Enlightened Belle's Open Salon Blog

Headupassitis

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:11:35 -0500

So The New Yorker - that's a pretty serious magazine, right? - took to the street and found eight random OWS protesters and asked them five questions.

Maybe they asked the wrong people the wrong questions, but what came across is that the two older people totally get the President of the United States and appreciate what he's trying to do, whilst the six who are under thirty, do not. They so do not understand or appreciate this President to such an extent that I wonder what planet they're on, ne'mind what country. I also wonder if they understand how our government is supposed to work - how Congress relates to the President in terms of power and how the Supreme Court can hold sway over the other two sections. I wonder if they are familiar with the Constitution, other than to know that the First Amendment grants freedom of speech and that the Second Amendment is all about guns.

Too many people like this garner their ideas from the Professional Left, amongst whommany of the more knowledgeable have proven that they don't understand a lot of government procedure at all, as Jonathan Chait recently indicated in his seminal essay which has a lot of sniffy Professional Lefters chewing nails and pissing rust.

But it's the youngsters, the politically inexperienced and naive whom the Professional Lefters try to influence. Occasionally, Bill Maher makes a pretty apt and pretty perspicacious remark. The last time he did this was two years ago, in an interviewwith ~~hack~~ Howard Kurz, when he remarked how shocked he was, when visiting college campuses, how intransigent young people were and how many of them actually were veering in a direction which wanted to see prohibition of freedom of speech.

Well, Bill's one of the Pied Pipers who love having young disciples hanging on his every word (and on his arm, if they happen to be female). Creepy Uncle Keith - he who reads the Thurber bedtime stories and calls the President "quisling" is another "voice." Then there's Cenk, the rude fortysomething "young" Turk. Soccermom white privilegist Joan Walsh is another. Auntie Arianna, the Queen Mother of Ratfuckers, loves young people, dahlink ... they work for nothing.

If the twentysomethings The New Yorker found are indicative of the driving force behind OWS, it deserves to fail; because they came across as entitled, sulky, spoiled and entirely clueless - especially about the President. Scariest of all is their propensity to cling to the candidacy of Ron Paul, which proves they know absolutely, positively nothing about politics or critical thinking. Let's look at them.

First up is Paul Lemaire.

Paul is twenty, and it says he's from Brooklyn, but Paul says he came from France in August and applied to go to school in January. However, he says he's not going to go. Instead, he's going to "dedicate himself to the movement," but he's running low on money and needs to find a part-time job so he can work part time and hang out with "the movement" the rest.

So ... I don't get this. Is he a French student here on a visa? If so, doesn't he kinda hafta sorta go to school?

When the reporters asked him what his specific demands were, Paul replied:-

I don’t have a specific demand. I want to cut the crap. If I were to have a demand of how we can change things, I want more democracy and to cut the corporate influence on politics.

So, Paul doesn't really have a demand. He just wants to "cut the crap." What crap? Be specific. Well, when he's specific, he pulls out the standard soundbyte of wanting "more democracy" and "wanting to cut the corporate influence on politics."

Now, I'm against Citizens United as much as the next guy, but not many people know that some of the organisations classes as "corporations" are entities people on the Left would support and would want to see them contributing more to political parties and candidates. Entities like the NAACP or unions or the Scouts.

Then Paul's asked how President Obama is doing and we get this interpretation of his Presidency:-

I don’t know how he’s doing. For what I thought he was in the beginning, he’s terrible. He’s not delivered on any of his policies. He’s consolidating the destruction of democracy.

So ... let me get this straight. The President has been terrible for America. He's "consolidating the destruction of democracy." Were I the reporter, I'd want to know how. Press this smarmy, little bastard. DADT is repealed. That would never happen with a Republican. The US has the start of what eventually will be universal health coverage. OK, it's not ideal, but if Paul would care to get out a history book - you know, facts - and read it, he'd find that Social Security, initially, would have been unrecogniseable today. It's a foundation upon which one builds, but since Paul's obviously had everything handed to him on a plate and has had enough of his old man's money to live off OWS for the past two months, I'd say he's suffering from terminal instant gratification. He wants his Maypo, and because he's not getting any of what he wants, the President hasn't delivered on any of Democratic policies. Again, were I the reporter, I'd have asked him to specify, or maybe the gist of the article is to show the utter ignorance of these people who want to defend what's increasingly becoming the right to camp out.

After all, as Paul says, they're "unstoppable."

Well, to Paul, I'd say va t'en.

Next up is Melinda Kashi from Staten Island. She's twenty-nine, almost thirty, but she hasn't learned much.

She's a student, but she finds it difficult to go back and forth to school because "student loans are killing her." But her demands are just as vacuous as Paul's, and she's almost a decade older.

My demand is to change the way corporations are working. I like to create change and I can’t do it by myself. That’s why I’m here, to have a positive effect on the world. I want people to realize that the world isn’t right.

