The First: First Amendment Project's Weblog

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Condemn No Evil

2009-12-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

The latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine includes an interview with Jytte Klausen about her new book on the Danish cartoons crisis and why Yale University Press chose to publish it without any illustrations. Index on Censorship positions itself as Britain's "leading organisation promoting free expression."

With more than a touch of irony, Index on Censorship also elected to publish the interview without including the cartoons, instead publishing the board's decision not to publish the cartoons, and the sole but vigorous dissent of a board member, Kenan Malik.

Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, describing Yale’s original decision as “idiotic”, pointed
out that he has “written and lectured extensively about the incident and shown
the cartoons without any negative reaction”. And, as Jo Glanville, editor of
Index on Censorship, observed in an article in the Guardian earlier this year
critical of Random House, pre-emptive censorship often creates a
“self-fulfilling prophecy”. In assuming that an “offensive” work will invite
violence one both entrenches the idea that the work is offensive and helps
create a culture that makes violence more likely.

Back in February 2006, I made the decision, in my capcity as editor and publisher of Annoy.com, to publish all of the Danish cartoons.

Along with the following explanation

"The following 12 images were published in Denmark's Jyllands Posten newspaper, which
sparked the furor among Muslims globally. The reason they are being displayed
here is not to provoke, despite this site's name, but to allow our users to make
an informed evaluation themselves. For the same reasons, we published Nick
Berg's beheading and James Kirkup's poem. After two federal court cases, one
before the United States Supreme Court, Annoy.com’s hard fought commitment to
free speech – not an automatic guarantee, even in the West -- cost a lot in
terms of time, determination and resources.

We are not oblivious to the fact that religious and cultural differences are far more
complex than anything we could articulate in this small space, but our
fundamental belief is this. Freedom of expression is not reserved for those
wishing to express their religious beliefs, but also those who question
them."

Author of The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones' response to Index on Censorship's decision on Redroom:
No Laughing Matter: Index on Censorship Censors Itself

Index of Censorship magazine: See No Evil

Index on Censorship board member, Kenan Malik's, dissent.

Ralph Lauren: Impossibly Skinny, Impossibly Fashionable

2009-10-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

Yep. Believe it or not, the Ralph Lauren model above has not been manipulated. At least not by me. By Ralph's fashion empire. He placed her in a slightly different context however. Note the body types though. Spot any differences?

I cannot believe in 2009 we still have to vomit our guts out, or slice off half our abdomens to fit into crappy clothes designed for holocaust victims. It's not just Ralph Lauren. The entire fashion industry seems to be fixated on perpetuating this bullshit. I hope Ralph Lauren comes after me. I'll have to gorge on laxatives to fit into one of his outfits to wear to court. Below would constitute my response:

Annoy.com deals with a subjects of intense public concern. These subjects have been and are the subject of acute debate in the media. Annoy.com constitutes both a reference work and a visual commentary that is relevant and important to the debate. It is speech entitled to the greatest and strictest protection under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

As far as their trademark is concerned, I acknowledge those rights. However, protection for trademark rights under the Lanham Act is limited to protection against another's use of a designation to identify its business or in marketing its
goods or services in a way that causes a likelihood of confusion. Such trademark
rights do not override First Amendment rights.

Eat it Ralph. Or at least have your models eat it.

For more context:

Last month, Xeni blogged about the photoshop disaster that is this Ralph Lauren advertisement, in which a model's proportions appear to have been altered to give her an impossibly skinny body ("Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis"). Naturally, Xeni reproduced the ad in question. This is classic fair use: a reproduction "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting," etc.

However, Ralph Lauren's marketing arm and its law firm don't see it that way. According to them, this is an "infringing image," and they thoughtfully took the time to send a DMCA takedown notice to our awesome ISP, Canada's Priority Colo. One of the things that makes Priority Colo so awesome is that they don't automatically act on DMCA takedowns. Instead, they pass them on to us and we talk about whether they pass the giggle-test.

This one doesn't.

Cory Doctorow, The criticism that Ralph Lauren doesn't want you to see!, BoingBoing.net, Octber 6, 2009

Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis.

Xeni Jardin, Ralph Lauren opens new outlet store in the Uncanny Valley, BoingBoing.net, September 29, 2009

When Ralph Lauren tried to remove a creepily retouched advertisement from the net, was it embarrassed by graphic design woes, or by a cutting hatchet job by an unknown prankster?

It's obvious by now that Ralph Lauren *hates* being mocked. They hate being mocked so much that they ordered their attack lawyers to send letters trying to fool ISPs into pulling an "infringing" advertisement featuring a ridiculously skinny model (in fact, our posting of the image was fair use, not infringement; Ralph Lauren's takedown notices are bogus and they should know better).

It's also obvious that the photo of Filippa Hamilton used in the Ralph Lauren advertisement was digitally manipulated. But we still have three questions: 1) who, exactly, gave Ms. Hamilton the Olive Oyl physique? 2) If the photo was manipulated after it appeared in the advertisement, why didn't Ralph Lauren's law firm make mention of that in their silly DMCA takedown notice? and 3) Where's the original advertisement?

Mark Frauenfelder, Searching for the skinny on Ralph Lauren ad, BoingBoing.net, October 8, 2009

Anonymity: Social responsibility, civility...or fear?

2009-09-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

An article in the New York Times, China Web Sites Seeking Users’ Names, reveals a new intrusion by Chinese authorities. This argument against anonymity has been made here in the United States as well. Recently Google revealed the name of a formerly anonymous blogger who had dared to call former model, Liskula Cohen, a skanky ho. The outed blogger, Rosemary Port, has threatended to file a $15 million lawsuit against Google. While most attorneys think she stands little chance of winning, most of the coverage I read appeared largely unsympathetic to Port's privacy claims. But back to China...

... in early August, without notification of a change, news portals like
Sina, Netease, Sohu, and scores of other sites began asking unregistered users
to sign in under their real names and identification numbers, said top editors
at two of the major portals affected. A Sina staff member also confirmed the
change.

The editors said the sites were putting into effect a
confidential directive issued in late July by the State Council Information
Office, one of the main government bodies responsible for supervising the
Internet in China.

The new step is not foolproof, the editors
acknowledged. It was possible for a reporter to register successfully on several
major sites under falsified names and ID and cellphone numbers.

Does government regulation represent an incursion on free speech and individual
privacy, or are we truly unable to manage this stuff ourselves

Cry My Diluted Swastika

2009-08-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

As the rhetoric heats over healthcare reform, the swastika has taken center stage. The problem is that no one knows whether the once dreaded symbol is being used to identify the target or the perpetrator. And therein lies the danger.

We live in toxic times.

The increasing displays of vitriolic calls to violence, fueled by frothy-mouthed commentators like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh, and condoned – if not exacerbated – by cowardly elected officials are menacing and troubling.

The tone of discourse that America saw during the Presidential election, unbridled anger and blatant racism stirred by politicians like Sarah Palin was finally overshadowed by the media’s shift in focus once Barack Obama won the election.

As the world rejoiced in a President with a beautiful, intelligent wife, adorable young daughters and the ability to string a sentence together without sounding like a village idiot, the racists and the haters stewed and simmered. The seeming dissipation did not last long however, despite the media’s love fest with Obama, and although critics on the right loudly condemned Obama’s economic stimulus package before the ink had even dried, they strained credibility, covered only by Fox News and right wing blogs.

On April 7, 2009, a report released by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” was greeted with outrage by Republicans and naturally right wing extremists, who used it as a tool to warn against the President’s nefarious agenda to curtail both the First and Second Amendments.

The report included a caveat that “threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups during 2009 have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts,” although the election of the first black President, a faltering economy and “the possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

The stated goal of the report – to “effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States” -- was irrelevant. From Joe Scarborough on MSNBC to the obvious suspects on Fox News and right wing blogs, the report was roundly criticized as nothing more than a slanderous attack against anyone opposed to Obama’s liberal, socialist agenda.

On June 10, 2009, 88-year-old white supremacist and vocal Holocaust denier, James von Brunn shot and killed Stephen T. Johns, a guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Racist and anti-Semitic screeds were found in his car parked outside the museum. According to a court affidavit, a notebook was found with a handwritten note reading, "You want my weapons — this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews."

On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was assassinated as he attended a Sunday church service in Wichita, Kansas. Frequently targeted by extremists for willingness to perform late-term abortions, Dr. Tiller was gunned down by Scott Roeder, who has since become a darling of the radical and ironically termed “pro-lifers.” Jail visits have included prominent leaders of the anti-abortion movement, such as the Army of God, a fringe hate group that unapologetically and openly glorifies murder and violence against physicians, women and clinics in their purported defense of the unborn. And, of course, homosexuals.

Obama’s healthcare plan was the perfect catalyst to rile up anyone ideologically opposed to his policies, notably bitter McCain/Palin supporters – the same ones who were chanting “kill him, kill him” at pre-election rallies. Particularly after the fringe “Birthers” movement headed by Orly Taitz and Alan Keyes challenging Obama’s citizenship gained widespread support following support by CNN’s Lou Dobbs, was widely discredited after offering an easily refutable fake Kenyan birth certificate as evidence.

Astroturfing campaigns – namely well funded campaigns by industry lobbyists to appear as if they are grassroots efforts -- have turned town hall meetings into increasingly high-pitched battlegrounds. Egged on by groups with ties to insurance industry lobbyists, the “disruption” of town hall meetings continues to get more explosive by the day.

The strategy has been not to argue any counterpoint, but rather to drown out any other expression at all, and to ironically dismiss any criticism other than to bolster arguments that their First Amendment protections are being eroded. Fear mongers continue to propagate lies designed to play on the fears of those already scared, and who have yet to reconcile that a black man was elected President of the United Sates. Their America!

According to ABC News, the Secret Service has launched an investigation of a Maryland man who held a sign reading "Death to Obama" and "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids" outside a town hall meeting this week.

The batty, barely coherent former half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who excoriated late night TV host, David Letterman, for making a joke about her daughter being “knocked up,” (even though one of her daughters had indeed been), and daring to shine a public spotlight on her children, took to Facebook to attack Obama’s “death panels” that she irresponsibly and inaccurately alleged would kill her parents and child with Down Syndrome, using her defenseless child as nothing more than a political prop to foment fear, hatred and mistrust.

On Fox News, Glenn Beck claimed President Obama harbored a "deep-seated hatred of white people" and accused him of being "racist." Only after he simulated poisoning Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, did advertisers begin bolting in droves; while Beck continues to spew his Rupert Murdoch funded hatred. Apparently UPS, HSBC, Visa, Pearle Vision and Broadview Home Security are still willing to affiliate themselves with this whack job. Visa, it’s everywhere you don’t want to be.

As the rhetoric heats, the swastika has taken center stage. The problem is that no one knows whether the once dreaded symbol is being used to identify the target or the perpetrator.

An astonishing editorial on healthcare reform in the Washington Times, laced with Nazi imagery, titled “No 'final solution,' but a way forward,” saw fit to inform readers of Nazi Germany’s Aktion T4 program in which “children and adults with disabilities, and anyone anywhere in the Third Reich was subject to execution who was blind, deaf, senile, retarded, or had any significant neurological condition, encephalitis, epilepsy, muscular spasticity or paralysis.”

Demonstrators both inside and outside town hall meetings hold up signs depicting Obama as Hitler, and his attempts to reform healthcare as a giant step in his radical socialist, communist fascist agenda, seemingly unaware of the inherent differences among socialism, communism and fascism.

On August 5, 2009, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi suggested the opponents at town hall meetings were there as a result of astroturfing. “They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare." Brian Baird , a Washington Democrat who has received death threats, later apologized for accusing health care opponents at town halls of a “lynch mob mentality” and their “close to Brownshirt tactics.”

The same week, radio-host Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners: “Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." He also stated; “"There are far more similarities between Nancy Pelosi and Adolf Hitler than between these people showing up at town halls to protest a Hitler-like policy."

