Home of the Petty

Land of the Childish

There's been a lot of world class pettiness on display in American politics for a long, long time. Yesterday, I started the day off with a good feeling that maybe, just maybe, some of the pettiness in the political process might be ebbing. By the end of the day, so much pettiness had been blasted through the newscycle that I wound up sitting on my couch in a rage, flailing away at my laptop cursing the likes of Mike Mukasey, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh and a cast of thousands of the pettiest emeffers walking what's left of planet Earth.

It has occurred to me, that this is my own fault. I'm too optimistic. A candidate like Barack Obama, or even Hillary Clinton at times, can tap into that optimism. Occasionally I'll go an hour or two without the bitterness of living in a twisted, dystopian shadow of the America I grew up in, which was itself a shadow of the America that it should have been.

So when I see a news item like this I start to think, maybe this troll Mukasey ain't so bad.

From The Washington Post:

Five years after a gay advocacy group was told that it could no longer use the e-mail, bulletin boards and meeting rooms at the Justice Department, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has reversed that decision and issued a revised equal-employment-opportunity policy barring discrimination against any group.

Mukasey informed leaders of DOJ Pride last week that the department would give it the same rights as all other DOJ employee organizations, said the group's president, Chris Hook. In a statement, Mukasey said the department will "foster an environment in which diversity is valued, understood and sought" and maintain "an environment that's free of discrimination."

DOJ Pride and its 110 members had been barred from holding an annual Gay and Lesbian Pride Month celebration since 2003, when then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told the group that the Bush administration observed an unwritten policy of not sponsoring events without a presidential proclamation, Hook said. The group also was told it could not post notices of general meetings and events on department bulletin boards, he said.

(more)

Sure, Mukasey reversed an incredibly petty move by Ass-croft that was continued by Alberto Gonzales, who remains at large. No big deal, just simple human consideration. A welcome development that caused me to think, maybe this guy's different.

Now don't get me wrong, I never expected him to be any better than Ashcroft or Gonzo when it came to policy. I just thought, maybe he's not a complete asshole.

I was disabused of that notion quickly.

Unconventional Conventionist nailed this down yesterday... He sucks. To that I'll add--he blows. During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, he testified that he would not investigate waterboarding because the Department previously ruled the program legal.

Wow! That is an outrage! But, by the standards set by the last two Attorneys General, it was right about where you would expect him to be--destroying our lives before hitting the lecture circuit. Holdfast blogger Matt Hamlin Browner wrote that Mukasey's declaration amounted to "a note that should go down as the day in which the Bush administration formalizes its position that the United States should be a country that is subject to the rule of men and not the rule of law." And he's right, except the Bush administration formalizes that position several times already--Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, several other acts, executive orders out the wazoo--we all have our favorite greatest hits of Bush's team killing democracy.

But to add pettiness to assault on the torn up, charred pieces of the Constitution, I capped off my night by reading about how Mukasey is stonewalling Talking Points Memo in retribution for their coverage of the US Attorney purge. Muckrakergate, as The Politico is calling it, was one of the subjects brought up at the hearing. Democratic Representative Hank Johnson had to ask Mukasey whether he was responsible for taking TPM off the DoJ press list. We actually had a hearing where Congress demanded to know from the Nation's top law enforcement officer "are we are a nation of laws or men, and by the way, why'd you monkey with that blog?" Mukasey's a child.

Between the onslaught of disturbing Mukasey stories, Mitt Romney managed to take pettiness to the next, smarmy level with his rationale for getting out of the Presidential race. You see, Romney had to drop out because this is a time of war. According to him, if he and John McCain kept fighting it out it would keep McCain--who Mitt could eventually beat if this process were only about Mitt--from beating Obama or Clinton. If, Romney reasoned, Clinton or Obama were elected, they would embrace communists and terrorists all over the world and that's bad for America, which he loves.

UPDATE: Olbermann covers Romney's gibberish.


Then there's Limbaugh. So petty is this man that he would abandon his own party to support his sworn enemy, Hillary Clinton, so he can spend (what he thinks will be) four year of attacking her. He'll blame Bush's mistakes on the Clintons every day and that will be good for America... somehow. Never before has it been so apparent that these McCain hating, pill-crunching blowhards don't care about anyone but themselves. It's all just a petty little game to them.

TAGS: Rush Limbaugh, Mike Mukasey, Waterboarding, Mitt Romney

The Disturbing Patriotism of Rednecks

The TV was on in the other room, and in coming from the kitchen to the living room I caught a glimpse of some man with a ZZ-top beard cutting down an American flag from a flag pole, wadding it in his hands, yelling angrily into the camera, and then striding off. I had no clue what transpired. Something about "illegally flying" some flag and "I'm a veteran", all the while brandishing some knife that was a good 7 inches long, kinda of like one of those Jim Bowie knives.

