Opinion and Commentary since 2003
W. as in W. Mitt. He is so adept at diplomacy – he will so dramatically change Obama’s foreign policy – that he managed in just one day to epically piss off our country’s very closest ally. This guy is a trip.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/SherrieGG/status/228691144161243136″]
Courtesy Marquil at EmpireWire.com
It was reported yesterday that an un-named advisor to Mitt Romney complained to a foreign publication how President Obama doesn’t share or “appreciate” the shared “Anglo-Saxon heritage” of America and Great Britain. The Romney campaign itself later disavowed this unbelievably stupid comment, but that’s not dissimilar to a celebrity apologizing for an insensitive Tweet.
You know they meant every word of it. They just realized that it was inconvenient.
First of all, Anglo-Saxon Britain ended in 1066 with the Norman conquest at Hastings. Like their persistent use of “Soviet” and “Soviet Union” to describe the country known as the “Russian Federation”, the Romney folks need to brush up on their history.
Secondly, this is all part of a wider theme that’s taken hold of much of the American right since Obama’s nomination and election. It all has to do with painting Obama as a foreign savage devil. How that characterization is made depends somewhat on the person making it, and the intended audience. It may also have something to do with the intelligence of the person making the characterization.
For instance, the extremely dumb and ignorant – oft racist – will simply aver that the President is a foreign-born Kenyan who was raised at a madrassa in Indonesia as part of a worldwide Communist/Muslim conspiracy to take over the United States – a plot dating back to 1961 at least. People mildly more intelligent will simply “ask questions” about the President’s birthplace and loyalty.
The less stupid will say they don’t doubt the President’s birth certificate is real, and “take him at his word” that he’s Christian. The scale slides as people more benignly accuse Obama of “not sharing our values”, or being “socialist”, or going around the world “apologizing for America”.
All of it has a central theme of Republican omniphobia, and of being so fundamentally out of ideas – ideas that plunged the world into a couple of quagmire-y wars and a crushing, long-lasting worldwide economic crisis – that this is all they have to fall back on. Literal demonization of the foreign usurper President, and urging reversion to the very policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
Obama may not be perfect, but he’s not a foreign Communist savage, either. Mitt Romney, however, is by no means the answer to any sane or rational question.
Neil Garvey was an attorney, but much better known as a local theater icon – he frequented the footlights of the Kavinoky, Irish Classical, and Shakespeare in the Park, and was a firm believer that the arts were a critical component of our society. He passed away earlier this year, and his friends and family have devoted themselves to keep his memory alive.
Established in 2012 by the family and friends of Neil Garvey as an independent organization to foster artistic endeavors throughout Buffalo and its surrounding communities, the mission of the Neil E. Garvey Foundation for the Arts is to empower and financially assist artists across all disciplines and, thereby, to promote the betterment and cultural growth of Western New York.
Tonight, just before the premiere of Shakespeare in the Park’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an inaugural fundraiser for the Garvey Foundation will take place.
When: July 26, 2012, 5pm until the show opens
Where: the Marcy Casino in Delaware Park
Info: Your ticket will settle your hunger, quench your thirst and keep you laughing! There will be raffles and a 50/50 and food will be prepared by Rich’s Catering. Tickets are $50 and can be purchased by calling the Shakespeare in Delaware Park offices at (716) 856-4533 or by filling out the form, here!
A couple of weeks ago, President Obama gave a speech in Virginia where he somewhat clumsily made the assertion that even self-made businessmen didn’t get successful on their own. They had teachers who inspired them, firefighters and police who protect them, roads that help them engage in commerce, and that ours is a society in which we are somewhat interdependent on each other; i.e., “government” to help private enterprise thrive. It is thus everywhere, despite the current fad among some to denigrate government and everything it does. Fox News is, naturally, at the forefront of this phony nontroversy, even trotting out a couple of little kids to discuss how N0bama is nationalizing their lemonade stand, or something.
So, Mitt Romney – who purports to be a self-made businessman, facts notwithstanding – put out this ad:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLZpMFbxyxU]
Jack Gilchrist, the New Hampshire business owner Romney features in that ad, is right out of Republicanland central casting. He whines that the President is “demonizing” people like him, who, with his father, built his business, “through hard work and a little bit of luck”. Also, the black Kenyan guy doesn’t “believe in America”. So, there’s that.
Yet Jack Gilchrist didn’t just get where he is thanks to hard work, luck, teachers, roads, and civic protection services. He also got there thanks to thousands of socialist government dollars.
In 1999, Gilchrist Metal received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority “to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment,” according to a New Hampshire Union Leader report at the time…
Last year, Gilchrist Metal also received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008, according to a government web site that tracks spending.
Gilchrist also is a recipient of an SBA loan of about $500,000, with matching funds from the federally-funded New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center. In other words, Gilchrist got where he is thanks to hard work, a little bit of luck, and over a million dollars in federal and state corporate welfare. Out of all the businesspeople available in the country to use to send this message, Romney’s campaign didn’t even adequately vet their Obama-hating generic middle-aged blue-collar rich guy.