Uh ... yeah, right. In case Melinda didn't know, the President actually signed a couple of laws which do change the way corporations work - one was the Dodd-Frank Act, which slaps regulations back onto Wall Street - not enough, mind, but, again, it's a start. When the President spoke a couple of months ago in response for various people demanding that Wall Street fat cats have their day in court, he pointed out that what the bulk of these people had done was immoral, but it was not illegal. Melinda should, like Paul, read some history, and she'd learn that in the past thirty years, literally all of the Wall Street restraints and regulations imposed by Franklin Roosevelt had been deconstructed by Ronald Reagan and William Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat.

The rest of her demands are just tripe. The President pointed to all of us and said that change begins with us, but Melinda whines that she can't do it alone, and she's there to have a positive effect on the world.

I'd say to Melinda, "You're twenty-nine, love. Time to grow up."

Oh, and her assessment of President Obama?

I don’t have a personal opinion on him. He has a lot of issues to deal with because he didn’t do anything in the beginning.

So, the President sat around on his ass for three years until he suddenly realised he had "a lot of issues" to deal with. This sounds like she's accusing him of having Lazy Negro Syndrome. It's all the more oxymoronic, considering Melinda is a person of colour ... hey, there's always Herman Cain.

It gets better. Here's "Dean Moriarty" (the quotation marks are his, so I'm assuming he's incognito), who's twenty-five and from Glen Cove, New York.

Dean lives on Long Island, so he flits back and forth to the Movement. He's just doing PR for OWS, until he can get an MFA in Script Writing. So, he's a graduate student. Since finance for graduate degrees is virtually nil and always has been, one has to assume that "Dean" is living off his parents' penny.

Well, his assessment of the President is certainly the most pejoratively colourful by far:-

Fuck Obama. I hate Obama, he’s part of the problem. Anyone here who supports Obama doesn’t know what they’re talking about. He appointed Geithner and let Larry Summers tell him what to do.

"Dean" is twenty-five. The last time Larry Summers was in any sort of governmental position was during Bill Clinton's second term. In 1997, "Dean" would have been ten years old. You have to be some kind of genius to understand what Summers did, who he was and what he accomplished for the Clinton administration (a balanced budget)if you were ten when Larry Summers sat in the Cabinet. I daresay, "Dean" had never heard of Summers before the President appointed him and Tim Geithner. I would venture to say that a lot of this tripe sounds like the shit Whoreanna Fuckington was spewing early on in the Obama Administration, and if so, this is living proof that people under the age of thirty are virtually brain dead when it comes to thinking and reasoning for themselves.

First of all, let's say "Dean" stays with "the Movement." Suppose during that time, he's sleeping outside in the extreme cold and wakes up with severe frostbite - so severe, he has to go to hospital. "Dean" is twenty-five, so if "Dean's" parents have healthcare cover, thanks to President Obama, whom "Dean" thinks is part of the problem, "Dean's" got healthcare via his parents to cover his frostbite or the boil on his ass. Shame it won't help his mental faculties.

His demands?

For starters, having public trials for people who have committed treason, war crimes, fraud, and larceny. Demilitarize the N.Y.P.D.

Like WOW.

Next up is Hank Norton, who's twenty and from Virginia. And, Lord, the fruit don't fall far from the trees in my Commonwealth. I'm actually beginning to think I should start a campaign to mow down all the apple and peach orchards in Virginia, thanks to Hank's words of wisdom. Suffice it to say that I rank Hank right alongside such Virginian greats as Eric Cantor, Ed Schultz and Lynddie England.

Hank has a job, so he only comes to OWS at night; but, heck, it's not as festive as in the daytime. Like, it's a party, right?

And did I mention Eric Cantor? Well, there's something not quite right about Hank. Here's what he's got to say about "the Movement."

I can’t really relate to people here who can’t find work. I’ve already had two jobs since I came to New York two months ago. The first job I had paid half of minimum wage and I stuck with it. The second job is not sufficient income, but I’m taking it seriously, trying to get more money, trying to please my boss. It’s about working hard. A lot of people think that they’re entitled to a job.

(Cough, cough!)Is he talking sense? Here's someone who's willing to work at something, anything as long as it's work, a job. But just as quickly, stupidity sets in. His demands?

I’m observing this more than anything. The main demand is for change in the distribution of wealth. We need a coherent and cohesive message because a lot of people are yelling and that’s where we alienate people. We need three goals. I think they should be tax the shit out of the rich, regulate, and downgrade the military, almost to the point of dissolving it. I want Ron Paul to get more attention because he’s the only Presidential candidate who offers true change.

