing.” They did not come apart in a few weeks, but neither did Rostow, and Ellsberg went off to Vietnam, where for two years he became something of an authority on the failure of the Vietcong to collapse. Two years later, tired, depressed, and thoroughly pessimistic about the lost cause in Vietnam, he returned to Washington, where he found Rostow just as upbeat as ever. “Dan,” said Rostow, “it looks very good. The other side is near collapse. In my opinion victory is very near.” Ellsberg, sick at heart with this kind of high level optimism which contrasted with everything he had seen in the field, turned away from Rostow, saying he just did not want to talk about it. “No,” said Rostow, “you don’t understand. Victory is very near. I’ll show you the charts. The charts are very good.” “Walt,” said Ellsberg, “I don’t want to hear it. Victory is not near. Victory is very far away. I’ve just come back from Vietnam. I’ve been there for two years. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to see any charts…” “But the charts are very good…” Now our president says the “surge is working” and charges the Democrats with wanting to override the wisdom of his generals and play politics, as if Bush hadn’t already fired all the generals who disagreed with him and actually stood up and said this war was a crazy, tragic mistake. In case you don’t get it, Iraq is Vietnam, as Vietnam is the Washita and Wounded Knee. I looked up what Harper’s Magazine wrote about the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 and found this, the only mention, in their Monthly Record of Current Events, in the March 1891 issue: Fears being felt of an uprising among the Sioux Indians in the northwest, large numbers of troops were sent to the frontier… Several conflicts occurred… between hostile Indians and United States troops—one at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, December 29th, in which 30 soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry… and nearly two hundred Indians were killed. Nothing to suggest the precursor of My Lai or the roughly 65,000 civilians killed in Iraq. Maybe it is too harsh to judge myself a Good German, and too harsh to judge others that way, too, especially the ones who fancy they are making a difference with their marches and emails. Maybe we are all doing our best to end this war, to reverse the course of Empire… but deep down, in the places we don’t like to go, we know it isn’t so. We are not threatened enough, motivated enough, enraged enough, desperate enough to do what we know needs to be done to stop the extermination machine. We’ve even got reasons to make distinctions between what the Germans did and what Americans do; I have made these arguments myself, vigorously, arguing Hitler’s killing machine was targeted, vicious, efficient, determined to kill everyone not acceptable to his sense of what is pure Aryan, as if the fact that it was all of that really differentiates it from the bombs we drop in what Lewis Lapham believes is not a war to end terror or create democracy but is actually an entrepreneurial venture designed to line the pockets of the rich investors regardless of the human cost. Ignore agony. I know we are not desperate, because we don’t strap bombs to ourselves and blow ourselves up in an effort to drive the occupiers out. I know we are not doing all we can because we don’t want to risk all we have. We do not have the courage of the American revolutionaries who put their lives on the line for what they believed. I often imagine that level of desperation—well, not often, not when I’m watching Law & Order reruns or ballgames. I think about this as I listen to friends argue Israel should give up the land it took and yet they don’t give their land back to the Indians and argue “it’s not the same thing” as if it isn’t the same thing. I have often thought that what separates us from other animals is not an opposing thumb but the sophisticated ability to rationalize. My friend Nancy sings a song, “I don’t see no Saints around here…” We are not saints. And we are not always wise. And we are not always as courageous as our values and principles demand. Which is why we need visionary artists and dogged reporters to at least show us an elevated plane of thought and truth, and why we should reflect, at least for a moment, when we lose a visionary artist or a dogged reporter. Instead, all too often, we are left with the likes of Don Imus. I know there is no God because Halberstam was killed in a car crash, not Imus. Imus, of course, is one of the American Goebbels, rotting minds, preoccupying minds, distracting minds, massaging minds, stirring minds with stupid redneck racism, a punk pied piper of pusillanimous prevaricating pseudo-punditry, enticing adults with eight-year-old mentalities, an alcoholic and drug addict filled with self-hate who foists his hatred on others and cons people into believing it’s satire (like Twain?) or profound humor (like Lenny?), totally incapable of making anything but false comparisons to those and other geniuses who turned their talents, as did Vonnegut and Halberstam, to fighting power, speaking truth to power, not shilling for it. I have no ending for this piece other than to suggest that each of us must be less of a Good German than we already are. I say that having no confidence that minimal step will lead to the justice we want, just as reducing gas consumption by increasing mpg will not end Global Warming. But let’s be honest. We will deceive ourselves until we are desperate enough to act courageously. How The Anti-War Movement Lost The Peace by Gary Gordon, 3/31/07 A shorter version of this was published in the L.A. Free Press The emails these days include many writers and activists who've concluded the reason for the current Congressional debate about setting a deadline to withdraw from Iraq is that the anti-war demonstrations have been effective. And the readers of this piece may agree with that conclusion. But should they? It is not cynical to point out that a huge additional pot of money to support the war was just agreed to by the Senate and the House, and that the language concerning withdrawal still lives in that gray area within the new instrument of government, the non-binding resolution. Let's turn back a few pages to Oct. 10 and 11, 2002, when both the Senate and House passed a binding resolution: the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. On October 10, 133 members of the US House of Representatives voted against that resolution, losing to the 296 who supported it. The next day, 23 Senators voted against the resolution, defeated by the 77 who supported it. Put another way, almost a quarter of the Senate and over a quarter of the House voted against the war. This was a significant improvement over the vote that took place in 1964 when Johnson wanted to pursue his war in Vietnam. Then, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution garnered unanimous support in the House and only two Senators voted against it. What does this mean? In part, it means that in 2002 the peace movement, the anti-war movement was already in the Senate and House, not solely in the streets. What has happened since 2002? Books have already been written that describe the calamity that the Iraq war quickly became. Everyone but the beneficiaries of government no-bid contracts has lost: lost lives, relatives, friends, homes, cities, funding, business, rights, freedoms, opportunities—the losses here and there are too great to calculate. We all know the mainstream press was complicit. All of us can go to nationalpriorities.org and learn how many schools or hospitals could've been built for what has been spent on bombs, guns, ammo, armor, camo and MREs—a comparison that rarely makes it into mainstream press analysis. And all of us have seen the 10- to 30-second clips of anti-war demonstrations on mainstream TV "news". Yet we all know what has been going on, whether through the internet, or various shows on C-SPAN (and BookTV); Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and Keith Olbermann; or thru the documentaries by Robert Greenwald and others, or by hearing speakers at community meetings and universities, or by reading the now numerous books. And we all know that, except for the price of gas, which may or may not be a by-product of the war, that the war has actually not impacted us very much, other than to offend our sensibilities, to outrage us, to cause us to walk through city blocks chanting, or in the words of my comrade, to "shout at buildings". The irony and shame that must be reckoned with at the moment—well, there are many ironies and many shames, but I'll start with this one: as the protestors march, many of them are either recalling their anti-war demonstration activities during the Vietnam War, or, if they're not old enough, then they're thinking, vicariously, that this is what was done and what ended the Vietnam War. There are many things that contributed to the end of the Vietnam War, and I submit that decreasing numbers of anti-war demonstrators was not one of them. During that war the opposition increased and the number of demonstrators increased. To draw five or six thousand people in a city the size of Los Angeles would've been thought of as pathetic. And it is pathetic. But it is not pathetic because so few people show up to the almost monthly ANSWER "Coalition" demos. It is pathetic because the anti-war movement, such as it is, has been reduced to thinking that marching through a few city blocks and shouting at buildings is actually the way to end the war. It is pathetic because otherwise rational and well-intentioned people actually think that standing on a curb or traffic circle in a clump of three or four or even ten and holding signs saying "End the War" is what has worked in the past and is working now. But even though the numbers of those who opposed the Vietnam War visibly increased as the war continued, it was not only the number that was significant. It was the behavior. It doesn't take much memory or research to recall or learn that most of those demonstrations represented a threat to the powers that were. Why? Because at the edge of those primarily peaceful marches lived those who were engaged in making the society ungovernable. Ungovernable. There are two ways for the people to end a war: they must either make the society ungovernable, or they must change the make-up of those in power. Since 2002 the anti-war movement has done neither. So what do we have? We have an anti-war movement that won't take the action necessary to be effective and instead hopes that its' meager actions will cause those in power to shake in fear. Does anyone actually believe that Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, or any of the other instigators and perpetrators of this war and any of the back-channel beneficiaries of the no-bid contracts has, for even one moment, been shaken by