SHAFTWAXER

For my birthday, the woman got me (among other things) a book that I had seen on The Daily Show as well as heard about on The Al Franken Show. It’s called “Spanking the Donkey: Dispatches from the Dumb Season” by Matt Taibbi. Essentially, it looks at how the lead up to the war in Iraq as well as the election coverage in 2004 was cheapened by the media. He challenges why the media doesn’t bother to hold the government in check any more, instead lofting softballs at the administration in fear of losing their press core status and access to the White House.

This general laziness and apathy has been something that has been bugging the hell out of me for a while now, so naturally, reading a book that continues to affirm things I already believed or suspected is just fine with me. I readily admit I’m the choir and I’m being preached at. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a great example of the media being beyond lazy, almost to the point of being insultingly stupid.

Naturally, it involved our good friends at Fox “News”.

Fox reported a story on August 7th about somebody in Orange County who was supposedly suspected to have terrorist connections to an extremist Islamic group. Former federal prosecutor John Loftus (who has a delightful little segment on Fox called “Inside Scoop with John Loftus”) “reported” the exact address of the suspected home of Iyad Hilal. Later, rabid Fox viewers would post satellite photos of the home. John claimed that this was somebody “linked with the London bombings”.

Unfortunately, Hilal moved out of that house roughly 3 years ago. Apparently fact checking is too time consuming these days.

That really didn’t matter though, never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Randy Vorick and his family has since been offered special police protection since people have been driving by, screaming profanities at their home, and threatening his family. Also, as a tribute to the average mentality of the Fox “News” viewer, somebody spray-painted “TERRIST” on their home. Randy is now afraid to leave his home for fear of what will happen to him or his children. Only last Friday did Fox offer an official apology and reprimand John for his “careless error”.

John’s response? “Mistakes happen. It was the best information we had at the time.” He thought he was helping the Orange County police by alerting the community of the “terrist” threat that lived in their own community. Maybe next time he can help himself to a PHONE BOOK. Instead, the Orange County police have a marked cruiser parked outside their home 24 hours a day to protect them from the average Fox viewer.

Fuck you, John. Seriously. Fuck you.

Hey guys. It has been a while since we have talked. We’ve been through a lot together, especially everything since that pesky election of 2004. I was pretty disappointed with how things went down there, but not just in the result. I was a little disappointed in you.

Don’t get me wrong, I still like you, and I for the most part believe in the cause, but sometimes you are starting to make we wonder what you are up to. See, unlike the mentality of a good chunk of the country, I can disagree with you and still like you.

When I heard that Howard Dean was going to be the new head of the DNC, I was pleased. Again, not always 100% behind him, but I really liked how he managed to do something that almost every other candidate was not able to do: initiate interest and dialogue with the younger members of the country. The internet became his tool to get his message out, coordinate efforts, raise funds, and connect other like-minded liberals together to get them legitimately excited and involved in the political process. That was impressive. It was time for something like that.

I think one of the biggest issues we have right now in our state of politics is that we, the voters, the taxpayers, the people who ARE PAYING YOUR SALARY, don’t feel like we are able to be heard or be part of the process. Granted, when our government was set up by our Founding Fathers, instruments and safety measures were put in place so we wouldn’t have to deal with the minutia if we didn’t want to. It’s a hallmark of a representative form of government. But when we have a representative form of government, by its very name, there is the implication that we are being represented.

I want to feel like you are really looking out for the people, not the corporations. But beyond that, I want to believe that you would be willing to take a stand and make the voters not roll their eyes in apathy. Say what you want about Howard Dean, but as a candidate, it seemed that he was willing to speak more clearly and more straight to the point than a lot of the other candidates were. I was really hoping that he would have retained that quality as chair of the party, but it seems that he is starting to embrace talking points as well.