Limbaugh told Washington Examiner's Byron York, “I've been listening to the left compare George W. Bush to Hitler for eight years. I've been listening to Democrats and the left compare conservatism to Nazis my whole career. This time I responded. In kind, by comparing the radical left policies of the Nazis to today's radical left leadership of the Democrat (sic) Party.”

Limbaugh’s comment is possibly the only intelligent remark he’s made over this whole fracas. That the left likened George Bush, and his policies, to Hitler is true. As an artist, I personally made frequent references to similarities to policies of the Bush administration and those of the Nazi Party.

The fundamental difference is that the left’s opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the constitutional desecration wrought by the Patriot Act, eavesdropping and spying outside the purview of FICA courts, black sites conducting torture on foreign soil, the politicization of the Department of Justice, extraordinary rendition and a host of other flagrant violations of the constitution were not masking a real and dangerous racism. And comparing those to Nazi regime tactics is not that difficult. Indeed, it may alienate some, or leave little room for meaningful debate or for others, trivialize the Nazi’s murderous rampage.

The coverage on the left by the likes of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, point to the Nazi rhetoric as a disturbing trend in a rise of hate speech. Seeking to criticize Obama as a Nazi, whether through imagery or rhetoric, is speech firmly protected by the First Amendment. Nazi comparisons, not matter how distasteful to some, are not the same as inciting people to violence, expression that the First Amendment does not protect.

Protestors at town hall meetings, like William Kostric, carrying signs with the same quote that Timothy McVeigh had on his T-shirt when arrested, packing unconcealed 9-mm Smith and Wesson handguns (actions protected by both the First and Second amendments respectively), are a lot more alarming than those hurling Nazi accusations, to be sure, but are still protected. And, more so than under the previous administration. As USA Today reported in 2006, “months before the 2004 election, dozens of people across the nation were banished from or arrested at Bush political rallies, some for heckling the president, others simply for holding signs or wearing clothing that expressed opposition to the war and administration policies.”

During the Presidential campaign, a man with a Star of David atop his head, admitting he doesn't want a black man as president hanged an Obama effigy in his front yard. An act mimicked by an unidentified protester at an anti-Obama healthcare rally in Salisbury, Maryland, where freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil was hung in effigy, the protestor smilingly posing with his handiwork, reminiscent of photographs of lynchings from the South, where such disturbing imagery was used to send postcards.

A four-foot wide swastika painted over the sign at congressman, David Scott's Smyrna, Georgia office stood out from some of the hyperbolic signage at town hall meetings. A "Blue Dog" Democrat, David Scott is black, and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Unlike Nazi references related to Obama or Pelosi, the painting of a swastika on the premises of a black man has that unmistakable message that crosses that First Amendment line. As unmistakable as a fiery cross.

For the right wing extremists, neo-Nazi’s, resurgent Ku Klux Klan members and others harboring racist sentiments, comparing Obama to Hitler is blasphemous. Imagery of Obama as a Nazi must irk neo-Nazis and white supremacists as much as it did Hitler when Leni Riefenstahl’s cameras captured the beauty and grace of athlete Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

It’s not the people holding signs comparing Obama to Hitler that America needs to be worried about. Fueled and fed by commentators, politicians and the media, it’s the ones whose racist hatred is being masked by more sinister, less obvious expression. Like heathcare.

Free Speech is Sacred

2009-03-17T18:58:00.000-07:00

A well reasoned, and articulate criticism of the UN's decision to even contemplate a resolution banning religious criticism, by Pat Condell.

June 2007 FAP Newsletter

2007-06-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

“At a time when access to information, and free speech and press freedom are all under attack, First Amendment Project should be cherished and supported as an essential resource, both for independent journalists and the community at large.”
– Sarah Olson, independent journalist

Acclaimed independent print and radio journalist Sarah Olson found herself on the witness list in the Army’s court martial proceedings against Lt. Ehren Watada. Olson was one of the first journalists to interview Lt. Watada, the officer who criticized the Iraq War and who would later refuse to deploy to Iraq. The Army charged Lt. Watada with “conduct unbecoming an officer” based on his statements to Olson and others, and Olson was served a subpoena to testify at the court martial. First Amendment Project represented Olson pro bono.

“Thanks to their superlative advice, I had access to the full range of information I needed in order to make what amounted to a very personal decision,” said Olson. The subpoena was ultimately withdrawn without Olson having to testify.

YOUR $4 A MONTH WILL HELP FIRST AMENDMENT PROJECT
CONTINUE ITS IMPORTANT WORK. DONATE NOW.

"First Amendment Project’s commitment to free speech and justice is unparalleled. Without their invaluable and pro-bono assistance I would likely still be in jail today. I am eternally grateful for the help and guidance they provided."
-- Josh Wolf, independent journalist/blogger

When freelance journalist/documentarian/blogger, Josh Wolf, was finally released from federal prison after 228 days of confinement, First Amendment Project was at his side. Wolf had been held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with a federal court subpoena calling for his testimony and unpublished video of a protest.

First Amendment Project joined Wolf’s legal team as he appealed the contempt order, and stayed with him during his confinement – which served as the longest confinement of a journalist on contempt charges in recent U.S. history. First Amendment Project took the lead in securing Wolf’s release after the federal government dropped its demand that Wolf testify before the grand jury.

Since 1992, First Amendment Project has provided pro bono legal representation to independent journalists such as Sarah Olson and Josh Wolf who lack the financial and legal backing of a major media organization. First Amendment Project has also represented numerous activists, advocates, artists and other nonprofit organizations who either have been sued for exercising their free speech and free press rights or file lawsuits to enforce their rights to speak, publish, and access governmental records and proceedings.

First Amendment Project is the only nonprofit organization in the country dedicated to providing free legal services exclusively on free speech and free press issues.

First Amendment Project relies on private donations to continue to offer free legal services to this constituency that would otherwise be without legal representation. We need your help so that we can continue to help others.

Please make a donation today. To celebrate our successes in this first half of 2007, First Amendment Project is asking its supporters to sign up for recurring donations of at least $4 a month. Your $4 a month donation will go a long way to helping First Amendment Project promote free speech and free press rights. Click here to sign up right now.

A CHALLENGE TO OUR SUPPORTERS: Already a First Amendment Project supporter? Then accept our challenge: Recruit five friends to sign up as recurring donors at least the $4 a month level. We will reward you with a special notice in our next newsletter and a free gift.

Fair Use and Copyright

2007-06-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

"Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University provides this humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms."

For more information: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/documentary-film-program/film/a-fair-y-use-tale

American Liberal Liberties Union

2007-05-24T21:10:00.000-07:00

In an editorial in The Wall Street Journal, The American Liberal Liberties Union, Wendy Kaminer takes the ACLU to task for trending towards what she sees as a selective approach to free speech.

This is not the same organization that once took pride in its costly, principled decision to defend the rights of neo-Nazis to march in a community of Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Ill. Of course the ACLU hasn't definitively abandoned its defense of speech: Large, national organizations change incrementally. But people should no longer depend on the ACLU to defend what they preach (especially at a cost), if it disapproves of what they practice.

In June 1998, my attorneys filed a request to allow my former company, ApolloMedia, to submit an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court of California in a First Amendment case, Oscar Aguilar et al. vs. Avis Rent A Car System, Inc., et al., that was being observed nationwide as a harbinger of speech in the American workplace. ApolloMedia's amicus marked the first time that Supreme Court determinations pertaining to the Internet were being applied to speech in the workplace, following the Court of Appeal's instruction to the government to create a list of "proposed epithets" or what we termed "Government-Forbidden Words."

ApolloMedia opposed the position taken by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in this case. The ACLU had filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs alleging that inappropriate workplace speech created a hostile work environment. An appellate court required the trial court to propose a list of "proposed epithets" or "Government-Forbidden Words" to be enjoined from the workplace.

As I stated in a media release back in 1998:

We respectfully disagree with the ACLU on this particular issue. We are not implying that inappropriate or racist speech be an acceptable workplace protocol, or encouraging its use, but the courts should not confuse pure speech with conduct, nor allow government to determine which words may or may not be uttered, especially without any regard for context or occasion.

One of my attorneys, William Bennett Turner clarified the distinction between recourse available to victims of verbal abuse versus a prior restraint enacted by the court itself:

Making certain kinds of workplace speech illegal is a difficult issue. The main problem with the lower court's ruling in this case is not whether the victim of verbal abuse can sue for damages, but whether the government -- the court -- can issue orders prohibiting certain disfavored words from being said at all, regardless of the context in which they're said.

While we had taken a position that opposed the ACLU, it's worth noting that a year earlier, in 1997, in addition to filing a lawsuit against Attorney General Janet Reno (ApolloMedia v. Reno) challenging a provision of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) which was ultimately heard by the United States Supreme Court, we had also filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the ACLU in another CDA challenge before the Supreme Court, Reno v. ACLU.

So although I generally believe the ACLU to be well intended, and have demonstrated my support by filing court documents supporting their position, their tendency to allow political correctness to muddy their free speech purity, as Kaminer refers to in her editorial, is not all that new a phenomenon.

Declan McCullagh, the CNet journalist who also happened to be one of the plaintiffs in the 1996 CDA case, ACLU v. Reno, made the same point on his Politech website:

It's true that ACLU litigators have done terrific work on free speech cases before, and will continue to do so. It has represented me as a plaintiff in the 1996 CDA case, for which I will always be grateful, and has devoted countless resources to COPA as well. The organization boasts the most principled and ardent First Amendment lobbyists in Washington, who are willing to take controversial stands on things like outlawing morphed child porn (a stand later vindicated by the Supreme Court).

But those attorneys and lobbyists ultimately report to a national board that seems to be growing more politically correct by the day. (Wendy was a dissident board member; I'm not sure if she's still on the board.)

This is not exactly a new phenomenon. Liberals and progressives have long been split between their totalitarian-minded leftist wing that loves to enforce political correctness through "hate speech" laws and campus speech codes -- and those who recognize the social and political dangers inherent in banning speech that someone dislikes, and believe the answer to objectionable speech is more speech.

The Right of Peaceful Assembly. Gone.

2007-05-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

By Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez
May 3, 2007
TheUnapologeticMexican.org

THERE IS NO RIGHT TO PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY IN AMERICA. There were signs earlier, it's true. But now it can be said to be official. File this along with what you read on blogs about habeas corpus and wiretapping, this latest display of contempt for our rights: here is a clear example of excessive use of police force, of tyranny by weaponry, of unwarranted police aggression, assault and battery—on women, children, and citizens alike. The police issue their typical statements about investigations and being upset, but give it a month (when the results of thier "internal report" is due and we've seen how these turn out time and time again) and it doesn't matter anyway. They have done what they wanted, made their mark, instilled fear. And despite what they say, they didn't do this because some people stepped off the sidewalk, bullshit. We know why the cops were there and in such gear, and with such attitudes and agendas. The government fears the numbers they saw last year on 2006. In 2006 we actually showed, lived out, demonstrated the Power of the People, and it scared the living shit out of our keepers. Because America is only about the Power of the People in word. That's advertising to keep us defending our jailers, paying our taxes, and joining the ~~grinder~~ military. America is really about the Power of the Few. And the Power of the Gun. And the Power of the Dollar. And the Power of the Lie.

So this year not only did the press keep very quiet about the May Day marches (as if they wouldn't be important to report on in context of all the ICE raids since, if nothing else!), but the city of LA—a city infamous for their brutal and lawless police—sent out their goons in riot gear to chase Americans out of a public park and fire weapons at them, disregarding the children, of all things.

I was over on the Southern side of Macarthur park and I saw the police move in on the park, shooting non lethal weaponry, tear gas guns openly into a crowd of women and children, unarmed women and children, unarmed men...this was a peaceful demonstration, the police showed up here and turned it into a violent demonstration.

—L.A. man at MacArthur park [YouTube vid below]

We got a right to be here. Fuck this running shit! This is how they got us all scared. Nobody wants to stand their fucking ground.