The bold type is mine, because he's showing how abjectly ignorant he is about Ron Paul. Ron Paul is not about taxing the rich. Ron Paul is a Libertarian. Libertarians are not about taxing at all. If anything, they're about a flat tax, which would hit Hank harder than it would ever hit any of the one per cent. He's a Ron Paul fan because Paul wants to legalise drugs and bring all the troops home. He doesn't realise Paul doesn't give a shit about people who get sick off drug binges or that de-militarised personnel might not have a job or a home. That's their problem. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Hank doesn't realise that ol'Ron's preaching "property rights," if Hank even knows what that phrase means. Hank should talk to old people in Virginia. They'll put him right.

It gets worse. His opinion of the President?

None of what he promised during the election has happened. There’s been no real change. Ron Paul is our only hope.

I am really wanting to know what smoke this kid is on or where the hell he's been since 2008 - then it dawns on me. He's twenty years old - like the first doofus, Paul. These kids would have been seventeen when Obama campaigned and was elected. They've never voted. And they honestly cannot see anything the President has accomplished? Why? Because they're not gay and serving in the military, they're still being, largely, supported by their parents, and Obama didn't turn out to be the Magic Negro? And they think Ron Paul is our only hope?

I want to know where in New York City this kid worked for half the minimum wage, because that's illegal already; but at least he's experienced this, so it won't hurt him psychologically when his instrument of change, Ron Paul, wipes the minimum wage from the law books as unconstitutional.

When I come home in March, remind me to start tearing up my daddy's apple orchard. We can't spawn too many Hanks in the Commonwealth.

Now meet Michelle Thompson, who's twenty-two, from Connecticut and pregnant. Michelle is finding OWS hard, simply because she is pregnant and can't find a loo in the night. She babysat for a decent wage, but can't really do that now, because she's protesting fulltime. And even though it's hard because she's pregnant, some sacrifices are worth making.

Pardon me while I SCREAM. Woman, you are now responsible for another life. You made the decision to have this life, and most likely, you made the decision to get pregnant, for whatever reason. This ceases to be about OWS or you now, and starts to be about your child. Go home. Send them good vibes, but go home and see a doctor. Jesus Christ.

Michelle's demands?

For women to get paid the same amount as men. It’s 2011! It’s ridiculous that men get paid more for the same jobs. We have to keep fighting. Also, a lot of my friends lived here and when the raid happened, everything was taken from them. There are many empty high rises in New York City, why don’t they just let us live there? They already take our money for taxes.

First of all, Michelle ... the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. I suggest you read up on it. It's the law that women get paid now as much as men. And since when does anyone take your money for taxes, sunshine, because you don't work, remember? You're asking for free housing? Check out Democrat and white man, Bill Clinton. He ended welfare as we know it.

Her assessment of the President?

He expects Americans to pay for health care. How will we pay for health care if we don’t have addresses and it’s so hard to get shelter and a job? Give us somewhere to stay and give us a job. It’s simple.

I'm banging my head on the table now. Is this woman for real? I mean is she, like, special needs or what? Americans have always paid for health care, and I'll let you in on a little secret, Michelle, even the fabled single-payer healthcare is not free. People pay higher taxes for free-at-source healthcare in the UK, where I live. Significantly higher. Like 30 percent. You're asking for the President to give you shelter and give you a job and free healthcare to boot. Just what do you think he is, Michelle? Do you know what the President's powers are? Do you know that he doesn't make laws, Congress does? And if he gave you a job anyway, as you say, you couldn't do it, because you're pregnant. Besides, he broadened criteria for eligibility for Medicaid, so you could have health cover immediately - paid for by the taxpayer, of course. On the other hand, if your parents have health cover, you could still be included on that too, thanks to the man you think does nothing.

Go home, Michelle. Just go. I pity your child's future.

And last, but not least, of the youngsters, here's Russ Runyeon, who's twenty-five and a teacher from Nashville.

Now, either Russ has lost his job or he's given it up, because he's been in New York since OWS started, and that ain't teaching school in Tennessee. Still, his demands are coherent enough:-

My personal demand is to unify this movement and establish defined, clear goals. Specifically, I’m concerned with socializing health care, affordability of a college education, student loans, and bank and trade regulations in order to stabilize American businesses.

Reasonable and clearly-defined goals, but what he doesn't realise is that all of those goals can only be accomplished legislatively, and that means getting out to vote. Russ also takes a pejorative view of the Presidency:-

Obama is a celebrity. He’s become less genuine in reference to the proposals he made during the campaign for Presidency.

On a good day, I don't know what Russ teaches, but I sure hope he doesn't teach history, because he needs a lesson in Civics 101 badly. Russ needs to be reminded of what exactly the President has achieved in his first term in office. The divine Milt Shook does an excellent job in listing in great detail what the President has accomplished. Russ and anyone else can read about them here. Milt's even provided links.

