Oh, Those Liberal Fascists

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 Remember when Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was on the NYT Bestsellers list and — while doing his best to blow off his critics — Goldberg could be found everywhere explaining that fascism and Nazism were in fact really left-wing phenomena?

So you have to wonder how Goldberg explains a guy like Tony Zirkle: good conservative Republican running for Congress in Indiana’s 2nd District who decides to show up and talk at the Hitler’s Birthday celebration held by the local chapter of the NSM.

You may recall one of our main questions regarding Goldberg’s text:

How does he account for the continuing presence — from the 1920s up through the present — of definably fascist groups, not just American entities like the Ku Klux Klan, the Christian Identity movement, the Posse Comitatus, the Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, Hammerskin Nation, and White Aryan Resistance (to name just a few), but also European groups like Vlaams Belang and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, all of whom are clearly right-wing political entities? Doesn’t this lay waste to his claim that fascism is "a phenomenon of the left"?

Zirkle himself feigned a certain ignorance about the nature of the group he talked to, which indicates he read Jonah’s book:

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

No, I guess he didn’t read Jonah, who does make a big thing out of that fact that "Nazi" is just short for "National Socialist."

But it’s obvious he in fact fits right in with his audience:

An account of the gathering on www.Overthrow.com says "Zirkle spoke on his history as a state’s attorney in Indiana, prosecuting Jewish and Zionist criminal gangs involved in trafficking prostitutes and pornography from Russia and the Zionist entity.”

… Zirkle said he feels he was misunderstood. His real mission, he said, is to rid the country of pornography, and that’s what he was saying at the ANSWP gathering. So how did his comment about Jews fit in?

"Most of the male porn stars were Jewish at the beginning," Zirkle explained.

I’m sure Goldberg will explain that this is just another case of a Republican being seduced by liberal propaganda.

The Media Want A Frenzy. The Voters, Not So Much

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

So the media whip up a big-ass circus around some remarks that they — a bunch of folks who live in exclusive gated communities — deem somehow reflective of an "elitist" defect in one of the Democratic candidates and spend all week whipping it up. And what’s the result? Well…

Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment may have had little immediate impact in the Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania, according to a poll out this morning.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that Hillary Clinton leads Obama 50 to 44 percent, a margin unchanged since the organization’s last statewide poll at the beginning of the month.

The unchanged margin does not come as a great surprise. Obama’s remark was made public Friday afternoon, leaving only two days to permeate the public.

The poll, conducted Wednesday through Sunday night, revealed no noticeable shift in support for polling done on Saturday or Sunday. It is the first indication that Obama’s controversial remark may not dramatically change the head-to-head match-up in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next Tuesday.

Anymore, you can pretty much figure that the people making these news judgments and setting daily news budgets built around permutations of the consensus "big stories" are working from faulty assumptions. They’ve been getting it wrong for the past ten years, and longer, after all.

Judging by tonight’s results, the voters aren’t much impressed. "Bittergate" was much ado about nothing, electorally speaking and real-world speaking.

Just another viewpoint

-- by Dave

In the age of Drudge and "Fair and Balanced" news, we all know that facts and falsehoods are just two sides of the same coin, right? So I guess it's inevitable that some Republican somewhere would find it acceptable to speak before neo-Nazis because they're just another interest group, after all.

Sure enough. Jason Miller at the New-Dispatch in Michigan City, Indiana, reports that a bright republican attorney named Tony Zirkle, vying for the GOP nomination in his local congressional district, decided to do just such a thing:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

"This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

The Crown Point Republican spoke in front of about 56 "white activists" at an event honoring the birth of Hitler. The German leader was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

Zirkle said the group asked him to speak to discuss the effect of pornography and prostitution on young, white women and girls.

Actually, it does matter who you speak to if you aspire to publicly elected office: Your presence before any organization lends them legitimacy; and when it comes to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, that's simply irresponsible. That's why it was a problem when folks like Ron Paul and Trent Lott and Haley Barbour spoke before the Council of Conservative Citizens. If nothing else, it speaks of incredibly poor judgment on the part of that official.

But when you read the report of the event from the South Bend Tribune, it's clear that Zirkle's problems go beyond just a lack of judgment:

An account of the gathering on www.Overthrow.com says "Zirkle spoke on his history as a state's attorney in Indiana, prosecuting Jewish and Zionist criminal gangs involved in trafficking prostitutes and pornography from Russia and the Zionist entity.''

... Zirkle said he feels he was misunderstood. His real mission, he said, is to rid the country of pornography, and that's what he was saying at the ANSWP gathering. So how did his comment about Jews fit in?

"Most of the male porn stars were Jewish at the beginning," Zirkle explained.

The Floyd Brown schtick strikes again

-- by Dave

In a way, you have to admire the Rovean evilness of Floyd Brown's schtick, now playing in North Carolina.

The new ad recounts the deaths of three Chicago residents in 2001 at the hands of criminal gangs. "That same year, a Chicago state senator named Barack Obama voted against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders," an ominous female narrator intones. "So the question is, can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?"

What's clever about the schtick is that it lets John McCain look noble and "moderate" by officially denouncing it -- to, of course, no effect, because that's how these things work -- while the ad gets national play and permeates not just North Carolina voters' consciousnesses but that of Americans generally. It's how the right runs these kinds of appeals up the flagpole to see how it flies -- and the way it's flying so far, I'd guess it's just a preview of what we'll see this fall.

And so it's been playing on my cable TV all day, over and over -- CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they're all playing it. Atrios has it exactly right, as usual:

Some Republican or conservative group runs a dumb ad.

John McCain nobly distances himself from it.

Cable news spends all day talking about it and showing it for free.

Rinse. Repeat.

That's the Brown formula: Create an incendiary ad, typically reverberant with far-right (often racist) themes repackaged for more mainstream consumption; spend a little bit of money in a few precincts, let the Republicans involved look good with the soccer-mom contingent turned off by racially incendiary campaigns, by officially denouncing; but still reaching the closet-racist bloc with the ad itself -- which of course gets national play in the mainstream media as it discusses the outrage that ensues. This, of course, expands the audience exponentially, and for no added expense. Diabolical, really, but clever as hell.

It's important to understand that the media are being deliberately gamed here, but they have no excuse whatsoever, ethically speaking, for allowing this to happen. After all, this is Floyd Brown we're talking about here. He's played this game before -- many, many times -- and has boasted afterward about how easy the media were to manipulate. But they never learn. Or perhaps they don't want to learn, because it makes for an easy narrative, and there's nothing they love like easy narratives.

It's also been striking how often the narrative veers into a discussion of Rev. Wright and Obama's judgment, which is ostensibly the ad's chief storyline. But anyone watching it can see that there's a larger, underlying theme: the ad is all about associating Obama with black criminality and supposedly lax liberal policies to "blame" for it. It's all about scaring white suburbanites while giving them the cover of hand-wringing about his "judgment."

Well, that's Floyd Brown for you. It is simply the Willie Horton campaign updated with the special edge of targeting a black candidate. And stirring the racial pot and widening the cultural divide is what Brown is all about.

Everyone, in fact, mentions the Horton ad as a classic example of Brown's tactics. But it's also important to remember that he's been a major player in nearly every right-wing smear of leading Democratic figures in the ensuing years, including the Clinton impeachment fiasco and the Swift Boating of John Kerry.

Brown Does His Race Thing, And The Media Do Theirs

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

In a way, you have to admire the Rovean evilness of Floyd Brown’s schtick, now playing in North Carolina.

The new ad recounts the deaths of three Chicago residents in 2001 at the hands of criminal gangs. "That same year, a Chicago state senator named Barack Obama voted against expanding the death penalty for gang-related murders," an ominous female narrator intones. "So the question is, can a man so weak in the war on gangs be trusted in the war on terror?"