—L.A. Woman at MacArthur park [YouTube vid below]

I know what these cops do. I've seen it. They flood the area with hostile, armed men looking for a fight. Ordered to have a fight. I've lived it. I've seen their faces up close, seen them snarl at requests for help or aid, seen them grab girls by the hair, seen them stomp on instruments just to watch them crumple. They are sadists. I can't speak for their life or totality of spirit, but once they are in those uniforms, they are pure sadists. Once you send in these numbers armed in riot gear, you are sending in bullies to begin a fight. You are free to disagree, but you will not convince me, because my life has not only spun out in front of a computer monitor or TV screen, you see.

Basically everyone is out of the park, and they are still firing.

—Narrator of video taken at May Day 2007 police action [below]

A naked display of violence acted out upon the powerless by the power-holders in violation with the bedrock of our codified "rights," and today the blogs and news sites discuss Republican debates, TV-shapes, and one of the many wars we started overseas. Wars started in the name of preserving our Freedoms and Laws. Which were, yesterday, mocked and made irrelevant. They will excuse endangering lives and causing blind panic to break out and military type formations of tear gassing, rubber bullet firing battallions because people "stepped off the sidewalk." We know what this means. It's like when someone walks into a bar or a gathering of other people and insults and pushes around people until he gets them to glare or raise a hand or stand up. Then the bully gleefully engages in the fight they wanted so badly the whole time. The one they lacked the courage to outright state was their goal. It's what I call the "Rio Grande" method of beat-down, for my own reasons.

Oye: Fuck the police and thier terrorist tactics. Yes, I am very pissed off. Maybe I have enough for both of us. Dunno. But it shouldn't work that way. I hope once you watch the video below, you will join me a bit. There is a huge and egregious violation of our most dear rights being mocked here, the Constitution itself made a joke. Yes, it is made a joke on brown people. But not only have laws been violated, but basic human morality has been completely disregarded, and our National Media has said what? Nada? Just passed along the cops' lawyer's words? That they are investigating to determine IF excessive forced was used? Watch the video! People fleeing in terror, as if an invading army has stormed the streets in black riot gear and is firing tear gas and hard, rubber bullets into the crowd! Because it is, and they are! Rubber bullets fired on crowds where women and children are? And innocent men, let's not forget! We have the right to peaceful assembly, too! By birth, let alone the "Goddamned Piece of Paper!" Pardon me garçon but WHAT THE FUCK is WRONG with you people, you so-called "Fourth Estate? Has all the People® magazine, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and American Idol, and polyethylene glycol wiped the very essence of your molecules out, churned them into pixels that respond to whatever thugs pronounce? How can you claim any "America" and "American ideals" and "American freedoms" and NOT be enraged at this? What if that woman was your MOTHER? They are people's mothers!!!!

But yeah—the press and cops are counting on Average Americans not to care because they will tout the gathering and the abuse as nothing more than ALIENZ being corralled. And who cares about ALIENZ????

And you think this doesn't apply to you? Do you, then, silently give up your right to assemble in great numbers? Because that's what this is about. Power of the People. Numbers that freaked out the old white men in Washington. They don't want to see us in numbers, and they don't want us to feel empowered. But they don't want that for any of us! Brown, black, or white! They want us all living in fear. Always in fear. And when the rhetoric fails to corral us, the violence is loosed. This is the same tactics they used on us in NYC, on the RNC 1800. Same marching lines, same "sidewalk" terminology, same mass attack that ignored your actual complicity in any crime.

They are testing themselves out, flexing their crowd-assault/control, practicing on us like the USA Military tests new weapons each time they bomb, and horrors like Shock And Awe become corpse-littered gleeful practice ranges for the white-hearted men in the halls of American power.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

—The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen

Isn't it interesting what happens to those who speak truth to power and remind the people where the power truly lies—in themselves? To those who preach unity and love? Why are those who live this, show this unity, demonstrate the awareness of this locus of power always gunned down, shot, strung up, crucified? Why are they always answered with violence? Because in the void of truth and reason thrives violence. Today we see the forces of control still hate the Power of the People, and the "goddamned piece of paper," the Constitution. We see they operate in a void of reason, and now live in a new post-9/11 fear-based mentality. A place where there is no room for reason or quaint documents.

They are not following constitution law, they are totally taking away our unalienable human rights...women...children, i mean would they do this to their own mother? to their own little sister? terrorize? They put on the uniform and think everyone is bad."

—U.S. Citizen at LA Park, May 1, 2007

People talk to me about not holding troops personally responsible for their actions. But do we then forgive police when they shoot at us, en masse, for no reason? When they teargas us because we peacefully fill a public park? They were, after all, clearly acting on orders. Police do not organize like that on a whim, or off-the-clock. So do we say they had the right? Of course some heartless and mindless maniacs on the far right are bound to justify this. Just as the chuckling, budding, Police State prefers. It will always have its defenders, acting freely on their own will and hate. Always those sad humans who think they are speaking out and making themselves stronger, not seeing the walls close in around them as they cheer.

What happened to our peaceful right to assembly? Curious? We do not have this right. If you are a teacher, don't you be lying to your classes. We do not have it. In fact—and I've known this since I was 16, learned it firsthand and have had it reinforced multiple times since—you have whatever right the cops feel like giving you at any given moment. And that, my friends, is ALL. Don't you be a naïve subject.

Here, what rights did the mothers have who could not run fast? What rights did babies or kids with respiratory issues have when the tear gas settled? what rights did the humans have who were shot at, point-blank, with huge, hard, rubber projectiles? No, the only "right" la chota gives these people is the right to run away in terror. The cops march in a tight line through the very streets of the city, as if it is a war zone, as if people were rioting, when it was these pigs themselves who brought the violence, the black-masked, stick-handed violence. They fire rubber bullets right in public, right on public streets, randomly into the terrified crowds. They attempt to hem in the people so they can mass-arrest them, or mass-attack them. For what? Tell me again? For what?

For gathering in a park. And for being brown and loud and present in great numbers.

They are making the people work for miserable wages and then on top of that they come here and fucking oppress them.

Man at MacArthur park, May Day 2007 [YouTube vid below]

One day this shit isn't gonna be people running. And one day they are gonna come prepared for the police to come.

Woman at MacArthur park, May Day 2007 [YouTube vid below]

But you will not stop us, O ancient force of force and oppression and hate and "racism." Now, again, you come. For the people. With your weaponry. That we paid for. You tiny, scared men.

Little kids are hitting the floor, bleeding, and then cops fucking shooting!....

Man at MacArthur park, May Day 2007 [YouTube vid below]

Remember Brad Will! Remember MLK! Remember the old dream of America—if you must think Like an American—the good parts of it. Remember that there are MANY more of us than them. We will need to keep this in mind one day soon, I fear. Unless we're happy with less and less and less freedoms. You gun lovers think you are safe in your home with your "right to bear arms"? You radical libertarian types think you will be safe with your collection of rifles when the Federal government drops down martial law? No, you are not. We saw in New Orleans what happened to people. The military swooped in and took away everyone's guns. Constituationally guaranteed or otherwise. You are not protected by any document. Our government knows this. They redact it at will.

Remember we have asked how so few could control and harm so many! We've asked it before! We are moving there now. They will act again, in different ways. Time and time again, chipping away at everything. Until all the talk of American Freedom is a joke to every single country and person but us, here, still living smiling and wrapped tight with the binding and blinding gloss of marketing, packaging, State propaganda, until it is only you, and your movement has been curtailed to such a tiny space you are doing jumping jacks in front of a telecreen and fearing your eyes will give away your thoughts. [Metaphor alert, trolls.]

What happens if we begin showing up at peaceful assemblies with padding under our clothes? Or football facemasks? Will they then outlaw football facemasks? Or would they then fire real bullets? I think you know my guess.

And how did this happen again? because of what, again? What caused platoons of police in riot gear to begin making war on people in public American streets and parks?

The Brown™ dared take the Constitution literally, as if it applied to us. The average person dared think they were safe from American police tyranny in 2007 in a public place exercising Constitutional rights. That was the first mistake.

What made the cops think they could get away with it? Because they know the American Media very well. And they remember all the times they get away with police brutality.

What I think is funny about this is its like the working class people pitted against the working class cops. It's just an irony that like...its a system of oppression, and when you have a fascist state...and it works. You keep people in fear and you can keep them from rising up.

They are concerned with this, these days. Because they have big plans, you know. And they don't know at what point it will be, but they know at some point, instinct will kick in and Americans will resist.

Add up the recent years, the unreported Halliburton prisons, the way they habituate the public to mass arrests and detentions, the police actions like this and the RNC mass arrests, the troops on the ground in Katrina, the loss of the Posse Comatitus protection, the Decider making clear his philosophy and hunger. Keep telling yourself they are isolated incidents. Keep thinking small. You may, one day, need to economize your range of motion.

update: Reader RickB points the way to this last video, the News take on it, from a Fox affiliate station, no less. Watcha. Even the female camera operators reporting the news and the reporters themselves get beat down by the cops. Now what ya say? Are they strange Newscast-ey Alienz? Shapeshifters perhaps? Dangerous Alien Wimmenz assuming the guise of Constitutionally-protected Americans? Good thing we have so many well-armed thugs to protect us from the scourge from outer space.

Nezua Limón Xolagrafik-Jonez is an artist and writer. His talent can be found at TheUnapologeticMexican.org, which is a site he runs. Reposted with permission.

NBC: Bringing Decency Back

2007-04-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

The famous ACT UP refrain that galvanized a movement was “Silence = Death”.

Despite a reputation for silence worthy of a monk, Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui, who peers and roommates say rarely uttered a word, let rip in a frightening, rambling, multimedia diatribe that he mailed off to NBC mid-massacre.

His perceived isolation and feelings of victimization (as a million talking heads have concluded, verified perhaps by his own contributions) fomented an intense rage that he silently withheld until Monday. His criticism and blaming of “rich kids” with “trust funds” and “debauchery” combined with his identifying with the Columbine killers revealed a resentment that might have resulted from either having been bullied or ignored because he didn’t fit in.

Yet, aside from obliterating Don Imus from the news cycle, (suggesting that had he committed this violent massacre two weeks ago, Don Imus would still be filling the airwaves with his own brand of hate and invective), he might still provide some insight as to why certain hate speech (not of the politically correct variety, but genuine threatening and fighting words that provoke violence) can have an impact that is far more dangerous than offending Al Sharpton.

As if to illustrate what the killer might have been feeling, The Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported that the killer was a 24-year-old Chinese student who arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai. (Atlantic Unbound’s James Fallows has documented the subsequent “Orwellian” cleansing of The Chicago Sun-Times’ web site to remedy the gaffe that sent shockwaves through China.) Chinese, Asian, Oriental, Korean. What’s the difference? The same thinking that Don Imus and his gang would spout about all Muslims being “stinking ragheads.”

Tart columnist Maureen Dowd is seldom at a loss for words, but her silence over the firing of Don Imus was in stark contrast to the embarrassing attempts to justify his tacit endorsement by another New York Times Imus enabler, Frank Rich – a frequent guest on the show. Yes, Rich admitted to being a hypocrite, but defended Imus on the basis that Imus was an equal-opportunity offender, railing against Jews (like Frank). Comparing him to Comedy Central’s Southpark and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, Rich failed to see the difference. Southpark is able to get away with insulting everyone because the creators hold up a mirror that educates and entertains at the same time. Same with Borat. Imus and his gang spew hate for no reason other than to see what they can get away with. Their authentic ugliness is transparent. Yes, still protected, but Rich’s claim that he hadn’t heard or didn’t appreciate the extent of Imus’ invective (or his team including Charles McCord, Sid Rosenberg, Bo Dietl and the other losers who consider themselves comedians with the same self-delusion that Sanjaya Malakar deems himself a singer) suggests that Rich is either disingenuous or an idiot. And the latter, he isn’t.

The Silence of the Dowd, however was also deafening. Perhaps she didn’t have the stomach for having to justify why she would chat with Imus as Bernard McGuirk, his Executive Producer, wondered if Representative Cynthia McKinney had ever had “white man’s jizz on her face,” or specifically referring to Dowd herself, suggested that he would apologize to her for criticizing her with “the tip of my Timberland shoe” after she posited that the Church sex abuse scandal was a pedophilia, rather than a homosexual, problem.

