Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.
Photo essay: Why Brisenia Flores matters Monday, February 21, 2011 [A portrait of Brisenia Flores at the Community Center near her home, where she played daily.]
-- by Dave
I drove out to Arivaca, Arizona, on Tuesday, the day after a jury convicted Shawna Forde of two counts of first-degree murder in the home-invasion shooting deaths of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul Junior Flores. I went to take some pictures, look around, and get a feel for the landscape, both physical and cultural.
Mostly, I wanted to see how the murders had rippled through the community, because distant rural places like this are always tight-knit communities where everyone knows everyone else. Everyone I talked to used the same word: "Devastating."
A woman at the community center just down the street knew Brisenia and her mother -- who did volunteer work at the center -- very well. She pointed to a picture of Brisenia hanging on a main beam inside the center, a black flower attached to a corner, and explained, "She came here every day." Brisenia, she said, was bright and sweet and devoted to her parents, as they were to her.
The murders, she told me, took place only two days before the start of the community center's annual summer camp, where Brisenia always enrolled, and where all the kids in the camp knew her too. The center brought in grief counselors to try to help the kids understand what had happened to their classmate and friend. She said she kept trying to explain to them that they were never going to see her again, and they couldn't grasp it. Finally, she said, she had to simply tell them straight out that she was dead. And then everyone cried.
"It was horrible," she said.
Arivaca is a little ranching community where the main activity is at the feed store during work hours and at the mercantile and bar the rest of the day. It mainly exists for services to ranchers in the Arizona desert. And it is only 28 miles, by the road to Sasabe (and slightly shorter as the crow flies) from the Mexico border.
Thus, it used to be quite a popular thoroughfare for border-crossing immigrants, but everyone in town told me that most of that had gone away in the past couple of years, thanks to an intense increase in the presence of the Border Patrol in the area. And it was true: I passed a Border Patrol checkpoint going to and from Arivaca, and encountered probably 20 different BP vehicles in different locales along the 23-mile drive between the town and I-19.
The immigrant traffic also drew people like Shawna Forde -- people who hated immigrants crossing the border from Mexico and were determined to stop it. And so a little girl whose parents, and grandparents, and their whole extended family, had grown up American in Arivaca wound up becoming a victim of the radicalism and hatemongering turned to violence that always, inevitably accompanies the Nativist mindset.
The Flores' home was just down the dirt road from the community center about a mile, part of a rural neighborhood that northeast of the town itself, a bunch of small homes spread out on large tracts.
The place had been mostly cleaned up since the tragedy, but there were little signs outside: plastic roses placed on the door the killers had come through; a child's lamp, and a sign for a garden, and a teeter-totter. All the signs of a normal, simple, sweet life suddenly ripped away by something monstrous from out of nowhere.
When a sweet, innocent life is cut short like this -- especially by an act as monstrous as this one -- it always horrifies us, just as the case of another Arizona 9-year-old slain by a madman, Christina Green, has resonated deeply with the public. And so often in such cases, the monstrousness and the tragedy simply overwhelm us, leaving us to throw up our hands and decide that it's beyond our understanding, that there's no explaining such events.
But there's no such mystery about what killed Brisenia. We know. We can see it clearly. And we need to be talking about it.
The people who broke into her home late at night while she was sleeping with her new puppy on the living-room couch and cold-bloodedly shot her in the face while she pleaded for her life were people who did not see her, or her father or mother, as human beings. They were people who had become so accustomed to dehumanizing Latinos that they didn't care about the devastation they brought to Arivaca and the lives of this family. They were so consumed by hate that they had no humanity left themselves.
The dehumanizing language of scapegoating and eliminationism -- the naming and targeting of other humans for the supposed social ills they incur, followed as always by words urging their excision from society, if not the world -- is endemic on the American Right. And among right-wing extremists, it intensifies, grows and metastasizes into something lethal and monstrous.
Cerna: Shawna, let me ask you about the issue of economics. You've heard constraints from growers, you know, that the apple harvest is very important in this state, particularly in this region. What do you say to the growers?
Forde: We've got a prison system. Let's utilize it.
....
Forde: I'd like to see two things on there. Not just about the people who came here legally, and are here legally, but how about the Americans who have been affected and died because of the illegal invasion in our country? How about our sovereignty?
And securing our borders and protecting our nation is extremely important. And I know the Minutemen and many organizations will not stop -- we will start at the local level and work our way up -- we will not stop until we get the results that we need to have.
This kind of language is not particularly rare -- indeed, it is common on the American Right, particularly the Nativists who are eager to deport all of the nation's undocumented immigrants, and it's endemic to the Minuteman movement in general, where you can find similar eliminationism at every corner, including people like Chris Simcox:
I feel that the people that are coming across, invading this country, I think that they should be treated as enemies of the state. We need to putting them in work camps. Anyone could walk through these borders of this country bringing bombs, chemicals, weapons of mass destruction. I think they should be shot on sight, personally.
And their many followers:
No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem. After two or three Mexicans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.
The mainstream media, particularly the folks at Fox News, have refused to recognize that this is what's occurring. Indeed, even at CNN, the only cable network to adequately report on the murder of Brisenia Flores, it's completely ignored and glossed over. As C&L commenter Karen noted:
No one is bothering to expose the actual ideology of this woman or her splinter group, or how they don't care about Mexican life.
.... The reporter calls this a "tragic and strange story." Tragic yes. Strange? Why? It's actually (sadly) banal. This shit goes on all the time. Murders like this happen every day. The only strange part is the involvement of splinter Minutemen, but that angle isn't pushed. It's the only angle that makes this a socially relevant story, and it's glossed over like a tangential fact. Like the real story is the heartless shooting.
As the folks at Presente observed after the verdict:
Though we received a verdict that condemned these atrocious murders, we also recognize that the Brisenia Flores’ case is not the isolated incident that some media reports make it out to be. Rather, it has galvanized the attention of the entire Latino community across the country as it reflects the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino hatred organized by extremist groups. Latinos – the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. – understand and experience the phenomenon of hatred that has rapidly expanded in the nation. In fact, Latinos are closely watching media outlets that provide a platform for hatred promoted by extremist groups like MAD and the Federation for American Immigration Reform – a group Forde represented on a PBS show, for instance. Latinos are closely watching those media outlets that irresponsibly allow hateful groups attack to Latinos and immigrants, fanning the flames of fear and violence in our communities.
The details revealed in the murder trial have touched us all in a deep and unique way. These important details reflect the deepening and mainstreaming of the most noxious and dangerous strands of hatred in the United States. They move us to continue efforts to make sure there are no more hate-crimes and to take action in condemning media outlets that help disseminate hatred.