What’s clever about the schtick is that it lets John McCain look noble and "moderate" by officially denouncing it — to, of course, no effect, because that’s how these things work — while the ad gets national play and permeates not just North Carolina voters’ consciousnesses but that of Americans generally. It’s how the right runs these kinds of appeals up the flagpole to see how it flies — and the way it’s flying so far, I’d guess it’s just a preview of what we’ll see this fall.

And so it’s been playing on my cable TV all day, over and over — CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they’re all playing it. Atrios has it exactly right, as usual:

Some Republican or conservative group runs a dumb ad.

John McCain nobly distances himself from it.

Cable news spends all day talking about it and showing it for free.

Rinse. Repeat.

That’s the Brown formula: Create an incendiary ad, typically reverberant with far-right (often racist) themes repackaged for more mainstream consumption; spend a little bit of money in a few precincts, let the Republicans involved look good with the soccer-mom contingent turned off by racially incendiary campaigns, by officially denouncing; but still reaching the closet-racist bloc with the ad itself — which of course gets national play in the mainstream media as it discusses the outrage that ensues. This, of course, expands the audience exponentially, and for no added expense. Diabolical, really, but clever as hell.

It’s important to understand that the media are being deliberately gamed here, but they have no excuse whatsoever, ethically speaking, for allowing this to happen. After all, this is Floyd Brown we’re talking about here. He’s played this game before — many, many times — and has boasted afterward about how easy the media were to manipulate. But they never learn. Or perhaps they don’t want to learn, because it makes for an easy narrative, and there’s nothing they love like easy narratives.

It’s also been striking how often the narrative veers into a discussion of Rev. Wright and Obama’s judgment, which is ostensibly the ad’s chief storyline. But anyone watching it can see that there’s a larger, underlying theme: the ad is all about associating Obama with black criminality and supposedly lax liberal policies to "blame" for it. It’s all about scaring white suburbanites while giving them the cover of hand-wringing about his "judgment."

Well, that’s Floyd Brown for you. It is simply the Willie Horton campaign updated with the special edge of targeting a black candidate. And stirring the racial pot and widening the cultural divide is what Brown is all about.

Everyone, in fact, mentions the Horton ad as a classic example of Brown’s tactics. But it’s also important to remember that he’s been a major player in nearly every right-wing smear of leading Democratic figures in the ensuing years, including the Clinton impeachment fiasco and the Swift Boating of John Kerry.


Joe Conason wrote about Brown and his cohort, David Bossie, back in 2004, when he was involved in swift-boating John Kerry:

At Citizens United, the boisterous Brown and his sidekick Bossie are raising money to air their latest video creation, which blasts Kerry for his expensive haircuts and his wife’s wealth, tagging him as a "rich elitist liberal from Massachusetts who says he’s a man of the people."

… If the names of Brown and Bossie sound more familiar, they attained notoriety together during the Clinton era as indefatigable promoters of the bogus "Whitewater" scandal. They served as publicity agents for David Hale, the crooked and discredited former Little Rock municipal judge whose allegations against the Clintons forced the appointment of an independent counsel. Among mainstream journalists panting for a career-making Watergate-style scandal, Brown and Bossie found many a gullible mark. For nearly a decade they churned out junk night and day. For a while, Bossie went on the payroll of the Senate Whitewater Committee; later he worked for Rep. Dan Burton’s House Committee on Government Operations investigating Clinton and Al Gore — until he was caught distributing doctored tapes to the media.

Their scorched-earth campaign tactics were epitomized by Brown and Bossie’s 1992 paperback broadside "Slick Willie: Why America Can’t Trust Bill Clinton." Among the ugliest features of this little pamphlet was a chapter of unsupported and anonymous insinuations about Clinton’s role in a female student’s suicide. Their "investigation" was later called "an unusually brazen dirty tricks operation" in a report on "CBS Evening News." (In light of recent discussion of the president’s National Guard service, the authors may nowregret at least one of "Slick Willie’s" chapter titles — "Brave Men Died in Vietnam: Where Was Bill Clinton?")

The Horton ad appeared not as part of the Bush-Quayle campaign, whose strategists shied away from such obvious racism, but under the auspices of a shadowy organization called "Americans for Bush." According to testimony filed with the Federal Election Commission, which investigated the financing and planning of the Horton ad in 1990, the ad’s actual creators included Brown and Shirley. Others involved included Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, and a young producer named Jesse Raiford who was simultaneously working on TV commercials for Roger Ailes, then his boss at the official Bush-Quayle campaign. (FEC commissioners and investigators strongly suspected unlawful collusion between Bush-Quayle and Americans for Bush, but Republican members of the commission quickly killed the probe.)

The rather primitive commercial featured the scary mug shot of Horton — a sullen, scruffy-looking, African-American murderer who got weekend passes from prison while Dukakis was governor. Its provocative appeal to white fear was so blatant that even the Bush campaign was embarrassed, but Brown gleefully described it as the "silver bullet" that ruined the Democratic nominee.

Brown hasn’t entirely lost his taste for stoking racial animosities. He currently works for the Young America’s Foundation, where he oversees the indoctrination of youthful conservatives at the former Reagan Ranch. The YAF recently honored Rhode Island student Jason Mattera as the "top conservative student activist in the country," apparently because he sponsored a "whites only" scholarship at his school in protest of affirmative action.

I also wrote about Brown that year, discussing his long connections to far-right extremists in the "Patriot"/militia movement, citing a Chip Berlet piece on Brown’s career:

Brown remains proud of the 1988 Willie Horton ad, widely denounced as racist pandering. In 1992, he attempted to place ads for a $4.99 paid phone call that would play tapes of Gennifer Flowers in a telephone conversation with then-governor Clinton. The hook was a promise that the conversation probed sexual matters. The incident was so tasteless that the Bush/Quayle campaign was again forced to condemn Brown and his tactics. Brown also arranged a screening for a reporter of Militia leader Linda Thompson’s video, "Waco: The Big Lie," a potage of conspiracy theories linking Clinton to premeditated murder.

Two of Brown’s senior staff are veterans of the ultra-conservative subculture with its conspiracist worldview of communism as a vast left wing conspiracy-a worldview that originated in the Old Right. Cliff Kincaid is director of Citizens United Foundation’s American Sovereignty Action Project. He the author of two conspiracist books on the United Nations, Global Bondage: The U.N. Plan to Rule the World and Global Taxes for World Government, both published by Huntington House. Kincaid’s claims about the U.N. are promoted within the patriot movement. Kincaid also works for Accuracy in Media, and writes columns for Human Events and the American Legion Magazine, with a circulation of 3 million. In a 1991 article for Human Events, Kincaid red-baited groups protesting the Gulf War and quoted right-wing undercover operative Sheila Louise Rees, claiming antiwar demonstrations were concocted "by the traditional hard-line peace activist organizations that have always worked with the Communist Party U.S.A." Human Events is now published by Eagle/Phillips Publishing. Regnery Publishing is primarily owned by Phillips Publishing and the Regnery family.

It’s important to understand the role that people like Brown play. Not only does he enable the right to feed red meat to their more extremist elements while giving them a certain "plausible deniablity" (thus the official distancing, which Brown explicitly welcomes), he plays an even greater part in transmitting ideas from the extremist right into the mainstream, thanks largely to a complaisant media willing to lend him the mantle of credibility he doesn’t deserve. For instance, I’ve discussed how the Wall Street Journal lapped up Brown’s bill of goods on Clinton in the 1990s:

Likewise, the WSJ indulged all kinds of extremist propaganda in its pursuit of Clinton. One of its chief sources was Floyd Brown, a longtime enemy of Bill from Arkansas days. Brown was responsible for the circulation of much of the early Whitewater dirt on Bill Clinton, mostly through Citizens United’s top investigator, David Bossie (who later gained notoriety as the erstwhile chief investigator for Rep. Dan Burton’s campaign-finance probe). Brown’s credibility was already of questionable value; by 1998, this had become unmistakable. For instance, at Brown’s Citizens United Web site — in addition, naturally, to a bevy of Monica-related impeachment screeds — you could find screaming exposes of the Clintons’ alleged involvement in the United Nations one-world-government plot. A streaming banner on the site shouted: "Secret United Nations Agenda Exposed In Explosive New Video!" (The video in question prominently featured an appearance by then-Sen. John Ashcroft.) A little further down, the site explains: "This timely new video reveals how the liberal regime of Bill Clinton is actively conspiring to aid and abet the United Nations in its drive for global supremacy." For those who follow the militia movement, these tales have more than a familiar ring.