But Maureen Dowd has a right to remain silent, despite how bloody her hands are. Far less excusable was NBC’s Tim Russert on Meet the Press Sunday, where he squirmed so uncomfortably that even I felt sorry for him. Washington Post’s Gwen Ifill, who Imus once gallantly referred to as a “cleaning lady” thankfully did not allow Russert or David Brooks (yet another New York Times Imus enabler) to get away with their lame attempts to try and compare Don Imus to Snoop Dogg or feign indignation over McGuirk’s portrayal of Cardinal Egan (perhaps the most authentic McGuirk ever was).

This isn’t about words, it’s about context. Hell, even Ann Coulter knows that.

So in the name of decency (also known as lost advertising revenue), Don Imus was fired by NBC, who claimed that they wanted to work toward a campaign of common decency that expanded beyond the walls of their news organization with its strained credibility.

That was before they received the “multimedia manifesto” from Cho Seung-Hui.

Now watch how decency looks, grieving families be damned, when advertisers aren’t bolting.

FISA Revisited

2007-04-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

By JAYNE LYN STAHL
April 16, 2007

Remember all the hooplah, and righteous indignation, on the part of Congress, when the National Security Agency electronic surveillance program story first broke, several months ago, and word got out that Bush & Co. have been illegally monitoring e-mails, and conducting warrantless eavesdropping in defiance of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act law of 1978?

As you recall, several prominent elected officials, at that time, insisted that the practice stop and itself have oversight, unless, o f course, efforts were made to revise FISA to accommodate the bogeyman war on terror; (bogey, short for bogus, of course)

Well, over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that, as part of his legacy, the president has now decided to make changes to the existing FISA laws, changes that would allow for greater surveillance of non-citizens as well as expanded "interception" of international communications. Under the current law, a person has to be associated with a specific "terrorism" suspect, or group to come before FISA court, and be deemed eligible for for authorization to monitor their overseas calls, and e-mails. But, as part of its policy of planned obsolescence of the Constitution, the administration now to expand its snooping authority to any noncitizen it deems worthy of surveillance, using a broad brush to define that worthiness. Additionally, the new bill allows the current, and future administration, the power to store information that has only a tenuous connection to their investigation, as well as any data they come across "unintentionally," as long as it is considered it to have what they deem "significant foreign intelligence."

Importantly, the proposed legislation does not deal with the pattern of abuse in the NSA scandal, late last year, which revealed that the government has been intercepting domestic communications, and demanding telephone and Internet records, whenever it believed that there contact between someone within our borders and someone overseas posed a threat to our elusive national security..

And, lest anyone could include inconsistency as among this administration's failings,and using the Military Commissions Act as a pernicious paradigm, this proposed bill also seeks to grant immunity, not from war crimes, but from prosecution, for those telecommunications carriers, and Internet service providers, who cooperate with the government in turning over confidential telephone, and e-mail records, should you or I decide to take them to court for doing so. What's more, this immunity would be retroactive for those companies that compromised your privacy by surrendering your personal information to the government dating back as far as the wee hours after 9/11. (WaPo)

When you consider that FISA has remained intact for nearly 30 years, and that, should this president have his way with this legislation as he did with the USA Patriot Act, it, too, will remain in place for decades, it's chilling to think about its longterm effect on freedom of expression. Think about how future generations will grow up with the constant thought that Big Brother may be reading their e-mails, letters, and/or listening in on their phone calls, and not only is Ma Bell going along for the ride, but their taxes may well go to keep this national (in)security infrastructure in place. Who will write the history books, and how credible will those history books be, when the government gets to breathe down the necks of those who, in some way, try to communicate about their authentic experience of events?

It's time, yes, and way overdue, that each and every one of us who got out to vote for change, in the mid-term elections, contact members of Congress and tell them that this is not what we had in mind by a changing of the guard. It's time we let them know that the 2006 election wasn't just about the war in Iraq, it was about the war on our civil liberties, too. And, those intelligence committee meetings that dealt with NSA spying, and government overreaching into our affairs, can be seen as little more than theatre of the absurd if this is how they plan to counter the excessive, and egregious legislation being enacted, and proposed, in the name of preventing another terror attack. We need to let them know that we want our Bill of Rights back; if they can have their secrecy, we can have our privacy.

Oh yes, and those Democrats, in the Senate , who said that if the president thought that FISA needed to be reformed, in light of 9/11, then he should reform it, surely this isn't what they had in mind by that reform. And, if it is, then we need to give them a piece of our mind before the Senate Intelligence Committee convenes tomorrow , and for as long as it takes until everyone we elected to represent us understands that 2008 is just around the corner, and we're not going to accept these ongoing, and outrageous efforts to put the First Amendment on the endangered species list.

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published, poet, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter; member of PEN American Center, and PEN USA.

Free Speech, Not Consequences

2007-04-13T03:09:00.000-07:00

And so it came to pass that MSNBC, caving to intense pressure, dropped Don Imus from their morning line up. A day later, followed by a meeting with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with CBS Corp. chief executive Leslie Moonves, his radio show was killed, essentially ending the career of a man that for years had ruled the airwaves with an unimpeded barrage of bigotry and hate.

Two years ago, I warned MSNBC that Imus was tainting their brand. More than that, I questioned how they could continue to allow Imus to denigrate their journalists, as the media and political elite sustained his platform with appearances on his show.

I am a firm supporter of free speech. I have fought my own First Amendment battles all the way to the United States Supreme Court. I currently serve as President of the Board of First Amendment Project (FAP).

The Don Imus firing is not a First Amendment issue, and this is not a censorship story. Only governments censor.

Imus in the Morning was a ratings and revenue bonanza and despite a despicable slew of misogynist homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Islamic garbage, the executives at both NBC and Universal did nothing for ages.

When this story broke, MSNBC, attempting to shirk responsibility, once more, had the audacity to claim that it was not responsible for the content on the show – that it was merely a simulcast. This, despite the full blown resources of NBC journalists and technology at his disposal.

Amidst intense pressure, both MSNBC and CBS pretended that the internal cacophony of protest is what ultimately led to their decision.

Again, in 2006, in another attempt to draw attention to the damage caused by Imus, I wrote the following in an editorial titled Fox, Henhouses and Chickens:

“Despite his reputation as a provocative, albeit aging, 'shock jock,' MSNBC does a simulcast of Don Imus’ WFAN radio show, 'Imus in the Morning,' which is positioned by MSNBC as a news program, replete with the reporting muscle of NBC News at its disposal.

Despite the childish, sexist, homophobic and racist diatribes that define Imus and his crew, and have caused anchors like Contessa Brewer to cringe in embarrassment before bitter and public feuds separated them on-air forever more (or at least until MSNBC does a reality show about supposed journalists), it’s highly unlikely that a genuine NBC journalist reporting on developments in the Middle East will inspire any sympathy from groups like the 'Holy Jihad Brigades' if they happen to catch Imus referring to Arabs as stinking ragheads with dirty laundry on their heads, as he has done before. (As he sits, ironically, with a gay cowboy hat in New Jersey). Or in the case of the now-fired Imus sportscaster, Sid Rosenberg, who stated on-air that Serena and Venus Williams were best suited posing for National Geographic rather than Playboy and that Palestinians mourning the death of Yasser Arafat were 'stinking animals' upon whom the Israelis 'ought to drop the bomb right there, kill 'em all right now...' Perhaps it was the crack cocaine talking, but it was neither his drug habits nor that comment that got Rosenberg fired."

I also suggested that as long as hard-working, courageous, idealistic and responsible journalists and reporters remain willfully ignorant of the corporatization of news, and allow and accept equal billing with loud-mouthed shills, spitting deliberate provocations in an increasingly divisive substitution of content for discontent, the remaining shreds of nobility in the profession of journalism will be irreparably damaged and news will forever be defined by shallow attempts to generate ratings and revenue, and to push agendas rather than explain them.

Imus should not have been fired for what he said per se, and certainly not because the new speech nannies, replacing Tipper Gore, Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman, namely Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, demanded it. Let’s get real.

In his own defense, Imus attempted to explain that his comment could not be considered without a broader context. And tried to pass his remark off as a joke. The only problem was that even taken in context, the “joke,” as New York Times’ Bob Herbert summed up on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, was missing a punchline.

Context is important, and so the banning of certain words, regardless of the frame of reference, is an ill-informed solution. And aptly demonstrated by how many times the phrase “nappy headed hos” has been repeated in the telling of this story.

If this was really about journalists and employees at MSNBC and CBS threatening mutiny if the response wasn’t swift and fatal, this would have happened a long time ago. The only reason Imus is off the air, and it’s not a censorship issue, or even relevant whether Imus is really a racist or just playing one for laughs that only he and his cohorts find amusing, is because of the marketplace.

Had American Express Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Staples Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and General Motors Corp. not decided to pull advertising to distance their brands from the show, would MSNBC and CBS really have listened to and acted on the concerns of their journalists and employees? Such concerns didn’t seem to warrant any action before.

Imus made a point of thanking Bigelow Tea for sticking with him. A fabulous tea, mind you. Especially served in the morning with crackers.

Bill Maher, the comedian who was fired by ABC for his controversial remarks about September 11th, said it was sad to see the “swaggering mustang” broken following the implosion of his career.

For me, it wasn’t. Seeing a bullying, arrogant, blowhard brought to his knobby knees by his own making could not happened to a more deserving guy.

Imus still has the right to free speech, and the right to call whoever he wants whatever he wants. With or without appropriate context. But never forget, that speech may well be free, but never free of consequences, and is not guaranteed under the banner of a news organization striving for integrity and journalistic excellence, no matter how far short they have measured.

Who's Ho?

2007-04-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

Oh My God! Who would have guessed?

Thatch-headed shock jock, Don Imus, was suspended by MSNBC and CBS for a whole whopping two weeks following a conversation with resident twerp and Executive Producer, Bernie McGuirk (and on the phone with none other than fired Sid Rosenberg), in which Imus referred women of Rutgers University basketball team as “nappy-headed hos”.

Where to begin with the absurdity? For Imus to be mocking anyone’s hair is as ludicrous as if it was Donald Trump doing it.

But more fascinating, is the sudden controversy, since Imus has been spewing hateful garbage for years and years.

My editorial, Imus and the Flies, detailed the bizarre relationship between Imus and the news properties that wholeheartedly endorse his brand of minority-bashing content, as well as the string of washed-out, yet high profile guests, ranging from John McCain to Tim Russert, who seem to think that turning a blind eye doesn’t taint them with the same filthy brush.

The supposed contrition, aside from reducing Imus to the same stature as Seinfeld comedian Michael Richards, who also apologized with a laughable sincerity and requisite faux pas, underscored the very sentiments he aimed to defuse, which is the real, tragic joke.

News coverage have focused on Imus’ tax-sheltered Imus Ranch, for “Kids with Cancer” or the money he raises for SIDS as a demonstration of how charitable he is, as if that even relates to Imus’ own claim that he’s not a racist. “What I did was make a stupid, idiotic mistake in a comedy context,” he claimed. Hilarious, isn’t it?

Characterizing Imus’ comments as “racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable and unconscionable.” Rutgers women’s basketball coach, C. Vivian Stringer’s response demonstrated the dignity and grace Don Imus will never come close to.

Perhaps as disturbing as Imus' remarks was watching MSNBC’s General Manager, Dan Abrams, attempt to spin that the punishment fits the crime, only after berating the equally minority-offending Fox News, for being hypocritical and playing politics over their reaction to Imus. The fact that genocide existed long before the Third Reich doesn’t make it any more palatable. The comparisons are a baseless deflection that viewers should treat with the same skepticism as they do Imus’ remorse.

Imus also revealed his sincerity, claiming “I may be a white man, but I know that these young women and young black women all through that society are demeaned and degraded by their own black men and that they are called that name.” The apology with the caveat.

Censorship is not the answer. It’s simply a matter of discernment. MSNBC’s initial response – that Imus in the Morning is simply a simulcast is about as disingenuous as it gets. Do they donate the money they generate from the show? Or are they just, well, hos?