In life, Brisenia Flores was ordinary and happy little girl living in the Arizona desert. In her tragic death, she has become a powerful symbol of our own lost humanity.
The bitter fruits of dehumanization always strike at our hearts. If we choose to turn away, we can easily focus on the pain and not on the meaning. But if little Brisenia's death can transcend that choice -- if we look it in the face and understand how this happened, and why -- then it will not be nearly so meaningless.
Karl Rove blames 'Birthers' on a 'White House strategy' to ensnare unwitting Republicans in 'Birch Society' trap Thursday, February 17, 2011
-- by Dave
We're already accustomed to Bill O'Reilly's standard MO when it comes to polls: If it makes Democrats and/or President Obama look bad, he shouts it to the skies. If it makes Republicans look bad, he simply doesn't believe it and declares the poll methodologically faulty.
O'REILLY: And in the "Impact" segment tonight, new poll by a Democratic organization says 51 percent of Republican primary voters believe President Obama was not born in the USA. I do not believe that poll. And here's the reason. The sample is so minuscule, very few people vote in Republican primaries. And to isolate them would be a challenge even for Gallup, much less a political polling center.
So, here is a better poll. According to CBS news, 58 percent of Americans believe the President was born in America, just 20 percent say he was born in another country. The rest don't seem to care. There is no question that some Democrats are trying to marginalize Republican opposition in 2012 by painting them as nuts, thus the birther polling.
Right -- because a a poll surveying all Americans is going to be just like a poll surveying Republican primary voters, eh?
Er, not exactly. Indeed, O'Reilly just unintentionally highlighted the stark differences between your average Tea Partying-Obama-hating-liberal-smacking Republican voter and the average sane, normal, decent American.
And then he brought on Karl Rove, who then declared that this whole Birther conspiracy theory was concocted by the Obama White House as a way to ensnare poor unwitting wingnuts in the "trap" of John Birth Society-esque conspiracy theories.
No, really, that's what he said:
O'REILLY: OK, so, there is no doubt in my mind after watching Gregory on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, grilling Speaker Boehner about the birth certificate and all of that that the liberal and Gregory is a liberal man, right? I'm not being unfair to him, am I?
KARL ROVE: No.
O'REILLY: OK. He may not acknowledge it but he is. So, it's divide -- let's divide the Republican Party.
ROVE: This is a White House strategy. They love this.
O'REILLY: How do you know it's the White House strategy?
ROVE: Look, the President could come out and say, 'Here are the documents.' They are happy to have this controversy continue because every moment the conservatives talk about this they marginalize themselves and diminish themselves in the minds of independent voters. And every moment we spend talking about this controversy is a moment we can't spend talking about the failed stimulus bill, the reckless spending, Obamacare, his failures in foreign policy and his failure to live up to the promises that he made in the 2008 election.
Look, he was born in Hawaii. If he was born in Kenya, then there must have been some massive conspiracy that said this guy being born in Kenya --
O'REILLY: The Factor already did the investigation and we --
(CROSSTALK)
ROVE: You know, birth notices in both Honolulu newspapers.
Got that? Even though the White House has produced a real birth certificate, the kind every person born in Hawaii uses to prove their citizenship, Rove thinks that somehow the "complete" certificate on file somewhere in Hawaii will change the Birthers' minds and convince them Obama was born in the USA. Right.
And that furthermore, the refusal to produce said certificate is actually a plot by the White House to make Republicans look like wacky conspiracy theorists of the John Birch Society mold:
O'REILLY: Ok. Now, there is though and you saw it at CPAC last week in Washington, D.C. -- there is an element of the Republican Party that's far right and that really loves this kind of discourse.
ROVE: The campaign for liberty types who are there for Ron Paul.
O'REILLY: Right. They love Ron Paul. They love Christine O'Donnell. They love that kind of stuff.
ROVE: Let's be clear about it. There is a healthy dose, an unhealthy amount of people in the -- in that movement who are 9/11 deniers. I keep running into them. They protest me. Ron Paul -- big Ron Paul stickers and so forth. They are birthers.
Look, we had people stand up and boo Dick Cheney and --
O'REILLY: They called him a war criminal.
ROVE: And because again, you have a very thin fringe.
O'REILLY: But how big is that?
ROVE: It's not big at all. Remember, Ron Paul who had a lot of very -- you know, sort of mainstream issues regarding, say, the Federal Reserve and hard money.
O'REILLY: Put a percentage of --
ROVE: It's a fraction -- tiny, insignificant.
O'REILLY: So this poll it says 51 percent of -- I know this poll is flawed.
ROVE: This poll is flawed. But I do say this; Republicans had better be clear about this. This we had a problem in the 1950's with the John Birch Society and it took Bill Buckley standing up as a strong conservative and taking them on.
And within our party we have to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11 deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight.
O'REILLY: But what percentage of Republican voters -- five percent; 10 percent?
ROVE: I don't know. But whatever it is, it ought to be less because we need the leaders of our party to say look, stop falling into the trap of the White House. Focus on the real issues.
Now, if Goldberg and O'Reilly are so concerned that the public might conclude that mainstream conservatives are prone to far-right conspiracy theories and various other forms of wingnuttery, they might look in the mirror. It's the virtual definition of wingnuttery to even be asking why Obama won't release his birth certificate when he has in fact done so.
There's no Obama conspiracy keeping this garbage alive and tying it around the necks of mainstream conservatives. They're doing a very fine job of that themselves.
And in the case of Karl Rove, you simply can't defend John Boehner's manifest failure of leadership in refusing to denounce the Birthers and then turn around in the same breath and declare that Republican need to separate themselves from their nutty Bircher faction.
Fact is, these guys are caught, as they have been for awhile, in the toxic embrace of their increasingly extremist base, embodied by a Tea Party movement in which Birtherism is a supermajority belief.
What Rove won't admit (and Boehner's abject failure to lead on the issue implicitly concedes) is that Republicans would never win any elections without that same nutty element that has always helped elect them -- but which they want to write off as the product of an evil Obama plot. Like that's going to help them deal with it.
So naturally we were pleasantly surprised when O'Reilly began tackling the Forde case last night with his panel of legal "experts," Lis Wiehl and Kimberly Guilfoyle -- and, to no one's great surprise, it was nothing but a pack of lies, disinformation and grotesque distortions, from start to finish.
For instance, here's O'Reilly's opening, having just discussed yet another case of an "illegal immigrant" having committed a murder, one of O'Reilly's favorite schticks:
O'REILLY: Now -- exact opposite on the political spectrum, in Arizona. A woman member of the Minutemen breaks into an illegal alien house?
GUILFOYLE: Right.