Yet in 1994, members of the WSJ’s editorial board sat down with Brown and examined his anti-Clinton information — which in nature was not appreciably different from what he was flogging four years later — and shortly thereafter, nearly half of the Journal’s editorial page was devoted one day to reprinting materials obtained from Brown. Moreover, the WSJ continued to recycle the allegations from that material for much of the following six years.

More recently, Brown played similar games in the 2004 election in Martin Frost’s congressional race against Pete Sessions: Came in with an "independent" group that ran racially incendiary attack ads against Frost. Sessions, of course, won.

Every time out, the media have played along with Brown. And it’s clear that won’t change anytime soon.

Tuesday Bloggage at Blog For Our Future

-- by Sara

It's that time again. This is rapidly turning "FLDS 'Till Your Eyes Bleed" theme week. I'm planning to spend another couple days working through my current pile 'o facts, and then (unless something really unique happens) I'm done with the subject for a while.

This week's Our Future piece riffs off of my "Crazy Dangerous" series of a couple months back. It's basically a threat assessment: Does the FLDS have what it takes to become truly dangerous? Several perspicacious commenters have already invoked those pieces and drawn some parallels, so I went ahead and did damn near 5,000 words on the subject today. (The short answer is: Yes. And No.)

I'm a long-form blogger, but that's excessive even for me. If you've got time this evening, go take a look. Be warned, though: this one's chewy, and it takes a while.

Another compassionate conservative

-- by Dave

I'd really like all those nativists and border watchers who claim that their activism is only about illegal immigration to explain this:

Disparaging remarks aimed at migrant workers got resident House rabble-rouser Douglas Bruce banned from speaking on a temporary-worker bill today.

"We don't need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in the state of Colorado," Bruce, R-Colorado Springs, told the chamber to an audible gasp.

Rep. Kathleen Curry, leading the House at the time, immediately barred Bruce from speaking at the podium, an uncommon maneuver.

"How dare you?" she asked Bruce, before House members moved back to discussion of a bill aimed at helping seasonal farm workers from other countries enter the state legally on a temporary basis.

The pilot program, which sets up liaisons in Mexico to assist foreign workers, would allow up to 5,000 laborers into Colorado
over five years.

The next day, Bruce was unrepentant, even going so far as to explain that he brought it up because he wanted to raise the issue of, yep, illegal immigration:

Bruce stood by his statement afterward, saying his colleagues are "offended by the truth" and contending the term was technically accurate. He said
he'd been planning the bill-related speech — at least two pages, single-spaced — for about a week.

"I was trying to make illegal immigration an issue for the House," Bruce said. "They just don't want anybody to disagree with a bill that they like."

The legislation in question, of course, was all about bringing in legal immigrants. Not that the nativists actually make that distinction.

[HT to Sam Smith at Scholars and Rogues.]

What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS

FLDS founding patriarch Rulon Jeffs with his last two wives
-- sisters Edna and Mary Fischer -- on their wedding day.
He received the pair as a 90th birthday present.

-- by Sara

So far, the wall-to-wall news coverage of the state of Texas's raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints compound in Eldorado, TX has been focused on just a couple of narratives. The first, of course, is the state's dogged and thorough -- and long overdue -- attempt to prove that the church's young women have been systemically sexually abused by the men of the group; and that this abuse is not just rare, but rather an inherent and accepted feature of the group's social order.

The other is the cultural curiosity of the sect's women in general. We see them, looking like they just walked out of the 1890s in their bizarre high hairdos, pastel prairie dresses, and sturdy shoes, and wonder how such a group of fossils (let alone tens of thousands of them) could still exist in modern America. It makes for great TV; but I often look at these women (most of whom have never watched TV in their lives), and feel like they're lambs being dragged out in front of media wolves they've never learned to recognize or fear. In a world when all of us seem to be in permanent rehearsal for our own 15 minutes of fame, these women are so unprepared for all this that they're downright fascinating.

These are the two current storylines the media is focused on -- at least, so far. In time, though, if the reporters and investigators stick around, they might find other things to talk about. A careful reading of Daphne Bramham's excellent The Secret Lives of Saints reveals that there are plenty of other questions we should be asking about the FLDS -- and months worth of stories we're not hearing about right now, but which need to be discussed and generally understood if the country is going to deal with the group appropriately and effectively.

And the country will be dealing with it -- probably for quite some time to come. Throughout its 60-year history, the FLDS has dealt with prosecution (or persecution) by seeding itself into new states, laying down roots for new communities that it can migrate to. (Eldorado itself started out as one of these.) New compounds are coming together now in Idaho and South Dakota; and there are rumors of others being staked out in Colorado and Nevada as well. Hildale/Colorado City may have been effectively taken over by the state of Utah, and Eldorado is in crisis; but with somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 adherents, this is a group that's not going to pass from the American scene any time soon.

One of the things we need to understand is just how the FLDS managed to stay so far under the radar for so long -- and what twisted consequences were allowed to follow from that lack of oversight. Bramham shows that they did a stunningly effective job of building their own self-sufficient infrastructure of community institutions -- hospitals, police forces, courts, financial trusts, schools, and employers -- that allowed the church to function without interacting with the outside world any more than necessary. Most of the group's institutions were designed to mimic and supplant outside authority well enough to keep the group (and especially its treatment of women and children) hidden from the prying eyes of outsiders. And, for 60 years, those who were responsible for providing higher-level oversight for all these institutions have almost always been somehow induced to look the other way.

In the existing FLDS communities in Utah and Arizona, state authorities have already begun investigations on many of these fronts -- not least because they are the stuff on which further legal battles, and the future of the sect, may turn. However, keeping the FLDS at bay in the years ahead will require county, state, and professional authorities everywhere in North America to stop averting their eyes, stay on their toes, and show a strong willingness to challenge these attempts to build this kind of sheltering infrastructure.

And there are other, less obvious reasons we need to be keeping an eye on them, too. Here's the first half of my motley list -- a few assorted areas of interest I'd be poking at more deeply, along with questions I'd be asking, were I a New York Times front-pager, a TV talking head, or a public official in any county or state where the FLDS has set up camp. The list is long, so I'll discuss a few today, and then follow up with the rest by Wednesday.

For-Prophet Health Care
FLDS communities put a priority on providing as much health care inside the community as possible, so they're not dependent on outside medical professionals. (To this end, pregnant mothers have often been sent to Hildale or Bountiful in their last months, so they can be attended by the FLDS midwives there.) Hildale/Colorado City has its own hospital -- built partly with public funds -- that has employed only doctors and nurses who have pledged their first loyalty to the Prophet.

As a result, the group's women and children get much of their primary care from people who feel no accountability to established medical standards of practice, state record-keeping requirements, or any of the existing mandated reporter laws. (Most people in these communities have no idea these laws even exist.) The spotty record-keeping that results is why the state of Texas has made the wise decision to do DNA testing on all the kids: it cannot be taken for granted that their birth certificates are accurate (or, in some places, exist at all).

The FLDs has also co-opted mental health services into another form of wife abuse. In Hildale/Colorado City, FLDS doctors have proven quite willing to declare unhappy women crazy. Daphne Bramham found that up to a third of FLDS women are on anti-depressants; and that women who are express acute dissatisfaction with the life have often been committed to mental hospitals in Arizona by the community's doctors. According to Bramham, the fear of being labeled insane and shut away in an institution is one of the most potent threats the community has used to keep women in their place.