By contrast, in the wake of the Aurora shootings, the Obama campaign took the opportunity to speak frankly to the American people about what’s really at stake in this election, and he also directly addressed Romney’s clumsy rejection of civic society:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBorRZnqtMo] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0yK5NakN2o]
In the wake of the Aurora movie theater massacre, do you:
1. Think that we need to strengthen and expand some sort of gun control;
2. Think that someone should have pulled a concealed gun on the shooter and stopped his rampage;
3. Think that this isn’t about guns, it’s about the stigma and poor funding/coverage for mental health care;
4. None of the above – we demand answers and reaction to tragedies like this, but they are exceedingly rare, despite our ridiculously overviolent gun culture, and sometimes motivated psychopaths will engage in this type of behavior, regardless of medical or legal intervention.
Remember this guy? He was all over Channel 4 and the Shredd & Ragan show: Shredd & Ragan show about a month ago, expounding on how black people were ruining the old First Ward, etc. How minorities should stay on their own side of town and not “wreck” South Buffalo neighborhoods.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR8NBOn1WY0]
Turns out, the proud South Buffalo racist guy is William Shanahan, and he’s not only in jail, he’s a convicted felon.
“Scheme to defraud” in the 1st degree involves a systematic, ongoing effort to defraud or obtain property under false pretenses from 10 or more people, or fewer depending on the value of the property and the age of the victim. This is a class E felony.
Robbery in the 3rd degree involves “forcible stealing” through the use or threat of physical force on a person to take his belongings. According to the New York State Penal Law, this is a class D felony.
Irony is a guy who complains about “the minorities” and their crime ruining neighborhoods, yet is a convict himself.
Erie County Democratic Chairman Len Lenihan is leaving, and a reorganization meeting will take place in mid-September – shortly after the primaries – to elect his successor.
Several candidates have come forward seeking that office, and I’ve already seen quite a few bitter, angry comments about them all from a variety of people. As if any of it matters. Really, as if any of it matters.
Well, I should qualify that. If you rely on the party boss for your job, I suppose it matters. And smug Republicans should look around, because they’re no different on this point. Next GOP hack who tells me how bad Obamacare and socialism are while collecting a state check with state benefits and state pension will be invited to go expletive himself.
But to average western New Yorkers, it has very little bearing on anything. Our byzantine election law and ballot-access systems will remain the same. The way in which candidates are selected will remain the same. There will continue to be dealmaking and secrecy and quids pro quo inherent in the job of party committee chair. The only difference will be whether the new chairman will be able to hand out enough gimmes to splinter factions to ensure more frequent loyalty. And even on that point, an operative who is aligned with, or who appeases, a faction led by someone who actively supports Republicans or regressive homophobic Democrats is not a chairman Democrats should want.
I’m absolutely not looking forward to the next few months, because there are a handful of important races for Democrats that can do without clumsy, hyper-nerdy gang warfare between party factions. But it would behoove the various faction partisans to set aside past hatreds and insults and select someone who can at least have a chance to unite the party, elect Democrats, and raise money to do so.
Paranoid Parrot
1. Homophobia: From the Niagara Falls Reporter, as part of a story about why fighting is good for hockey.
Ha ha! Gays! The ways in which the passage above is offensive are many, but to suggest that gays are not manly, or are emasculated; and to contrast the desirability of fighting versus homosexuality are idiotic and ignorant. Chances are, there are plenty of gay guys who could beat the living crap out of the author, so I fail to see the validity of the argument.
Since that paper got a new publisher with a regressive attitude towards women and who expounds on “manliness”, this sort of thing is to be expected.
2. Islamophobia: Member of Congress and renowned lunatic Michele Bachmann (R-Cloudcuckooland) refuses to be out-crazied by the likes of Allen West, so she had her own Joe McCarthy Moment this past week, “revealing” that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the highest levels of the federal government Islamo-Kenyan-Indonesian N0bama Administration. Actually, the term she used was downright pornographic, “deep penetration in the halls of our United States government”. When asked to clarify, she singled out Huma Abedin, who is the wife of disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner and an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Abedin also happens to be Muslim (married to a Jewish man, incidentally, thus proving that co-existence is possible).
A writer for Salon summarized the six-degrees-of-terrorism in which Bachmann engages:
As evidence, she pointed to Abedin’s late father, Professor Syed Z. Abedin, and a 2002 Brigham Young University Law Review article about his work. Bachmann points to a passage saying Abedin founded an organization that received the “quiet but active support” of the the former director of the Muslim World League, an international NGO that was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe in the 1970s through 1990s. So, to connect Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to go through her dead father, to the organization he founded, to a man who allegedly supported it, to the organization that man used to lead, to Europe in the 1970s and 1990s, and finally to the Brotherhood.
Ms. Abedin’s office released this statement:
They are nothing but vicious and disgusting lies that have no place in reasonable political discourse. And anyone who traffics in them should be ashamed of themselves.
Finally, a homophobic nominally Christian woman from Minnesota is willing to stand up to the Islamic faith! To his credit, Senator John McCain took the Senate floor to blast Bachmann, as everyone with a brain should. Always. About everything.