That's a pretty impressive list. In fact, he's accomplished more in three years than FDR did in his first term and just as much as Johnson did in his only term. Has the President faced obstacles? Of course, he has; but Russ and the rest of these kids need to disabuse themselves of the notion of an Imperial President. Obama's not a dictator. He doesn't legislate and he has to work with the Congress he's given. Unfortunately, that means working with Blue Dog Dems like Bill Nelson or Michelle Thompson's Senator, Joe Lieberman. Unfortunately, considering the fact that Russ and "Dean Moriarty" probably heeded the Progressive moose call led by Ed Schultz in 2010 and didn't vote in the Midterms, the President has to deal with, arguably, the most ignorant, most recalcitrant House in the history of the United States.

In short, Russ can sit on his ass in New York all he wants. If he wants a President to move Leftwards, he needs to get out the vote and get rid of people in his home state like Lamar Alexander. Because if he doesn't vote, he's going to get Senator Alexander's party in the White House, and that would be very bad for Russ, indeed.

But then, we get some glimmers of hope.

Meet, first, Artie Ravitz. Artie's seventy-two (that's right) and from Pennsylvania.

Artie comes up about once a week. He's retired and financially secure, having owned his own toy business. Artie keeps busy by working for the President's re-election and for the Democrats.

That's right. A grassroots organiser.

His demand is beautifully simple:-

My demand is to correct the system because it’s skewed in favor of the rich and against the poor. My feeling is that Robin Hood was right.

And his assessment of the President?

I like Obama. He means well and he’s trying hard. The party of “no,” the Republicans, are against him. If he said he was in favor of motherhood, they’d be against him.

Brilliantly put. Artie should talk to the previous protesters, but it's debatable whether they'd listen to someone like him. These are the same people who refused to allow John Lewis a word at Occupy Atlanta, who heckled the President and were drowned out by his audience of everyday people, and who rejected any advice from Van Jones, but who embrace the Ayn Rand philosophy of Rand Paul on the one hand and flock to be filmed on camera with one percenter hypocrite Michael Moore, whose ownracism has been exposed.

It doesn't make sense, and you have to, at one time, wonder, fear for and be afraid of these people ... because they are the future of this country.

And lastly, let's meet a pragmatist, Mary Most, who's fifty-six and from Brooklyn. Mary's dropped by everyday, but she can't say much about what's been going on. She works for the city, and Mayor Bloomberg is her boss.

Again, her demands are reasonably coherent, but note that she has a teenager who, somehow, has got the idea that democracy in this country is skewed.

There was so much disrespect for the law yesterday. If I have a restraining order, you can’t keep attacking me while your lawyers deal with the restraining order. They’d made arrangements month ago to take anything that was left here to the Homeless Coalition. A landlord can’t throw all my stuff into a compactor if he evicts me and just say, “Oh well.” That’s not the way an eviction is supposed to work. My teenage daughter is reading “Persepolis” and she told me that this is what they did in Iran. I want to justify to her what’s happening and say we have a democracy. But she thinks the United States quells democracy in action.

Perhaps daughter got that idea from the only Presidential administration with which she's familiar - that of Bush. This President has actually done things by the Constitutional letter. He's made sure Congress legislates, even though it doesn't want to and whines about getting the President involved in matters where he really shouldn't be.

If that's the case, Ms Most needs to tell her daughter that change has to start bottoms up. They seek and work for representatives who reflect their constituents' views and, hopefully, can influence the President.

Her assessment of the President, however, is a bit oblique.

He’s a conservative Democrat who’s never going to make the left-leaning Democrats happy. I’m a pretty radical Democrat and I didn’t expect to find any elected official to represent my beliefs, so I’m not as disappointed in Obama. He’s done extraordinary things. I think Occupy needs to claim some victories because rarely do environmental or political movements gain victory.

Firstly, I don't think that the President is conservative. I think he's a Left-leaning pragmatist who understands the lay of the land on Capitol Hill and also within his own party. He practices the conciliatory policies of Saul Alinsky and understand that the democratic process involves compromise. And as for Ms Most's last comment, I'd ask her what, exactly, was the Civil Rights' movement and what did it achieve?

Reading this article, made me think instinctively of Chris Matthews's cleverly disguised race rant last Saturday on Alex Witt's show, when he mimicked the President for being so smart (read: "uppity"), for accusing him of telling the American people to go home and let him sort the mess out.

That was wrong. The President has always said that the change we could believe in comes from us, and that we had to begin that change. Most of the above - well, six-and-a-half of them - didn't listen to the President. I guess, even for the young, it's hard to listen to a black man who isn't part of your radical stereotype. The President did not fail us. We failed him. He didn't tell us to go home, although Chris would like to believe that. We went home of our own volition. We went home, vegetated into couch potato status and waited for the Magic Negro to wave his wand.

It's always easier to blame the black man, isn't it?