Of course, this misuse of mental health care has turned into one non-obvious but critically important cultural land mine for the Texas authorities who are trying to figure out how to deal with their FLDS wards. Along with everything else, they're trying to work with women who've learned to see mental health evaluations as tantamount to an incarceration threat -- are thus predisposed to regard gentile doctors or social workers as a mortal enemy. It's not making things easier.

Based on this long history, counties and states that find themselves hosting FLDS compounds need to be keeping a close eye on how these communities manage health care. Who provides it? Are they keeping good records? Are they following the law? Do they adhere to accepted standards of care? Are they holding the line as our first line of defense against child abuse -- or are they helping the community hide its abusive secrets? If the state officials in charge of supervising hospitals and doctors had stepped up and asked these questions decades ago, thousands of women and children might have been spared generations of abuse.

Cops and Courts: No Law But God's Law
Much of the power of the prophets has been drawn from the fact that they historically controlled both the cops and the courts that served the Hildale/Colorado City area. Though these were officially chartered law enforcement agencies and nominally public courts, they weren't concerned with civil law. Instead, their task was to enforce the law according to the FLDS and its Prophet. The people in these communities had no effective recourse to the laws the rest of us live under. They could be arrested, fined, jailed, and have their property seized by nominally "official" cops and courts, acting under full authority of civil government, for violating church laws.

Like African-Americans in the slavery era, women who tried to run were captured by these police and returned to their husbands for punishment -- or taken to the hospital for the dreaded mental health evaluation. The police force's main job is to be the muscle that enforces the Prophet's control of the entire community. When the Prophet decides that a man no longer deserves his home, these are the cops who enforce the eviction. Appealing to the FLDS judges has been useless: due process as we understand it doesn't even enter into the conversation.

There is progress on this front. The state of Utah began to move against the Hildale police force in 2005, revoking the certification of its polygamous chief. Sam Roundy admitted that he'd investigated over 25 sexual abuse cases in the past decade -- including one that involved the rape of an eight-year-old -- and never reported it to child protection authorities. (He pleaded ignorance of all mandated reporter laws.) However, Roundy was replaced with another polygamous officer who immediately sent Warren Jeffs a letter pledging his loyalty, and I found no word that he's left office since. Later that year, the Utah Supreme Court also disbarred the local polygamous judge, which paved the way for reform of the local courts.

But the Saints are now in many places besides Utah; and officials in these other states shouldn't be surprised if they try to hijack cops and courts and replicate this system wherever they go. In Utah, decades of failure to attend to this effectively deprived tens of thousands of people of their civil rights. It can't be allowed to happen again.

Death Among the FLDS
These communities also bury their own dead (and at least one has its own crematorium), which opens the way to record-keeping anomalies with death certificates -- and ensures that no questions will ever be asked, and no autopsies will ever be performed. Given the genetic instability and volatile control issues within this group, it may not be wise for them to have the means to dispose of dead bodies without official oversight. We need to be asking questions about who's in their cemeteries and crematoria, how they got there, and what kinds of records are being kept.

The Fatal Flaw: Inbreeding Takes Its Toll
One of the most striking things about the FLDS is that certain surnames -- Jeffs, Blackmore, Fischer, Jessop, Barlow, Steed -- occur over and over again. In a community of over 40,000 people -- many of whom share fathers, grandfathers, or uncles -- the degree of blood relationship between any two people is likely to be very close indeed. In fact, over half the people in Hildale/Colorado City are blood relatives. So it's not surprising that, starting in 1980, the tragic results of three generations of tight inbreeding began to appear.

That was the year the first Colorado City child was diagnosed with fumarase deficiency -- a genetic disease so rare that only a handful of cases had ever been diagnosed worldwide. The disease causes severe mental retardation, seizures, hydroencephaly, growth failure, and physical deformities. Two of the FLDS's old-line families, the Barlows and the Jessops, both carry the recessive gene -- which is now present in several thousand FLDS members who trace their descent to those two founding fathers. By the 1990, Bramham writes, the twin FLDS cities had the highest concentration of children with fumarase deficiency in the world.

There are also signs of widespread hereditary eye problems among the current crop of children, along with evidence that that the community has a higher-than-average infant mortality rate. Arizona coroners recently -- and finally -- got involved in investigating these. But there's plenty more here for public health officials to look at; and it's becoming clear that the custom of close intermarriage needs to end on genetic grounds alone.

In the next post, I'll cover a few more reasons that the FLDS should never again be allowed to operate without close oversight from the outside world.

What to Give the Racist Who Has Everything

-- by Sara

The spirit of the Confederacy is alive and well -- and now available for just $99 (in three easy payments!) from The Bradford Exchange:


Also, apparently, doubles as a dog whistle:

Civil War Men's Sterling Silver Ring Shows Your Southern Pride! Exclusive Civil War Gift for History Enthusiasts!

Hold history in your hands with a dramatic jewelry exclusive that pays tribute to an unforgettable time in American history. Introducing the Civil War men's sterling silver ring, available only from The Bradford Exchange. Detailed with striking Civil War era symbols, this fine jewelry design is a handsome presentation that represents Southern pride and memorializes those who fought for the South during this turning point in our country.

Proudly wear this Civil War memorabilia, individually crafted of solid sterling silver for a gleaming finish. At the center, this Civil War men's sterling silver ring bears the Confederate flag and shield in rich red and blue enameling and trimmed in silver to boldly stand out against an inlay of genuine black onyx. C.S.A. (Confederate States of America) and the years of the Confederacy (1861-1865) are emblazoned on the banner below. As a special finishing touch, the inside of the band is engraved with "Pride of the South." What a stunning keepsake for you to treasure every day or give as a unique Civil War gift. Hurry, strong demand is expected. Order now!

However: I'm puzzled that it's missing that all-important secret compartment for your Viagra pill, which strikes me as a very serious oversight considering the audience.

Remember: Just eight shopping weeks till Father's Day!

h/t Andrew Kar, who found this little gem in Parade magazine.

The Minuteman Scam

Chris Simcox (the cleaned-up version)

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

One of the few pleasures to be derived from watching the antics of the American right is that more often than not, the whole scene devolves into something like a Punch-and-Judy show on acid (bad acid, admittedly), which if nothing else has its moments of amusement. If they’re not turning up dead from self-asphyxiation dressed in wet suits, they’re busy ripping people off — most particularly each other. At which point much more head-clubbing ensues.

Take, for instance, that erstwhile Neighborhood Watch on Androgenic Steroids, the Minutemen. It seems that even though the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, whose finances have come under close scrutiny, reported income to the IRS that finally jibed with what they reportedly spent, there’s something not quite right about their accounting:

But Stacey O’Connell, former MCDC Arizona state chapter director who is now a member of the Patriot’s Border Alliance, a separate Minuteman-style organization, said the money listed in the new 990 filing does not match claims by Mr. Simcox on how much MCDC has actually collected.

Mr. O’Connell said that in past interviews, Mr. Simcox said the organization had collected $600,000 in donations in its first year, along with $1.6 million for a border fence MCDC is building. He said he also is aware of a single $100,000 donation given by an Arizona man. He later filed a fraud lawsuit against MCDC that has since been withdrawn because of a lack of funds to pursue it.

"After reviewing the Minuteman Foundation 990 from 2006, it appears well below the donation amounts Simcox has claimed in the past," Mr. O’Connell said. "Many of us, perhaps thousands of volunteers and supporters, have donated not only to MCDC but to the fence project as well.

"Many of us also feel that the lack of cooperation in showing where the money goes, how it is spent; that there is something very wrong within the organization," he said.
MCDC, on its Web page, said donations have been "used wisely and effectively, and have focused the nation on illegal immigration," saying it "cannot … accept responsibility for conspiratorial, disruptive and inappropriate speculations about MCDC organizational process and finances, nor will we waste precious time or resources upon those who refuse to accept the IRS nonprofit organization financial accountability standards."