No, that's wrong: Both Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia (as well as Gina Gonzalez, the girl's mother) were American citizens, born and raised in Arivaca.
And from a factually false opening, it goes rapidly downhill: Both Guilfoyle and Wiehl begin trading in even more factually wrong characterizations of Forde and her relationship to the Minuteman movement. Guilfoyle was perhaps the worst:
GUILFOYLE: This woman has some, um, problems otherwise. This wasn't really about immigration -- this was a woman who is a criminal, was working with this group to do drug ripoffs.
O'REILLY: She's a criminal herself.
GUILFOYLE: Yes. The organization she belonged to was Minuteman American Defense, otherwise known as MAD. But I did a lot of research on this case, and essentially she was using this organization to say, 'I'm gonna do rip-offs of drug cartels to fund my group.
O'REILLY: Ohhh, so she joined the group to find out where illegal aliens who might be dealing narcotics.
Wiehl at least points out that Forde didn't join MAD -- she founded it. But that's the least of the issues here: What's more important is that in fact this case had everything to do with immigration, which was the entire fuel motivating Forde's radicalism: She saw herself as a Minuteman "willing to take it to the next level" -- and she was using the drug money to do that.
Indeed, as we reported early on, she intended to metastasize MAD with the money so that it became a kind of super-militia whose larger purpose was to take on the federal government, not just over immigration but a whole panoply of related "Patriot" movement issues.
This wasn't about ordinary criminality: It was about right-wing radicalism. As Tim Steller at the Arizona Daily Star reported back then, she was talking to a lot of people about her plans for the group:
Accused ringleader Shawna Forde told her family in recent months that she had begun recruiting members of the Aryan Nations and that she planned to begin robbing drug-cartel leaders, her brother Merrill Metzger said Monday in a telephone interview from Redding, Calif.
"She was talking about starting a revolution against the United States government," he said.
In any event, at this point things in the O'Reilly Factor discussion became nothing but a farrago of falsehoods:
WIEHL: She was kicked out of two other organizations.
O'REILLY: Oh, she got kicked out of the Minutemen?
WIEHL: Well, that was the point. She was such a nut that she was kicked out of Minutemen. She started her own organization.
O'REILLY: All right, so her scam was, she would enter suspected drug dealers' homes and steal their drugs.
WIEHL: She thought he had $4,000 bucks in drug money, she wanted to go in there and get that money with her two accomplices.
O'REILLY: She killed how many people?
WIEHL: She killed the man, she killed the 9-year-old child --
O'REILLY: She killed a 9-year-old.
WIEHL: Yes. The mother of the 9-year-old was on the phone --
GUILFOYLE: She was present, she wasn't the shooter.
O'REILLY: Now, does she get the death penalty? Has she been sentenced?
GUILFOYLE: She is now eligible for the death penalty. The jury is considering it. Her defense at the time was, 'It wasn't me. It was the girlfriend of one of my codefendants.'
O'REILLY: But it doesn't matter, because she was convicted of the murders.
WIEHL: Right.
O'REILLY: So she's gonna go. All right, so then, uh --
GUILFOYLE: And she should -- and the Minutemen organizations don't want any association with her.
O'REILLY: And we want to emphasize that she was kicked out --
WIEHL: She was not part of the Minutemen.
GUILFOYLE: One of them, she was kicked out within 40 minutes of attending her first meeting!
WIEHL: She lied, she said she was leader, she wasn't any of those things.
O'REILLY: So she covered her own stupid organization as a cover for her own criminal activities.
GUILFOYLE: That's correct.
O'REILLY: Then she got what she deserved.
Both Wiehl and Guilfoyle are simply lying here: Shawna Forde was a significant figure in the Minuteman movement in Washington state for the better part of two years before she headed to Arizona. She appeared onstage in Everett with Minuteman Project cofounder Jim Gilchrist at a big Minuteman rally in 2007, and appeared on a public-TV town hall as a spokesman for both the Minutemen and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which later -- much later -- repudiated her as their spokesman.
And while it's undeniable that she was bounced from a number of Minutemen gatherings -- not for being a nutcase who was too extreme, but for being a mouthy and unpleasant person -- the movement nonetheless was ripe territory for her self-aggrandizing style. She was kicked out of the Washington state chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps not because they found her too extreme, but because she was caught stealing from the back bedroom of one of the local Minutemen's home.
Just to demonstrate how dishonest they are being here: Where does Guilfoyle get the anecdote that she was kicked out of one group within 40 minutes?
In August 2008, Forde showed up uninvited at Camp Vigilance, used by the Minuteman Corps of California and the private group Border Patrol Auxiliary as a base for patrols, said member Carl Braun. She was ejected after 40 minutes.
Last October, she showed up at a camp near Three Points where the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps had a group, Simcox said. There, too, she was ejected not long after arriving, he said.
But let's go back and read the lede to that story:
Shawna Forde was a rogue, many border-security activists say, or an impostor or a criminal.
They say the woman now charged in connection with the home invasion and shooting deaths of an Arivaca marijuana-trafficking suspect and his 9-year-old daughter was not really one of them.
But interviews with so-called Minutemen and their critics, as well as reviews of recently scrubbed Web sites, suggest Forde was well-placed in the border-security movement and represented a persistent radical wing.
"Shawna Forde was very much a known entity in this movement and, to some degree and to different folks, tolerated for quite some time," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.
Here's Shawna bragging to Scott North of the Everett Herald in early 2009 about her border-patrolling activities in the Arivaca area:
Additionally, she claimed herself that she was "not insignificant to this movement":
Indeed, as North reported over a year ago, Gilchrist was running updates on Shawna's border patrols on his Minuteman Project web site even after the Flores murders -- in a report that tried to blame the murders on illegal immigrants. Moreover, he then corresponded with her by e-mails to query about the story that the authorities were after her:
Gilchrist stood by Forde when her ex-husband was shot, after her reported rape and after her mysterious shooting, when she was wounded in the arm. When The Herald in February revealed Forde's history of childhood felonies and teenage prostitution, Gilchrist said what mattered more was her ability to overcome a troubled past.
"She is no whiner," he wrote at the time. "She is a stoic struggler who has chosen to put country, community and a yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying ego."
Gilchrist remained in touch with Forde after she left Everett without giving detectives a chance to question her closely about the attempted murder of her ex-husband.
On the Minuteman Project Web site, Gilchrist continued to post press releases and Forde's dispatches detailing her Arizona border exploits.
One of the last arrived on May 31, just hours after the Arivaca killings.
Forde reported that she and her group had been in "boots on the ground" patrols of the border for eight days and had observed thousands of pounds of dope being smuggled into the country.