any of the demonstrations? Johnson was shaken in '67 and '68; Nixon was shaken for most of his occupation of the White House. Just read the books, read the transcripts, listen to the tapes: they thought the society was on the verge of collapse or revolution or anarchy. And if you take the time to remember or do the research, you'll see why someone who grew up in WWII and began their political career in the "Leave It To Beaver" '50s might've thought so. Demonstrators were demanding, unruly, uppity, troublesome, clever, unpredictable, fearless, lawbreaking and—here's the punchline: dangerous. Contrast that to the narrowly scripted ANSWER "Coalition" fundraising events that pass for demonstrations these days. First, the power structure is paid a fee for a permit so the march can occur. It's remindful of the line in Oliver Twist when the starving youth holds out his empty bowl and pleads: "Please sir, can I have some more food?" Second, the "coalition" (in L.A., really an elite, top-down, exclusionary organization) lines up speakers. Is the first or second speaker or the majority of speakers from either the Green or Peace & Freedom Party, the two anti-war parties on the ballot? Does the "coalition" support these parties by providing a platform for genuine electoral action? No. Instead there is the usual rhetoric that passes for analysis, most of which has been heard before by the marchers, who are already in agreement with most of the speakers, punctuated with various chants like "Dump Bush" and "Stop the War Machine" or "End Imperialism" as if chanting makes it so. (Did the people who responded to King, Gandhi, Malcolm etc. merely chant?) Third, any organization wanting to set up an information table has to pay the "coalition", thus begging the question, what happened to free speech? The "coalition" insists it must be paid because these demos cost money. (I've heard the figure $20,000.) So let's recap: a demonstration that must be bought from the power structure and has no possible chance of throwing any fear into the power structure and that does not give an ample and abundant platform to support the electoral alternatives to the power structure is what passes for an anti-war movement. That is pathetic. And what of resistance, the step beyond demonstration? During the Vietnam War there was actual resistance. Draft evasion. Draft-card burning. Peaceful civil disobedience and a variety of other activities that did not please the law and order crowd who elected Nixon to "bring us together" occurred with varying degrees of impact and alarm. Now resistance, for the most part, takes the form of calling for a national no-shopping day, as if this could possibly have any impact that matters to anyone but those who call for this nonsense. Break it down: if all of us don't buy toothpaste and groceries and gas etc. on a particular day, there's a one hundred percent chance that we'll buy that stuff within the week if not the next day. This is going to end the war? I realize that of those of you who may still be reading this, many of you may be furious with my thesis, or offended at my willingness to negate many of your activities over the last 5 years. And some of you may be getting set to argue that there is forward motion on ending the war, as evidenced by the 2006 mid-term elections. So let me ask: how many of you have studied those elections closely, district by district, to discover exactly how many real anti-war candidates were elected? Do not victimize yourself by hearing what you want to believe, reading what you want to believe, concluding what you want to believe. Belief has nothing to do with it. Feelings have nothing to do with it. Ending the war is about facts and acts, not beliefs and feelings. Feeling or believing a particular candidate will do a certain thing is the weakest reason someone can have for supporting a candidate. In the California 36th congressional district that includes Venice, California, represented by the wealthy pro-war, pro-patriot act, pro-torture Democrat Jane Harmon, an anti-war Democrat (Marcy Winograd) challenged her in the primary, garnered eighteen thousand votes (37.5%), but lost. The Peace and Freedom Party candidate did substantially worse in the general election (forty-five hundred votes), as most of the anti-war voters who supported Winograd let their anti-war sentiments take a back seat to supporting a Democrat over a Republican. How often did this happen? Even without doing the research, the evidence is clear: it happened enough so that, along with continuing funding for the war, we now have the possibility of a non-binding resolution that might end the US occupation of Iraq in 2008. Not 2007. 2008. But just the possibility. This is an anti-war Congress? The investment of votes and hopes by the anti-war movement in the Democratic Party has yielded mush. The door prize might be that Attorney General Gonzales resigns. Whoopee. Meanwhile, the war continues, and although Republican pundits Tony Blankley and Robert Novak write that Bush is in trouble, the people who are really in trouble are those at the terminus of the bombs, and those of us back in the States who would prefer universal health insurance, more schools, more hospitals, fewer prisons, and an end to the war. Again, glancing quickly at the past, in 1972 the Democrats actually nominated an anti-war candidate who won 39% of the national vote. Continued investment in the Democrats means one must ask if Hillary or Barack is genuinely against the war. The prognosis is not good. Put another way, the only hope we have to fear is pointless hope. The 1972 Democratic Party candidate, Sen. George McGovern, returned to D.C. in December to offer his plan for a withdrawal within six months and a reparations program for Iraq, a plan detailed in the October 2006 Harper's Magazine article and in his book Out of Iraq. Some in the Congress appreciated and supported his plan, but most Democrats, along with the Republicans, ignored him. Had this Congress been truly anti-war, the plan would’ve been adopted in January and the war would be over in three months. The sad truth is that in all likelihood the anti-war movement will not end this war. Eventually the mainstream politicians at various levels of government will become so strapped for cash that they will insist the war be ended. The part of the power structure that wasn't cut in on the Haliburton/KGR skim will declare that stability is better than instability and further involvement in the war will create too much destabilization. The funding of the war itself will make the country ungovernable because it will tie up too much money. The exception to this sad truth would be if the anti-war movement participates in making the society ungovernable faster than the money drain makes it ungovernable. Meanwhile, there is the big picture, the long run. What can be done to prevent future wars like this? This is the relevance of the two anti-war parties in California: the Greens and the Peace & Freedom Party. I don't think anyone in either of these parties is under the illusion that they will win significant power in the foreseeable future to change the paradigm, retract the empire, and get back to the job of creating a just society. The people in these parties are engaged not in making the society ungovernable, but in the other option: electoral power. True, many of these activists have chosen to victimize themselves by being distracted into practicing the pointless tactic of demonstrations and shouting at buildings. The hope is that they will return to their actual purpose: they are political parties, their job is not to plead with and try to influence those in power, their job is to gain power. At this point I have either convinced some of you, or failed. Some of you will still insist that demonstrations have a place, and I would agree with you under certain conditions. Spontaneous demonstrations are effective. Demonstrations that contain an unexpected turnout, like the immigration demonstrations last year, or unexpected fervor, fury, militancy, and organization, like the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle several years ago, were very effective, in part because they reflected power and in part because they were threatening to those in power. But the success or failure of a demonstration ultimately has to be measured in whether or not in genuinely forwards the agenda and that means: does it lead to gaining power? When Bush was re-selected in 2004, I suggested the following plan: 1) cease all demonstrations, 2) put all energy that was going into demonstrations into working door-to-door, neighborhood-to-neighborhood, to build as large and organized constituency as possible, 3) return to demonstrations only after number two had been worked for at least a year if not two years, and 4) when returning to demonstrations, do not get permits. Along with this, people would choose whether they would prefer to contribute to making the society ungovernable, or work in the electoral realm as offered the Peace & Freedom Party and the Greens. Further, all demonstrations would be geared to one tactic or the other, and not to endless rhetorical speeches. Obviously, this did not occur. But it's not too late to adopt the strategy. To those of you who disagree with this thinking, I would urge you to study the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s, study the make-up of the current and prospective Congress, and think about the best use of your time. Demonstrations then were qualitatively different, a tactic that offered and secured results, and I submit that having house parties, inviting friends, neighbors and co-workers, educating them with documentaries and discussions, and urging them to get involved in the same way with their friends, neighbors and co-workers will yield more anti-war volunteers than endless ANSWER "Coalition" marches ever will, and that those volunteers, if they're wise, will reflect the kind of power that ultimately shakes the power structure. To those of you who agree with what I've written here, please register Peace & Freedom or Green (one is Socialist, the other isn't; both are anti-war). If you're already registered then it's time for you to consider being on a steering committee or central committee, or running for office. In this way, eventually, the anti-war movement can win the peace. THE HANGING PRAYER (offered by Gary Gordon, 1/7/07) Dear God, THANK you for letting the Iraqis hang Saddam Hussein, and thank you for letting the two guards use their cell phones to capture the hanging, and thank you for the internet, so everyone could witness the hanging, and rejoice in it. THANK you for answering the prayers of so many, be they Christian, Muslim or Jew, for there is only one God, we shall have no other gods before Thee. THANK you for your infinite wisdom that lets us witness what truly is a just end to the leaders of nations who persecute