The reality of the Minutemen — that they really are just another right-wing moneymaking scam, one that mostly takes money out of the pockets of ordinary citizens — became clear shortly after they split into two organizations in late 2005 — mainly because the two paranoiac egos that had founded the organization, Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, wound up scarcely able to be in the same room together.

Simcox went off and formed the MCDC, part of an elaborate PR makeover for Simcox. It was built essentially around drafting as many recruits from non-border states into their border-militia concept — which they could fulfill just by donating. Then Simcox has turned around and hawked the resulting mailing lists to right-wing political-mailing outfits. At the same time, he’s embarked on other scams as well, most notably the supposed construction of the border fence that never got built.

Meanwhile, Jim Gilchrist has not fared any better. His Minuteman Project organization has similarly devolved into a predictable right-wing mudpit, with lawsuits and paranoiac accusations flying hither and yon.

It would be a lot more amusing if they could find a way from making demonizing Latinos and other immigrants the reason for their existence.

It's about American values, Mandrake

-- by Dave

JJust as Californians are considering finally repealing the McCarthy-era "anti-communist" laws that threatened the firing of any teacher suspected of promoting communism, it seems that the Arizona Legislature is considering passing their 21st-century counterpart:

Arizona schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization" could lose state funding under the terms of legislation approved Wednesday by a House panel. SB1108 also would bar teaching practices that "overtly encourage dissent" from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Schools would have to surrender teaching materials to the state superintendent of public instruction, who could withhold state aid from districts that broke the law.

Of course, such subversiveness is an overwhelming problem in today's schools -- far more pressing than dropout rates and declining academic standards. Now if only we could figure out who's doing the subverting ... unless ... that's it! It's that insidious Reconquista! plot!

Sure enough, that's what this bill is in fact all about -- killing Latino studies and MEChA clubs:

Another section of the bill would bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if it is "based in whole or in part on race-based criteria," a provision Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said is aimed at MEChA, the Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a student group. The 9-6 vote by the Appropriations Committee sends the measure to the full House.

MEChA is the nativist right's favorite flogging boy, even though there is no evidence at all that it's actually subversive or racist or whatever it is they seem to think it is. Unless you consider holding school bake sales subversive. Most likely it's the Cinco de Mayo parties.

When Sock Puppets Rule Our Media

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Everyone is already buzzing with early word of tomorrow’s New York Times report about the Pentagon sock puppets who have been posing as "military experts" on the nation’s national news and political-talk broadcasts:

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

It’s a thorough and devastating portrait, and every word deserves reading, largely because it lays bare the machinations that went into selling the war to the public. Yet in some ways, none of this is particularly new for anyone with eyes and ears beforehand. Did anyone watch these guys perform on TV and not intuit immediately that they were in the tank for Rumsfeld and Co.?


A crystalline example of this came during what was known as "the Generals’ Revolt":

The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals — none of them network military analysts — went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.

On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the “Generals’ Revolt” dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show. When an aide urged a short delay to “give our big guys on the West Coast a little more time to buy a ticket and get here,” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office insisted that “the boss” wanted the meeting fast “for impact on the current story.”

That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.

“Starting to write it now,” General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. “Any input for the article,” he added a little later, “will be much appreciated.” Mr. Rumsfeld’s office quickly forwarded talking points and statistics to rebut the notion of a spreading revolt.

“Vallely is going to use the numbers,” a Pentagon official reported that afternoon.

The standard secrecy notwithstanding, plans for this session leaked, producing a front-page story in The Times that Sunday. In damage-control mode, Pentagon officials scrambled to present the meeting as routine and directed that communications with analysts be kept “very formal,” records show. “This is very, very sensitive now,” a Pentagon official warned subordinates.

On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.

“I’m an old intel guy,” said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) “And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, ‘Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.’ ”
“What are you, some kind of a nut?” Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. “You don’t believe in the Constitution?”

There was little discussion about the actual criticism pouring forth from Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals. Analysts argued that opposition to the war was rooted in perceptions fed by the news media, not reality. The administration’s overall war strategy, they counseled, was “brilliant” and “very successful.”

Of course, fairly early on in this conflict, there were in fact questions raised about whether the Pentagon was engaging in Psyops tactics, with the American public as the target; some of us even pondered the effects this program might have on democratic discourse.

But then, those concerns were either largely ignored or dismissed as paranoid alarmism. Now it’s clear that there were reasons for that. After all, the media were too busy giving airtime to "serious" folks.

Rick Perlstein has more.

The Secret Lives of Saints

-- by Sara

For most watchers of the religious right, the definitive book on fundamentalist Mormonism has been Jon Krakauer's 2003 bestseller, Under the Banner of Heaven. That book centered on the murder of a woman, along with her child, who dared to defy her husband's involvement with that polygamous sect. It also introduced America to Warren Jeffs, long before he became a fugitive and eventually a convicted felon; and put Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT on America's cultural map.

A lot has gone down in the FLDS world in five years since the book came out -- and much of it has occurred in locations far afield from those dusty twin cities straddling a southwestern state line. The FLDS has dealt with the increased scrutiny by diffusing its 40,000 or so members (some counts put the number as high as 100,000) across North America. The sect has always been strategic in using state and national borders to shield both its money and any "persons of interest" in their midst, which is why they built compounds in British Columbia and Mexico as far back as the late 1940s.

But that strategy has gone into overdrive in the past decade, as governments have grown increasingly interested and the group's population has continued to explode (as tends to happen wherever women average seven to ten kids apiece). The compound at Eldorado is only one of these expansion efforts: others are afoot in Idaho, South Dakota, and suburban Las Vegas. Beware of Mormons claiming to build "hunting lodges for wealthy businessmen." That seems to be the usual cover story whenever they go land shopping.

One of the most perceptive and tenacious reporters covering these developments as been Daphne Bramham of the Vancouver Sun. (A collection of her reporting on the FLDS over the past several years can be found online here.) Bramham's focus has been on the remote 2500-member Bountiful compound just outside Creston, BC, which was founded in 1947 by Roy Blackmore and a group from one of Canada's largest historical Mormon settlements in Cardston, AB. Roy's son Winston Blackmore inherited the role of patriarch for the community until Warren Jeffs cheated him out of control in 2002.

Bramham's take on the story has been different -- and in some ways, both broader and deeper -- than Krakauer's. For one thing, she's spent a lot more time with the women of the community, and has become good friends with several of the better-known escapees like Debbie Palmer and Carole Jessup. That friendship gives her an insider's sensitivity to the emotional and social dynamics of these families -- the interior lives of the women as they deal with their husbands, their children, each other, and the outside world.

For another, while Krakauer's book focused tightly on Colorado City/Hildale, Bramham's northern perch gives her a much broader view of the far-flung geography of the FLDS nation -- and a much keener sense of the way the sect has used that geography to escape government interference to date.

Over the past four years, I've been fortunate to be able to follow the vagaries of the international FLDS through Bramham's articles in my local paper. And now I'm delighted to be able to recommend her new book, The Secret Lives of Saints, released in Canada just a few weeks ago -- barely ahead of the Texas raid. (Amazon will be filling US pre-orders starting in May.)

The book provides the best available backstory and context for anyone trying to make sense out of what's happening now in Eldorado. It also fills in the details of the past five years, picking up where Under the Banner of Heaven left off and bringing us up to date. Most importantly, it explains precisely why this group has been left to go on as it has for as long as it has -- even when local and state-level authorities were well aware that laws were being violated.