In conversations with, ironically, Al Sharpton, and amidst demonstrations led, ironically, by Jesse Jackson, the two run-to male figures on the redemption circuit that appear to represent a whole diverse community of black people, Imus has suggested he might add a black person to his team. Females or better yet, lesbians shouldn’t hold their breath though.

In a race card society, the real whores, (namely the brass at MSNBC and CBS) are far more concerned with ratings and money than who is trampled on in the process. So women and gays can still expect as much deference as the attention the Jews lavished on Mel Gibson’s use of the word “sugartits” in his infamous anti-Semitic, drunk tirade. Ask singer Kylie Minogue just how exactly MSNBC and CBS responded when, following her breast cancer diagnosis, Sid Rosenberg joked: “She won't look so pretty when she's bald with one titty."

Rest assured, misogyny and homophobia are alive and well on Imus in the Morning.

ACLU Reading: The Bookseller Who Fought for "Ulysses"

2007-04-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

"The Battle for Ulysses" tells the story of an American bookseller's struggle to publish a banned novel that became a literary classic: James Joyce's "Ulysses." Sylvia Beach moved to Paris, opened a bookstore, and was the first to stand up to censors to publish the novel. "The Battle for Ulysses" recounts Beach's personal tragedies, including the loss of her beloved bookstore and the six months she spent in a Nazi concentration camp rather than sell one of Joyce's novels to a member of the SS. It is a witty and passionate story of her tenacity and grace. Jayne Lyn Stahl adapted the play from a feature-length screenplay she wrote in 2001.

What: Staged reading of "The Battle of Ulysses" to benefit the ACLU Foundation of Southern California

When: Wednesday, April 18, 8 p.m.

Where: Odyssey Theatre Ensemble 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A.

How Much: $35-$50

RSVP: (310) 477-2055 ext. 2

The reading is co-sponsored by Stanley K. Sheinbaum, Ed Asner, Danny Goldberg, and Linda and Arthur L. Carter. Proceeds support the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Just Lie

2007-04-05T12:44:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter, the self-professed “patriot” always quick to criticize liberals calls them faggots. General Peter Pace, the fey Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, despite looking like one, (and despite his wife appearing as manly as Ann Coulter), believes he is morally superior.

This Tuesday in the Rose Garden, when asked if he concurs with General Pace’s assertion that gays are immoral, President Bush reiterated his support of the infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy concerning gays in the military stating: “I will not be rendering judgment about individual orientation...I do believe the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy is good policy.”

He also thought invading Iraq on cooked intelligence was a good idea. This is what “good policy” actually looks like.

The first of many disastrous moves by President Clinton, the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was an unworkable compromise passed to appease bigots and avoid the real issue. (And stroke the shattered ego of the uglier, less election-worthy Southern Democrat, Sam Nunn). The military had no other choice than to admit that there were just too many gays in its ranks to argue that gays couldn't serve admirably without admitting that the military was fundamentally unprepared and ineffective as a cohesive unit.

So a flawed policy, that continues to this day, and under which more than 10 000 servicemembers have been discharged, allows an absurd charade to exist, which communicates that although the military knows that gays are rife among their ranks, they don't want to know who.

The military's "Don't Tell" provision, in essence, is designed to prevent straight servicemembers - not from the anguish of knowing that some in their unit are gay, mind you - but rather from discovering who.

The military policy makes no distinction between speech and conduct. A celibate servicemember, even a virgin, professing to be gay will be discharged for homosexual conduct. There exists a rebuttable (no pun intended) presumption that the statement alone will invariably lead to prohibited conduct, and therefore is conduct already.

The military spares no expense in both the implementation and violation of its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Notorious for witch hunts and campaigns to weed out men and women they have spent millions of dollars preparing and training, a mere suggestion, or incorrectly interpreted glance, is enough to trigger an investigation which invariably leads to a discharge.

As President Bush’s Iraq adventure, and General Peter Pace’s stellar performance (under which Abu Ghraib occurred), continue to stretch the military so thin that the United States can no longer use the threat of force as a deterrent against countries like Iran or North Korea, scores of servicemembers are still weeded out and fired for being gay, even if they happen to be translators fluent in Arabic or Farsi, and able to actually interpret intercepted communications.

Even though the "Stop Loss"policy suspends many gay discharges during times of war -- presumably when unit cohesion and morale are the most critical, thus defeating the very purpose of the policy -- discharging servicemembers for their sexual orientation is tantamount to treason. Talk about aiding and abetting Al Qaeda's strategies.

Worse, in order to meet dismal recruiting numbers in all branches of the service, the military has lowered the standards of potential recruiters to include those who have not completed high school as well as felons. Even straight servicemembers who might have supported the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy are proving to be allies of those in favor of lifting the ban, correctly asserting that they place a higher premium on someone who shoots straight than who is straight. Particularly if the choice is between someone who happens to be gay versus an idiot or a criminal.

But like the Abu Ghraib scandal, the rot seems to trickle down from the top. Peter Pace’s sentiments are reflected in an email message sent by Army Recruiter Sergeant Marcia Ramode to Corey Andrew, a black, openly gay, potential recruit, suggesting he “go back to Africa and do your gay voodoo limbo tango and wango dance and jump around and prance and run all over the place half naked there and practice your gay morals over there...”

In spite of the difficult and bitter war, poorly prosecuted, those that oppose openly gay servicemembers in the military (Turkey and the United States being the only NATO countries banning openly gay servicemembers) claim that the presence of openly gay soldiers constitutes a threat to unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. So rather than encouraging an environment based on trust – the essential ingredient for unit cohesion – the policy requires that a servicemember lie, even to a superior officer, if “asked” about their sexual orientation. “Don’t Tell,” means exactly what it says. Under any circumstances.

Never mind, "Don't Ask." The question we should be asking, is whether a policy designed to create liars is supposed to foster trust and bolster military readiness? Does denying truthful expression of one's core identity -- fomenting a climate of suspicion that requires lying to create a false impression that hidden truths will make any difference in a combat situation -- engender unit cohesion?

Lie, cheat, deceive or trick your comrades -- or be discharged.

Is it any wonder that this lying President thinks “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a “good policy”?

Putting a Noose around the News

2007-02-16T18:33:00.000-08:00

By JAYNE LYN STAHL
February 16, 2007

If it seems to you you're getting the same news no matter which channel you watch, you're right, and you can thank newspaper consolidation for that. There are only three or four major newspapers left in this country, The New York Times, The Washington Post, among them; there is only one Reuters, one Associated Press, and now the FCC is investigating claims by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a New York congressman, that CBS television is "seeking to consolidate newsrooms," (United Press International) thereby introducing the concept of central command to television newsrooms.

CBS and the Writer's Guild are currently in the process of revamping their 50 year contract in some of the nation's biggest cities, which would involve mergers in such high octane markets as New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. These discussions center around staff layoffs, as well as divesting news producers of negotiating power. Clearly, the goal is to create corporate media empires which micromanage at the expense of diversity of opnion, and dissent.

Yet another remnant of the American Dream has been sacrificed at the altar of the almighty buck in an effort to reduce our collective field of perception to the size of an escargot. What's more, declaring preemptive war on news producers bolsters CBS, and others who are working towards newsroom consolidation, and a network central control, thereby emulating the empire-in-chief currently running this charade we call democracy. When there is micromanagement from the top down, decisions made by one or two people carry over to several stations, and there isn't any room for contrarianism. A climate that doesn't allow for difference, and the expression of contrary viewpoints, can expect only Slim Fast, not substance, in return.

Here in Los Angeles, we're used to reruns of the weather. On most major holidays, we're even treated to repeats of human interest stories, but to think that we, the American consumer and electorate, are being force fed pre-packaged, and often recycled tripe, much of which is inaccurate in the first place, should be more than enough to make our blood boil. Worse still, newsroom consolidation isn't so much about conceptual unilateralism as it is about ensuring swift, and steady profit at the expense of diversity of thought.

The good congressman from New York is concerned that newsroom consolidation will lead to the ultimate demise of independent news stations much as newspaper consolidation has. How does this affect each and every one of us? Imagine a world with only one Internet Service Provider, or being able to only access those Web sites that can afford to pay gargantuan fees if, and when, the world wide web becomes IRS territory. The only ones to benefit from consolidation are the behemoth corporations who tell us which underarm deoderant to wear, which cat food to buy, and which cars to drive. When newsrooms become profit delivery vehicles, as well as promoters of uniformity of thought, we're in even greater danger of losing ourselves in the totalitarian void that has cost us much of our civil liberties these past few years.

The FCC which has been hugely preoccupied with "public decency" ratings, over the past 6 years, must now be prevailed upon, as Rep. Hinchey told UPI , to "ensure that corporate interests stay out of newsrooms so that the American public can be on the receiving end of journalism...Any further consolidation of newsrooms and attacks on journalists would be contrary to the best interests of the public." Moreover, assaults on the First Amendment are "contrary to the best interests of the public;" it's high time Congress, and we, the viewing public, said so!

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published, poet, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter; member of PEN American Center, and PEN USA.

The Horrors of Torture, Reinterpreted through Art

2007-01-24T02:40:00.000-08:00

Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle reviews my latest exhibition, Torture, posing some interesting questions. I have received a lot of praise and a lot of criticism related to this show, but art critic Kenneth Baker frames the debate amazingly well, and asks some critical questions.

"Encountering them in an art gallery provokes tangled responses: outrage that someone would advance his own ambitions through the degradations the Abu Ghraib photos record; perverse temptation by the opportunity to study the mise-en-scene of the original pictures, safe in the knowledge of seeing simulations; despair that history has again diverted the resources of art away from pleasure and contemplation to bleak and urgent critical functions; and, finally, the recognition that, after all the barriers between art and life come down, nothing insulates our enjoyment of the arts against toxic pollution from our knowledge of real events.

How far should simulation in art go? Will we next have to ponder a re-enactment of, say, Saddam Hussein's execution, or even Daniel Pearl's, merely because these images can be found on the Internet, and because they symbolize the degeneration of American foreign policy?"

Unacceptable In Any Context or Circumstance

2007-01-19T13:22:00.000-08:00

Isaiah Washington doesn’t read much.

Nor do members of GLAAD, executives at ABC, gossip bloggers or a billion other people running around with knotted knickers.

Yes, it’s an ugly word when tossed as a hateful epithet. And although the word faggot has been around since around 1250 or so, referring to a bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel, and as late (or early) as 1915 was used as a contemptuous word for a female (by Americans, of course), its still a word that is unequivocally acceptable in some contexts and under certain circumstances.

Although not according to star of the ABC hit show Grey’s Anatomy, Isaiah Washington.

A brouhaha of gargantuan proportions has enveloped Hollywood after the Grey’s Anatomy star, speaking to reporters at the Golden Globes, reopened a wound he had made back in October last year when he referred to T.R. Knight as a faggot.

His transgression, this time, was denying the original accusation -- that he had referred to Knight as a faggot in a heated on-set altercation with co-star Patrick Dempsey -- by once again uttering the forbidden word. “No, I did not call T.R. a faggot,” Washington told reporters. ”Never happened, never happened.”

Problem though, was that following the October altercation, Washington had issued an apology to Knight for his derogatory slur, suggesting he was either unlikely coerced into apologizing for something he did not say, or has an atrocious memory.

His remarks at Sunday’s ceremony, however, ignited like a bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel – dare I say – a faggot!

Grey’s Anatomy star, Katherine Heigl, immediately came to Knight’s defense, suggesting in no uncertain terms that Washington just shut up. On Tuesday, Knight appeared on the Ellen Degeneres show, clarifying the original incident, which forced him to come out as a gay man, and referring to Washington’s remarks Sunday. “He referred to me as a faggot. Everyone heard it.”

It got worse. On Wednesday, GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, demanded that Washington apologize, and the influential gossip columnist, Perez Hilton, began a boycott of ABC, Disney and all related properties, refusing to write about any of their talent, unless they fired Washington.