When the Big Tent Sucks

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:10:15 -0400

I don't like Republicans. I never have. I was raised to think of them as the social and political enemy of my kind, the Democrats, but just because I'm not fond of all Republicans in general, doesn't mean I extend a blanketed tolerance to all things and all people Democratic.

Sometimes, the Big Tent can become claustrophobic to the point that I want to smack someone, like this morning.

Charlie Pierce writes in his Politics Blog:-

There was great trembling abroad in the land on Sunday when the Des Moines Register published its latest poll of the various Bible-banging rubes, Grant Wood zombies, and other caucusing Caucasians that the country has to pretend to take seriously once every four years.

He was talking about the home stretch of the time before caucus/primary time begins for the Republican Party, of course; but Pierce's choice of words literally made me vomit in my mouth. This is a guy who sits on his reputation (literally) as a clever and incisive sports-cum-political journalist, but for such a savvy wordsmith, his choice of vocabulary in referring to the people who happen to live in Iowa was neither clever, cute nor constructive.

It was insulting in the worst kind of way, and - more than that - it was endemic of the sort of snide, superior, Coastal elitism for which the Democratic party and the Left are often derided.

Pierce is not the only person guilty of this. People of his ilk (read Joan Walsh, Bill Maher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Keith Olbermann and assorted others) often speak derisively of people who live in rural neighbourhoods and small towns found in the agrarian Midwest and the South, areas otherwise known to them as "flyover" or "shitkicker" country.

Yes, we're all Bible-thumping, fundamentalist, shit-kicking inbred, racist, homophobic Caucasian rubes.

Except, mostly, we're not, but it's a pity and a shame that we all can't be East or West Coast Irish Catholic sophisticates, especially the variety who either consign President Obama to the realm of the racist comment thinly disguised as comedy as Pierce has done, as well as those sophisticates, Bill Maher and Michael Moore. It's pretty sad that none of us rubes can even pretend to impart such common sense rhetoric as Joan Walsh, even though we don't resent people of colour, although it behooves the Walshes and Pierces of this world to think as much. They prefer to think of us as having sprung from the loins of George Wallace's Democratic Party, when they would excoriate us for even assuming that they burst forth, fully clad in Celtic armour, from the forehead of Father Coughlin.

People like Pierce need to remember that rube-haven Iowa recognises same-sex marriage, like his hallowed ground of Massachusetts. People like Pierce want to remember that Douglas Wilder was the first elected African-American governor in the United States, in Virginia, when Derval Patrick was still in school someplace, and that, in the Commonwealth (of Virginia, mind you), when we speak of "the Governor," we don't mean Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants McDonnell, who's part of Charlie's tribe. People like Pierce really want to remember that Bill Clinton's Scots-Irish (as in PRODDY, Charlie) antecedents hail from rube-seeded, shit-kickin' Hope, Arkansas; and that if Charlie's and Bill's people hadn't left the Old Country, they'd have grown up lobbing rocks and other more dangerous objects at each other down the Falls Road, in Belfast.

Sometimes the Big Tent gets do damned claustrophic and over-heated, that it's mete some people take a walk outside for a breath of fresh air; and since my claim to America starts with Pocahontas, I reserve the right to tell Charlie Pierce to fuck off in his prejudicial assumptions.

When the Big Tent Sucks

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:10:12 -0400

There was great trembling abroad in the land on Sunday when the Des Moines Register published its latest poll of the various Bible-banging rubes, Grant Wood zombies, and other caucusing Caucasians that the country has to pretend to take seriously once every four years.

Moore Porky Pies

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:10:35 -0400

Having spent the past 30 years in the Southeast of England, married to a Londoner, it's difficult not to absorb a little bit of rhyming Cockney slang. There's a tradition amongst Londoners to use rhyming slang phrases for certain everyday words in English.

For example, "Barnet fair" is slang for "hair;" "dog and bone" is "phone; " and "Berkhampsted hunt" is Cockney slang for ... well, put it this way: If you're ever in England and someone calls you a "berk," you've just been called the ugly four-letter c-word which Bill Maher likes to use to describe Sarah Palin.

"Porky pie" is easy to decypher. A "porky pie" is a lie. And today, Michael Moore told a porky pie so foul even Sweeney Todd wouldn't have touched it.

Remember this from earlier this week?

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How could you forget Moore sitting in front of so persistent an interviewer as Piers Morgan, a journalist trained in fifty different ways of asking the same question, only to deny that he's a part of the problem against which the Occupy Wall Street is protesting, a movement which Moore, with a new book to plug just before the Christmas season starts, seems hell-bent on appropriating?

Moore, the working-class stiff. Moore, the voice of the downtrodden. Moore, who called President Obama a murderer for bin Laden's death?

That Michael Moore.