Ghosts in the Machine
The problem, as Bramham portrays it, comes down to one issue. Nobody -- not in Utah, nor Arizona, nor British Columbia -- has yet dared to challenge the FLDS on the basic legality of polygamy itself. Where prosecutions have succeeded, they've been on other charges: Brenda Lafferty's murder, Warren Jeffs' role in facilitating statutory rape, and the more general economic exploitation of the church's members. These efforts have done much to undermine the church's functioning (especially the latter one, which I'll get to in an upcoming post). But they've all been criminal and financial assaults that dance around the deepest question at the heart of this church's existence: Is polygamy acceptable in modern North American culture?

That's a debate that can be had all kinds of ways -- and will be had in the months ahead. (Bramham, personally, thinks the answer is a firm "no"). So it's striking to realize just how far out of their way prosecutors from BC to AZ have gone through the decades to avoid putting polygamy itself on trial. And the reasons for this have to do with the ghosts that seem to haunt the political machines everywhere the FLDS has sunk roots.

In BC, they've shied away because Canada's religious freedom laws have only been in place since 1982. They're still new enough that the country hasn't really had enough time to establish the conditions under which they shouldn't apply -- and prosecutors are terrified that if they bring a challenge, Canada's supreme court will rule all existing anti-polygamy laws unconsitutional. It's a Catch-22: there are laws on the books that nobody dares to enforce, because they're afraid that if they do, the courts will void those laws entirely. Which means, of course, that they might as well not exist at all.

Bramham points out, however, that the BC attorneys may be misreading the mood of the justices in Ottawa. Immigration Canada routinely rejects Muslim immigrants with plural wives. Ontario courts have also recently decided that allowing Muslims to deal with divorce using Sharia law is a violation of Muslim women's civil rights, thus establishing the principle that religious freedom does not apply when the religion in question is depriving people of their basic liberties. These two precedents suggest that Canada's Supreme Court might well rule that polygamy doesn't merit religious freedom protection -- and BC now has a new AG who seems a bit more inclined to push the issue.

Similar ghosts haunt both Utah and Arizona. In Arizona, the state government still cringes at the memory of the 1953 Short Creek raid -- an earlier attempt to disband the FLDS community that backfired badly on every politician involved. (The memory of Short Creek is everywhere in this story, and I'll come back to it later, too.) In Utah, prosecution is hobbled by the fact that many of the state officials involved are themselves descendants of polygamous Mormon pioneers. They want very much to get rid of the FLDS, which they regard as a PR blight on their faith, But at the same time, it feels much too much like they're prosecuting Grandpa and Grandma. The ghosts of their own ancestors stay their hand.

What's remarkable about Eldorado is that the Texas authorities have had no such qualms. For the first time in the 60-year history of the FLDS, a state government appears to be carefully building a case that polygamy (at least, as practiced within this community) is so harmful to the women and children involved that it does not deserve First Amendment religious freedom protections. It's hard to overstate how audacious and unprecendented this is: it's the very first time anywhere in the 60 years of the FLDS that anyone has dared to say this right out loud. But it's an effort whose time has clearly come -- and it's probably no coincidence that Texas was the state to finally take it on.

Don't Mess With Texas
In choosing Eldorado, Jeffs may have, at long last, picked the wrong place to hide. Texas doesn't harbor the ghosts of Mormon pioneers or FLDS martyrs. Any liberal Texan will tell you that the Lone Star State is not cursed, as BC is, with an overbroad sense of religious freedom. What does lurk in its memetic closet is the memory of Waco -- another closed, secretive, sexually abusive cult that was left to fester unattended too long, with horrific consequences. Many of the people who are dealing with the FLDS had enough of an up-close-and-personal view of the 1993 disaster with the Branch Davidians to know what they're dealing with here.

There's no shortage of people in the media trying to make this a debate about religious freedom, which is fair enough. But the question they're not asking -- and the one that is central to that debate, in my mind -- is how we can reasonably and justly incorporate America's historical ideas about religious freedom with what we know now about how to identify and chart the prognosis of dangerous cults. As I've written before, governments in both Canada and the US are well aware of the signs that indicate a community headed toward violence. The FLDS exhibits almost all of those signs. As a society, it's time to figure out where the line gets crossed, and when government intervention becomes justified.

In an upcoming post, I'll discuss the specific ways the FLDS is following that well-understood path -- and how current events could conspire to either pull them back from that fate, or push them farther toward it. In the meantime, go over and put in your pre-order for Daphne Bramham's The Secret Lives of Saints. It's essential for anyone seeking a broader context and a deeper understanding of the events of the past two weeks.

A Modest Proposal for the NBA

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

When the NBA Board of Governors meets tomorrow to vote — as we know they will — to move the Sonics out of Seattle and on to Oklahoma City, I’d like to suggest they take another vote alongside it: Drop the names of the cities where your teams currently reside from the teams’ names. Adopt the system used by the Japanese: Just name them after the corporations that own them.

That way you could have teams like the Target Timberwolves and the Vulcan TrailBlazers and the Cablevision Knicks and, now, the Chesapeake Rustlers.

At least then it would be more honest. Fans then would know they are in fact rooting for the company that owns the team, not for their communities.

As it is, the NBA looks more and more like a bunch of slick-talking grifters who come to the little burgs and offer to sell them a fine bronze statue of the town’s founder but instead sell them a cheap thing made out of pot metal with the face melted off.

And that way, when owners want to pack up and leave, they can just go ahead and do so, no hard feelings. That’s what this vote is all about, after all: David Stern wants the owners to be able to move at will, especially if the local community isn’t all hot and bothered to ante up hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade their facilities only so that they can keep up with insane NBA salaries. And so the owners, being owners, of course will gladly approve this move.

The communities? Screw them. What have they done for us lately?

Now I’ll admit that I was one of those poor saps who fell for the NBA’s little grift for many years. Back when I was a kid growing up in the rural Northwest and you had to choose between California teams and the rest of the country for teams to root for — regardless of sport — the arrival of the Sonics in 1967 was a real godsend. Even in remote Idaho, they were the hometown team. I followed them in boxscores each day and was ecstatic when Bill Russell finally coached them into the playoffs in ’74-75; delirious when they nearly won the title in ’78, and out of my mind when they won it outright in ’79.

Since then, I’ve rooted for them every year, through thick and thin — mostly a lot of thin. After I moved to Seattle in ’89, I attended as many games as I could and covered a number of them for the newspapers where I worked. I was a season ticket holder from 1995 through 2006 and attended more games than I can count.

I’m a basketball nut – tried hard to play it when I was young, and gym ratted a lot in my 20s, but I was never any good, and a knee injury in my early 30s ended my playing career, such as it was. But I love watching the game. In my mind, basketball players are the world’s finest athletes; and I loved watching the NBA because it was home to the world’s finest basketball players.

But most of all, I loved to root for the Sonics because they represented my community, and I mean the larger community of the Northwest. They were my hometown team and rooting for them was all about standing up and taking pride in the place you lived. Sports are kind of silly entertainments, but they’re also more; much of the larger cultural value of sports, especially as a kind of secular religion that everyone could coalesce around, lay in the way they were real repositories of the hopes and aspirations of their community.

Now over the years, especially as the season tickets mounted, there was a lot not to like. The gross commercialization at NBA games is just overwhelming, and you have to learn to shut out the constant bombardment if you’re there to enjoy the game.

And the officiating: a travesty. It became increasingly clear over the years that NBA officials were corrupt, but not in the usual way; they called games badly at times that were convenient most of all for the NBA, when it wanted certain marketable matchups in the playoffs. They were also corrupt in that they clearly made calls based on grudges they held, and their egos became the most dominating force on the court. The "superstar call" is a staple of modern NBA games. So when confirmation of the usual kind of corruption as well arrived in the person of Tim Donaghy — well, no one was exactly surprised.

But the officials were just symptomatic of the larger problem of the NBA game generally: team play — which is really where the beauty of the game emerges — has for years been sublimated to talent. Michael Jordan in effect ruined the NBA, so that now all that fans root for is that somehow their team can draft or somehow nab the league’s next great talent. Defense is an afterthought in the NBA, and the pick-and-roll is about as team-oriented as you get on offense. The college game — though its players are inferior — is far superior from the standpoint of the game itself.