"A (sic) American family was murdered 2 days ago including a 9 year old girl," Forde wrote. "Territory issue's (sic) are now spilling over like fire on the US side and leaving Americans so afraid they will not even allow their names to be printed in any press releases."
In a few days Gilchrist began receiving e-mails from a Minuteman in Tucson who had previously let Forde's teenage daughter live at his home. The man asked Gilchrist why a SWAT team had shown up at his door looking for Forde.
"I called her," Gilchrist said. "She was as calm as can be."
Forde told him there was no cause for worry. The man, she said, was a disgruntled former member of her group.
At the same time, though, she was sending out a list of 17 people around the country she wanted contacted if she was arrested or killed. After her arrest, Gilchrist learned he was 10th on her list.
He and Steve Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, almost certainly were among the last people Forde e-mailed before her June 12 arrest. They talked about adding her and her officers to their Web site's list of national Minutemen leaders.
"The border is going to be HOT. Good things to come my brother," Forde wrote Eichler that morning. She was in police handcuffs later that day.
Gilchrist has since scrubbed references to Forde from his Web site. He says she appears to have cloaked her true self behind the Minutemen movement.
"We all have to be aware that there are individuals who have motives other than altruistic ones," he said. "But you don't know until they present themselves."
I wouldn't want either of these legal "experts" as my attorney. Not if they claim to have done heavy "research" into a story and then the best they can come up with is a pack of falsehoods.
But that's about the best we can ever expect to get on The O'Reilly Factor.
Shawna Forde case briefly gets a touch of the 'liberal' media's attention. Plus: Shawna speaks Tuesday, February 15, 2011
-- by Dave
We've been remarking for awhile how strange it is that the case of Shawna Forde has received so little media attention, especially because of its naturally sensational elements and the fact that it has real political and social significance. Indeed, one of the most common reactions we've observed among readers to whom we've presented the case has been: "Why haven't I heard about this?"
Even with yesterday's conviction on two counts of first-degree murder for the killings of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, it hasn't gotten a great deal better: the story, for instance, ran as only a "brief" in the New York Times, and didn't appear at all in the Washington Post, even though both had written briefly about it previously.
Well, at least CNN -- the only cable-TV network to have bothered to pick up the story previously -- did a full-length segment on the story, which ran on Anderson Cooper's show.
Easily the best coverage of the case came from the local reporters at the Arizona Daily Star and from the Daily Beast's Terri Greene Sterling, who yesterday pulled off a coup by getting Forde to talk to her for a post-conviction interview.
As we observed yesterday, one of the more remarkable aspects of the announcement of the jury's verdict was how utterly unfazed by it Forde seemed to be. Sterling zeroed in on this:
Forde, dressed in a navy-and-cream blazer and navy pants, remained calm as she listened to the verdict, even though the murder charges could lead to a death sentence in a state that does not shy from executions. The 43-year-old former child burglar, mom, beautician, and self-professed Minuteman from Everett, Washington, kept her composure, because, she told The Daily Beast in an exclusive post-verdict jailhouse interview, “you can’t freak out with the whole world watching you.”
Speaking by videophone in the Pima County Adult Detention Center, the woman prosecutors dubbed a braggart and a killer—who reportedly boasted she would “kick down doors and change America” with her border vigilante activities—maintained her innocence.
Wearing glasses, no makeup, and black-and-white striped jailhouse pajamas, Forde told me she was “extremely saddened” by the verdict. The jury of 11 women and one man also found Forde guilty of attempted murder, two counts of assault, two counts of robbery and one count of burglary. The jury gave a clear victory to prosecutors, who accused Forde of cooking up a plan to steal drugs and money from Raul Flores by gaining entry to his Arivaca, Arizona, mobile home with accomplices on the pretense of being law-enforcement officers in search of fugitives.
The verdict was “surreal” to Forde, but she said she took it like a “pro.” As the leader of Minutemen American Defense, or MAD, which she described as a large organization of patriots, she said she’d learned to “take things step by step, revamp, assess, and move forward.”
Forde also claimed that she sympathized with Brisenia's mother, Gina Gonzalez, who was shot in the home invasion but survived, and later identified Forde as the leader of the gang. But then, she had a very bizarre way of expressing it:
“I know in her mind,” Forde said of Gonzalez, “I am guilty and she hates me. I know her tragedy is extremely sad.” But on the other hand, she said “people shouldn’t deal drugs if they have kids.” (No drugs were found in the trailer.)
Forde told me she’d “lost a daughter” and she knows from experience Gonzalez will feel pain “the rest of her life” and her “tragedy is extremely sad.” “I wish I could say I was sorry it happened,” Forde said. “I am not sorry on my behalf because I didn’t do it.”
Forde, of course, is a prodigious liar. Fortunately, the jury figured that out.
Master interrupter O'Reilly whines that David Gregory was 'disrespectful' of John Boehner in MTP interview
-- by Dave
Bill O'Reilly was in his usual High Umbrage mode last night over the way Meet the Press' David Gregory grilled House Speaker John Boehner over his manifest failure to provide some real leadership among Republicans by knocking down the continuing belief by so many conservatives that President Obama is Muslim -- embodied in that Frank Luntz/Sean Hannity "focus group" from Iowa that was dominated by fools who continue to believe that the president is not a Christian.
Of course, O'Reilly didn't bother to mention that the original media miscreancy that gave rise to the Boehner grilling occurred on Fox -- but this was just another classic case of O'Reilly defending his Fox colleagues for their smear-laden propaganda and claiming that it was perfectly legitimate.
But the real howler in all this was the segment's overarching narrative -- namely, as O'Reilly put it, that Gregory somehow conducted a "disrespectful" interview.
This is pretty funny, really, coming from a guy who just conducted an interview with the President of the United States that was remarkable for the utter lack of respect he exhibited -- not just in the nasty tone of his questions (such as how Obama felt about all those people who "hate" him), but even more particularly in the way he relentlessly interrupted the president, refused to let him finish a sentence, and .
Indeed, some folks even put together a video detailing all the interruptions:
Apparently, O'Reilly would have been fine if it were Obama getting the grilling from Gregory. But when it's a Republican, and the source of the matter is Fox Propaganda -- well hey, that's a whole nother story, Fox respects Republicans by tossing them softballs and giving them Hannity Jobs -- and it respects Democrats by treating them like crap.
Shawna Forde: Guilty of all eight counts in the Flores family murders Monday, February 14, 2011
-- by Dave
The jury in Shawna Forde's trial for the murders of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul, spent nine hours deliberating the case before delivering its verdict today in Pima County Superior Court, and it was clear there was little doubt in their minds: Forde was found guilty of all eight counts in the case, including two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder for the shooting of Brisenia's mother, and an assortment of burglary, robbery and aggravated assault charges.