Well, folks, that Michael Moore, self-appointed patron saint of the Occupy movement ventured West today to bless the Occupy Oakland protest, which has produced some pretty lairy moments this week, courtesy of the boys in blue. And it would seem that Piers Morgan struck a sweaty nerve with Moore's Catholic conscience, because today Moore admitted, in a blog on his website, that, yes, he was one of the one per cent.

The blog, as most of his writings are, was heavily laced with references to his Catholic upbringing and values, even going as far as alluding to (without actually naming) the Doctrine of Good Works which is drilled into every parochial schoolkid's brain.

I feel very blessed that I have this life -- and I take none of it for granted. I believe in the lessons I was taught back in Catholic school -- that if you end up doing well, you have an even greater responsibility to those who don't fare the same. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last." Kinda commie, I know, but the idea was that the human family was supposed to divide up the earth's riches in a fair manner so that all of God's children would have a life with less suffering.

All well and good. I'm glad Moore remembers and adheres to so much of his Catholic upbringing. It should put me, lapsed Catholic-cum-unbeliever, to mortal shame, but it doesn't.

It doesn't, because smack dab in the middle of that self-righteous, quasi-religious, excuse-ridden blog, was a glaring, bare-faced lie. Speaking of the time 22 years ago, when he'd sold the distribution rights of his first film, "Roger and Me" for three million dollars, he recounted how he proposed dispose of his new-found fortune and what he would do with whatever remained, once he'd spent what he had to spend of the three million.

What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).

The bold type is mine, because that's the obvious lie. Michael Moore is lying through his teeth, and it was none other than another British journalist, who revealed that lie.

Before he gained international fame with the trivial Britain's Got Talent and thenAmerica's Got Talent, Piers Morgan was the boy wonder editor of The Mirror, a Leftwing daily tabloid in the UK. Around about the time he was editing that journal, Janet Street-Porter, a veteran British broadcaster and journalist was Editor-at-Large for The Independent, a Left-leaning daily broadsheet. Street-Porter, herself, is a well-heeled Liberal with a strident Cockney accented voice.

Steet-Porter is an old-school journalist, who'd put this generation's pretenders to professional shame. Street-Porter, during her tenure editing The Independent, would never have countenanced the Johann Hari debacle, Britain's own version of Jayson Blair journalism. In an article appearing in The Independent almost six years ago, entitled "Michael Moore: The Man, the Myth, the Millions, the Pizza", Street-Porter uncovered some slightly whiffy facts Michael Moore is scrupulous to keep hidden from the vast army of potential and malleable recruits to his cause here in the U S (remembering his political advice to voters in the 2000 election).

Writing in 2005, the first year of Bush's second Administration, Street-Porter wonders:-

Whatever happened to Michael Moore, the man who told us his mission in life was to stop President George Bush getting re-elected? The man who loathed Bush so much he spent millions of dollars making a film, Fahrenheit 9/11, the main purpose of which was to discredit the President. The man who went on national television and relentlessly toured the US begging people to vote the Republicans out of office. Moore never missed an opportunity to ram home the fact that he sought nothing less than total humiliation for Dubya. But since Bush was returned to the White House, Moore has been strangely silent - obviously he found the result extremely unpalatable, and Moore is not someone who likes to lose an argument. At 20 stone plus, the largest man in movies is pretty hard to miss. But, apart from launching a film festival in a remote part of Michigan a couple of months ago, he seems to have vanished into thin air. There were stories that he'd been shacked up at a Florida fat farm trying to lose weight. There were rumours that he's toured New Orleans after Katrina, but reading his website, it's clear that while keen to rally support for the homeless and jobless, he was not actually there in person.

Now a new book, Do As I Say (Not As I Do) - Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, by the right-wing commentator Peter Schweizer, criticises Moore for not living up to the high moral standards he claims to espouse. The author, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, went through publicly available IRS (tax) documents to discover that Moore's foundation bought shares in some of the companies he has spent a career in the media attacking. Not just a few shares either - don't forget Moore has always said he doesn't own any stock and doesn't have a broker - but his foundation owns tens of thousands of shares in Boeing, Sonoco, Eli Lilly, and Halliburton, the same defence company that Fahrenheit 9/11 attacked for making huge profits out of rebuilding countries like Afghanistan and Iraq after American military intervention.

Even more damaging, try logging on to the Name the Hypocrite website, and read claims that Moore, who says conservatives are racist because they don't support affirmative action, has only managed to employ three black people out of a workforce of 135 people working on his books, television shows and radio projects. Moore, who says that Americans who live in white neighbourhoods are racist, has lived for the past seven years in a waterfront home in Central Lake, Michigan, a community of 2,600 residents. The 2000 census records that the number of black people living there is zero.

