Aquarian Weekly 5/11/05 REALITY CHECK

GOP GRIDLOCK – PART I Conservative Insider Unloads On Republican Congress

I have known Georgetown for about 15 years now, more or less. He has provided my readers an interesting and oft times hilarious insight to all things Republican, while maintaining his anonymity. It is this anonymity that has allowed him the fresh honesty for and against many policies of his party and this government without reprisal, and whether I agreed with his assessments or argued them our deal has stayed the same: He gives me the inside scoop and his ornery take on it and I print it in this space. Little edits. No pussyfooting. But during these 15 years, he has rarely, if ever, displayed as vehement an opposition to his party’s direction and procedure as he did late last month during our most recent conversation.

As usual, the following is a two-part excerpt of almost an hour of his rants, instigated by your truly to some degree, but it is mostly a candid and strikingly frank assortment of criticisms leveled at the most dominant GOP federal government this republic has ever seen.

jc: The accepted theory on George W. Bush’s first term was that he was far more fiscally and socially conservative than his father, who I know you and many conservatives had problems with, taxes, the Gulf War, etc. Now that evaluation has to come into question. This government has its hand in everything from social issues, private affairs of citizens, restructured environmental issues, Medicare pork, and has managed the most spend thrift budget ever. And this president, who has yet to veto a single bill, has rejected none of these subjects.

Georgetown: I’ll tell you this, there is a serious and growing rift in the party between social conservatives, mostly lobbied by the religious right, and fiscal conservatives, many of which began as hawks during the ramp up to the war, but who now believe it to be a money pit, and one that we will not be able to recover from for at least a decade and has been a detriment to more pressing domestic policies. Period. This is no longer a maybe or if, it is a real and present danger to our control of this congress, and one, in my estimation, that will break the back of the president’s push of Social Security or tax reform. This war is doing to Bush what Viet Nam did to Lyndon Johnson’s ability to govern the country at large. It is badly run and terribly administrated, and if there is isn’t a mass exodus of Republicans in the house and senate by late summer on most of the White House’s agenda, it will be news. These people have to save their asses.

jc: So there’s a battle for the heart and mind of the Republican Party, which ostensibly makes up the United States government right now.

GT: Take the Tom Delay thing for example. There are many Republicans who want this guy hung out to dry. This is bullshit. He has given the Democrats an easy target when we’ve got judges to be nominated, bills on the docket, and this John Bolton thing, which is the lynchpin for the Bush foreign policy in the Middle East. We’re going to shake-up the world politic, right? Let me ask you, do you think Bush likes bringing in the Saudis and having them read all over the Washington Post that his proposed ambassador to the UN is being depicted by fellow Republicans as Attila The Hun? Have you ever seen anything so bush league? It’s dime store politics, and it makes you wonder who the hell is in charge.

jc: But how does Delay’s problems factor into that?

“You are supposed to make the Democrats look like stallers and backbiters, not make the party in charge look like power mongers.”

GT: This is the same shit we pulled on Clinton. By the time the Lewinsky thing became public, his ability to govern was nil. He was shot. This killed the Democrats in the mid-term elections and made him one of the earliest lame duck second termers ever. Delay is the face of this government right now. Who the hell wants that? I’ll tell you who, George Bush. His “loyalty” crap is crippling the government and landing the party in a corner. That bullshit with him walking off the helicopter with Delay last week was political suicide. I watched that and thought, “Jesus, we’ve forgotten how we got here.” It sure as hell wasn’t on the back of punks like Tom Delay or Bolton for that matter, who is a self-serving bureaucrat, who is so far up Dick Chaney’s ass its scary. You think Dick Chaney cares who runs this government over the next two decades? He’ll be lucky to live past Christmas.

jc: Where’s Karl Rove in all of this?

GT: Not happy, I’ll tell you that much. But Rove is a campaign wiz. He concocted the God vote thing. They needed him to rattle the social cages to bring out the anti-gay, anti-secular, anti anti-war vote. He did his job. You want him to tell Bush to sell these fanatics down the river when he’s beginning a second term? Why? To save the party? He works for George W. Bush. His man has won all the elections he’s going to win. It’s over. It’s our problem now.

jc: But you do support Social Security reform, right? So that means private accounts, and doesn’t private accounts amount to political suicide?