their own people thru wilfull action or ignorance, who launch wars for either no cause or trumped up notions of national security, who plunder their own country's resources; denying food, clothing, shelter and hospital care to the needy of their own country for the sake of their own wealth or the accumulation of wealth of their friends and benefactors. THANK you for reminding us that posers and impostors who do not rightfully rule and that those who use your name or forsake your name to justify their actions must be dealt with swiftly and righteously in like manner for all to see and behold. THANK you for letting us witness Saddam twist in the hangman's rope, and for the subsequent executions to follow of those who worked with or conspired with the former leader of Iraq; thank you in your infinite wisdom for showing us the way these co-conspirators who wreak havoc and mayhem on their own people must be treated. THANK you for showing us that execution is righteous, that those who wail against such executions know not of what they speak for it is clear, Oh Lord, that executions such as this one will indeed discourage the wicked, arrogrant, greedy, treacherous, and murderous from engaging in their heinous ways. The victims of Hussein's crimes thank you, for Thou art great and powerful, O Lord; The victims of 9/11 thank you, The victims of Katrina thank you, FOR Thou art great and powerful, O Lord; THANK you for letting the two guards who mocked and taunted Hussein at his hanging speak, for surely you Most Almighty must have freed their tongues so that the high ideal of free speech could prevail, even at that somber and just occasion, and surely you in your infinite wisdom would want us to cry out "Shame!" on those who would criticize or chastise those who mock and taunt dead and dying leaders who committed such crimes against their own people and the peoples of the world, of your Kingdom. THANK you O Lord for showing us the way, as we struggle under the yoke of our own misfortunes and the misfortunes cast upon us by those who would betray the teachings of your only Son, Jesus Christ, for yea, as we struggle against our oppressors, those who wantonly seize and abuse power as did the ancient Romans in the days before and during the time of your Son, we are mindful of your teachings and signs. Those who toil in the fields and sweatshops and diamond mines, those who toil in the markets and houses of worship, those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who lie in underequipped hospitals, those of our young who suffer in schools without books or lunches or who suffer without schools, those who walk thru the valley of death and those who lie down in green pastures thank you, AS it is written, "with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath", you will show us the way. O LORD, you teach us, you inspire us, you show us the way. WE THANK YOU for this and all things from which life flows. IN Jesus's name we pray. AMEN. Iraq, McGovern, and Me… Now It’s Your Move By Gary Gordon 11/1/06 Last Sunday I watched the most moral, sensible, reasonable hour and forty-five minutes of TV I’ve seen in, well, maybe decades. So what? The thing is, it was former Senator George McGovern and a guy named William Polk talking about their plan to get the U.S. out of Iraq while at the same time doing the right thing for the Iraqi people. I’m not sure that I’ve heard anything as sensible since I heard McGovern in front of the California delegation in Chicago in 1968 declare that he supported withdrawal from Vietnam—a position Hubert Humphrey and the majority of establishment Democrats could not bring themselves to embrace. The TV show was on BookTV, on a fairly civilized network called C-SPAN2. It’s 48 hours of programming about non-fiction books every weekend. Imagine, as John Lennon might sing, 48 hours of programming every weekend featuring authors; authors interviewed, speaking at bookstores, universities, book festivals, on panels conversing with and debating other authors—all very civil, no wrestlers, shouting heads, sans O’Reilly. And, get this, no commercial interruptions. So, last Sunday, McGovern & Polk, moderated by the distinguished John Brademas, for 105 minutes. As a disclaimer, before I proceed with an endorsement of McGovern’s & Polk’s plan and urge you to support it and use it as litmus test by which to measure Democrats and others who vie for your vote and support in 2008, I should mention two things: I gave my political heart to McGovern in 1971 as I worked for him in Georgia and Illinois, and I have been an opponent of Bush, his military misadventures, and his wholesale destruction of the American revolution and the American way of life since 1999. It boggles my mind (as it may yours) that so many people are only beginning to grasp that elections are referendums as well as contests for power and that so many people are finally coming around to the notion that 2006 ought to be a referendum on the wars as if 2002 and 2004 were too early to really frame the discussion. In the words of my people, “Oy!” Be that as it may, 2006 is certainly shaping up as that referendum, even though my friend John, whom I agree with, declares flatly that the war is a side-show. Side-show? Yes. The problems in this country are so great as to require the economic equivalent of the Marshall Plan, the philosophical and legislative muscle of the New Deal, and the vision of many of the founding fathers, Paine, and the unsung revolutionaries combined with Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, the trust-busting inclinations of Teddy R., the visions of Debs, FDR and JFK (jawboning the steel industry, ignoring his generals and top intelligence and military advisers in the Cuban Missile Crisis) and LBJ’s Great Society, plus a dash of early Nader (the Highway 61 Revisited years), MLK and the other great souls who found that by mixing the small c christian values with the Enlightenment with American values, attitudes and resources you could work to create a society that would define greatness not by size or world domination but by a legal and judicial system and political system that was inclusive, democratic, oriented to justice, the dignity of the individual and the clear concept of society, especially anti-European, with its royalty and vulgar, brutal class systems, and especially anti-theocratic. Note: I have few illusions about American ideals and the American revolution, realize almost everyone and everything mentioned in the paragraph above has it flaws, hypocrisies, buts and “did you knows?”—for further insight, read Gary Nash’s “The Unknown American Revolution”—but I still think justice, democracy, inclusiveness, and individual dignity are pretty good ideas. Now, short of some as-yet uninvented Star Trek technology, how do we get there from here? How do we heal? How do we roll back the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years and get back (and forward) to a vision that can incorporate the best of Debs, FDR, LBJ and McGovern? How do we get on a path that picks up where Frank Church et al left off, reining in the CIA and the multinational corporations? How do we end what Marvin Harris called the Permanent War Economy and implement what was politely known a couple of decades ago as Conversion. And how do we do this in time so that the religious fanatics and warmongers in our own leadership and those around the world, and the impacts of Global Warming don’t succeed in irrevocably dooming civilization? We start with the side-show. The side-show must be ended so full attention to re-building America can begin. And how do we end the side-show? McGovern and Polk have a simple, eloquent, cost-effective, moral and diplomatically ideal plan, published in their book “Out of Iraq” and summarized in a recent issue of Harper’s. The highpoints of the plan are these: 1. Rebuild Iraqi infrastructure, 2. Build hospitals and schools, 3. Close U.S. prisons in Iraq and release P.O.W.s, 4. Eliminate U.S. bases, 5. Provide financial assistance to create a national reconstruction corps, 6. Provide for an independent audit of all funds spent on the war, 7. Fund reparations to Iraqi civilians, 8. Fully fund veterans’ services in the U.S., 9. Rebuild Babylon, and 10. Finance the creation of a national Iraqi police force (instead of an Army). Additionally, they insist the United States must offer condolences to Iraq. This significant gesture is non- negotiable. The cost of this plan? Around $12 billion… or, at the current $250 million-a-day cost of the war, about seven weeks cost. A further note: both Polk and McGovern readily acknowledge that this will be difficult and bloody. It is a plan for what America should do. It is not a plan for what Iraqis should do. There will be violence. People will kill each other. Their plan does not make every Iraqi nice. It does not require everyone behave. It does explicitly state that the major cause of the insurgency, the presence of the American military, will be removed and that over time this will lead to a decrease in violence. As both McGovern and Polk (who has studied the history of insurgency and guerilla warfare) said, bloodbaths predicted rarely occur; historically the withdrawal of the occupiers is the beginning of a return to order. Now, as to criticisms that will be made, left, right and center, of this plan. Well, the right-wing criticisms are as predictable as they are self-righteous, ignorant, wrong-headed, pathetic, evil and dangerous. ‘Nuff said. As for centrists (Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman etc.), they will argue timetable, they will argue details—they will study and argue and bluster and recount their own self-serving histories--such are the actions of American Tories. As for the left, they might argue that this plan doesn’t address the larger issues (as they see it) of the American war machine, troops in over 140 countries, Israel & Hamas, capitalism, and a host of other worthwhile issues that this plan is not designed to address. So, what is our plan? You and me? The ones who are against the war, want us out of Iraq, but also believe there is a moral obligation to unbreak some of what was broken. My humble proposal is this: we, you and me, should endorse this plan. Unequivocally. Without hesitation. Entirely. Not piecemeal. Not qualified. Not “I kind of like it but…” To use the flip of Bush’s line in the sand, with the Ken Kesey spin, “you’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus.” Further. We should start insisting that every single Democrat in congress, all the representatives and all the senators, propose this plan as legislation and pass it. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that the Democrats take the House and Senate. Let’s imagine they endorse and pass into law the McGovern-Polk plan. Let’s suppose Bush doesn’t sign it, or flails about, or tortures syntax, or flails about some more. I like the scenario. Of course the reality is that this plan won’t satisfy some readers. Some Democrats, even if they take the House and/or Senate, won’t support this. Then what do we do? Well, then it becomes the litmus test. That is, if you really care about the war, either as the number one issue, or as the side-show that must be dealt with before we can move forward. See, it’s not enough to be against Bush. It’s not enough to declare a war immoral. It’s not enough to support Democrats (and as we will learn, boys and girls, someday the notion that they are the solution will have to go the way of Santa Claus—but that’s another column)—it’s not enough. You have to have a plan. Now there is one. The McGovern-Polk Plan. Moral, reasonable, sensible. And timely. And you have to get the plan implemented. Your move. Hi all. Haven't changed the website much for awhile except for the above column I just wrote. Working on a novel. Doing lots of reading. Here's some books I recommend: and dozens or hundreds more. Below is some writing from a couple of years ago... As for those of you who used to ask me about movies, or still do, the two this year to see are The Matador and Little Miss Sunshine. As Stan Lee used to say, "Nuff said" In the meantime, I urge you to check out NationalPriorities.org to see how Bush's war is impacting our country, and enjoy the rest of the site. The Night Lorne Michaels Killed Hunter Thompson A Report From The Front Lines Of The Culture War By Gary Gordon 3/5/05 There is a scene in the Tim Allen academy award-winning movie “Fawn Hall” where Buster Keaton stands at a microphone in a crowded supper club and sings “Seems Like Old Times”. Later in the movie, Diane Sawyer paints a fence white in order to get Margaret Thatcher’s attention (Thatcher denies killing Fredo) while Tim Allen tries to seduce Paris Hilton by capturing an elusive sushi roll that’s fallen into the kitchen sink, along with everything else. At least, that’s the way I remember it. No, it’s not drugs. It’s years and years of disinformation and revisionism. After all, there’s no doubt, is there, that Nixon would’ve done a better job than Kennedy with the Cuban Missile crisis, Reagan’s Great Society was much better than Johnson’s, James Watt turned out to be correct when he said Christ would return when the last tree was felled, and Global Warming is, after all, junk science, and we would all have known that if only Creationism were taught in school. In the words of my people: “Oy.” (If indeed they are my people. After all, we all came from Olduvai Gorge, n’est-ce pas?) No, it’s not the drugs. Although I did meet Hunter S. Thompson once. In Miami Beach in the summer of ’72, that golden summer that began with the Watergate break-in and featured the nomination of George McGovern Who and the coronation of Richard Nixon at their party’s conventions, both held in Miami Beach. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War were there, lead by Barry Romo and Ron Kovic—I don’t know if John Kerry was there; Scott Camil wasn’t because he’d been indicted along with six other VVAW leaders on the H. Rap Brown charge: crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot; they were in jail in Tallahassee. I met Hunter when we stood next to each other watching the VVAW march on the convention hall one sweaty hot afternoon, Kovic and other wheelchair-bound vets in the lead. I don’t know if “wheelchair-bound” is the politically-correct term now, what with Clint Eastwood taking a pummeling from the pro-family/anti-euthanasia crowd and the disabilities crowd but I’m sure the U.S. “involvement” in Vietnam was politically incorrect, and after listening last Monday night (Feb. 21) to Naomi Klein and Tom Hayden at the Venice United Methodist Church event, I’m convinced that disinformation and revisionism in the journalism practiced by the mainstream media is alive and well, especially regarding the Iraq elections. Hayden, as you may recall, despite your instincts to forget, was not a contestant on American Idol, he was one of the Chicago 8—eight anti-war activists indicted on the H. Rap Brown charge (“There’s A Riot Goin’ On” sang Elvis) stemming from the police riots at the Democrat’s convention in Chicago in ‘68. Klein has not been indicted or killed yet, although one should not be surprised when that happens. She is young, bright; very, very articulate, and a troublemaker of the highest order. She bothered to tell the packed house that the folks who won the Iraqi election had, as part of their platform, a call for a quick timetable for U.S. withdrawal, an elimination (aka “forgiveness”) of the odious debt run up by Saddam Hussein, and possession of their own oil. (The audacity of these freed yet occupied yet freed yet occupied people!) She noted this was not reported by the U.S. mainstream press (WMSP) that chose instead to emphasize that the Iraqis had an election as if the election, rather than what they voted for, was the central point. “It was election as performance art,” Klein noted, in an elegantly phrased concept so profound it really should join Patrick Henry, Lincoln and the General who said “Nuts!” in the Hall of Fame Quotes. She suggested that Bush’s declaration (echoed by Sen. Hillary Clinton of the loyal opposition) that there will be no timetable was purposeful: this way the U.S. could subvert the democratically-elected government of Iraq so the troops would stay, the debt would stay, and our hands on their oil would stay. As Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. said in his Dec. ’72 article in Harper’s on the political conventions that year: “The fix is in.” Klein went on to detail the restrictive and coercive laws and Constitution promulgated by Paul Bremer—the unelected Monarch of Iraq in the age what Klein called “appointocracy”; and she went on to detail the IMF, WTO, Paris Club and oil companies’ deals already signed, all to the detriment of the Iraqi people and real democracy, all irreversible under Bremer’s laws & Constitution. (For a complete version of what she and Hayden said Monday night, contact JusticeVision.org, which, for the princely sum of $3, will provide you with a DVD.) Hayden was there to follow her with a 5-point plan of action. He did not ask people to join a group, he asked them to do what was done in the 60s: attack the infrastructure of the war machine by putting pressure on Congress to defund the war, by keeping the torture issue alive (remember the Tiger Cages and Operation Phoenix? If not, look it up.); by supporting resistance among U.S. troops, especially those who have gone AWOL (although he warned that’s tricky and risky—possibly because they’re felons in the eyes of the King and that ol’ Fugitive Slave Law is still in effect), by opposing a reinstitution of the draft, and by opposing the Patriot Act. He noted the Portland City Council voted to have its police department refuse to cooperate with Homeland Security and the FBI on matters concerning the Patriot Act. (Has the Santa Monica City Council done this yet? Should they? Let your voice be heard.) Back in Miami, back 33 years ago (“seems like old times”), the VVAW march on the convention hall was dramatic: Miami Law Enforcement was out in force with riot gear and nightsticks longer than baseball bats (as noted by Vonnegut when a few of us found ourselves surrounded in the midst of a tear gas attack), and with the 101st Airborne stationed a block away, ready to engage. The Vets had an edge. Everyone knew what these soldiers were capable of, but no one knew what they might do. (Camil et al had been accused of making wrist rockets to shoot fried marbles at cops and Republicans. He was later acquitted. I used to have one of the wrist-rockets.) Hunter mumbled something—I wish I’d understood what he said, but fact is I barely knew who he was then and was more interested in what the Vets would do, and what Ike Pappas of CBS News and Sam Donaldson of ABC News were saying into their microphones as they broadcast live. When the Vets stopped, silent, in front of the convention hall, the cops gripped their clubs, preparing to swing away. In a split second the Vets might attack; in a split second the cops might attack. Instead, the Vets knelt and began to pray. The move completely disarmed the police. Hunter mumbled again as we both scribbled on our notepads and that time I understood him: “Take that, Nixon, you warmongering son of a bitch.” Years later I thought Bill Murray caught him better in “Where The Buffalo Roam” than Johnny Depp did in “Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas”. But that’s taste, maybe, with a dash of hard-pressed memory. Murray, you may remember, came from the very irreverent National Lampoon Radio Hour and achieved fame on the initially very irreverent TV show Saturday Night Live as Chevy Chase’s replacement. In case you forgot, this was all documented in an uneven celebration of the 30th anniversary of SNL broadcast on NBC the same night Hunter killed himself. Tony Hendra in “Going Too Far” argued when anti-establishment humor arrived on network television on SNL, it died (similar I guess to Neil Young’s take that Woodstock was the end of rock ‘n roll). If you disagree, take it up with Tony. What I know is that Hunter was watching the SNL show that Sunday night, and shortly after the part about John Belushi’s drug-induced death, SNL-creator Lorne Michaels noted that at the time, back in the late 70s, everyone thought that if you showed up and did your job, if you were funny and creative, then what you did with your personal life was your own business. Then Michaels declared, “But we were wrong.” That’s the moment when Hunter reached for his gun, aimed it squarely at his head, and calmly pulled the trigger. Take that, Lorne Michaels, you sell-out son of a bitch. The day after Hunter died, police showed up at Michaels’ house, but coverage took a backseat to the Bush-Putin exchange on—don’t laugh: democracy— not to be confused with the Kruschev-Nixon exchange, the Lincoln-Douglas debates or even the O’Reilly-Franken duel. My friend John argues that an Iraqi democracy without enforceable constitutional rights like our bill of rights is meaningless, that while a majority of Iraqi voters did indeed use their election to call for U.S. withdrawal, debt forgiveness and ownership of the oil, they also called for the establishment of a theocracy. Klein didn’t mention that part, so I don’t know if Klein is right about democracy in Iraq, but it’s hard to imagine those folks getting it right when we have so much trouble with the concept. When the cops left Lorne Michaels house after presenting him an award for “Maturing”, they went over to Hunter’s and arrested him for killing himself. “You have the right to remain silent…” Mort Sahl’s American Revolution (A review of Sahl's performance at Magicopolus, in Santa Monica, CA, Aug. 2004) By Gary Gordon Published in the Santa Monica Mirror, Aug., 