I don’t want to hear talking points. I don’t want to hear lots of words and no content. I want you to answer the fucking questions. Be honest. Just tell us straight up what is going on. Sometimes you are going to have bad things to say. Guess what! We are all adults here. Some of us would like to be treated as such. I’m willing to go along with you if you’ll just give us a shot. I’m willing to sacrifice if I know why and to what ends it would go. It just seems like you are so afraid of having a small nugget of difficult honesty get turned into fodder for an attack from the right. If your convictions and rationale are in place, you should be able to defend this, so what’s the big deal?

Speaking of the right, I’m also a little pissed off at you for that mess that was the energy bill and the highway spending bill. What was that shit? The energy bill was a complete joke. Nowhere in there did it do anything to address energy policy. All it did was encourage car companies to not push forward on things like hybrid vehicles and reduced incentives for selling them to consumers. Hell, it even went as far as encouraging car manufacturers to making bigger SUVs! Even though they are getting billions in profits, the oil companies are given even more incentives and tax breaks. Where were you guys?!? How come nobody stood up and said that it was bullshit? Not one of you! And if you did, you apparently didn’t try very hard because nobody covered it. I know that the right says that you’re not doing anything to offer your own ideas or alternatives, and I understand that since the House and the Senate are run by some rather narrow republicans, you CAN’T move your own legislation forward because they wont even let it hit the floor. I understand this. But if you wanted to, you could go on a media blitz. You could hold press conferences. There are outlets where you could get your message out, take your ideas to the people, and show that you have great ideas for the future. Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you fight back?

If you want to win back the House and the Senate, I think you need to take a long hard look at yourself. It’s time to present something to the American people, similar to what Newt did with the right in 1994. We need to redefine the Democratic party as the party of fiscal responsibility and efficiency. Show the country we will be the ones who will go after corruption no matter which side of the aisle it comes from. That means that some people are going to have to account for that travesty that was the pork infested highway appropriations bill. How could you guys be part of that? All that pork? Shameful. Show the country this is coming to an end. Fight the corruption. Make our government and corporations accountable for the wasteful spending in Iraq. Find the companies who are screwing over the environment and the health of the American people and expose them.

It’s time to clean the house. If you can speak to us like adults and show some accountability and efficiency, you will gain respect. I want to believe in you, and in the end, you know I’ll still be supporting you, but you have to help me out here. You might have to make some unpopular choices with some of the corporations that have their hands firmly cupping your balls, but so what.

You work for us. Not them.

I was recently directed to a crazy uber-conservative’s web site. I’d seen it before and was absolutely in love with it and it’s doctrine of compassion. A small nugget of his love:

I also gave my support online for executing murderers and rapists and even those that curse father and mother as Jesus upheld in Matthew 15 and Mark 7. That made Bethany pretty upset with me too it appears. We have over 600,000 rapes in this country and I want to bring that number way down as close to 0 as possible. I would do this by swiftly, painfully and publicly executing a rapist or rapists so that everyone 10 years old and up would witness the execution and have that image and association in the back of their minds for the rest of their lives. Every time they hear the word rape they will see that person or persons being executed by the hands or instrumentality of their victim(s) and their familie(s). That would make rape a rare occurence again if we did that.

So once again, in review: The culture of life says it’s OK to kill after you leave the uterus, but not when you are in it.

Alright.

I love this man, too.

Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, host of the 700 Club, and batshit insane televangelist beams in with this nugget of Christian compassion and understanding:

You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.

Yes. That’s right. Pat Robertson, a (supposed) man of the cloth, is encouraging the United States to assassinate a foreign leader. This isn’t really all that shocking if you look at his star studded career. A few years ago he urged all of his “followers” to pray for change in the Supreme Court. Now that O’Conner has announced her retirement, he is getting more specific in his demands by asking his “followers” to pray for “more vacancies in the Supreme Court”. Yes. He’s asking God to KILL OFF MORE JUSTICES. Lest we forget how 9/11 was really all the fault of liberals, gays, atheists, and pro-choice people or how he recently confused statements Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Cal) made with satirical commentary from a right-wing web site…

Maybe he should pray for a conscience.