GT: You pick your battles in this town. I applaud the president for his courage to at least broach the subject, but he has to consider that other people need to win elections beside him. He’s done. He will try and hammer away at things for another 16 months and then he will attend a few dinners, make a round trip of the globe, and shuffle off into the sunset. But then what does he do, hand this party over to social liberals like Giuliani and McCain?

jc: So how much does Delay and Bolton and Social Security effect the judiciary nominations?

GT: Killing them. Fucking killing them. And now they want to press the issue of filibuster reform. Holding up judge nominations is as American as apple pie. You always think you’re going to be in control forever, but it’s a pipe dream. There will come a day when the Republicans will need to filibuster again, and then what? Here’s the problem with restructuring congressional power, your force that to be the issue and take the onus away from the nominations, which is wrong. You are supposed to make the Democrats look like stallers and backbiters, not make the party in charge look like power mongers.

jc: Then Delay attacks the courts with the Catholic League over the Schiavo case and it looks like you’re trying to stack the deck.

GT: Exactly. Now you’re playing real life politics.

NEXT WEEK – PART II

Reality Check | Pop Culture | Politics | Sports | Music

Aquarian Weekly 5/4/05 REALITY CHECK

WE WANT BOLTONAmerica The Ugly Has Spoken

Not even the most optimistic Democrat on Capitol Hill thinks the rabidly vilified John Bolton won’t be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. They fully comprehend, as well as the realists among them that he represents the will of the people. This past November we rubber stamped the mean, war crazy jingoists, and damn it, if we don’t deserve our pit bull to crack a few heads around the United Nations then what was the point of voting George W. Bush back into office in the first place? It sure wasn’t his stellar economic record or a stirring command of the English language.

We have political capitol here. Didn’t the memo go out? Wasn’t there a general e-mail head’s up received on this? We voted. Bush won. He won on a record of boorish and aggressively dangerous behavior, combative and unyielding to anything resembling sober reason. This is obviously the agenda. He is also God’s choice. What is the argument? Let’s get on with it already.

Look, no one around here gives half a shit about the latest and greatest independent intelligence report that proves for the hundredth time that this government went mad over flimsy evidence to wage a money pit war on Iraq. Fuck that noise. We needed to crush the Evil Doers, or at least the Evil Doers that peeved off the president’s daddy, and, as a result, we’re more than willing to bankroll the rebuilding of it for the next two decades no matter what. So save all your bleeding heart analysis for the French hippie freaks. We want Bolton.

We want the “quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy”. He represents the American spirit; uncompromising, self-aggrandizing, quick to judgment, and conveniently patriotic. His ambitions are our ambitions. Three million more of us put any doubts of this to rest on Election Day, and a couple of thousand more Ohio residents made it law. If Captain Shoo-In wants John Bolton, an oft-quoted anti-UN big mouth to kick the ass all over the world stage than so be it. You think those kids who come back in boxes every day from the Middle East or the family members they leave behind care who we piss off after two years of bloodshed?

Grow up.

There’s a new sheriff in town, and he has the badge to prove it. The proverbial cards are on the table. John Bolton is aces up and the pot goes to Washington DC.

This is the New World now. We don’t fiddle around with diplomacy. We have The Dick Chaney School of Batten Down The Hatches & Hang On To The Women & Children, Here Comes The U. S. of A. international view for ya. It’s the 9/11 blank check theory of foreign policy, and its here to stay, so deal with it. Maybe the rest of the planet should have gotten on board when we were scrambling around like lunatics looking for scapegoats. Then there would be no need for outcry and long Congressional hearings that frivolously spend our tax money on done deals.

Yeah, I know, Bolton screams and yells at secretaries and doesn’t particularly care about playing nice with other government agencies and he may or may not have treated Colin Powell like his bitch. It’s a small price to pay to jam a first class jerk off into the malaise of the United Nations. Give it a little spit shine and weaken its resolve to keep us from gutting the world to protect our interests. We’ve been cow towing to these fossils for far too long. We’re the muscle and the money of that operation, so instead of sitting around making pretty, its time to stop all the silly role playing and finally show the rest of this poor, docile planet who’s boss.

The administration and its mouthpieces like to call this appointment and its fallout Reform. We are reforming the United Nations. It is a way of reminding everyone that its main headquarters resides on our soil, a few blocks from where the towers went down and all this craziness ensued. Reforming means no more begging to enact our will on things. No more meetings. No more dancing for our supper. We are reforming the UN from ostensibly being an objective international forum to our blind handmaidens. It’s our address that bares the checks sent all over the place to combat famine and pestilence and it is our army that ousts beret-wearing religious war mongers, so we’re going to make some changes around here.