2004 “This is a revolution, dammit, we’re going to have to offend somebody.” John Adams, 1776, in response to proposed deletions in The Declaration of Independence  Mort Sahl, Icon and self-described Iconoclast, used to end his nightclub act by asking the audience if there were any groups he hadn’t offended. Although no one seemed offended at Magicopoulos last week, in the midst of enthusiastic response there were some audible hisses when he mentioned Ralph Nader, and there was palpable disappointment with the absence of a full-throated endorsement of John Kerry for president. This belief that he’s supposed to be on “our” side has plagued him for decades, ever since Joe Kennedy and others got mad when he aimed his satire at JFK. (“We thought this was what you wanted,” say the JFK supporters in an old bit; “You didn’t have to do it for me,” Sahl replies.) Sahl opened by dubbing Bush ‘the unknown soldier”, then quickly declared that Kerry “may get desperate enough to take a position on the Iraq War.” And he was off and running, older, a little slower, a little hard of hearing; he is still a revolutionary, in love with the American Revolution. He still takes no prisoners. Much of his act is about who he is as much as about what he thinks. For the unfamiliar, Sahl is the seminal wellspring of stand-up political satire since 1950, preceded only by Will Rogers and Mark Twain in a limited-membership pantheon of those who are truly independent, with truly keen, seasoned observations that really cut to the core of what motivates individuals and institutions. His terrain is politics and psychology, and he dominates it like a guard dog and explores it like Lewis & Clark, Einstein and Hawking. To understand his politics you have to understand his admiration for Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, and especially JFK (“the last liberal”). Like many artists who become gurus to some and targets to others, he is elusive to those who insist he be who they want; he doesn’t conceal his politics—Sahl hides in plain sight—but you must know the background. Knowing of his affinity for John Kennedy, Sahl remarked, everyone keeps suggesting “you’ll like [fill in candidate name], he’s a lot like Jack.” Kerry (and Howard Dean) were the latest on this list, prompting Sahl to report when he once wondered aloud “who isn’t like John Kennedy?” a waiter answered, “Ted Kennedy,” to which Sahl footnotes: “Always trust the working class.” Sahl’s the one who lead us out of the “Take my wife, please” and into humor that challenged authority. Like Fidel, whom he mentions while declaring the absence of a Left in America (“It ended with the blacklist”), Sahl has survived 10 presidents. He may be the only American who has known most of them—(he says President G.H.W. Bush once asked him who he would get to run the CIA, to which he replied: “Why don’t you get the guy who ran it when you were ‘running’ it?”), worked for several of them, and for several contenders; he’s done fundraisers recently for Kerry and did one for Nader and for Buchanan in 2000. (He credits his wife with the best line on Buchanan: after his 2000 GOP convention speech his wife noted “It sounded better in the original German.”). He’s certainly the only one who put his career on the back-burner and at risk to work with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison on the Kennedy assassination investigation. There was a period when “progressives” concluded Sahl was lost or had “gone conservative” in the 80s and 90s, it’s not a stretch to conclude that he thought and still thinks it’s the “progressives” who were lost. Known for coming onstage with only the day’s New York Times, Sahl has introduced a new element to his act: a display board of the political spectrum (Left, Social Democrats, Right) because “you can’t rely on newspapers anymore.” Placing cut-outs of Marx, Lenin, Stalin (“Lenin’s Cheney”), Fidel, and Che on the far Left, he denounces those he places on the Far Right (the Bushes, Cheney-- “The only living heart transplant donor”, “Wolfowitz of Arabia”, et al) as fascists, but focuses his vitriol on the right wing of the Social Democrats, whom he defines as domestic policy liberals and foreign policy fascists; here he places Clinton, Gore, Ted Kennedy, Kerry, and—because of their support for Kerry: Dean and Dennis Kucinich. Nader (“ a non-emotional Arab”) he puts on the left wing of the Social Democrats. Noting California’s governor’s praise of Hitler’s leadership skills and Kurt Waldheim’s presence at their wedding as evidence of the Arnold’s affinity for Nazis, Sahl zings: “Schwarzenegger often observes he grew up in Austria watching what the Russians did, but he forgot why the Russians were there in the first place.” Of a Bush fundraiser he was invited to at Al Haig’s house in Palm Beach, Sahl notes the president declared his primary mission was to fight terrorism “because it’s what you elected me to do,” to which Sahl says he replied, “We didn’t elect you that much.” During a Q. & A. period—another new element to his act, he was asked about right-wing talk radio: “Liberals were too indefinitive, the Right stepped in,”; prisons: “Candidates haven’t chosen to make it an issue. You haven’t seen Kerry asking Jesse Jackson on stage with him,”; and Skull & Bones: “A real fascist outfit…. JFK broke with his class, was ready to break with the Church and, more important to me, was ready to break with his father.” He insists that among the qualities that set him apart from other political comics and from so many of the politicians he barbs are their failure to recognize the promise of America, their lack of passion, and their failure to have “the best interests of the people at heart.” “To be driven only by profit and not by destiny or country seems like a bad idea… America is too good an idea to go under, but now nobody has an idea.” Fahrenheit 9/11, Not A Disney Film By Gary Gordon Published in the Santa Monica Mirror, July, 2004 Is 911 degrees the temperature at which truth burns? I ask because the fire this time seems to feed off the arguments over what is and isn’t true. To know the truth has been a self-evident value. But has knowing the truth ever really served us? Let’s assume for a moment that President Eisenhower was right to lie to us about U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, even after the Soviets shot one down, and that the Kennedy administration was right to conceal their involvement in the Diem assassination. Let’s assume we’re better off because of LBJ’s lies about Vietnam, and Nixon’s lies the invasion of Cambodia, the Watergate break-in and cover-up, and Chile. Let’s stipulate Reagan’s lies about Iran-Contra and so many other things, and Bush I’s lies about being “out of the loop” and the need to invade Panama were in the highest service of our country. Let’s decide that every claim of “National defense” and “National Security” was not only justified, it was mandatory, with the nation’s fate at stake. And what of the other lies that have been ferreted out and undone? Black people are inferior. The poor don’t want to work. Jews control the money. The rich don’t have it so good. The free hand of the marketplace will indeed provide. Nuclear power is perfectly safe. Women are incapable of anything but childbirth and housework. Wouldn’t we be better off if these lies had been left undisturbed? Michael Moore’s new film, “Fahrenheit 9/11”, is about lies, money and connections. It’s about lies told by those who run the country, lies told by those who prey on people’s patriotism for personal gain; it is about the use of the Federal Government for personal gain. He suggests that we are plainly not better off being ignorant. But whether or not the revelation of these lies is more important to the public than the fears that facilitate the acceptance of the lies is up to the viewers and voters to decide. As has been noted in other reviews and commentaries, much of the information in “9/11” about the lies of Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz et al, and the connections between the Bush family (father and son) and the Saudi Royal family and the bin Laden family and the Carlyle group and Cheney’s connections to Halliburton, and the connections between the Taliban and now the new (U.S. Prime selected) government in Afghanistan and Unocal (who wanted the pipeline), is already known by those in the public who choose to keep up. But knowing that the U.S. and the Bush family have long slept with the Saudis and did business with the Taliban is just not the same as seeing film of Taliban government visitors and film of the public beheadings conducted in Saudi Arabia not by terrorists (per se), but by the government. With an artful barrage of facts and a clever soundtrack, Moore’s contention that the war in Iraq is about oil and power and money and has nothing to do with fighting terrorism is reasonably supported and is convincing, I suspect, to anyone who isn’t firmly committed to the fatuous notion that Saddam Hussein was indeed Hitler incarnate, that his war machine was poised to destroy the free world, and that Bush is too honorable a man to engage in the deceits he is charged with in the film. But film is an emotional medium, and it is here that Moore moves entertainingly and effectively between wonderfully graphic and humorous presentation and discussion of evidence to more somber presentations of the flesh & blood impact of these lies. There are interviews soldiers in Iraq, some of whom question their own actions and are confused by what they’ve seen, others who celebrate adrenalin, destruction and death. He interviews wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital. There is footage of an Iraqi woman who has lost her family and home to American attacks. In a disturbing sequence laced with dark humor, he follows two predatory Marine recruiters as they mine the low-income and no-income areas of Flint, Michigan in search of prospects for enlistment, and he interviews Lila Lipscomb, a proud American who puts her flag out every day and now feels lost and betrayed because her son has died in Iraq and she doesn’t know why. It could be argued that the case Moore makes is circumstantial, lacks the necessary smoking gun, and ultimately fails because the word “is” is never defined. After all, just because there are all these connections, all these lies, that doesn’t prove these men in power are corrupt, immoral, self-serving, criminal. Is it audacious to imply otherwise, or do those in the administration and their corporate cohorts have the corner on audacity? It does seem at times that these Republican rhetoriticians learned more from Lenny Bruce (“If they’ve got pictures, deny it”) and Tim Robbins’ movie “Bob Roberts” than they did from Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roosevelt. (In “Bob Roberts”, when a reporter persistently asks a candidate a question the candidate doesn’t want to