Meanwhile, the salaries for that talent have gone through the roof, so that perfectly good basketball stadiums like Seattle’s Key Arena no longer can be profitable in today’s NBA, because revenue demands are so high that all NBA facilities require high-revenue-stream offerings.

This has all occurred on the watch of David Stern, whose every move has been about promoting the league’s superstar mentality and sublimating not just the teams but the communities themselves. NBA teams are no longer community assets — they’re marketing platforms for athletic superstars.

Now, there have been a number of team moves previously, but the history of those moves — from the Lakers’ departure from Minneapolis to the Grizzlies from Vancouver — has always involved teams that had only been in their communities for a relatively short length of time, had always had trouble drawing fans; the majority have taken place in the era of mass expansion.

The Sonics, in contrast, have been in Seattle for over 40 years. They’ve never had trouble drawing fans, even in down years. The only problem we’ve had has been with idiot owners making boneheads moves, like the time they fired George Karl because he chafed some front-office types. Or selling the team to con artists from Oklahoma.

But that matters not to the poobahs of the NBA. What matters is making the wealthy team owners wealthier and wealthier, along with their players. All that money has to come from somewhere, and if some of the suckers get tired of being played, well, there are always new ones to be found.

So of course Stern not only has no compunction about moving the Sonics to Oklahoma, he’s been content to bash Seattle and warn us that we’ll never get another team here for years and years.




Nevermind, of course, that the new Sonics’ owners not only lied outrageously to the community when they bought the team. Well, it’s true that Clay Bennett put on an elaborate show to convince folks he had done his best to convince the politicians to finance a new stadium. Thing was, he wanted to move the stadium far south to Renton — where hardly anyone in Seattle would travel to see a Sonics game — near the worst traffic intersection in the state. And the bill was a mere $500 million, out of which Bennett and Friends were only, haltingly, willing to commit $100 million. The taxpayers were to pay the rest. It’s no wonder it died in the legislature.

But all that time, in turns out, Bennett was assuring his co-owners that "the game" had only begun, and that they could count on having the Sonics in Oklahoma City eventually — sooner if not later. Bennett was also lying through his teeth to Stern, who he was assuring all along that he was working in good faith to try to keep the team in Seattle.

And it probably tells us everything we need to know about the NBA that it didn’t bother Stern one iota. What’s a little lying among fellow thieves, after all?

So really, fellas, when you vote today to swap your presence in the nation’s 14th-largest media market for one in the 49th — we know, you just can’t help but shoot yourselves in the foot when there’s money to be made from it — go right on ahead. Because even longtime NBA fans in Seattle have been given a front-row view of your scam, and we’d probably just as soon be shut of it.

Sure, I know that in a few years NBA execs will start hinting that something can be done about getting a team back here. It’s too big a media market for them not to be in. But that will probably mean ripping the heart out of some other community, and frankly, having been there, most of us want nothing to do with that. Overexpansion has already made the NBA a joke, so please don’t bother us with the idea of putting an expansion team here.

No, I figure if you move, you’ll be gone for good. And ya know what? Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.

Now, in the meantime, we will get our little revenge. When you lose your lawsuit to enable the Sonics to breach their contract with the City of Seattle two years early, as you almost certainly will, you’ll be stuck keeping the Sonics here through two more years. And as you may have already figured out, Seattleites are not so generally stupid as to give their money to people who intend to abscond with their team. The seats will be empty (Kevin Durant notwithstanding), and Clay Bennett and his pals will suffer.

I’m sure there’ll be offers to pay us off to escape those final two years. I say no way. Make them suffer. And not just out of spite, but because we really would have nothing to gain from taking their money.

After all, why would Seattle want to have anything to do with the NBA in the future? Why would we take yet another team in, just to have them turn around in seven years and begin demanding tax packages to underwrite their newest state-of-the-art money-sucking devices? Eh?

I’m sure the folks in Oklahoma City will get to see that side of the NBA soon enough. Indeed, they just voted to pass a tax to pay for an improvement of their local stadium. Good on’ em. Enjoy it while you can.

In the meantime, I suspect that there will be other cities who wake up to your grift, fellas. Because there’s a whole city up here willing to tell everyone all about it. There will be other threats, and other removals for the insufficiently obsequious.

So just spare us the histrionics and change the way you name your teams. Name them after the companies you fellow represent. Or maybe you can even name them after yourselves. After all, hey, the NBA is where the egos come to play. Just quit conning people into thinking that these teams represent their communities. Because we know now that that’s just a scam.

Why We Boo

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

It’s been building over the past couple of months, as we waded through endless cable talk shows about Obama’s "pastor problem" and his "bitter" remarks and Hillary’s Kosovo claims. Gradually, it’s become clear to just about everyone that the American media aren’t informing them or helping to sort through difficult issues in the course of this presidential campaign, and are instead focusing on the trivial, the silly, the truly insignificant, as though these kinds of effluvia constitute the reasons why we vote.

And we’ve had enough.

This trivialization of American political discourse reached a real nadir last night with ABC’s handling of the Democratic presidential debate. The gossipy, absurd nature of the questions in the first hour were so obvious that the audience reacted loudly — not to the candidates themselves, but to the questioners.

That booing you heard last night, ABC? It was for you.

Bad enough that the questions were trivial — even more notable was that it seemed as though they had been concocted by right-wing talk-show hosts, since they all were built out of right-wing talking points. And well, whaddya know?

Hannity asked George what kinds of questions they’ll be asking at the debate tomorrow and they discussed a few things. When Hannity asked about the first question below about Ayers and whether George had plans to ask such a question, George replied, "Well, I’m taking notes now Sean." It did actually sound like he was pausing to take notes.

There’s no small irony in Sean Hannity demanding to know about Obama’s supposed unsavory connections to people who once were radical terrorists. Sean Hannity, the onetime friend of Hal Turner.

Turner, you’ll recall, has made something of an ugly name for himself in recent years with his frequent calls for the assassination of various figures, including judges overseeing the cases of white supremacists and various members of Congress. Max Blumenthal has all the details. And of course, it’s always fun to watch Hannity lie and scramble for cover whenever Turner’s name gets brought up on his show.

But Hannity is only one of many serial prevaricators working the dark mines of TV broadcasting these days. Indeed, it’s become clear that they’re all just one big circle-jerk, handling tips from one another and passing them along like they were nectar from heaven itself.

The rest of us, however, have a decidedly different view of the proceedings. And until it improves, we’re going to keep booing.

Are FLDS women brainwashed?

The FLDS's first consecrated Mormon Temple at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, TX.
It was built by the order of Warren Jeffs, and consecrated by him
while he was a fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted List.

-- by Sara

I've spent the day wrangling with a post (which will probably turn into several posts) about the FLDS raid in Eldorado, TX. Oddly, last week's events occured while I had my nose buried in the best new book on the subject of the FLDS since Jon Krakauer's bestselling Under the Banner of Heaven came out in 2003, so I've got a lot of fresh and deep perspective on the matter -- too much, in fact, to be wrestled down into one coherent post.

Over dinner, I'd just about decided that the only way to deal with the overload was to chip away at the story in short blats over the next few days, which will attempt to put some new context to these events. And then I got an e-mail from Pastor Dan Schultz of Street Prophets, containing ample proof of just how badly that context is needed now that the media talking heads are all holding forth on this story.

Dan pointed me to the second most inane thing ABC News has produced today (the first, of course, being Charlie Gibson's and George Stephanopoulos' performance at the Pennsylvania debates) -- an odd little story by Emily Friedman asking "experts" whether or not FLDS wives are "brainwashed."

Between hysterical sobs, the women of the Yearning for Zion Ranch in rural Texas tearily pleaded Monday for the return of their children from state custody, but at the mere turn of a phrase, those tears mysteriously, uniformly stopped.