OK, yes, I realise that Schweitzer is a Rightwing author and a fellow of the conservative Hoover Institute, but suck it hard, the man deals in facts. As I said, Street-Porter is abona fide journalist. Furthermore she's old Labour, which means she isn't and never was a follower of Tony Blair triangulation; and like any old-fashioned journo, if someone presents her with undisputable fact, she'll take it from the source, if he or she be reliable, ne'mind the political persuasion. A lot of Schweitzer's information comes from the IRS - can't get more established and factual than that.

It's also easy enough to check out the racial make-up of Moore's workforce, as well as that of the neighbourhood in which he lives; and all of this tallies with the recent race kerfuffle in which Moore inadvertantly involved himself whilst a guest on The View.

Street-Porter was as intrigued by her discovery of Moore's lifestyle and his investments, nonetheless than by his demeanor now that he'd found considerable success. So intrigued was she, that she actually went to the United States in 2006 and produced a film broadcast on British television later that year, entitled "Michael and Me." Further in the same article, she describes the Frankenstein monster Moore had become (and, once again, the bold type is mine - so pay attention, peeps!):-

Fourteen months ago I wrote in this paper "he makes politics seem as exciting as a ball game, as partisan and one-dimensional as a comic. He aims so low it's extraordinary". Even so, I have always saluted Moore's achievements as a communicator, putting complicated subjects across to the mass audience. I commented that denigrating Moore because he distorted the truth in his movies and books was missing the point, and if every major politician was judged on how often they got their facts right Tony Blair, George Bush and Jacques Chirac would have been impeached and removed from office years ago. Over the past year, however, Moore has not only got richer than in his wildest dreams, but his celebrity status has meant that he now mingles with the glitterati. Stories of his giant ego and huge tantrums abound - but how many were manufactured by those on the right fearful of his influence? I decided to go to America and make a documentary about how America's champion of the underdog has morphed into one of the creatures he originally so despised.

Now Moore is more unapproachable than the Pope, more obsessed with his own security than Elton John. There's a dangerous gap between the Moore of myth and the reality. For a moment during the presidential campaign it seemed as if he sought public office as a way of cleansing the system and achieving a fairer redistribution of wealth in his country. But many would argue by taking on Bush in such a heavy-handed way, he actually helped his arch enemy win, galvanising wavering Republicans to turn out and vote. Meanwhile, Moore alienates everyone who has to work with him (outside his small trusted team) by imposing demands that make Mariah Carey seem like a reasonable woman.

In my film I discover just how appallingly he behaved during his British tour, ordering pizzas and stuffing himself while the audience waited for him to go on stage. Refusing to meet a woman who knew his mom, who'd come from his home town and baked him an apple pie. Crowing on the phone in the interval to his mate in New York, about the fact that Vanessa Redgrave and Bianca Jagger were in the audience, while the public waited for him to entertain them. The same man who did a deal with two of the poorest people in his film Roger and Me whereby they earned a measly 100 dollars, while he made millions.

In the end, I conclude that Moore is a victim of his own success, with a lot more in common with Bush than he would care to admit.

Moore, himself, joshed nervously in the Piers Morgan interview that he was, in fact, a victim of his own success, in a sweaty and hopeful effort of getting Morgan to move onto the next audience question or Tweet and get away from the awfully embarrassing incident of a member of the public actually wanting to know if Moore were a member of the nefarious one percent.

Well, today, we know that answer is "yes." We knew it then, but we also know that when Moore states that he had never owned shares, he's blatantly lying, and maybe that merits a private visit to a confessional with a priest of his choice; or maybe it takes another interview with another British journalist to raise this fact for Moore to dispute and josh off.

Yes, yes, yes ... I know the Moore dittoes will flounce about and point out that Street-Porter's article was written way back in the Bush years, but the fact remains that Moore stated in his blog today that he'd never ever owned shares, and he has. Whether he does now or not is a moot point. He has owned them, when he said he had never done so.

He lied. He porky pied.

And those kids camping out in tents and having tear gas canisters lobbed at them should know that.

The Radical Chic 2.0

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:10:14 -0400

Watching the Occupy movement as it is in London and looking at that in New York, I'm utterly struck by the fact that not one high-profile British celebrity has moseyed on down to St Paul's Square and hung out with the protesters.

Unlike what appears to be happening in New York City where it's become the place to see and be seen for various and sundry celebrities alike, most of whom would like to appropriate the movement for their own publicity.

The hero of the PragProgs, Kenny Mack, he who verbally bitch-slapped the Professional Left underminers Cenk Uygur and Dylan Ratigan tweets:-

To me, it seems as though protesters are like star-struck fans w/e someone famous visits.

This was in answer to a question from a tweeter as to how the OWS protesters are responding to "visits" by the rich and famous with egos, books and new films to sell.

Says a lot, doesn't it?

Yes, the protest in London is largely made up of affluent, privileged white college kids, but they haven't been graced with any appearance by any of the usual luvvie suspects. James Blount hasn't sung, Paul McCartney's on honeymoon and Ricky Gervais has other things to do.