answer, the candidate first falsely claims to have already answered, then accuses the reporter of not being objective.) Moore’s critics accuse him of being an ambush journalist, trapping innocent Congressmen and CEOs and asking them… questions. But what is the appropriate response to politicians who conceal, stiff-arm, obfuscate, and prevaricate? Is it possible that an ambush is the only response? His critics glory in what they perceive to be his errors and sleight of hand, and fervently pronounce the whole film, as one talking head did on CNN, “crap”. Christopher Hitchens, for example, who accurately denounced Henry Kissinger as a war criminal, is so eager to support this war in Iraq that he has seized upon one of Moore’s statements, that Iraq never killed an American (prior to the Gulf War) and shouted in response “What about their harboring of Abu Nidal?” It is up to the viewer to decide whether Hitchens has bested Moore by referring to Iraq’s support of a terrorist at the same time Iraq was an ally receiving U.S. aid and whether this negates the entire movie. Other critics assert the film is a hit piece, so much so that ads for it should not be allowed to run during the presidential campaign. Clearly Moore posits the Saudis and Bush Regime are bad guys— but are the Democrats the good guys? In an anguishing sequence, Moore presents information to suggest that looking for spine among Democratic Senators is like looking for bone in jello. The fact is, “Faherenheit 9/11” is more than a movie, it is an event. People are turning out to see it in record numbers for purely American reasons—they don’t like Bush, they don’t like the war in Iraq, they don’t like being lied to about things that matter—like war, they like Moore, they don’t like Disney for screwing with the distribution of the film, and while standing in line or waiting for the movie to begin, they’re talking politics. And Moore—is he a film-maker? propagandist? charlatan? a con man? an agitator? son of a bitch?—well, isn’t that really beside the point? Moore didn’t make up the lies told by the Bush crime family (to use Mike Malloy’s label), nor did he make up the war in Iraq and the limbless now living in Baghdad and at Walter Reed. It could be argued the smoking gun is in Iraq, in the hands of the U.S. military. Regardless of his label, Moore does not have power. Bush does. Moore may stimulate some people to think, or help people rally around already adopted positions, he cannot send young men and women to fight and die in another country, he cannot bomb another country to smithereens and reward his friends the reconstruction contracts. In any discussion of lies and liars, magnitude and the magnitude of impact must be part of the equation. Or not. There must be a documentarian or pundit (P.J. O’Rourke? Ann Coulter? Lynne Cheney? Mike Savage? Rush Limbaugh? G. Gordon Liddy? Oliver North?) poised to argue either that all lies are equal or lies about sex are more important or, worst of all, that lies told to forward the war on terrorism are the most patriotic lies of all and therefore are not lies at all, that there is no need to know, and Moore is guilty of treason. It is said we are a 50-50 country and the election in November will be decided in the swing states—if the election is on the up and up. I don’t know if this documentary will change anyone’s mind. Coupled with two other documentaries that received much less attention—“Uncovered” and “Unprecedented”, there is plenty of damning information about the lies, money and connections shaping our lives, relieving us of our democracy. Near the end of the movie, Moore states that he is always astounded that it is the young, disadvantaged men and women who join the army and eagerly serve our country and it is the Ruling Class who always takes advantage of them, manipulating economic circumstances and breaking the vow to never put them in harm’s way unless it is the last resort. Yes, Disney was right to ditch the film. It is not a Disney movie. It is not a fairytale. To Bury, Not To Praise By Gary Gordon Sunday, June 6, 2004 When Bob Schieffer of CBS’s Face The Nation asked Newt Gingrich about the huge deficits that would also be part of the Reagan legacy, Gingrich said Reagan’s choice was always to have a strong defense and cut domestic spending and that this would grow the economy and cure the deficits. On whose backs? And what about all those nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union still aimed at us? In other words, why all the hoopla about Reagan? Well, it’s Mainstream Media Hoopla Time, and part of their job is to praise Caesar and reinforce the collective memory loss that urges us all to forget Reagan’s war on the poor, his efforts to eliminate Head Start, Food Stamps, Legal Services Corporation (legal aid for poor people), and his war on the environment (remember James Watt?) and alternative energy progress-he tore the solar collectors off the White House roof in one of the most vivid demonstrations of backward thinking to date. This is where Ralph Nader would be important, had Nader not chosen to become something of a joke. Nader, and journalists like Mark Hertsgaard (“On Bended Knee”), Ronnie Dugger (“On Reagan”), Mark Green (Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error”) and those journalists who covered Iran-Contra-these are the folks with the facts and figures about what really occurred during the Reagan regime. Those of us who were involved in municipal policies during that era (I served on the city council in Gainesville, Florida) had to deal with a Reagan-lead federal administration that reduced funding for mass transportation, Community Development Block Grant funds, and environmental protection. Here was a man who, among other things, got “the government off our backs” by withholding federal highways funds to states until they raised the drinking age from 18 to 21. (Fine, you might think that’s an appropriate age limit, that it’s okay to fight for your country at 18 but not to drink-that’s another argument-the point is Mr. anti-government Reagan was not really opposed to using the power of the federal purse to implement social policy, so don’t be conned by that scam.) The green light was given to corporations to make war on unions and to do their best to conglomerate. What had remained of the Great Society thru Nixon, an American experiment that was working, was wiped out under Reagan. And as far as Reagan’s huge accomplishment (other than speaking at Bittburg to commemorate the Nazi war dead) of defeating the Soviet Union, most analysts agree that empire was on its last legs, and its fall was hastened more by its invasion of Afghanistan than by Reagan’s “evil empire” rhetoric and his fascination with and attempts to fund the huge boondoggle SDI aka “Star Wars”. (An invasion, by the way, which we unnecessarily chose to oppose by arming the Mujadeen with RPGs-you remember the Mujadeen aka The Taliban and Al Qaeda?) Returning for a moment to all those warheads, the question must be raised, despite the end of the Cold War, are we really safer? What was gained geopolitically (thinking like Kissinger here) from the destabilization of the check against an expansionist China? With Russia and a variety of hard-to-pronounce “republics” armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, many aimed at us, all destabilized, coupled with the destabilization now of Iraq (the check against Iranian and Saudi expansion), how can anyone conclude that the world is a safer place? Reagan supported dictators around the world, failed to support democracy in Central and South America, supported rogue actions (conducted by the liars Admiral Poindexter and Ollie North) that violated US law, increased the no-win war on drugs, decreased the funding and impact of the great social programs of FDR and LBJ, enthusiastically embraced the fast-track corporatizing of America while reducing environmental protections, made war on the Air Traffic Controllers Union (PATCO) thus giving the green light to all those CEOs wanting to destroy unions, lost 250 Marines on an ill-defined mission in Lebanon, “wagged the dog” in Grenada, and in all likelihood stole the 1980 election through deals made regarding the hostage release, and successfully fooled most of the people enough of the time to get them to feel good about voting against their own interests and to now, perhaps, want to celebrate him as something other than a second-rate movie actor. And in fooling all those people, in conning them, in scamming them, in seducing them with his "humor" and genial manner and smile that concealed a complex combination of ruthlessness, narrowmindedness, dogma, know-nothingism, and ego, well, Reagan committed what became the number one crime of the Clinton era: he lied. Now the man will lie in state… as he always did. Happy Anniversary By Gary Gordon March 21, 2004 (published in the Santa Monica Mirror, 3/24/04) So what do you get for someone on the first anniversary of the war? Paper? Plastic? A... rock? Ever since Amy Vanderbilt died, and now that Martha Stewart is headed to prison where she belongs after bilking all those people and states of their energy funds and retirement income, it’s hard to know what’s proper etiquette. Etiquette is, of course, a French word, so it may no longer be proper to use the word etiquette to mean etiquette-it may be, in Ann Coulter’s word, treasonous. And we certainly can’t use a Spanish word, now that they’ve gone and defied President Bush and are about to join The Coalition of The Used To Be Willing But Not Any Longer. I wanted to get an anniversary gift for those significant others in my life-close friends, that is, not be confused with the people with whom I may or may not be doing something with which the sex police wouldn’t approve-something that says “Well, it’s been a year since the war started and here we are, one year later, so let’s celebrate, I guess.” It was, after all, a year like No Other, with a war like No Other, following an unspeakable attack like No Other when our world was turned upside down. This requires a gift like No Other, but I don’t think I can give the same gift to each friend. Some of them are for the war, some are against this one though they’re not pacifists and support wars of liberation or actual national defense, and some are pacifists. For those who aren’t pacifists I thought a t-shirt saying “Some War” would be ideal since that slogan allows for people to pick and choose which wars they want. But that leaves out the pacifists. According to those who make these rules, Paper is the first year gift, so I spent three hours in a bookstore after seeing “The Fog of War” looking at a variety of books as possible gifts. There’s no shortage of books about the war, Bush, campaign money and elections, and everyone’s favorite topic: lies. I could get “The Five Lies Bush Told About Iraq” by Christopher Scheer (Robert’s son) for the