By Thursday, ABC and Washington were in high-octane damage control mode, issuing statements and apologies quicker than you could sneer “sugartits” to female police officer.

“We are greatly dismayed that Mr. Washington chose to use such inappropriate language at the Golden Globes, language that he himself deemed ’unfortunate’ in his previous public apology,” ABC said in its statement. “His actions are unacceptable and are being addressed.”

Washington, clearly an out-of-control idiot, taking a page from all-too-obvious Mel Gibson playbook, apologized yet again. Feel the sincerity.

“I apologize to T.R., my colleagues, the fans of the show and especially the lesbian and gay community for using a word that is unacceptable in any context or circumstance. I marred what should have been a perfect night for everyone who works on ’Grey’s Anatomy.’ I can neither defend nor explain my behavior. I can also no longer deny to myself that there are issues I obviously need to examine within my own soul, and I’ve asked for help.”

And what might that help look like? You guessed it. A “meeting” with the gay and lesbian community to “to apologize in person and to talk about what I can do to heal the wounds I’ve opened.”

We can only pray that Washington, who is black, doesn’t deem the rich, white, high-drama, hysterical queens at GLAAD as representative of the gay and lesbian community.

You may recall, meetings aren’t particularly effective in dealing with hate, especially when confused with speech and expression, and GLAAD’s efforts in the past have yielded little. They attempted a town hall meeting with Eminem over the homophobia in his lyrics, which he smartly rejected, and then angered Elton John by scolding him after he agreed to sing a duet with Eminem.

The smartest suggestion of all came from none other than the singer John Mayer, who suggested that ABC “produce an episode of Grey's Anatomy in which Mr. Washington's character, Dr. Burke comes out to his friends and colleagues as a gay man!!! What better way for an actor to get to the roots of his discrimination than by portraying the very the subject of his own ire for the remainder of his contract? That'll learn ya!”

Like Jesse Jackson’s attempts to ban use of the word nigger, efforts to punish Isaiah Washington for using the word faggot seem ridiculously misguided.

His denial of having uttered it is what’s offensive, not his use of it in the context of the denial. Had he said, I am really sorry I called T.R. a faggot, as opposed to I didn’t call T.R a faggot, would his comment have been so explosive?

The big question, if ABC was to follow John Mayer’s advice, is whether Washington’s character would have to endure being called a faggot. Offering a real and meaningful demonstration of the hurt the word can cause when brandished as a weapon.

Somehow, I doubt it.

Dead at Last: I Have a Nightmare

2007-01-15T02:00:00.000-08:00

I wrote this back in 2003, shortly after Trent Lott was given the boot as Minority Leader following his December 2, 2002 whiskey-drenched toast to Senator Strom Thurmond, at a hundred year birthday celebration, wistfully imagining a world where racial segregation would have governed our social interaction. Since Lott was returned to Senate Republican leadership by being elected Minority Whip in November 2006, this dark reality check deserves a revisit. My apologies, once again, to Dr. King.

Dead at Last: I Have a Nightmare

I regret to inform you today we bear witness to the greatest erosion of freedom in the history of our nation.

Symbolic platitudes, such as a day dedicated to Martin Luther King, and upon whose poetic insights these dire forebodings are reconstructed, offer little more than a decoy that enables us to avoid the yearnings of institutionalized apartheid, inadvertently vomited forth by racists at political birthday celebrations of bitter men as fresh as their moldy ideological predispositions.

For forty years later, not the nigger nor honky, the kike nor kaffir, the spic nor kook, the raghead nor faggot, the witch nor shwarze, the beaner nor Jap or any other ethnic, cultural or social epithet you can conjure, have enjoyed anything more than a cursory nod to random speech prohibitions cloaked in political correctness. Lonely islands of token terminology in the midst of a vast ocean of ill intention. Religious dogma exiles the compassionate to languish in the scornful corners of faithless derision, killing spirituality with fanatic fervor. The chosen versus the abandoned, the saved versus the damned, the holy versus the holey.

In a sense we’ve reached a point where it’s time to empty the cache, and load the ballistic fingerprinted magazine of our hate nation. When the architects of our republic penned the ambiguous words of the ill-treated Constitution they did not imagine the destructive forces of faux piety laying claim to the sacred doctrines to which every American was to fall prey. The indoctrination that accepts that all but a few privileged white men - yes, one or two wealthy black men as well– should be blindingly ensnared by the government’s domain over death, entrapment and the illusion of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has not changed an iota since Doctor King reminded America of her sacred obligation, (or differs much from a regime on the southern tip of Africa who at the time likely attributed Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus as Negro laziness). America’s blank-check racism is far from insufficient. The savings garnered by storming out of the World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa just prior to the events of September 11, 2001 stands testament to the revenue-producing potential of unbridled denial when combined with cutbacks in tolerance and layoffs in leniency.

But we cannot deny that the bank of justice is as bankrupt of equality as its leader is of moral consistency. We have to acknowledge that there lies nothing but worthless stock options in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so it’s time to cash this reality check, a check that will give us upon exchange a mere glimpse at the pretense of freedom and surplus of indiscriminate justice that plagues America.

We have also come to this tainted realization to remind America of the final solution of procrastination. This is the perfect time to wallow in delusional national security at the expense of fundamental liberty or to take the debilitating drug of affirmative discrimination.

Now is the time to pig out on the lies brimming over the trough of democracy’s empty promise. Now is the time to realize that the treacherous path of identity politics and all advances in social progression lead forebodingly back to the dark and desolate valley of segregation and ignorance. Now is the time to face our nation’s shameful reemergence from the polluted swamp of covert racial injustice to the solid rock of unabashed Klean Kut Kommunity. Now is the time to continue to fake justice and blur reality for all of God's hated and deluded children.

It would be predictable for the nation to overstate the earnestness of its compassionate commitment to remove the hoods, while amicus briefing its true intentions. This bitter winter of the Senate’s unintended exposure will not erase the explosive spring of half-hearted apologies and unconvincing spin attempts that followed, and will continue to.

Two Thousand and Seven is not a beginning but a damned continuation. Those who hoped that the demise of the disgraced helmet-haired Honky Segregationist, Senator Trent Lott, would not blow over, or that the incident would force the media to focus intelligently on racism, deserve the rude awakening as the nation, once again, dons its hood and returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until every citizen is reclassified as an enemy combatant at the mercy of military tribunals. The hurricane of denial is nothing more than the bulimic byproduct of a nation binging on political correctness at the expense of comprehension and in the absence of contextualization, and will continue to reinforce the impenetrable foundations of our deep-rooted perversion until the darker days of vigilante justice reemerge stronger and more sinister.

But there is a tornado of turmoil that envelops those who stand on the icy precipice towering over the shantytown of justice. In the process of absent-mindedly sauntering to the front of the bus, try not get run over by the White Lexus of the United States leadership or fooled by the whitest faced blacks in the blackest wing of the White House, nor mistake Condoleezza for Rosa. Let us not blindly drink from the poisonous well of bitterness and hatred, marketed and packaged as an anecdotal quench for our thirst for token equality. We must forever remember the transformational political makeover of hoods and sheets into suits and ties offering cheap platters of petty placation. The uppity plane of dignity and discipline must not thwart creative protest or preclude self defense in the face of physical violence. Look closely at the colors on the frontlines of America’s preemptive war against America, and praise Ivy League alumni for their ability to give orders and profit from body bags.

Again and again we must defend against the jagged shards of cultural suspicion and dangerous misappropriation of moral superiority. The horrific hijacking of spiritual compassion must serve as a color coded alert to anyone pawning rectitude in the guise of religious piety or as a fundraising cash cow for the sin sowing temple thieves and apocalyptic assassins of reason, remedy and resolve.

For few today have come to realize that their political and pseudo-religious maneuverings are functions of, and enabled by, media complicities. Complicities glued by the wholesale purchase and selling of access, by cozy elites, to the production and distribution of consumer messaging. And most don’t seem to realize that their delusional freedom is inextricably bound by their subservient devotion to unbridled consumption of the entire destructive package.

We walk alone in fear, plagued by paranoia.

And as we walk, we are forced to avert our eyes and watch our backs. We cannot turn back. There are those who are accusing the pesky devotees of civil rights of terrorism. We are meant to be satisfied whilst women are the victims of the unspeakable horrors of religious intolerance and governmental subjugation. We are meant be satisfied whilst women’s bodies are dictated to by the penis platitudes of erectile dysfunctional males, and are afforded fewer rights than the fetuses they carry by the men who raped them. We are meant to be satisfied whilst teenagers and children slit their wrists rather than live with the sordid secrets and painful aftermath of the musical pedophiles, hidden and sheltered by the religious institutions, snatching their parents’ meager salaries to settle steamy sexual lawsuits. We are meant to be satisfied whilst our children are sodomized and robbed of their childhood and their futures by God ordained evil men wearing satin dresses or hooded sheets. We are meant to be satisfied whilst men, who wrap their heads and arms in leather in devotion to the God that chose them, feel no compunction in strapping leather over the heads and arms of their neighbors before flicking the power switches to kill them. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied while injustice rolls down like toxic mudslide with boulders of patronization crushing down like a devastating avalanche.

I am not unmindful that most of us are recycled products made up of telegenically cleansed consciousness vacuums and pop-psychology induced apathy. Where the First Amendment is nothing more than a pornography provision from a Hollywood flavored Larry Flynt movie. Where the greatest struggle we’ve encountered is how to reconcile Esera Tuaolo’s coming out of the closet as a gay NFL linebacker with our deep-rooted attachment to stereotypes. Most of us come from perspectives where our casual disregard for basic freedom leaves us battered by storms of political deception and staggered by the stench of institutionalized hypocrisy. We have been the victims of creative propaganda. We can no longer recognize the fact that the human suffering of others, left unchallenged, is ultimately self perpetuating.

Cry for Mississippi, cry for Alabama, cry for South Carolina, cry for Georgia, cry for Louisiana, cry for the cross burning, Bible thumping, sheet-hooded past of our northern cities, knowing that somehow in keeping with the worst of our misguided intentions, this situation will never be changed.

Let us wallow in the menacing meadows of political incorrectness. I say to you today my scapegoats - so even though we face the nauseating reality of today and tomorrow, I still have a nightmare. It is a nightmare deeply rooted in the horror of the American dream.

I have a nightmare that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" by stoning women to death, burning faggots and Caucasian-exempt conscription.

I have a nightmare that one day on the acrid wastelands of Tennessee, the sons of former politicians and the sons of former affirmative action recipients will peel off their pasted smiles and cover their perfectly barbered and coifed hairstyles with familiar slit holed sheets and erect a partition at the table of racism.

I have a nightmare that one day even the state of California, a state sweltering with the heat of superficiality, sweltering with the heat of shallowness, will complete its transformation into a spirit sucking desert of bulimia and skin cancer.

I have a nightmare that my little children might one day live in a nation where they are forced, in sickness, danger or in health, as children to bear children, because some Attorney General, who anointed himself with oil, believes the only way to keep his job is to raise a generation of criminals by making parents of a generation of inadequately equipped minors.

I have a nightmare today.

I have a nightmare that one day here in America, with its vicious racists, with its putrid judges inseminating the separation of Church and state with the gonorrhea of confusion - one day right there in America little unborn fetuses will trump the rights of little boys and girls as well as sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers.

I have a nightmare today.

I have a nightmare that one day every tragedy shall be cheapened with token gestures and cheesy sentimentality, and every hill and mountain shall be leveled to make room for more Starbucks and McDonalds franchises, that the rivers will run with the sticky syrup of a patented Coca Cola recipe, doubling as pesticide for the genetically engineered corn on the banks, enveloping the landscape with the sickly sweetness of intellectual property litigation, and the glory of the dollar shall be revealed and all DNA-monitored, retina-scanned irises shall see it together.