I was there to observe. The jury's verdict came in relatively short time this morning in Tucson, and it was an efficient affair: Forde, wearing a light plaid suit jacket and pants, entered with her attorneys, looking confident and smiling. The jury then filed in, and delivered their verdicts to the judge. The court clerk then read them aloud, along with the jury's findings: guilty, guilty, guilty, with no doubts at all about any of the qualifying issues.
Strangely, Forde was almost perfectly emotionless: She looked straight ahead, chatted with her attorneys, and even smiled occasionally. Indeed, she continued to exude the bravado that has been her style from the outset -- even as she was led back out of the courtroom to her awaiting prison cell.
There were plenty of emotions flowing, though -- much of it directly in front of me. As the verdicts were announced, Brisenia's mother, Gina Gonzalez -- who not only survived the shootings, but delivered damning testimony in the trial -- began weeping softly, as did her sister and mother, who accompanied her.
Now the trial heads to the penalty phase, with a hearing tomorrow to discuss mitigating factors in the sentencing, which will be followed by deliberations to determine whether or not she ends up on Arizona's death row. (Arizona currently has only one other woman facing the death penalty -- Wendi Andriano, convicted in 2004 of murdering her husband. (Arizona's preferred method of execution is by lethal injection.)
As Presente observed in its press release praising the verdict:
Though we received a verdict that condemned these atrocious murders, we also recognize that the Brisenia Flores’ case is not the isolated incident that some media reports make it out to be. Rather, it has galvanized the attention of the entire Latino community across the country as it reflects the anti-immigrant, anti-Latino hatred organized by extremist groups. Latinos – the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. – understand and experience the phenomenon of hatred that has rapidly expanded in the nation. In fact, Latinos are closely watching media outlets that provide a platform for hatred promoted by extremist groups like MAD and the Federation for American Immigration Reform – a group Forde represented on a PBS show, for instance. Latinos are closely watching those media outlets that irresponsibly allow hateful groups attack to Latinos and immigrants, fanning the flames of fear and violence in our communities.
The details revealed in the murder trial have touched us all in a deep and unique way. These important details reflect the deepening and mainstreaming of the most noxious and dangerous strands of hatred in the United States. They move us to continue efforts to make sure there are no more hate-crimes and to take action in condemning media outlets that help disseminate hatred.
But the researchers at Media Matters happened to catch one of the more hilarious of these: Beck bringing on a onetime commanding general in Iraq -- Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin -- to defend his theory as being on the money. That's right: the guy who brought you Abu Ghraib, on to warn of yet another dire threat.
Of course, the last we happened to notice Boykin poking his head out of his lead-lined nuclear bunker was when he was explaining how Marxism is being insidiously implemented in America under President Obama -- rather like another general we once knew:
As we observed at the time, this was what Boykin saw as America's biggest problem:
I'm a Special Forces officer, I'm a Green Beret and I've studied Marxist insurgency, it was part of my training. And the things I know have been done in every Marxist insurgency are being done in America today.
Among the signs that we are now on the verge of a complete Marxist takeover?
-- The bailouts, which Boykin says "nationalized" large chunks of the economy.
-- Gun control, which Boykin claims that Obama is pursuing by agreeing to a United Nations small-arms treaty.
-- The hate crimes law, which Boykin claims is about being able to silence pastors and other critics.
And then, of course, the coup d'grace:
The final thing has been to establish a constabulary force, a force that can control the population. You say "well, we don't have that." Well, let me remind you that prior to the election, the President stood up and said that if elected he would have a nation civilian security force that would be as large as and as well-equipped as the United States military.
For what?
Remember Hitler had the Brownshirts and in the Night of the Long Knives, even Hitler got scared of the Brownshirts and killed thousands of them.
So you say "are there any signs that that's happened" and the truth is yes. If you read the health care legislation which, by the way nobody in Washington has read, but if you read the health care legislation it's actually in the health care legislation.
There are paragraphs in the health care legislation that talk about the commissioning of officers in time of a national crisis to work directly for the President. It's laying the groundwork for a constabulary force that will control the population in America.
Of course, one couldn't listen to this rant without being instantly reminded of General Jack D. Ripper. I obtained some documentary footage of Gen. Ripper and mashed it up with the Boykin video so you could do a comparison/contrast.
Let me also just point out that Senate Republicans actually had Boykin on their witness list to testify against Elena Kagan at her confirmation hearing until they dropped him at the last moment.
What is not known about Waco is that the final assault plan was amended on the ground by the tactical field commanders on the very day of the assault. That alteration had been discussed and rejected by the FBI brass over several weeks. Nonetheless, the FBI HRT commander, Richard Rogers implemented the rejected plan via a loophole signed by Janet Reno the morning of the final assault on April 19. That alteration was identical to the gassing and demolition plan that two Delta Force advisors seconded to the Justice Dept. in a principals meeting of April 14. Those two advisors supported the rejected plan that was later implemented "hypothetically" in order to conform to the letter of Posse Comitatus law. I also have published a peer-reviewed article with this finding. It is based on government documents--all open source. The rejected plan supported by Jeff Jamar, Richard Rogers, and the two Delta Force officers resulted in a disaster that did not have to happen. It was an ill-advised tactical approach to a religious community that feared that Satan was attacking them.
Those two Delta Force officers were Peter J. Schoomaker and "Jerry" Boykin, now both top officials in the US Army in charge of military planning for the war on terrorism.
A Washington Post piece actually tried to tackle this very question, but only dropped a little toe into the lava pit:
But unlike the Krentz case, the trial has been a largely local story.
"There's a few places writing about this, but it is not getting the attention it deserves," said Eric Rodriguez, vice president of the National Council of La Raza. "It should be shocking to more people. Is there any circumstance where what took place is acceptable to people?"
Krentz's shooting, which for a time was a staple of news coverage and has been brought up in homeland security hearings on Capitol Hill, struck a nerve in part because of the government's failure to deal with illegal immigration. Arizona, which the Pew Hispanic Center reported this month is home to 400,000 undocumented immigrants, has passed tough legislation in recent months to crack down on those who are in the country illegally.
The trial is now in the hands of the jury, and I haven't yet seen a single cable-network report on the story -- particularly not on Fox News Channel, which has had complete silence on the case. I'm flying down to Tucson tomorrow and will be reporting from the scene when the verdict is delivered. (The project is being funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.)
Meanwhile, the local media have done an excellent job of covering the trial, particularly the reporters at the Arizona Daily Star, led by Kim Smith, who wrap up the closing arguments made Thursday:
Shawna Forde thought so highly of herself she believed she could create a new world, decide who was a drug dealer and who wasn't and who should live and die, prosecutor Rick Unklesbay told jurors Thursday.