I was immediately irritated because first off - there's no LAW regarding the flying of flags, specifically the American flag. There is an instructive code regarding the "flying of the colors. "

Second off - I cannot stand seeing shirts, sweaters, hats, handkerchiefs - any article of clothing - that is basically turned into the American flag. (Section 8d of that code, BTW) I find that incredibly disrespectful. I always have. Now I know in some quarters, it is considerable patriotic fashion but it bugs the shit out of me.

All right, so we have owner of Cantina El Jaripeo in Reno flying the Mexican and American flags on the same pole. The Mexican flag was above the American flag. Someone contacted a Reno TV station regarding the legality of the flap flying. (Section 7g) Tonight, I watched a video of the incident at Crooks and Liars. I'm not impressed. It's video of some fascist redneck posing as a patriot - again.



The other flag attached to the pole dropped to the ground, now how respectful is that?

The first question I had was why didn't this asshole talk to the proprietor of the store? The proprietor of the bar is an American citizen. He didn't realize there were the code requirements regarding the flying of an American flag in relation to another country's flag. Perhaps if said asshole (Mr. Jim Broussard) had pointed out the error, the owner would have remedied the situation immediately.

And therein lies the problem for me because I find this aggressive patriotism totally unnecessary. How in the hell did this come about? When did it become okay to publicly demean or disrespect someone else in order to prove one's high standing? When did it switch from being unacceptable socially to now just being overlooked or having defenders who become as volatile as the individual(s) whose actions they are defending.

Dave, The Quaker Agitator wrote about Mahmoud Ahmadineja's reception at Columbia as well as the introduction by the college president, Lee Bollinger. Dave's point is more about being allowed to continue thinking for one's self, while my point is about the incredible rudeness that is apparently acceptable in insulting the sitting president of a sovereign nation who has been invited as a guest speaker to your institution. Mr. Bollinger couldn't have expressed his reservations to Mr. Ahmadineja via email, letter, phone call, personally when Mahmoud showed up?

Then yesterday, Dave put up this Who gets to decide who gets to speak? at our other hangout, Les Enrages. A 'resident-fellow' of a conservative organization writes that the U.N. should restrict the access of despots who are invited or schedule to speak to the general assembly of the U.N. Because of this man - "Burma's minister for foreign affairs, U Nyan Win, a mouthpiece for the junta, mounted the steps to the main stage" who had the audacity to claim that "things in Myanmar have returned to normal." Regardless of what was being streamed across the Internet throughout various news organizations, NGOs, blogs, and human rights organizations just to name a few outlets which indicated pretty damned starkly that, nope things were too peachy in Burma. It was so reminiscent of ole' Baghdad Bob - don't believe your own lying eyes.

While Dave's point becomes . . . .

Who gets to decide who gets to speak? Who gets to be the final arbiter of what is right to say, and what cannot be said? The staff of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies? Or how about Code Pink? The National Education Association? Fox News? The judges from American Idol? Who exactly gets to pick what we all get to hear? And on what criteria will they base this decision?

. . . . my point is similar. When the hell did that responsibility pass from me to someone else? Not only will (or does) another decide, but it is done publicly AND rudely. By declaring or taking it upon one's self to be enforcer/decider regarding who it is among us or outside our group or comfort zone is allowed to speak, the stage is set for those redneck fascists who believe it is patriotism that allows them to, 1) shield us (the American public) from speakers with unsightly thoughts, opinions, and points/hypotheses to disseminate; and, 2) to perform this shielding in an unsavory manner and "interpret" the message however is most beneficial. Beneficial to what, I'm not quite sure nor am I clear on what that is precisely or even generally. Where did our civility go?

I attended Ursuline College. It's a Catholic women's college, liberal arts affliated with the Ursuline nuns, Cleveland. As with many orders of Catholic sisters, their focus was tinged with social justice but they were thrown headlong and more deeply into the struggles confronting other peoples when one of their own nuns and a laywoman were raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980, some months following the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The campus often had speakers who provided diverse perspectives whose speeches or visits were either open to 'the public' or were more 'local' as for a particular class.

One year as part of Women's History month, the director of our Multicultural Affairs office on campus managed to line up a woman who had been active in the French Resistance during WWII. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until about 10 minutes into her discussion of her life, education and work. It began to dawn on me and others that this woman was NOT who she had apparently represented herself to be. Yes, she was French and yes, she was Catholic - but there was unabashed disgust being expressed for Jews. One of our history professors asked her about the Vichy government and she proceeded with quite a defense of Phillipe Pétain, and then it became obvious. There was murmurings amongst the audience with our now tainted speaker throwing defiant looks our way, and then the questions became pointed. No one was rude; no one shouted; no one threatened to kick her elderly white ass when she walked out the door to her car. Civility was what she got. That's all she got. That's more than she would have gotten had some folks been in charge. And, I worry about that. I mean, it's bad enough we have the Decider in charge (koo-koo-kachoo!) but an entire nation of Deciders?

I'm thinking, no.

[Oh, and for a different perspective, here's a gentleman's reflections on Mr. Ahmadineja's reception at Columbia last month. He writes for the Pakistan Post.]