I love this man.

Bill Burkett is the retired Air National Guard officer that provided CBS News with the questionable documents about Bush’s equally questionable service. Let’s see what Rush had to say about him as of late:

8/15/05: I mean, Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There’s nothing about it that’s real, including the mainstream media’s glomming onto it. It’s not real. It’s nothing more than an attempt. It’s the latest effort made by the coordinated left.

And then people started to give him heat for insinuating her son didn’t serve in the war. Or maybe the insinuation was even deeper, that she didn’t have a son who died. Who knows what was going on in his head. Well, we at least know what what he had to say 2 days later.

8/17/05: Let me take a brief time out here to address something. I have been the recipient of a pretty decent amount of hate mail, far, far, far more hate mail than I usually get. Just this morning — and I don’t really get a whole lot of hate mail. And most of it’s funny as it can be. But apparently there is something that is out there misreporting what I have said. And of course, these people are reading that rather than listening to this program and choosing to believe it.

Apparently, what’s out there is that I said that Cindy Sheehan is no different than Bill Burkett, that Bill Burkett lied and Cindy Sheehan lied. They’re actually out there, people saying that I am accusing Cindy Sheehan of making up the fact that she had a son and making up the fact that her son died in Iraq. And of course, I’ve never said this.

So was he being an insensitive ass hole and back peddling on this? Or just a misunderstood cretin?

So what exactly is up with artists releasing albums that have a great first track but then fill the rest of the album up with steaming piles of horse shit? I mean, sure, I understand you want to start off strong with a great hook, but what’s the point of a hook if you are just dragging me into a wading pool filled broken glass, cow urine, and covers of Britney Spears songs?

Last week was crazy. During the beginning of the week, I was busting my ass, churning out drill for everybody. I was very pleased with the quality of my work. It’s nice to feel like you are growing, getting better. Being stagnant is being creatively dead. I think when the writing season is done, I’m going to pull out a few of last year’s projects and compare them side by side, see how their product improved from year to year. I have the feeling that it will look like products written by 2 different people entirely.

The mad rush of productivity was inspired by the need to get everybody in place so I could escape for a vacation with the woman. It was really great. I don’t think I realized how utterly exhausted I was from the past few intense months of writing until I got away from it. I’ve been working pretty hard. I’m glad that I’m starting to get to a point where I can see the end. Only 14 things left to do, and 2 of them are over halfway completed. 3 more of those things will probably be taken care of by the weekend as well, so I’m getting there. Slowly but surely, I’m getting there.

One thing that is making my life annoying difficult would be kids dropping and adding band at the last absolutely possible second. You brats are the absolute bane of my existence. I get a number, and then I try and come up with all the great geometric shapes I can work with. I write 20 some pages of stuff only for you to decide that you don’t want to do it. Not only are you pissing me off and making me go back and rewrite everything I’ve done, but you are also fucking over your friends and your classmates. I could have gotten more done, gotten it to the guard staff so they could write work well ahead of time… But no. I instead have to waste my time rewriting everything and putting a band-aid on everything because you didn’t have the balls or foresight to say anything to anybody until you absolutely had to. No matter how late I wait to start in on the drill (sometimes I don’t start until the day before they go to camp, especially with some schools that seem to have a chronic history of this shit) it seems that I can’t escape.

Now, I understand that there are some occasions where things happened at the last second, something involving their family, a sudden scheduling conflict with the guidance office, stuff like that. I get it. I was a public school educator, I know how things like this work. These things happen. These are not the kids I want to beat. No, it’s the ones that just decided they didn’t like it but didn’t want to have to deal with the confrontation of telling the band directors about it until camp starts and they are getting phone calls wondering where the hell they are. If they are not careful, I’m going to shit in a lunch bag, set it on fire, and leave it on their doorstep…

…or maybe I’ll just suck it up and post something about it on the internet… like that’s going to really change anything.