friends who are against the war, and “Slander, Liberal Lies About the American Right” by Ann Coulter, for my pro-war friends. Or maybe “The Lies of George W. Bush” by David Corn for the anti-war and “An End to Evil” by David Frum and Richard Perle, for the pro-war. I glanced at Frum’s and Perle’s book and it turns out that even with umpteen books documenting how Bush and his Team lied about Iraq, those of us who thought they were lies simply misunderstood. I guess it would be wishful thinking to think the whole lying thing had run its course. Clinton lied about what he did with Monica Lewinsky and that resulted in his impeachment mostly because it was a self-serving lie about sex that wasn’t a matter of National Security. Bush... well, if he lied about the war it was a necessary lie in his pursuit of the war against terrorism, and for those who scoff at what’s been accomplished since 9/11 suffice it to say that not only are shoes less dangerous than they used to be, but the World Trade Center hasn’t been bombed again and neither has the Pentagon. Speaking of the world being turned upside down, this actually happened before 9/11. Several times in the last 30 or so years, different maps, like McArthur’s Universal Corrective Map of the World, have been published showing the world upside down. That’s right. South America and Australia are near the top, Canada’s near the bottom. Other maps, using the Peters Projection or the Hobo-Dyer Equal Area Projection instead of the common Mercator Projection, show land mass accurately, revealing that Africa is more than 14 times bigger than Greenland and the land south of the equator is more than twice the size as land north of the equator. Some people, who argue the war is about imperialism and empire-building also take a North vs. South interpretation. If you want to get dizzy, quit trying to follow the line of reasoning that posits how tax cuts for the rich help pay for the war against terror and how cutting funds for police and firefighters helps fight that war and just turn a map of the world upside down and keep looking at it. Whew! After thinking about it, I thought maybe my anti-war friends should receive one of the books by the pro-war PNAC Trust-Perle, Wolfowitz, Kristol et al, and my pro-war friends should receive one of the books that purport (with extensive, accurate, plentiful footnotes) to demonstrate Bush and his people lie. Would my pro-war friends read Al Franken’s book? Or a book by Joe Conason? Eric Alterman? Mark Green? Molly Ivins? Michael Moore? Scott Ritter? Would my anti-war friends read Coulter’s book? Or one by Michael Savage or John Podhoretz? Has anyone other than Garry Trudeau read George H.W. Bush’s book in which he explains why he didn’t pursue the invasion of Iraq and regime change? Put another way, would my friends keep an open mind to new information that ran counter to everything they believed with every fiber of their being? Not knowing the answer, and still wanting to get some gifts for this important anniversary, I went to the big anti-war march and demonstration in Hollywood on Saturday. I hadn’t been to one in a long time, not since Bush’s dad drew a line in the sand. There were thousands of people and dozens of organizations. The Green Party was there, although I didn’t see anyone I knew. So was the Sparticist League, which has nothing to do with Kirk Douglas. Jerry Rubin was there with his table of bumperstickers-always a nice gift. I saw a t-shirt for sale that said: “Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot” and another that said “The flogging will continue until morale improves”--I think that’s from “Mutiny on the Bounty.” “Mutiny on the Bounty” may not seem relevant to any discussion about this war in Iraq, but let’s keep an open mind about what literature and the arts can teach us. Mutiny on the Bounty was about the machinations of the British Empire as seen through the eyes of the hardworking and periodically-flogged crew of a ship ordered to bring breadfruit from Tahiti back to England. See, I worked in empire, which according to many is what this war for which we celebrate the first anniversary is really about. Also, "Mutiny on the Bounty? inspired "The Caine Mutiny", which, as you may recall, included Captain Queeg’s hunt for the missing duplicate key to the mess cabinet from which strawberries were stolen. Queeg is convinced that a duplicate key exists and has the ship searched, turning it, if you will, upside down. When it’s not found he insists that it was his officers who were disloyal, his men who were plotting against him, and that the key really, really, really did exist. Kind of like Weapons of Mass Destruction. “The flogging with continue until morale improves.” I think a grocery store worker was wearing the shirt. The turnout in Hollywood was great, enthusiastic opposition to Bush was palpable, but the two groups who kept their drum circles going while the speakers spoke made listening to the speakers almost impossible. That would’ve pleased my pro-war friends; perhaps the drummers were working for the GOP. Not that I agreed with everything I heard. As I told the sociology student asking questions for her class, “I’m here to oppose the war.” I wasn’t there to agree with everyone’s analysis of what’s wrong and how to fix it. And I think some of my anti-war friends would’ve agreed, also not wanting to buy into everyone’s analysis. I’m not sure you have to be anti-capitalist to oppose this war. And for alot of anti-war folks I know, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is irrelevant. Some people were chanting “Free Tibet!” and I’m sure the folks selling the books by Mao Tse Tung didn’t agree with that. On the other hand, I didn’t see anyone holding a sign saying “Capitalists Against The War” or “Jews Caught Between The Cross And The Crescent Who Think This War Is Bad But Are Kinda Worried About Crusades, Inquisitions and Jihads”. Some Kucinich supporters wore t-shirts that said “Democrats With A Spine” while other Kucinich supporters--and I witnessed this myself--registered to vote Peace & Freedom at their table. The Peace & Freedom Party is running Leonard Peltier for President, which raises a question rarely asked when Democrats and Republicans talk about female running mates, “Is America ready to elect a Native American in Federal Prison wrongly convicted of killing two FBI men?” One lone person carried a “Hands Off Syria” sign and it occurred to me that all the people who want “Free” this and “Free” that could end up committing what historians call The Wilson Error in that his Fourteen Points never really spelled out freedom for whom or self-determination for whom. Personally, I’m not interested in nations who want the freedom to persecute minorities or wipe them out, nations without religious tolerance and freedom of speech; put another way, I thought we could all agree Syria’s no good and everyone, from the U.S. to Cuba to Libya to Russia to East Timor ought to mix it up with those folks... but I guess not. Okay, I made that up about historians calling it “The Wilson Error.” But the fact is his Fourteen Points were vividly vague. In the end, sorting out my friend’s views and determining what would be the right anniversary present stumped me. So I took a different path. Inspired by Robert McNamara’s comments in “The Fog of War” about how “we’re not omniscient” and “we make mistakes”, I bought a book called “1421” for my friends. “1421”, by Gavin Menzies, is about the Chinese discovery and partial colonization of the Americas seventy years before Columbus’s voyage of discovery. It’s not a conspiracy theory. The archaeological evidence along with the maps are there. How’s that for turning your world upside down? Happy Anniversary. Nipples And The End Of Western Civilization A Report From The Front Lines Of The Culture War By Gary Gordon My friend Scott Camil cut the ears off dead Vietnamese when he was a Marine sergeant in Vietnam. Like John Kerry, he returned to the United States and became a leader of the VVAW-Vietnam Veterans Against The War. Decades later, and most of a lifetime working in a variety of anti-war and peace movements, and he still can’t sleep at night. When I visit my mom, who just celebrated her 81st birthday, we talk history and current events and sooner or later the conversation reaches the topic of obscenity. She is a voracious reader but hates-really hates-the obscene words in most “modern” books. She insists the F-word is obscene. I say Napalm is obscene, and we go back and forth: neither of us has convinced the other in over 25 years, although she conceded my use of the F-word was appropriate as I cursed the doctors who couldn’t prevent my Dad from dying of a heart attack. Me? I took up the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll anthem, didn’t go to war, laced my language and writing with words I thought were appropriate and reflective of the culture-only somehow, early on, my anthem became sex, politics and rock n’ roll-and proceeded to explore the variety of activities and lifestyles conjured by free people in an uprising culture. I worked for civil rights, against the war (Vietnam), against nuclear power, against apartheid in South Africa, in municipal government (safe energy, energy conservation etc.), and played rock n’ roll in a host of unknown but fun bands. And of course there was sex. Details are not necessary. Use your imagination, or see the movie. Better yet, do it yourself. Put another way, I never cut the ears off anyone and I don’t find the F-word to be obscene, although sometimes it’s tiresome. Sex, politics and rock n’ roll will take you right to the center of the Culture War (as Patrick Buchanan aptly described it) underway in the U.S. Oh, I know, we’re at war with Terrorism, but Terrorists don’t effectively challenge our values as much as they challenge the architectural durability of our skyscrapers and lead us to do the damage to our values ourselves. The Culture War is much more to the point as it actually is about values-and we all know what “is” means. Let’s be blunt. I don’t know what the hell our values are. Do you? The other day I sat in a Government Affairs Committee meeting at the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and heard a report from a Person From Sacramento on the Master Plan For Education-necessary because of the multitude of problems and challenges. Bottomline: every kid should have a wonderful education. The plan, as presented, didn’t include how to get there (a policies and dollars discussion) and there is no inventory of just how bad things are. How many classrooms throughout the state are in disrepair, and how many more are necessary to achieve an adequate student-teacher ratio? “We don’t know, but finding that out is part of the plan.” When I was a kid, my dad, a professor of education in the South, used to talk with admiration as a majority of others in the field did about