The truth, however, he said, is, "What Shawna Forde is is a common thief and a murderer."
Unklesbay spent approximately 90 minutes Thursday going over the evidence he says proves Forde, 43, was the mastermind behind a May 30, 2009, Arivaca home invasion that left Raul Junior Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old-daughter, Brisenia, dead of multiple gunshot wounds.
Two other suspects in the case, Jason Bush and Albert Gaxiola, are scheduled to go to trial this spring.
The prosecutor reminded jurors that at least four witnesses testified Forde bragged about her plan to fund her Minutemen American Defense organization by robbing drug-cartel associates during home invasions.
Among those witnesses were her sister, two FBI informants and Oin Oakstar, an Arivaca drug smuggler.
Flores and Brisenia died because of Forde's greed, Unklesbay said.
Forde may not have pulled the trigger, "But make no mistake about it, she's the one who planned the event, recruited the people to do it and she went in there with them," Unklesbay said.
The Daily Star team has also been filing a lot of the details in the trial at their courthouse blog. Definitely worth checking out.
Meanwhile, the folks at Presente have created a website and poster demanding justice for Brisenia Flores:
For the second year in a row, Ron Paul won the presidential straw poll at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, earning 30 percent of the vote.
The Texas congressman, known for his libertarian views, ran for president in 2008 but was never a serious contender for the GOP nomination.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a 2008 GOP candidate who is expected to run again, came in second place with 23 percent of the vote. Romney won the previous three presidential straw polls before Paul snapped his streak last year.
Many convention-goers booed when the results were announced but the Paul supporters drowned them out with chants of "Ron Paul! Ron Paul! Ron Paul!"
Paul's consecutive victories in the straw poll have frustrated many GOP faithful who would rather see a more credible contender win. A CPAC official told Fox News that the big story is not Paul winning again but rather the strength of Romney's second-place finish.
Now, I don't disagree with everything Ron Paul has to say, but I would never vote for him and boy, did he ever get destroyed by the GOP base during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Talk about the proverbial ship without a rudder. This wasn't some online poll that got freeped, this was taken in person at the GOP's biggest annual event.
It's always helpful when a guy who really is a right-wing extremist gets the support of the GOP's most ardent activists. Tells us a lot about the direction they want to go, at the very least.
A Gwinnett judge sentenced a tea party member to serve eight years in prison for attacking and hospitalizing a President Barack Obama supporter during a 2009 bar room altercation, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Jurors convicted Carnesville resident Larry Morgan, 39, of aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated battery this week for smashing several bones in the victim’s face with a pool cue on Jan. 31, 2009 — a few days after Obama’s inauguration. Deliberations took only an hour.
The single blow, which broke the pool stick in half, happened about 1:30 a.m. at Will Henry’s Tavern in Stone Mountain, said Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Taylor, who prosecuted.
The victim, Patrick O’Neill, then 24, was hospitalized for five days and endured a months-long recovery. He testified that he suffered numerous facial fractures, including a broken nose and orbital ethmoid bone, Taylor said.
“The pictures of his injuries were some of the most egregious pictures I have seen,” Taylor said. “(He) is very lucky to be alive.”
According to testimony, trouble began when Morgan was talking to other bar patrons about his negative feelings about Obama, when one of O’Neill’s friends said he had voted for the president.
Morgan replied, “Well, you are stupid as hell,” before making some racist comments or jokes, witnesses testified, Taylor said. All people involved were white, she said.
Later, O’Neill and his friend were laughing about or poking fun at Morgan’s comments when he became angry, fetched a pool cue and broke it across O’Neill’s face. The impact was so forceful that the victim had no memory of being struck or the circumstances leading up to it, Taylor said.
Morgan, who testified he considers himself a tea party member, told the court he was acting in self-defense. He claimed O’Neill and his friend had threatened “to beat him up in the parking lot,” Taylor said, recalling testimony.
There, you see! It's just another liberal plot to make Tea Partiers look like violent thugs.
Like Howard Beale on hydrocodone: Glenn Beck approaches final meltdown in extended angry rant
-- by Dave
There really isn't much to say about Glenn Beck's opening rant for his Fox News show yesterday. It really pretty much speaks for itself.
Which is to say: Better ready that nice rubber room for the pudgy guy.
It does feature what will no doubt become a classic line:
BECK: You want to call me crazy? Go to hell. Call me crazy all you want!"
See, this is like all those times Beck has pretended that he was asked his viewers, "What if I'm right?" He never seems to reckon much on the consequences of his being wrong.
This, of course, pleases the cultural warriors at Fox News, especially John Bolton, who was on Greta Van Susteren's show last night proclaiming how right Cameron is.
For the sake of argument, let us concede at least that multiculturalism has developed some important flaws over the years, some of which the conservatives have identified. What none of these critics have explained, however, is what system of racial ethics they would champion in lieu of multiculturalism.
If multiculturalism is dead, what do they propose we replace it with?
Remember: As I've explained many times, multiculturalism -- a concept first proposed by the father of modern anthropology, Franz Boas -- was specifically a direct reaction against white supremacism, and eventually overthrew it as the dominant American worldview. Most American critics are coy about what they would replace it with -- though of course, there are some Nativists who are not: they want to resurrect the white-supremacist ethos that was dominant in America for much of the first half of the 20th century and before.
Nonetheless, it was a concept tailored for America -- in part because of the national "melting pot" that has been our history, and in part because Boas saw it as a specifically democratic ethos. This may go a long way in explaining why the Europeans are continuing to struggle with it.
"State multiculturalism is a wrong-headed doctrine that has had disastrous results. It has fostered difference between communities," the Conservative leader said in a speech.
"And it has stopped us from strengthening our collective identity. Indeed, it has deliberately weakened it."
Cameron defined "state multiculturalism" as "the idea that we should respect different cultures within Britain to the point of allowing them – indeed encouraging them – to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream."
But that's the root of the problem, isn't it? Arriving immigrants in Europe are never treated -- either legally or culturally -- as real citizens, full participants in the society and culture. You can claim French citizenship, but if you're Muslim, no one in France treats you as a Frenchman.
Europeans have been distinctly slow -- indeed, expressly reluctant -- to assimilate their arriving immigrants, and this has ultimately driven the arriving cultures into insular enclaves, for their own self-protection and sustenance.
It's not so much that multiculturalism has failed in Europe as that Europeans have distinctly failed at being multicultural -- in many regards because of their own deeply embedded racial and cultural attitudes about arriving immigrants and their own native ethnic identities. And now, they're blaming that failure on the arriving immigrants instead of taking a good hard look in the mirror.