You know, Reform.

The mask is off. We no longer appear to peddle global compassion, while doing whatever the hell we want. Now we come hard, without the song and story. No more fancy pants chats or teary-eyed speeches from phonies like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. We have the Texas Oil Man in charge; the Shit-Kicker King. He is our hero. He is the savior of the Western World. The British know it; now so will everyone else slow on the take, like the Democrats, who still think they have a say in this.

Those woefully uniformed who are left out there will now finally know what kind of bulldozer is coming to rearrange the furniture, get acquainted with the Bull/China Shop policies we got going here. No one will dare feign surprise about what kind of mayhem follows. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he has the badge to prove it. The proverbial cards are on the table. John Bolton is aces up and the pot goes to Washington DC.

Cue the madman with the axe, taking chunks from the bathroom door.

“Heeeeeere’s Johnny.”

Reality Check | Pop Culture | Politics | Sports | Music

Aquarian Weekly 3/30/05 REALITY CHECK

DECONTRUCTING THE CONSTITUTIONHow The God Fascists Are Trampling On Your Inalienable Rights

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. – Amendment X United States Constitution

“I was in the house when the house burned down.” – Warren Zevon

This government’s deconstruction of the Bill of Rights and Constitution since 9/11/01 has been outright oppressive and downright criminal. It has managed to make a complete mockery of Amendment IV and Amendment I, and now the 109th Congress has seen fit to ignore Amendment X in a grandstanding political maneuver so patently absurd it bares serious scrutiny by the members of this republic.

The Terri Schiavo case is the very reason I repeatedly tell friends and colleagues to read their constitution. Read it every day. Download it off the Internet, take it out of the library, buy a hand pocket version of it, and get to know it well. It is all that stands between you and government tyranny or the wonton desires of fanatics. And this, my friends and colleagues, is the age of King George and the God Fascists. The Enlightenment is in a shambles. Superstition and false morals have invaded the system like parasitic vermin. Get it in writing, team up the lawyers, and be willing to fight dirty.

This is no time for outrage or long-winded speeches. This is a time for reflection and reaction both personal and public. It is time we put our houses in order, ready our muskets and wait for the hordes to come charging over the mountain, because they have long begun their ascent, and it does not look to be abated by law or reason.

Know this: Elections and sedition are for sheep. Wolves earn freedom. It’s time for a serious uprising.

The blind audacity of the federal government to halt its tasks for the will of the people and suspend the law of the land while the president of the United States rushes in at the eleventh hour to sign law based on an individual case of state rights is martial law. Period. The irony is that this is a Republican run federal government, which claims in its stringent platform to defend state rights and reduce the powers of the federal government.

Whle you chew on that one let me take a moment to point out that I do not agree with the actions of the subject’s husband. He doesn’t want to divorce this poor woman, so he demands she starve to death? This is a murder of convenience. This is not a mercy killing. If someone is unable to function and has a living will that stipulates they want to pull the plug, so be it. This is not one of those cases. Also, I would like to make clear I do not agree with the woman’s parents either. By law, and this is why I am so adamant that the denial of basic civil rights to gay marriage is so egregiously unconstitutional, a spouse has full and complete rights. This is not negotiable, nor should it be.

The Terri Schiavo case is the very reason I repeatedly tell friends and colleagues to read their constitution. Read it every day. It is all that stands between you and government tyranny or the wonton desires of fanatics.

But make no mistake; this is a clear case for the state’s court system. This is why we have it. Checks and balances. Simple civics. Look it up. The federal government has three basic functions, uphold the constitution, protect the borders and deliver the mail. One out of three is not good enough.

The funny thing is the federal government’s failure to protect the borders on 9/11 has caused it to usurp power and enact crazed laws all over the joint, from the vague terminology of the Patriot Act to the loosely translated use of the military. These leans on civil liberties are not ideological – conservative nor liberal, they are unconstitutional. They are above the law. Just like congress sticking its nose in Major League Baseball over drug abuse when dozens of businesses in this country piss all over the environment, create new and improved toxins for us to inhale and ingest, openly steal money from stockholders and farm out manufactured labor to Dickensian work camps all over the Third World. How about the FCC imposing $500,000 fines for ambiguous indecency standards while huge foreign conglomerates own 70% of the airwaves and the White House infiltrates news programming with fully-produced propaganda schlock?