3. Omniphobia: “traditional marriage” enthusiast and drug addict Rush Limbaugh claims that, “Bane”, the villain in the new Batman movie, was thusly named so that the Hollywood media elite (which is code, incidentally, for a different type of hatred) can equate Mitt Romney’s “Bain Capital” with evil, or something. Bane was actually created by comic book writers in 1993. So, you’d have to believe that it was a very prescient conspiracy, indeed.
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Photo by amstefano988 on Flickr
Margaret Sullivan, the Buffalo News’ editor-in-chief, announced on Monday that she would be leaving the News this summer to become the New York Times’ “public editor” – a position formerly known as “ombudsman”. I wish her well in her new position.
It does, however, raise some questions about the News. The Buffalo News performs a valuable public service, and it’s Buffalo’s only daily newspaper. What does a public editor do, exactly?
“The role of the public editor is to represent readers and respond to their concerns, critique Times journalism and increase transparency and understanding about how the institution operates,” the media group said in a statement.
“With the vast changes in journalism in recent years, the new public editor will seek new avenues for that mission.”
Sullivan will continue to write a print column, “but she will focus on a more active online role: as the initiator, orchestrator and moderator of an ongoing conversation about The Times’s journalism,” the statement said.
That will include a blog and Web page on NYTimes.com, along with an active social media presence.
Given that New York is a three-daily-paper town, the residents of the city get choices in terms of the type of paper, coverage, and editorial voice they want. The Times transcends that, however. It’s the closest thing we have to a national daily paper of record. The Buffalo News is shrinking. It regularly trumpets that it remains “profitable”, but in the past 10 years or so, it’s lost an entire roster of talented writers, and its online efforts are sometimes successful, sometimes bizarre, and inexplicably unintegrated with the more youthful and vibrant Buffalo.com outlet.
To this day, Sullivan misapprehends what the Buffalo News is in this new media environment. The News is poised to erect a paywall because it believes that it is in the newspaper printing business rather than the journalism and information business. It will be charging 99 cents to obtain online something that costs 75 cents to buy in paper form; that’s 99 cents for something that’s free to distribute versus 75 cents for something that involves paper, ink, trucks, and a wide distribution network. That’s fewer eyeballs looking at the content, looking at the ads accompanying that content.
I don’t get it. The paywall, and its regressive, absurd pricing structure, further cleave the paper from the community it serves. No one wins – combat decreasing physical circulation by decreasing online circulation? That’s the job qualification for a public editor? Chats that Sullivan has hosted at the Buffalo News’ website revealed nothing along the lines of a public editor role, merely defense for the alleged impartiality of certain columnists and coverage.
We’re reminded that the News remains profitable; that Papa Buffett remains supportive. Profitability is maintained despite a drop in circulation, because veteran writers would rather take a buy-out than stick around. The News prints lots of things for a fee on their state-of-the-art machinery, including the New York Times.
But Sullivan’s new job – why exactly doesn’t a one-paper town have an ombudsman? Isn’t the News’ duty to its readers somewhat higher, given that there is no print competition? Or is that duty alleviated because of occasional criticism or analysis from online competition like Artvoice, Buffalo Rising, or Investigative Post?
After all, most people buy the News for the coupons. The coupons. Isn’t that a damning indictment? Doesn’t that discourage the talented writers who remain at the News, who have been recently placed in new, high-profile beats, or sent out to report on goings-on in suburban town halls, muscling in on the Bees’ turf? How long did Janice Okun stick around expounding on the relative pros and cons of booth dimensions? How many more times will Bob McCarthy repeat his patent bullshit about Chris Collins being scandal-free and fulfilling all the promises? How many more times will Donn Esmonde – nominally retired – write glowing profiles of the newest and best thing said or done by the Elmwood intelligentsia?
It will be interesting to see how the Buffalo News changes after Sullivan’s departure. Change is inevitable because I don’t think the paywall is going to fix anything. I also believe that the News is in the business of journalism, not in the business of printing a paper. It should be spending money and using resources to create a 21st century newsroom and a product that is less reliant on coupons and gimmickry, and better integrates itself into the networks of people, groups, and neighborhoods that make up WNY.
The internet shook the newspaper business to its core. Very few, if any, papers, have adapted well to that shift to the new media landscape. Sullivan kept the paper afloat under monopolistic market conditions. Buffalo.com is unable to integrate with BuffaloNews.com – banner ads promote each in the other. What is your opinion of the Buffalo News? Do you buy it? Subscribe? What reporters do you appreciate and follow? I enjoy the work of Tim Graham, Matt Spina, Denise Jewell Gee, Andrew Galarneau, Aaron Besecker, and Steve Watson, to name a few.
You go to the Newseum in Washington, and you get the very real sense that it’s a museum honoring the relics of pre-internet news gathering and dissemination. As people shift from paper to computer to tablets, the Buffalo News has been playing catch-up, oftentimes frustratingly so. We criticize the News because it’s the only game in town. Because it’s the only game in town, it has a duty to be better; more responsive, accessible, and transparent to the community it serves.
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