When conversations with reporters shifted away from the 416 children in state custody toward touchier subjects surrounding the mysterious religious sect, the overflowing emotions were quickly replaced with blank stares and terse replies.

Clad in conservative prairie dresses, hair back in buns and tight braids, the women stuck to monotone, emotionless responses in declining to answer reporters' questions concerning allegations of plural marriages and sexual assault within the sect.

Asked whether 14- and 15-year-old girls get married on the compound, a tight-lipped woman who would only give her first name, Marilyn, gave what appeared to be a rehearsed response.

"We are talking about our children now," she said, shaking her head, unwilling to stray from the subject of her children.

The shift to blank-faced denial was jarring in both its immediacy and consistency. Not a single one strayed from the script, an impressive display of solidarity, if a bit peculiar to the outsiders granted unprecedented access to the members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

To outsiders, everything about these people is strange — from the way they dress to the way they talk and especially the way they live. To the uninitiated, it may even appear that these women must be brainwashed to live within the confines of the isolated, controlled sect.

Questions about rumored child brides, teen pregnancies and men assigned multiple wives garnered stoic expressions and a relentless determination to defend the sect's lifestyle.

"Do you know the definition of Zion?" responded Marie, when asked by a reporter what life within the sect's gate is really like. "Heaven on Earth."

It's an extreme statement, and the women of the sect have begun to realize that their devotion to their lifestyle is unusual to those on the outside.

So, are these women just fanatically, independently religious, or are they victims of something more sinister, like mind control?....

Mental health professionals told ABCNEWS.com that it may all depend on how you define brainwashing.

The piece goes on to interview several mental health professionals, who (except for one outlier) ome to the consensus that no, probably, these women aren't brainwashed -- just weirdly socialized. Brainwashing, after all, would require real coercion:

"Just because they are different doesn't mean they've been brainwashed," said H. Newton Malony, a senior professor of psychology at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "Brainwashing occurs when a person is physically incarcerated in order to believe something."

As far as we know, said Malony, these women and children — and even men, for that matter — have not been held against their will, but rather, have grown up in the sect and have become socialized to its customs.

"Are these woman just parroting strong pleasure or is this a strong religious conviction?" asked Malony. "I doubt it; they grew up in this [environment].

"This is just an example of a different culture," added Malony....

Nancy Ammerman, professor of the sociology of religion at Boston University and author of "Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World," also discourages the labeling of the West Texas polygamists as victims of brainwashing.

"Brainwashing is actually extraordinarily rare," said Ammerman. "It implies that the person has literally lost the ability to think independently and to make choices.

"We really don't have any evidence that anything even vaguely resembling that is going on with this particular group or with most religious groups," Ammerman told ABCNEWS.com.

....Most of these experts sided with Maloney, who said, "It only becomes brainwashing when a person is physically held against their will."

The problem, as it so often is with the mainstream media, is that absolutely everybody involved with reporting or commenting on this story has been airlifted into it in the past few days. (You'd think somebody would have at least taken the time on the plane flight to skim Krakauer's book and get up to speed. You'd be wrong.) And this is just one example of the ways that ignorance of the backstory cheats the rest of us out of a real understanding of what's going on here.

Because, by the definition offered by these experts, the FLDS is very coercive indeed.

Almost every feature of these women's lives is determined by someone else. They do not choose what they wear, whom they live with, when and whom they marry, or when and with whom they have sex. From the day they're born, they can be reassigned at a moment's notice to another father or husband, another household, or another community. Most will have no educational choices (FLDS kids are taught in church-run schools, usually only through about tenth grade -- by which point they girls are usually married and pregnant). Everything they produce goes into a trust controlled by the patriarch: they do not even own their own labor. If they object to any of this, they're subject to losing access to the resources they need to raise their kids: they can be moved to a trailer with no heat, and given less food than more compliant wives, until they learn to "keep sweet."

At the very least, women who do decide to leave the sect leave without money, skills, or a friend in the world. Most of them have no choice but to leave large numbers of children behind -- children who are the property of the patriarch, and whom many of them will never see again. If a woman is even suspected of wanting to leave, she's likely to be sent away from her kids to another compound far yonder as punishment for her rebelliousness. For a woman who's been taught all her life that motherhood is her only destiny and has no real intimacy with her husband, being separated from her children this way is a sacrifice akin to death.

At the very worst, death is indeed what awaits them. The FLDS preaches "blood atonement" -- the right of the patriarchs to kill apostates who dare to defy them, usually by slitting their throats. And they've done it: Krakauer hung his entire book on the murder of Brenda Lafferty and her year-old daughter, who were both killed by her husband's brothers because Brenda rejected (and mocked) her husband's desire to take plural wives. (Warren Jeffs also liked to rouse people out of their beds in the middle of the night for dramatic mass meetings testing their readiness for the Final Judgment -- meetings that had dark shades of Jonestown.) Brenda is the only one known to have been killed, but others who've left report being threatened with the same fate.

So ABC's reporters blather on about how these women aren't really brainwashed, because that would require coercion and being held physically against their will. One hopes that if they understood that they're holding forth about a group that routinely controls women by threatening to take away their kids -- and tells them that God justifies the slaying of wayward brides and their babies -- they'd change their minds and admit that this isn't just another odd, quaint sect on the American religious scene. Without that information, though, everything else that's going on in Texas loses much of its context.

There's a whole lot more depth and nuance to this story, and I'll try to get at some of it over the next several days. But let's start with the premise that almost nothing you're hearing in the mainstream media about this group can or should be taken at face value. Stand by for more.

How to Kill an Army

-- by Sara

It's Tuesday, which means I've committed my weekly act of bloggage over at Blog for Our Future.

This week, I picked at John McCain's refusal to back Jim Webb on his attempt to update the GI Bill. McCain says he's against it because paying for our troops' college educations would create retention problems -- he thinks it's a bad idea to give people an incentive to leave the service and get on with their lives. (Of course, not offering college benefits presents other retention problems; ask any recruiter.)

I point out that this logic, extended and put up against some other current trends (like the declining quality of new recruits -- when you're issuing conduct waivers for felons, druggies, racists, and gang members, the bottom of the barrel is well in sight), takes us to some very ugly and dark places if it becomes enshrined in policy. It's a new vision of our relationship to the troops that abrogates all the old bargains great nations have always made with their soldiers. And it's a debt we owe that we default on at our own peril.

Eliminationism at the New York Times

-- by Dave

There's something deeply wrong with our public discourse when a reviewer like Niall Ferguson can pen a piece at the New York Times Book Review that contains, almost glibly, language like this:

The terrorists are at once parasitical on, and at the same time hostile toward, the globalized economy, the Internet and the technological revolution in military affairs. Just as the plagues in the 14th century were unintended consequences of increased trade and urbanization, so terrorism is a negative externality of our borderless world.

The difference, of course, is one of intent. The rats that transported the lethal fleas that transported the lethal enterobacteria Yersinia pestis did not mean to devastate the populations of Eurasia and Africa. The Black Death was a natural disaster. Al Qaeda is different. Its members seek to undermine the market-state by turning its own technological achievements against it in a protracted worldwide war, the ultimate goal of which is to create a Sharia-based “terror-state” in the form of a new caliphate.

I know, of course, that we're talking about the Enemy: terrorists. But it doesn't take a Dalai Lama to recognize that this kind of dehumanization is part of what brought us to this pass in the first place. And it only takes a historian to point out where it is likely to take us.

This is, in fact, classic eliminationist rhetoric: speech designed not merely to dehumanize and demonize other human beings, but to create the conditions for, and ultimately provide permission for, the actual elimination of those elements from society. As Kalkaino points out, Ferguson's description of Middle Eastern terrorists is nearly indistinguishable from from Nazi prewar propaganda about the "filthy Jewish vermin."