Am I the only one who is incensed at these sanctimonious cretins pointing fingers and riling up the locals on certain issues, while blatantly ignoring others? Am I the only sap who gets miffed when shitheels like Tom Delay run roughshod over the ethics of his office while working diligently to block an investigation, and then has the unmitigated gall to stand before the American people and talk about morals as if he invented them?

I’m also not amused at this nonsense about the sanctity of life. Oh, boy, these phonies can’t wait to wave that tattered flag at you. Then you realize that 40 million Americans are currently denied health care and their government has done nothing to even investigate it. They did manage to pass a Medicare bill last year that handed the pharmaceutical companies a blank check, but that was when morals took a back seat to Calvin Coolidge’s axiom that “the business of America is business”.

All this noise about Terri Schiavo is just that, noise. It has no legal merit, and morally it is thorny and sad. I detest the details as much as the next guy, but she should not be a political football for the federal government. This incessant meddling and horseplay with its power and reach has gone above and beyond for too many consecutive months to let it stand much longer. And although I am all for the federal government intervening when an entire race of people are denied civil rights, it is not for the government to intercede on the behalf of one person who does not effect the general populace.

Finally, if I may be so bold, it needs to be mentioned that Shiavo is in this condition because she was a world-class bulimic, resulting in heart failure and irreversible brain damage. She destroyed herself by her own free will, kind of like an alcoholic or a junky. And I ask you, how much of a furor would the Moral God Police be whipping up if this were a hobo junky from Harlem?

I wager none.

Now, let’s all hop off the high horse and get back to screwing up Social Security reform and spending our money like drunken sailors.

Reality Check | Pop Culture | Politics | Sports | Music

Aquarian Weekly 3/23/05 REALITY CHECK

CONDEE SPINS ETERNAL

I feel for Condoleezza Rice. I really do. I like her. I think she is by far the smartest and most sincere of the wild and wooly Bush Cabal. And as allegedly misguided as she was along with everyone else at the helm before 9/11, I believe she was just another sad symptom of the illusion this country’s government had lived under since the end of the Cold War.

But it pains me to see her eat shit the way she has time and again in front of the American press, the international press and a host of world leaders. Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State, could no longer eat the shit. This is why he is gone. But Rice auditioned well for the job during the 9/11 hearings when she went toe-to-toe with Democratic senators on “what the big boys knew and when they knew it”, prancing deftly around facts and timelines that showcased her considerable mettle and loyalty to the cause by gobbling massive quantities of excrement and emerging as a martyr for the good and true.

Don’t get me wrong; Secretary of State is a pretty good reason to eat shit. Hillary Clinton feasted on the stuff just to be first lady. Most people do it to keep a mid-level gig in some faceless corporation. Secretary of State is a few heartbeats from the presidency and comes with a cachet rarely, if ever bestowed upon intellects. Former recent secretaries like Henry Kissinger (Nixon’s savage bombing of Cambodia), Cyrus Vance (Carter’s disastrously planned rescue attempt of the Iran hostages) and George Shultz (Reagan’s Iran/Contra fiasco) gorged on the dung. Piles of it. And not one of them is getting into to heaven for it.

But I was not particularly fond of any of these gentlemen, and I never got the willies as I do now watching sweet Condoleezza parade these spin doctored fabrications around the globe like a jabbering marionette. It is sad and disturbing and I can no longer abide it quietly.

To wit:

On the leading candidate for Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jafari, a “former” terrorist (former terrorist like being kinda pregnant or sorta dead) and well-known American foreign policy dissenter (a nice way of saying “hates us”) Rice has been laughably extolling his virtues to defend the purported democratic process. Last week Rice stated that Jafari “will be a fighter in the war on terrorism”, which is completely antithetical to the profile the CIA is willing to cop to and just plain silly talk.

The fact is a toad like Jafari and the predominant Shiite presence in the Iraqi democratic process creates another sort of anti-American political conundrum for the current administration. This is why falling back on the “fighting for the freedom of Iraqis” fable following the flop of the “US threat and WMD” song and story leads to wider problems. Not the least of which is Iran, considered among many US officials for close to a decade as the “real enemy”, now developing a nuclear bomb with no counterbalance from a weakened Iraq.