This is our future. This is the foreboding that I bring to the New Year. With this toxicity we will be able to hack out of the mountain of despair a monolith of psychosis. With this failure we will be able to thrash the precarious threads of harmony into an entropic cacophony of regret and recrimination. With this agenda we will be able to fire each other, to fuck each other, to hate together, to murder together, to detest and deplore together, knowing that in the shadow of a pitiful dream, we will be dead one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to loathe with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, bitter land of hypocrisy, of thee I wretch. Land where my fathers were lynched, land of the Pilgrim's massacre of natives, from every pillaged and polluted mountainside, let hypocrisy scream!"

And if America is to remain a belligerent nation of self-deceiving fools, this must remain true. And so let hypocrisy scream from the burning skyscrapers of New York. Let hypocrisy scream from the littered streets of Louisiana. Let hypocrisy scream from the urban sprawl of New Jersey.

Let hypocrisy scream from the hate-filled slopes of Colorado. Let hypocrisy scream from the overextended hydro-electric plants of California.

But not only that; let hypocrisy scream from the empty office space of Texas.

Let hypocrisy scream from the anthrax-dusted offices of Washington DC.

Let hypocrisy scream from every project and ghetto, synagogue, mosque and church – from every homeless shelter and prison.

Let hypocrisy scream. And when this happens, and when we allow hypocrisy’s scream - when we let it scream from every abortion clinic and every veteran’s hospital, from every electric chair and every detention camp, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's illegitimate and abused children - black men and white women, gays and straights, hermaphrodites and transgendered, Jews and Gypsies, Muslims and adulterers, Christians and Wiccans, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to glare at each other, place barrels squarely between each other’s eyes and spit in each other’s faces and mutter, with trigger-clenched fingers, in the words of the current American spiritual: "Dead at last! Dead at last! Thank God Almighty, we are dead at last!"

The Nigger Trigger

2006-11-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

How about the F-word?

I’m so over hearing the likes of Jesse Jackson, the black male version of media whore, Gloria Allred, preaching his self-righteous drivel.

As much for the ridiculous thought process he inspires in others as his own un-American meanderings.

In the wake of the Michael Richards “nigger” meltdown, Jackson and some friends have decided that the word nigger is “unprotected” from a First Amendment standpoint. Really?

I’m sure people are going to take issue with me making this argument. After all, I was born in South Africa during the height of apartheid, and so even if what I have to say is legitimate, I will be criticized as racist. So be it. This debate is too important to ignore, and not enough people are saying what’s really wrong or right, because political correctness precludes them. Well not me.

In fact, the point I am making stems from my passionate advocacy in support of the First Amendment, and the federal lawsuits behind me to back me up. Racism is irrelevant to my thinking on this subject.

Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic meltdown was no less vitriolic because he used the word Jew instead of the more derogatory kike or hooknose. His seething sentiments were perfectly communicated by the context and delivery in which they were proffered, not by his choice of words.

Similarly, Michael Richards’ tirade was shocking because of the sentiments he communicated, not because he used the word nigger. Had he told the black men in the audience that he didn’t appreciate being heckled by African Americans, would that really have made the comment any more palatable? Would joking about a fork up the ass of an African American have been acceptable? Didn’t think so.

There is absolutely no sense in forcing the cloaking of bigoted sentiments in verbal niceties, because all that does is further enrage the person holding those feelings, and potentially lull the recipient of such sentiment into a false sense of security. In other words, no one is served.

For years, the word “queer” was used as an epithet against gays and lesbians until they had the good sense to co-opt it and own it, be empowered by it, and refuse to be victimized by it.

There are still homophobes who would toss the word queer as a hateful epithet, but it simply doesn’t have the sting it once did.

Jesse Jackson’s wishful thinking, that the entire hip-hop community will suddenly stop using the word nigga (note the more acceptable gangsta rap spelling of the word) is not only delusional, but connotes the raising of a white flag in any attempts to co-opt the word as a tool of empowerment.

Paul Mooney, a comedian and writer who wrote for Richard Pryor and Saturday Night Live, apparently ripped into Richards with Greta van Susteren on Fox News, although was more conciliatory Monday evening with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. "He's my Dr. Phil," the comedian, who happens to be black, said of Richards. "He's cured me."

Mooney told Olbermann that in light of the Richards controversy and Jesse Jackson’s subsequent request, (or is it a demand?) that he’s dropping the use of the word nigger from his act. He also told Olbermann that returning troops didn’t need to come home (as if) to hear that kind of word being used when we have so much else on our plate.

By all means, Mr. Mooney, Reverend Jackson and others who make a conscious choice not to use the derogatory word, as is their right, go ahead. But aside from the fact that there may be just as many troops astounded that their attempts to fight for freedoms abroad are being corroded by politically correct buffoons at home, there are those of us for whom a bigger question exists.

If you can’t utter the word nigger, how do you teach a child when, how and why it was used and subsequently banned?

"We want to give our ancestors a present," Jackson said at a hastily convened news conference on Monday. "Dignity over degradation." It's not a clever sound byte and it doesn't even really make sense in the context.

"There's a horrible word that bad people once used to refer to blacks, little Joe. I don't want to even mention it, it's so bad. You'll know it when you hear it. When you listen to old songs, when you look at old news reports...in fact, there was a time when certain people even used to murder black people with pride. It's called the L-word, and no that's not lesbian. You used to be able to see pictures of such horror too, but we've cleansed our books and archives of it. Trust me, it was awful."

Have we all gone insane?

Actions speak a lot louder than words in this instance. And it’s actions, deeds and thinking that need changing, not words. Your ancestors, Jesse Jackson, would be more impressed by your defense of the Constitution than your attack on it by virtue of a mere word. They've suffered enough without now having to have their experiences sugar-coated.

If News Corp. Did It

2006-11-20T22:16:00.000-08:00

Amidst the cries of censorship and the frenzy surrounding the OJ Simpson/Judith Regan/Fox News saga, people seem to be confusing censorship with public backlash.

Despite a long-winded screed defending her decision to publish O.J. Simpson’s hypothetical confessional, If I Did It, Judith Regan’s attempt to garner sympathy appears to have come from the Linda Tripp School of Redemption. In fact she almost sounded like Linda Tripp in her infamous, “I am you” speech, claiming that she did it for all the women who had been abused, herself, front and center.

News Corp. the Rupert Murdoch owned media empire that own both ReganBooks’ parent, Harper Collins as well as Fox News, and who stood to benefit by this grisly cross-promotional cheap-shot grossly miscalculated how swift and ferocious the backlash would be.

Even I, on Annoy.com, took News Corp. to task, but not with the kind of hypocrisy that the holier-than-thous at MSNBC and CNN et al. saw fit to cover the story. Taking a graphic image of Nicole Brown Simpson lying in a pool of blood, her slashed throat covered by a promo of O.J. s new book and the News Corp. logo and tag line, mocking Judith Regan’s claim of domestic abuse solidarity and whitening her skin in much the same way Time magazine had once made O.J.’s darker, the piece was titled, using the same font as the book, If We Had Ethics. The irony is that I am posing the question as much to myself as I’m applying it to News Corp. After all, we are exploiting a tragedy in almost the identical, gratuitous way. The main difference though, is that ours is a commentary, and we aren’t making any money from it.

The ferocious response from the outraged public, as advertisers warned of pulling ads amidst rumors of consumer boycotts, as Fox affiliates jumped ship, refusing to air the interviews, and bookstores refused to sell the book, News Corp. bailed. Not because of a sudden pang of conscience and instantaneous recognition of the bad taste they were exhibiting, but because in totality, the endeavor was doomed to cost them, not make them money.

If anyone thinks Rupert Murdoch’s statement was about a sudden cathartic recognition that the toilet paper garbage he produces globally is too damaging and unfair, wake up and smell the ink. It’s the business equivalent of President Bush realizing in 2004 that Iraq was a mistake and pulling out. That’s why Rupert Murdoch will be around longer than President Bush.

No matter what, this was not censorship. There was no government involvement in this whatsoever, and truthfully, New Corp. has the right to say and publish what they want.

The market, however, can also tell a corporation where to get off, and they sure as hell did. But don’t be fooled into thinking the Diana-chasing is over. Not by a long shot.

TXU's First Amendment Pollution

2006-10-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

In an example of corporate bullying and one of the more frivolous threats filed by a corporation, Texas energy giant TXU is threatening an environmental group, Downwinders at Risk, alleging trademark dilution.

According to Public Citizen, an organization with a strong history of protecting the First Amendment:

TXU objected to the group Downwinders at Risk's use of the TXU logo, along with the logos of other pollution-causing corporations, on a float depicting Gov. Rick Perry kissing a dirty smokestack. The float was part of a protest to represent the close political and financial relationship between the governor's office and the energy industry. TXU threatened to sue the organization for trademark infringement and dilution unless it removes the logo from its float and any published materials.

David Poole, TXU’s executive VP and general counsel, ignoring the first lesson over-zealous inside counsels are apt to miss, drew national and international attention to TXU’s polluting history by warning that TXU would “have no choice but to protect its trademark from infringement and pursue all available legal remedies.”

Public Citizen’s Paul Levy reiterated in a press release similar objections to TXU’s actions as he did in a letter to TXU’s Poole:

TXU's claim that this grassroots group must ask the company for permission to depict and criticize it is patently absurd. The company's real motive is to use the threat of costly and intimidating lawsuits to stifle the political participation and free speech of citizens who are legitimately concerned about the effects of TXU-caused pollution.

In a predictably idiotic comment, TXU spokeswoman Kim Morgan told The Dallas Morning News TXU was “very hopeful they will simply stop using our logo.” As hopeful perhaps, as Downwinders at Risk is that TXU will refrain from building new coal-fired power plants.

My gut feeling is that TXU, David Poole and Kim Morgan have already done more than enough damage to TXU’s brand and they’ll slink away with their smoky tail between their legs rather than continue on this ridiculous path.

Surely their money would be better spent on Rick Perry’s campaign than fighting a small environmental group, bringing all this attention to their bullying, frivolous campaign to silence their critics, and creating a whole new breed of critics in the process. (Cough, cough…)

Additional materials:

To read TXU's demand letter, visit
http://www.citizen.org/documents/txudemandletter.pdf.
To read Downwinders' response, visit
http://www.citizen.org/documents/darlettertotxu.pdf, and to view Public
Citizen's response, visit
http://www.citizen.org/documents/responsetotxu.pdf.

Mistakes v. Lies

2006-10-14T00:09:00.000-07:00

When Fox News Channels delusional Bill O’Reilly's show, The O'Reilly Factor, incorrectly identified disgraced Republican congressman, Mark Foley, as a Democrat, it was almost immediately lampooned by Jon Stewart of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, who suggested that when the facts don’t work in your favor, simply alter the reality.

According to Editor & Publisher:

"Once it came to our attention, we removed the incorrect chyron immediately," said David Tabacoff, executive producer of the Fox News Channel show hosted by Bill O'Reilly, who also does a newspaper column distributed by Creators Syndicate. "We didn't run a correction per se."

Well what did you do, per se? Actually they scrubbed the label entirely, rather than correcting the label, per se. If Foley was a Democrat, this would be newsworthy for Fox, but not that he was a Republican?

According to Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog, Associated Press did the same thing, but at least had the decency to both correct the problem by changing the "D" to "R" and noting the original "error" at the bottom of the report in a journalistically appropriate way when they did so.

Correction: This story originally referenced Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat. He is a Republican. The AP ran a similar correction 3 hours after it first moved on the wire.

The First Amendment has been under attack of late, from the jailing of Judith Miller, sentencing of Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, to the jailing of Josh Wolf, to mention but a few.

Although legal rulings have tended to support the notion that an intrepid freelance journalist with a blog is no less deserving of First Amendment protections than a well funded media organization, you still hear that annoying label “legitimate” when it comes to media, and press access is granted accordingly.

If media outlets like Fox News are willing to compromise their remaining crumbs of journalistic integrity and willingly and deliberately broadcast falsehoods to pursue a partisan agenda, they cease to deserve the few privileges afforded the press, and should be shut out accordingly.

When you make a mistake, you correct it. Or in Fox’s case, when you get caught lying, you hide the evidence. O'Reilly? Oh, really.

Do Mark Foley's Sexually Suggestive Electronic Communications Constitute a Crime?