Sort of like the people like John Bolton, who made similar remarks about American immigrants. He also made a claim typical of revisionist right-wing jingoes:
BOLTON: I think it's absolutely fundamental in a country like ours, where we have always welcomed immigrants, we have insisted that they all go into the melting pot.
That's simply historically false -- at least, prior to the arrival of multiculturalism after 1950. Look, for instance, at how we treated Asians for years: We denied them citizenship and the right to naturalize as citizens until after World War II, forcing thousands of Asian immigrants to exist here in a kind of political limbo that only their children were able to climb out of, thanks to birthright citizenship (and yes, the Nativists of that era worked to deny those Asian-American immigrants that right, too, back then).
Moreover, it was a commonly held belief that Asians could never become "real Americans" -- "oil and water never mix" was the oft-heard explanation for this belief -- because they were deemed too "alien" to ever become full-blooded Americans and full participants in our society. Indeed, the term "illegal alien" was devised to describe Asian immigrants after the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act -- an expressly racist piece of legislation dubbed the "Asian Exclusion Act" (it forbade all further immigration from Asia) and the foundation upon which our modern immigration laws rest even today.
These views were based on the prevailing racial ethos of those times. It has been only since the rise of multiculturalism after 1950 as the gradually prevailing ethos that America began not only recognizing but welcoming immigrants of all races and ethnic backgrounds -- and actually assimilating them. Before multiculturalism, all immigrants faced real difficulties, and nonwhite immigrants in particular were kept out of the "melting pot" almost entirely.
So this again begs the question: If David Cameron thinks multiculturalism is a failure, what does he propose to replace it with? Does he favor the right-wing approach that ultimately favors white supremacy? Or does he have some hithero-unknown system of racial ethics in mind?
Birthright-citizenship bill stalls: Arizonans may be hesitating to invite another firestorm
-- by Dave
You know that plan by Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce -- the architect of SB1070 -- to push through legislation that would deny the children of undocumented immigrants their traditional American citizenship by birthright?
A bid to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants faltered Monday when proponents could not get the votes of a Senate panel.
After more than three hours of testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, yanked the two measures. Gould said he lacked the backing of four other members of the Republican-controlled panel, which he chairs.
Gould said he will keep trying to secure votes. And Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said, if necessary, he will reassign the proposal to a more friendly committee.
There was a lot of testimony about the bill, including an invited "expert" who urged the senators to pass the bill just so the state can immediately embark upon an expensive legal defense that they hope will go all the way to the Supreme Court -- where he predicts there will finally be "clarity" on the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship to every person born on American soil.
But other than that, the committee heard nothing but criticism, including testimony from children begging them not to take their citizenship away, to a Democratic senator who wanted to know how people would prove their citizenship: Would they have to carry copies of their parents' birth certificates too?
However, I will just about guarantee that the testimony that convinced this committee full of Republicans to think twice before committing the state's taxpayers to this misadventure came from the business community:
The proposals also drew opposition from the business community.
Kevin Sandler, president of Exhibit One, said he worried about the message adopting such a law would send.
Sandler said his firm, which provides audiovisual equipment to courts across the nation, had to lay off six employees after some out-of-state firms boycotted Arizona businesses after lawmakers adopted SB 1070 last year. That measure gives police more power to detain illegal immigrants.
"We've created a toxic environment," he told lawmakers. "Businesses don't want to move here."
He said companies looking to relocate pay attention to the political climate in a state.
"What we've really done is create a not-open-for-business environment here."
And Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told legislators they should leave the question of citizenship where it belongs: in Congress.
Arizona's economy is completely in the toilet, far more so than in most other states. And while it may not be the chief culprit, the reality is that the furor over the immigrant-bashing SB1070 dearly cost the state -- not just with the boycott, which had a major impact, but with the dramatic loss of tourism dollars thanks to Republicans' incessant and hysterical fearmongering in defense of the bill.
And remember that Pearce already snookered his Republican colleagues by promising not to promote this bill in order to win his Senate presidency, and then promptly reneging on it. They demanded the promise because they know that their most important job should be resuscitating the state's economy, not trying to strip Latino children of their citizenship and embroiling the state in another disastrous controversy.
Oh well. Arizonans are getting what they deserve for electing these fools and cretins.
Stuart Varney is a lying scumbag. Just sayin'. Tuesday, February 08, 2011
-- by Dave
Megyn Kelly invited the resident expert in all things British at Fox, Stuart Varney, on to discuss that sensational story from the Telegraph claiming that the Obama administration was selling British nuclear secrets to the Russians.
Of course, Varney believes every word of the story, even though it has in fact been pretty readily debunked. And lots more, too:
VARNEY: There's an increasing feeling in Britain that the American administration doesn't like the British, for whatever reason.
KELLY: What's the evidence of that?
VARNEY: Well, there's two symbolic items, and two more serious items. To first, the symbolism: The first act of President Obama when he walks in the White House -- send back a bust of Winston Churchill, the great statesman between America and Britain. Second --
KELLY: Why did he do that?
VARNEY: Because his father -- President Obama's father -- disliked the colonial administration in his native Kenya.
Varney then described the other supposed anti-British offenses: the White House's clumsy gift gaffe of presenting the Queen with an iPod; the administration's ardent prosecution of British Petroleum over the catastrophic Gulf oil spill; and now, the supposed nuclear-secrets release.
Kelly ran through these and actually demonstrated that they're all either nonsense -- such as the supposed "secrets" release, which has been debunked by the State Department (it seems we've been providing Russia with this information since 1991, and everyone has known about it) -- or otherwise perfectly explicable. But she was at a loss on the Churchill-bust charge, which Varney again asserted has convinced Britons that President Obama "dislikes" them:
KELLY: But the thing about the bust -- has the White House ever come out publicly to explain why they sent that bust back?
VARNEY: It was apparently because President Obama's father, who was a native Kenyan --
KELLY: Have they admitted that?
VARNEY: I believe that is out there. I've not read the formal statement. But an explanation was requested. And the explanation was that Obama's father, being a native Kenyan, disliked the British colonial rule in Kenya, which ended in 1963.
Now, the folks at Media Matters are more polite than I am. They called this a "fact-free Obama smear and a "betrayal of reality." Actually, this is just a flat-out baldfaced lie.
Because in reality, back when the explanation was requested, a very clear one was given by both the White House and the British embassy: The bust had been a loan to the White House that expired with President Bush's tenure and was simply due to be returned.
A British Embassy spokesman said: "The bust of Sir Winston Churchill by Sir Jacob Epstein was uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W Bush, from the Government Art Collection in the wake of 9/11 as a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship.
"It was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009."