Oh what a tangled web we weave…

Concerning the uprising against Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon, a fishy stage show reminiscent of CIA-instigated protests in Central America for three decades and a cheap political attempt by the Bush administration to label a “victory for freedom”, and the subsequent mass retort provoked by the terrorist all-stars known as Hezbollah, Rice is coy. At once she manages to denounce Hezbollah as a “rogue terrorist outfit threatening to the United States” while responding to its legitimate political power recognized by the UN as a shoulder-shrugging downside of the democratic process. Rice knows well the powder keg that is Lebanon, and to spin a freedom march from the obvious seeds of another likely bloody civil war is so patently ridiculous not even this loose canon president is dumb enough to sell it.

Rice’s dance of the absurd is in lock step with the fantasy this administration has concocted since its many-layered theory of war two years ago in Iraq.

Truth is Lebanon has been, and always will be a breeding ground for anti-Israeli fervor. Syria’s military presence, while abhorrent to the new and improved Middle East freedom chatter of this government, is a necessary evil for the security of Israel and American concerns there. Despite Syria’s disdain for Israel, ironically, after years of horror in Beirut, the Syrians brought order and managed to expunge the IDF, leading to immense popularity and more than a little anti-American sentiment. But there was also a sense of lockdown, sovereignty, and protection. Left to its own devices, the Lebanese could prove more troublesome to US efforts in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict than most know, except Condoleezza Rice. She knows.

Rice’s recent appearance on “Meet The Press” had her chewing on chunks of crap when faced with the administration’s proposed appointment of a lunatic like John Bolton to ambassador of the United Nations. “He has a wealth of experience in UN affairs”, Rice told Tim Russert, which is tantamount to saying Michael Jackson is familiar with children. Bolton, known inside the Beltway as Bush’s Pit Bull, has publicly mocked the UN, calling it, among other undiplomatic descriptions, “obsolete”. Yet Bush, after grandstanding international unity all over Europe last month to help pay for the Iraq money pit, is sending this maniac into the cauldron of a corrupt and bitch-slapped conglomerate reeling with a lethal dose of figureheaditis. Rice, for her part, is rubber-stamping Bolton as “a very important part of my team.”

Anyone who listens to Bolton for 30 seconds knows he is an ass. He is the worst kind of myopic bully, the type of ideologically rabid monster this space warned against should Bush continue to run amok around this planet. If he is unleashed on the international scene he will no doubt be an embarrassment to an already yawping farce, and it is disconcerting to me that a brilliant and normally even-handed Condoleezza Rice has to vouch for it.

…when first we practice to deceive.

Rice’s dance of the absurd is in lock step with the fantasy this administration has concocted since its many-layered theory of war two years ago in Iraq. This maze of circular logic unleashed on the American public is so convoluted in patriotic pap by now it defies definition. Alas, Condee rides the dragon, and I feel for her.

In the spirit of this thorny trap, Rice has taken to calling the current opium-rich, unprecedented production of drugs in Afghanistan (described haughtily as a victory in freedom during the presidential campaign) as “a narcotics problem”. Yes, and Anne Boleyn had a headache. She also dubs Korea a “willing negotiator” sounding more and more everyday like Chamberlain handing Hitler Eastern Europe on a platter.

I have found it in my heart to forgive Rice for trying to tame this monstrosity, the way I gave Powell the benefit of several doubts before he went off the rails at the UN with tall-tales that embroiled this country in a bankrupt police action under questionable pretenses. My leash, irresistibly short for the authors of this mess, is longer for bureaucrats of the system, but for sweet Condoleezza and the looking glass on Pennsylvania Avenue, the slack is tightening.

Reality Check | Pop Culture | Politics | Sports | Music

Aquarian Weekly 3/16/05 REALITY CHECK

LIBERAL BIAS IN THE MEDIA Explaining The Obvious To The Uninitiated

The exit of embattled CBS news anchor Dan Rather this past week has renewed age-old discussions on liberal bias in the media. This always brings a smile to my face, for I, as consequence of experience, have always known that the accusation rings hollow in the sense that if by painting the press with one bold ideological brush stroke will somehow force it en masse to either back off its alleged job as public watch dog or make it more rancorous against the purveyors of liberalism. This has never been the case, nor will it ever be, no matter how many Dan Rathers are thrown under the bus, anymore than the moral lunacy of the right will be curtailed by revelations that Bill Bennett is a terminal gambling freak.