On the other hand, I'm surprised the red carpet hasn't been rolled out in New York City. I've heard that the fragrant Katrina vanden Heuvel, she who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing politically and who speaks of "the poor" as an abstract image, has a book about to be published - The Change I Believe In - or some such shit. She'll be sure to glide smugly amongst the protesters, always careful to stick to the more salubrious side and avoiding at all costs, the genuinely unemployed and any people of colour. Then she'll retreat to her mansion and have an antiseptic, but perfumed bath none too quickly.

But look at the list of ~~fame whores~~ celebrities who've casually "dropped by" to lend their "support" (by appearance) to the Movement - people like Roseanne Barr, Russell Simmons, Kanye West, those perenniel Leftwingers Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore (who has a book to sell and who refuses to use union labour on his productions and who also is a big shareholder in the likes of Boeing, Eli Lilley, Sunoco and - shock, horror! - Halliburton).

The motto of the Occupy Wall Street Movement is "We Are the 99 Per Cent." Well, yes, they are, but the celebs who come to lend their all-important "moral" support are not; nor they intend to change their lifestyles to accommodate their so-called sympathies to the movement. Chances are they zoomed in on a private Lear Jet and they'll zoom out again on the same. One thing for certain: they are as much corporate whores as either of the established political parties.

Whilst I usually find his columns trite, Frank Bruni, writing in today's New York Timeshits it out of the park, with his observations:-

The movement’s “we are the 99 percent” motto expresses ire over not only the unaccountability of huge financial institutions but also income inequality in America and the concentration of so much wealth and privilege in so few hands. Every time a wealthy messenger gloms on, that aspect of the message gets muddled and possibly compromised.

And the glomming has begun. With a slowly growing number of actors and musicians paying well-chronicled visits to Zuccotti Park, the movement is in danger of becoming a sticky fly strip for entertainers who like to flaunt their self-styled populism: a gadfly strip.

(snip)

Entertainers are members of the well-connected economic elite against which Occupy Wall Street ostensibly rages, whether or not they want to see themselves that way. True, they’re not bundling mortgages, and they often have their extravagantly beating hearts in the right place. Many donate generously to charity. Many do remarkable good.

But they nonetheless make oodles of money for themselves and for major corporations with lavishly compensated executives: the corporations that bankroll and distribute their television shows, movies, record albums and concert tours; the corporations that peddle the clothing, electronics and ever-so-important cosmetics and styling products that entertainers are paid so handsomely to model and endorse.

In some cases entertainers even make money for the banking industry itself. This issue came up last week when Alec Baldwin dropped by Zuccotti Park.

Critics noted that he appears in television commercials for Capital One, a banking behemoth. While he responded that he gives his fee away, he’s still promoting the company, and there remain other facets of his work and life that render him, like other stars, a very odd fit for a movement concerned with the sway of big companies and the distribution of wealth.

He has homes in both the Hamptons and Manhattan, a fact widely noted in news reports about a New York City tax inquiry into which is his primary residence. He claims the Hamptons.

His television show, “30 Rock,” is shown on NBC, which is part of NBC Universal, whose president and chief executive officer, Steve Burke, had a total compensation package worth $34.7 million last year, according to a recent survey of executive salaries in The Hollywood Reporter.

That same survey put the compensation of Brian Roberts, the chief executive officer of Comcast, which owns a controlling stake in NBC Universal, at $31.1 million. Philippe Dauman, the chief executive officer of Viacom, which owns Paramount Pictures, outpaced both of them. According to the company’s filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, he had a compensation package last year that totaled nearly $85 million, more than double his 2009 amount. Like Wall Street bankers, entertainment industry executives haven’t exactly suffered in this economy.

Celebrities help line those executives’ pockets, even if that’s not their goal, and then take the extra step of supporting other affluent corporations as pitchmen and pitchwomen. Some of them are seemingly aware enough of how mercenary this can seem that they favor endorsements outside American markets, especially in Asia, where their primary fan base won’t notice. At least Sarandon is doing her most recent endorsement work, for the clothing retailer Uniqlo, right here, on billboards in Manhattan and in a full-page ad in last week’s New Yorker magazine. I’m betting she chose Uniqlo, admirably, because it’s not Prada and its magazine ads push something other than glamour. The merino sweater she models in one ad costs $39.90.

But Uniqlo is part of a multibillion-dollar Japanese corporation, and the vast majority of its clothing is made in China. How does that serve the jobs-hungry young Americans in Occupy Wall Street’s fold?

There are many mixed signals in the celebrity assist to Occupy Wall Street, along with a reminder that we too seldom hold stars to account for their own greed.

Or their hypocrisy. Oh well, at least Bono hasn't shown up to pontificate.