2006-10-08T22:16:00.000-07:00

Keeping Eyes on the Balls

By CLINTON FEIN
October 8, 2006
Annoy.com

The Mark Foley IM sex scandal, (which revelation after revelation confirms the scandal itself has been anything but instant) is shining a spotlight on all things creepy about congress and the special interest groups to whom they pander.

Democrats, who have long been smarting over the Republican's unwelcome intrusion into Bill Clinton's office peccadilloes, are gloating over the prospect of pointing a moral finger at the conservative Republican power players (hoping to even steal some of their Evangelical base).

Despite the inability of Democrats to successfully counter that it wasn't Bill Clinton's innovative use of Cuban cigars that distracted America from focusing on Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda, but Henry Hyde, Kenneth Starr and the predatory Republican sharks that sought to punish him for it, they seem determined to make the same mistakes as their Republican counterparts.

Revenge is sweet, and there is nothing more satisfying seeing a hypocritical pig at the pinnacle of his power taken down by the very laws he, as chairman of the missing and exploited children's caucus of the House of Representatives, crafted. But the desire to savor his downfall appears to be trumping the most basic common sense.

First and foremost, is the question of legality. Did Mark Foley's conduct violate any laws, federal or otherwise, and under what jurisdiction is his conduct examined? If he sent IMs from Washington DC, where the age of consent is sixteen, or West Palm Beach, Florida, do those locations have jurisdiction, or do the locations of the page rather, determine where the law might have been violated, or both?

Foley, alas appropriately but seemingly unintentionally, operates with the aplomb and finesse of a fifteen year old that keeps making the same desperate mistakes, oblivious to the uncomfortable cues that his younger, more mature targets offer in response. But is cybersex (or failed attempts) actually sex?

Creepy, socially retarded and sexually immature as Foley's online persona is, is there really anything that wrong with fantasizing about getting it on with an anatomically developed teen brimming with sexual curiosity?

Why is there such a demand for videos titled, "Barely Legal," in which adults over the age of eighteen, but who look anywhere from fourteen to sixteen? Does the underage appearance of half the college girls in Girls Gone Wild undermine its massive success? Yeah, right.

The double standards are mind blowing (no pun intended). Why not the same revulsion over the twenty-four age difference between Don and Deirdre Imus or the thirty-three year age difference between Jack Nicholson and Lara Flynn Boyle? The misogynistic patriarchy that is America had a more difficult time with the fifteen year age difference between Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, but doesn't flinch at the notion of Deirdre Imus working on Don Imus' Viagra-dependent shriveled old penis.

Any member of the House of Representatives, male or female, gay or straight, faced with the option of the presence of anatomically mature pages, male or female in tight white pants as eye candy, (as Foley is alleged to have enjoyed), or Dennis Hastert sweating, waddling and wheezing about the chamber, should think twice before terminating the page program. There's nothing wrong with aesthetics. After all, Dennis Hastert himself seems to have enjoyed gawking at young men in spandex wrapping their thighs around one another's heads. Why else would you become a wrestling coach?

While many minors are indeed ill-equipped to deal with predators, equally many sexually active seventeen year olds are probably not that put out by telling an obviously desperate older guy that they prefer fucking people their own age and to take a hike. Especially virtually.

What makes Foley's actions reprehensibly different, and the facts on this are yet to be determined, is his position as a member of congress and his association with the page program itself. If his liaisons, online or real-time, were with former pages over the age of consent, there is no foul and no story here.

By all appearances, and despite breathless headlines in the Los Angeles Times to unapologetically liberal online amateurs like RawStory, the fact that Mark Foley had sex with a former page who was no longer associated with the page program and who was over twenty one is not only not news, it's nobody's fucking business. Even if the former page was male, and even if the former congressman was closeted.

Predictably on cue, the gay haters rose to the surface like flies to fresh shit. Pat Buchannan, the MSNBC firebrand, who hates gays only more than he hates Jews, appearing on the show of MSNBC's equally hate-filled former congressman, Joe Scarborough (he of dead interns in his office), referred to Foley as a "flamer" and incorrectly accused Democratic House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, of marching with NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association), a group of pedophiles intent on changing age-of consent laws, and are about as helpful to gays as Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas is to Christians.

Tony Perkins of the ironically named Family Research Council, who spends more time than most gays and Mark Foley combined thinking about gay sex in every variation, blamed Foley's predatory conduct on his sexual orientation. When the conservative Republican, Daniel Crane of Illinois actually fucked, not just IM'd, a 17 year-old female page (for which he apologized to the House in 1980), if it wasn't his heterosexuality, as Perkins would have us believe, it must have been his religion or his Republicanism.

Ignoring the impact, perhaps, on the pages themselves, claiming that Democrats have been involved in sex scandals far worse than the Mark Foley scandal, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, told a Greenville, South Carolina crowd gathered for a Republican fundraiser: "What we don't have to do is allow our friends on the left to lecture us on morality...There's a certain stench of hypocrisy." Indeed! The same kind of stench emanating from this habitual divorce who, like Foley, wrote the Defense of Marriage Act whilst in congress, and yet who terminated his relationship with his wife as she lay in bed riddled with cancer. Till death, insensitivity or hypocrisy, do us part.

Republicans, following the misguided cue of one truly familiar with closets, news aggregator Matt Drudge, are attempting to deflect attention from their cover-up by accusing Democrats of having engineered an "October Surprise" just before a mid-term election. Although there is no evidence to support the claim, and plenty to refute it, the tactic itself misses the point entirely. Who cares? If Foley engaged in illegal behavior or ethical misconduct, and Republicans covered it up or failed to act on it, those facts remain. Had they acted appropriately, or investigated further, the Democrats wouldn't have a weapon to brandish, regardless of the timing.

Democrats aided and abetted by the breathless twenty-four-hour news cycle, and left-wing and liberal bloggers foaming at the mouth in a feeding frenzy to unseat Republicans, are playing a dangerous and hypocritical game that feeds straight into the hands of the very lawmakers they are trying to undermine. Instead of adopting the same stance they took when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Democrats are simply switching roles.

If Mark Foley did not engage in illegal conduct, and it may well turn out that he didn't, and if he was a heterosexual, this scandal would have been over already, the focus would be on the sharp spike of deaths on Americans serving in Iraq or the credible and increasingly growing threat of terrorism against America.

The real issue is that Mark Foley may have abused his position of power to intimidate those younger and more vulnerable, and that is what is objectionable, regardless of his age or his sexual orientation. Instead of focusing on that, and clarifying that consensual banter between two individuals over the age of consent is private and legal, and unless evidence emerges to reveal otherwise, perhaps Mark Foley deserves the benefit of innocent until proven guilty, Democrats would rather adopt the hypocritical position of their Republican counterparts.

As my friend Daniel pointed out, it's not that Democrats are challenging the Republican position on homosexuality and questioning the legitimacy of their claims to the guardianship of faux family values, but are simply accusing Republicans of being unable to live up to those standards.

The real lesson here, of course being missed by just about everyone, is that this is exactly what Don't Ask, Don't Tell breeds. The same way as the United States military adopts a incomprehensible policy that forces gay servicemembers to lie about their sexual orientation in violation of every tenet the military teaches in terms of honor and integrity, so too does the antigay agenda of the so-called religious right and the Republican Party demand the closet of the complicit gays that pepper its ranks.

If Mark Foley had the option of being open about who and what he was, rather than living in fear of its disclosure, and could enjoy the possibility of either fucking, dating or settling down with a consenting partner in an environment that supported and nourished his choices as an adult, rather than codemn and judge them, perhaps there would be none of the shame enveloping this incident from every angle, and perhaps Foley wouldn't have felt the need to cowardly race like a frightened rat into rehab, coming out as a gay, a drunk and a victim of molestation by a priest along the way.

For Republicans, the Mark Foley scandal is as much about the embarrassment of having a high ranking homosexual in its party as it is a predator in its fold, for each are equally reprehensible to them. For Democrats, it's more about revenge of the Republicans than it is about questioning their supposed values to begin with. For right-wing fanatics, it's more about equating homosexuality with pedophilia than it is about protecting allegedly vulnerable pages. And for gay activists, it's more about clamoring to defend itself from those very accusations and the likely vilification by Republicans than it is about simply distancing itself from a congressman whose only possible crime is being a predator, not a homosexual, and for whom the issue is no more relevant than it is for Alcoholics Anonymous.

For one or two of us, it's about waiting for investigations to determine if any laws were actually broken or whether Mark Foley is not a criminal, but simply a boozy hypocrite and a creep. As well as be forced to stomach the incredulous reactions that emerge from a commission finding following the next terrorist attack that reveals that while the entire country, Democrat and Republican alike, focused on Mark Foley's irresponsible, possibly illegal behavior, al Qaeda laughed knowingly as they plotted.

Your Name in a Novel -- Again!

2006-09-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

This year's First Amendment Project character name auction is underway on eBay. Check it out at www. ebay. com/fap

Prominent Authors Again To Raise Money For First Amendment Project eBay

Charity Auction Starts September 7th and Runs Through September 23rd, 2006.

Fourteen of America's most prominent authors, including John Lescroart, Carl Hiaasen, Elinor Lipman, Francine Prose and Edward P. Jones are participating in this year's character name charity auction to raise money for First Amendment Project (FAP) through eBay Giving Works, the dedicated program for charity listings, starting on September 7th and running through September 23rd, 2006. The authors will auction off the chance to name a character in their upcoming books, and donate the proceeds to the FAP, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to providing free and low cost legal services to protect freedom of information, expression, and petition. Some authors are also offering wining bidders the opportunity to speak on the telephone.

The authors participating in the FAP auction at www. ebay. com/fap include: Kevin J. Anderson, Emily Barton, Stephen Elliott, Tim Green, Carl Hiaasen, Edward P.
Jones, John Lescroart, Elinor Lipman, Phillip Margolin, Lorrie Moore, Patricia Polacco, Douglas Preston, Francine Prose, and Chris Ware. The authors represent the full spectrum of literary genres, from children's literature to science fiction, to graphic novels, to mysteries and thrillers.
Additional authors may still be added.

Last year's charity auction, featuring Stephen King, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Amy Tan, Michael Chabon, Lemony Snicket and 11 other prominent authors raised over $150,000 for the organization. The 2005 charity auction was among the most closely watched charity auctions on eBay for several weeks and attracted bids from around the world. Authors Brad Meltzer, David Brin and Chris Offutt, eager to help the cause, joined after the start of last year's event. The fundraising effot was conceived by First Amendment Project advisory board member Michael Chabon and author Neil Gaiman.

"We again this year asked literary artists to sacrifice a bit of their own artistic freedom in order to promote freedom of expression for all," says David Greene Executive Director and Staff Counsel for FAP. "We, again, were overwhelmed by the response from the literary community.
First Amendment Project is the only nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free and low cost legal services on free speech issues. The authors who are helping us with this auction understand how fundamental First Amendment rights are and how without organizations like FAP being vigilant in preserving them, our nation's democratic and creative cultures will suffer."

The authors speak:

"There's nothing more important to democracy: protecting and fighting for the right of free
expression. It's a battle that began at the birth of our Constitution, and is carried on in the courts today by the First Amendment Project." Carl Hiaasen.

"The First Amendment is the cornerstone of American liberty. Our freedoms to speak and to write are our most sacred legacy. We are living in a time when First Amendment rights are under siege. I'm involved in this auction to show my support for the First Amendment against all its enemies." John Lescroart

"As a science fiction writer, I like to push ideas, stretch my imagination, provoke people to think along new paths. That frightens others who like to believe they have the "only" way.
Unfortunately, some of those people are in positions of power and try to enforce their opinions as law. We need staunch groups to stand up against those agendas and let people have their say. It's the only way the truth can keep getting out." Kevin J. Anderson

"Everything I do--everything this country is about--depends on the First Amendment." Francine Prose.

Conducting the charity auction is Auction Cause, a premier online auction management agency specializing in high impact and high value eBay charity auctions for nonprofits and their corporate partners. Auction Cause also conducted the 2005 auction.