Varney is right in at least one respect, though: This theory linking the return of the bust to Obama's father and his Kenyan background has been "out there" alright -- floating around the GlennBeckosphere since at least last summer, when Beck adopted Dinesh D'Souza's cockamamie theory that Obama is secretly an anticolonialist, just like his father from whom he was utterly estranged and for whom he had no known affinity.
That is an extraordinary and -- if true -- damning allegation. Such allegations, when made on an avowed "straight news" program, demand evidence. But Varney offered no evidence whatsoever. Instead, Varney portrayed his claim as conventional wisdom that is "out there."
One of two things is true: Either Fox News is sitting on a story that would be massively damaging to the Obama administration, or they are employing a hack who pushes libelous, evidence-free speculation during its news reports.
It's pretty obvious that Door No. 2 is the only one that's going to open. But at Fox News, it will almost certainly make no difference.
While far from complete, it at least covers some of the more significant differences between the real president that Ronald Reagan was and the fake myths about him that have become enmeshed in right-wing conventional wisdom since -- and thus embedded as truth for mainstream media.
But really, this only points to the larger truth about this whole weekend's worth of praise for Reagan, which included a special halftime program at the Super Bowl, fergawdsake. As Charles Pierce adroitly observes:
By way of historical comparison, the centennial of Franklin D. Roosevelt's birth took place in 1982. The halftime entertainment at that year's Super Bowl -- the telecast not yet having been blown up to 96.5 hours -- consisted of Up With People singing a medley of Motown hits. Somewhere between those two events is something that says a great deal about this nation, not much of it encouraging. Maybe the NFLPA should change its acronym to PATCO and eliminate all confusion.
Much as Reagan himself was during his presidency, his image is now functionally just a stand-in for conservative-movement ideology. Whatever conservatives need him to be now, that's what the Reagan Myth stands for -- even though, as Jon Perr points out, today's Tea Partiers would call Reagan a RINO.
And that's why, as Will Bunch explores at length in his great book, Tear Down This Myth, there has evolved in fact a cottage industry around the mythologization of Ronald Reagan -- naming airports and boulevards and buildings after him, constantly burnishing his achievements, constantly celebrating various Reagan anniversaries, including slightly odd ones like his 100th birthday. This industry exists not to much to celebrate Reagan the actual president, but to embed conservative mythology in the nation's political landscape -- even after its disastrous consequences are made manifest:
There has always been a place for mythology in American democracy – the hulking granite edifices of the Capitol Mall in Washington are a powerful testament to that – but this nation has arguably never seen the kind of bold, crudely calculated and ideologically driven legend-manufacturing as has taken place with Ronald Reagan. It is a myth machine that has been spectacularly successful, launched in the mid-1990s when the conservative brand was at low ebb.The docudrama version of the Gipper’s life story, successfully sold to the American public, helped to keep united and refuel a right-wing movement that consolidated power while citing Reaganism – as separate and apart from the flesh-and-blood Reagan – for misguided policies from lowering taxes in the time of war in Iraq to maintaining that unpopular conflict in a time of increasing bloodshed and questionable gains.
As Bunch recently observed, in recalling the way the so-called liberal media attended to Reagan's funeral on bended knee:
The death of Reagan some six-and-a-half years ago, and the remarkable tenor – not to mention the depth -- of the news coverage, especially on cable TV news channels, marked something of a turning point. It showed the extent to which a vast content-hungry media world – much more extensive than when Reagan was president in the 1980s, when their main concern was the half-hour evening network newscast -- was eager to swallow the manufactured myths about Ronald Reagan, and thus honor what the unnamed TV executive told Hoagland, that “today history is what we say it is.” Any chance for an honest portrayal of Reagan and his presidency – the dangerous overreach of the Iran-contra scandal, the growing embrace of deficit spending (both in Washington and for credit-card-laden consumers), or even the positive idea that his greatest contribution to history was a heartfelt desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons (an idea out of step with modern conservative thinking) – has been tossed down the memory hole for the last decade.
What the American people have been news-fed instead has been an ideology loosely based on Reagan, called Reaganism – a notion that has led to the Tea Party’s hatred of anything involving government and the bogus ideas that taxes can only be cut or that diplomacy with America’s rivals is for wimps. With each passing election, more and more of the electorate is too young to have remembered or experienced the real Ronald Reagan, yet are searching for an idealized president based on these right-wing perpetrated fallacies. Many of the worst aspects of the George W. Bush presidency – more tax cuts for the rich, soaring deficits, and “axis of evil” bluster – were rooted in this legend of a man who wasn’t there.
My own recollection of Reagan was that he destroyed the Republican Party for moderate Republicans such as I was at the time, especially by empowering the Religious Right. It drove people like me out of the GOP, and we've never looked back.
Bill O'Reilly wants to assure us that Fox News isn't 'out to get' President Obama. Uh-huh.
-- by Dave
Bill O'Reilly phoned in to Fox News' Happening Now program this morning to talk over his interview with President Obama with Martha MacCallum retrospectively.
O'Reilly's real impressions sound like classic cases of projection: He thinks, among other things, that the president is "thin-skinned" and probably "self-centered." Indeed. Our impression of O'Reilly exactly.
And then he tried to pull a fast one:
MACCALLUM: I also want to get your thoughts -- at the very beginning of the interview, I appreciated that you took a moment to thank him, and to thank the administration, for some help that they gave us at Fox News in helping two of our colleagues, Greg Palkot and Olaf Wiig, and the whole thing kind of reminded me too of that moment, way back, when they talked about the fact that Fox News wasn't a news organization. And clearly we were treated in a very respectful way in this whole thing. I just wanted to get your thoughts on all that.
O'REILLY: Well, look, you have to understand that interview that we did yesterday was the most widely viewed interview of all time, because of the Internet -- you know, the moment it was done it was all over the world, everybody was looking at it. And I wanted people who don't know Fox News, and all they hear about is the liberal media defining us, to know that we don't have any personal animus against the president of the United States -- and he did, and Robert Gibbs and the State Department did really, really good work in helping Palkot and Wiig. That's the truth. So why not say that?
And why not say that to him? And I wanted him to get the message that, look, we're not out to hurt you. We the network. There might be guys like Hannity and Beck who really feel that you're not a good president and your policies are destructive. But we have other people on the staff who feel the opposite.
So, yes, Fox News is skeptical of President Obama, more so than the liberal networks, of course. We're not personally invested in hurting him and I think that that statement up top was true. It needed to be said. It was in the context of the event, and I'm glad I said it.
And those "staff" members who "feel the opposite"? OK, my guess is that they're all members of the janitorial staff. Because you'll sure as hell never see them on the air at Fox News.