the glory of the California educational system. It was, he said, the model. So what the hell happened? Apparently although we say we value education… well, do the math. We say we value privacy and free speech and equal opportunity and individual rights, despite increasing evidence to the contrary as the “Patriot Act” nullifies the Bill of Rights and the rewriting of tax policy coupled with a host of Executive orders continues the massive transfer of the wealth to the wealthy. We say we value clean air and clean water, but look at what Bush’s budget does to the EPA. (Can you say “cut”, boys and girls?) We say we value the work of people who serve in police and fire departments, yet funds are cut, and cut again. We say we value love but deny the right of two people in love to marry if they are the same gender. (The romantics and poets speak of unconditional love; the State puts conditions on it.) And we say we value decency. FCC Chairman Michael Powell, one of society’s decency watchdogs and protectors, was shocked by “the crass and deplorable stunt” during the half-time show at the Superbowl and has promised investigations and fines. There’s no indication he was shocked by CBS’s refusal to run the MoveOn.Org ad criticizing the president’s accomplishment at creating the largest deficit in the history of, well, history. CBS argued it was within its rights (who owns the airwaves?) and pulled out the popular slogan, there is a time and place for everything, and the Superbowl, being the “nation’s largest undeclared holiday” was not the time and place for a political ad. (Horse flatulence, yes, politics, no!) As observed at our Sunday Table at the Main Street Farmer’s Market, in the Soviet Union poets were dangerous; here, apparently, political ads during the Superbowl are dangerous. How did a nation born from a political idea and ideal succumb to the notion that there is a time and a place for politics and that time and place is only on C-SPAN at 2am? Well, I don’t know exactly how we got here, but only with such a value system can we impeach a slick president for lying about a blowjob and not even condemn or investigate a sly president for lying about reasons to go to war. It takes a nation that places politics in the closet to s/elect and celebrate the inept, cowardly, opportunistic son of a distinguished father, as if they are similar. Maybe it is all a matter of education. What if, instead of memorizing the presidents, we had been taught to memorize the broken treaties with native American tribes? Wouldn’t that have better prepared us to understand how the world views us when we use our military might unilaterally and irrevocably? What if, instead of thinking that football players and sports figures are heroes, we thought a little more about the people whom we now celebrate? How many people celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day recalled that he wasn’t just shot in Memphis, he was in Memphis to support a garbage workers strike not unlike the grocery strike occurring now in Southern California? What if celebrating King’s memory meant honoring that strike rather than just taking the day off or cursing (with the f-word) the assassination? But do we value health care for workers or convenience in shopping? What if, when someone said sports builds teamwork, we said “Okay, but I certainly didn’t see a whole lot of team support when Curt Flood took on the slavery clause in organized baseball.” Decency, well that’s the tricky one. Two to three hours of grown men slamming themselves into one another with millions of dollars and life- and career-threatening injuries at stake, while massive quantities of alcohol are eagerly consumed and “large” money is gambled is all celebrated as “the nation’s largest undeclared holiday” but the unplanned, unrehearsed exposure of a nipple-covered breast is condemned as a threat to western civilization. “How can I explain it to my kids?” one imagines a shocked father (Powell?) asking as he sips his Jack and Coke and watches the point spread evaporate. I only watched a few minutes of The Game and did happen to catch the half-time show. It’s not my taste in music but, with the raw beat and physicality of the dancing, it seemed to fit with the élan of football. I was shocked that Justin Timberlake is a star, but I’m Out Of It, preferring Dylan or Springsteen or Jagger. And I had to wonder why Abbie Hoffman got busted for wearing a flag shirt but Kid Rock didn’t-oh yeah, Abbie was dangerous; Kid Rock, for all his posturing, not so much. As for those who think these points are too simplistic, well that’s the point, isn’t it? Western civilization and any discussion of values has to include the complexities of history and human life; complexities that seem to escape Powell and his ilk. (But as we recall from the Psalm of Forest Gump, “Fundamentalism is as Fundamentalism does”.) Me, I’m confident we will survive the unrehearsed exposure of Janet Jackson’s nipple-covered breast just as much as the involved entities will survive any fines levied by the FCC-to use a different f-word. Survival against the Fundamentalists in the Culture War though is still an open question. While the game and the attack on western civilization occurred (it will be known and remembered as 2/1), I’m sure my friend Scott was playing volleyball with other vets and political activists-he hosts a game every Sunday; I’m sure my mom was reading, and I spent most of the time watching C-SPAN. In Memory of Neidermeyer, In Praise of Nurse Ratched By Gary Gordon As you may remember, Douglas Neidermeyer was killed by his own men in Vietnam after serving his fraternity, his school’s ROTC unit, and his country. The men who killed him were never prosecuted, and there is no statue to honor him, even at his alma mater, Faber College. Most of what we know about Neidermeyer comes from the highly one-sided and revisionist documentary, “Animal House”, written by graduates of the sophomoric National Lampoon, and starring, among others, John Belushi, who died in Los Angeles in a den of iniquity known as the Chateau Marmonte, and Donald Southerland, who smokes marijuana in the movie and has always had very, very questionable values. In this documentary, Neidermeyer is portrayed accurately as a staunch patriot, willing to do his duty for his fraternity and school, but his patriotism is needlessly and incessantly mocked, mocked to such an extent that audiences actually cheered the news of his death. Notes from the soon to be released Neidermeyer’s Diary (Limbaugh Press) reveal an introspective young man, passionate, given to action, a man who cared for his horse; a man who would not tolerate lardasses or people who had been persuaded to be ethnically different; a man who, with good reason, hated the Delta House as well as its members, which included the aforementioned Belushi. Animal House was released 25 years ago in 1978 and is enjoying some celebration on this anniversary, but to many prominent scholars it represents the last in a long line of untimely, ill-conceived anti-American movies that endorsed irreverence and anti-establishmentarianism. As Greg Marmelard, another Faber alumnus and frat brother of Neidermeyer once noted in an interview in the National Review, “what started with outlaw film-makers like John Cassavettes and Woody Allen, and outlaw films like ‘The Trip’ and ‘Easy Rider’, what was inflicted upon an unsuspecting and gullible public during those eleven years was nothing short of despicable, subversive, unintelligent garbage. Fortunately ‘Animal House’, in which I played a part, ended that run, finally undone by God-fearing action films and happy endings.” Marmelard, a swimming pool salesman with a keen interest in anti-pornography and anti-terrorist legislation, currently tours college campuses with another veteran of those years of turmoil and the absence of decent values, Nurse Ratched. “What I tell the young people,” Marmelard said in a recent interview on Bill O’Reilly’s talk show, “is that if those movies were allowed to be in the theatres these days, President Bush would have faced tremendous opposition to his foreign and domestic policy initiatives, and the Arabs and Socialists would’ve won. Those movies fostered the notion that authority figures should be challenged. Just look at the way the Delta House members jeered at Dean Wormer and wrecked our parade. It’s all there, all caught on film.” Marmelard cites movies as diverse as “Bonnie & Clyde”, “M*A*S*H”, “Five Easy Pieces”, “Little Big Man”, “Catch-22”, “Network”, “Shampoo”, “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, “Badlands”, “Midnight Cowboy”, “Blue Collar”, “Taxi Driver”, and even a pre-1967 movie, “Cat Ballou”, for brainwashing youth and undermining American values. “Neidermeyer understood this at the time. According to his diary, he lectured his men on the evils of masturbation the day before they killed him,” Marmelard said. “Neidermeyer got a bad rap and a raw deal and now that America is proud to be America again, it’s time to swing that pendulum back, get right with God, and honor his memory,” Marmelard told the graduating class of Faber College last June. Marmelard contended Nurse Ratched “also got a bad rap.” Nurse Ratched, now retired and working on her memoirs in her home in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where she serves on several municipal boards and commissions, accompanied Marmelard throughout his campus tour, presenting her version of what actually happened at the mental institution depicted in the movie “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”. Her assertion, similar to Marmelard’s, is that the character portrayed by the popular but amoral Jack Nicholson was a “sick, sick, troubled, sick, perverted, sick, troublemaker.” “That movie was an outright attack on every trained professional who works with the sick and disturbed people in this world, and what’s more, it was an attack on any professional who takes their job seriously, who knows the amount of work that goes into formulating policies and rules, who knows that you don’t just go around changing rules because that’s what people want, who knows where to draw the line between serving people and getting walked on by opportunists who claim to be visionaries, who knows that there are just some people who reject conformity and want to violate the conventions and values society holds dearest, and need to be disciplined or lobotomized,” Ratched tells college students. She said in an interview with Ann Coulter that she is impressed with the quality of college students these days, as opposed to students during “that awful, awful, truly awful period”. “These students are attentive. They listen. They’re clean and neat. Most of them support the President. They understand the need for authority, obedience, loyalty, and especially reverence. And even the ones who don’t support the President, who are swayed by the lone, sol |