I have no love for Dan Rather. I met him once about 20 years ago, maybe more. I don’t remember. It was long before he was stomped by thugs on Park Avenue for failure to acknowledge “Kenneth’s frequency”, but long after he started a mosh pit on the floor of the ’68 Democratic Convention. He was perfectly cordial. I never saw him as an elitist or even that passionate about anything, really, least of all frequencies or punk music. He was a newsman. You can identify their species from a mile away. No sense of humor or fashion, myopic dinks with a tinge of nervous energy you might misconstrue for pretension. I don’t think he wanted anything more from life. None of these people do. They live for news; disaster, murder, political suicide, celebrity implosion. Personally, I never forgave Rather for that farcical report on the 20th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in which he presided over a theater of the absurd proving “without a shadow of a doubt” that Oswald acted alone. Honestly, its fictitious zest made the Bush National Guard Papers seem tame by comparison. But that’s my problem.

Sure Rather is a liberal. So were Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, Jacob Riis and Walter Winchell, Margaret Fuller and Ernie Pile. Most reporters, journalists, newspersons are liberal. Unless you’ve studied or practiced this craft, it is apparently hard to grasp. This is true of yammering asses like William McGowan or Bernard Goldberg, neither of whom know the first thing about reporting the news, but answered a curious calling to write books featuring “in-depth analysis” of American journalism. Some might call this stupid. I concur. These poor saps are busy discussing party politics in the cauldron of human nature, a folly if there ever was one.

In order to get up for a life of reporting, one must believe one can/will change the world, make government work diligently for the people, expose the bad guys, celebrate the common man, while repeatedly taking shots at the rich and powerful for the general good. It is a tough calling in a country where the rich and powerful run things, make laws and do whatever the fuck rich and powerful wants. This is an acceptable reason for the remainder of journalists not already raging alcoholics or recovering from some kind of addiction to barely cling to a last remaining shred of sanity.

Shitty hours, crappy pay, lunatic editors and horrific travel routes will leave even the most centered among us with a flimsy excuse for optimism. Believe me, when you’re dealing with the sickness of the human psyche on meager wages and no sleep, you are bound to steer your allegiance to things like civil rights, government programs, underdog causes, conspiracy theories, counterculture pursuits, etc. Big Business, Real Estate Moguls, Religious Fervor, Military Industrial Complexes, Imperial Foreign Policies, and the odd nasty political malfeasance tend to rile these creatures up.

Shitty hours, crappy pay, lunatic editors and horrific travel routes will leave even the most centered among us with a flimsy excuse for optimism.

This is why most of the modern American newspaper chains were launched by Socialists back when Socialism meant power to the people and the rejection of money and progress running roughshod over natural resources, human dignity, and the truth. There was always a sense among the originals that the press would not only keep the tyranny suffered under King George at bay, ala the searing pamphlet by the first subversive patriot Thomas Paine, but it must also force the issue of change and progress like the printed abolitionist movement from brave souls like Horace Greeley, who started the Herald Tribune as a daily anti-slavery rant or Mary Livermore who published the Woman’s Journal as the genesis of suffrage.

Journalists are also skeptics. They need proof for stuff. Lovely and warming concepts like God, country, and apple pie don’t swing a good reporter. It’s the facts, ma’m. The beauty of skepticism leads to edification through research and training in diverse thought (another key reason people keep missing for why most American universities or higher learning institutes breed liberal idealism). Not accepting tenets on face value, to question everything from traditions to subtle to overt forms of bigotry is the foundation of journalism and, for that matter, a free society for which journalism is supposed to serve.

It always struck me as odd that people do not bat an eye when conservative thought enters free enterprise or fiscal responsibility (sans military build-up and corporate stock and tax fraud) but yet find it necessary to debate the leanings of journalists.

But saying that liberal optimists who have convinced themselves that what they do is important for the survival of the republic and not for greed or fame or notoriety is not necessarily true either. Every news jockey in this country would trade some part of himself or herself professionally to get ahead, find a bigger audience and translate that into cash. This is especially true in American journalism.

I personally know heavy leftists who lied to FOX News, the National Review or the Washington Times to get a gig in a more conservative news organization, and vice versa to get gigs at the Village Voice, the New York Times, or Newsweek, more liberal publications.

So, in the end, the publicity monsters like Pulitzer and Hearst still beat in the chests of our journalists, who begin their journey of reporting with all the wide-eyed cheer of the most naïve college sap and end up voracious capitalistic fundamentalists. It’s a crude journey, even for someone like Dan Rather, whose only crime was laziness and the false sense that being rich and powerful makes you resistant to accountability.

That kind of armor is reserved for the presidency.

Reality Check | Pop Culture | Politics | Sports | Music