Q: You’re a rancher, a lot of us here in Kansas are ranchers-I just wanted to get your opinion on Brokeback Mountain, if you’d seen it yet?

Bush: I hadn’t seen it–I hope you go back to the ranch and the farms.

I don’t quite know what that means. Is George W Bush making a cryptic reference to the “Exodus” groups committed to “Reforming Homosexuals” back (or over to, as the case may be) to good Christian Heterosexuality? Or is he simply concerned for the future of American ranching and farming, the homo and hetero sexuality not really factoring into the equation?

Ah well. There is a backlash against Brokeback Mountain, both against its homosexual theme and against a sort of “Afterschool Special” mentality. I muse on this comment:

If it WASN’T about gay cowboys it would get no attention.

My much belated response: If Moby Dick weren’t about a whale hunt, it would be the Old Man and The Sea.

Actually, the comedy comes from right wing radio discussing the matter of the movie, and that darned constant supply of lie-beral themed movies. Good Night, and Good Luck — and you know, Joseph McCarthy gets a bad rap in history… ’cause, He was a good, patriotic American who was mostly right, you see.

I note a genre of nonfiction tossing up unapologetic defenses against the sometimes one-sided culture war battles. (There’s one about the 1960s, another one for the Baby Boomer Generation, and…) Progressive Hollywood. Take it for what it’s worth. I say one-sided because, in the end, I do not believe that there are many people in the nation who wake up in the morning, foaming at the mouth, thinking and breathing “Culture War”.

I note that whenever social conservatives see a movie with a generally conservative message, they clutch their hands around it and wave it as a weapon on how triumphant they are in society. So you have Mel Gibson and The Passion of, and you have Narnia. The effect with Narnia is that I can’t see it, because it doesn’t matter how much I respect CS Lewis, to see Narnia is to throw a victory to the cause of right wing Christianity, and the Right in general — and I say the “Right In General” because, yep, there it is, on the cover of The National Review.

But I can’t go too far with that. Consider Mozart and consider South Park. Here’s the cover of last week’s Weekly Standard:

I looked to the Weekly Standard, hoping the cover feature would be something worth skewering, but… what the heck can I say against Mozart? Everyone gets to claim Mozart, I suppose. Lyndon LaRouche blasts The Beatles and gives his devotees a “classical” education — I don’t know if Mozart fits into the picture, but he probably does.

Meanwhile, a few years ago, some conservative ideolouge discovered that South Park had a generally libertarian bent, and proclaimed that a generation of conservatives were “South Park Conservatives”.

Clutch onto it, and maybe it’ll be true. But I doubt it.

Gerald Ford is credited with giving the most negative State of the Union speech in history — that being the first when it was assumed he would not run for president in his own right. The conceit that came out of Ford’s speech was that no matter how bad the state of the Union may be, a president needs to hammer home a message that America’s brightest days are ahead of us.

Hence, Bush gave this clip at his State of the Union speech in 2002:

As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger.

I imagine a scenario where America is falling apart at the seams. And the president — let’s call him President Arthur H. Smith — gives us this recitation:

Today, America’s agricultural economy has been decimated by large swarths of locusts. Our drinking water has been destroyed by a strange brew of Acid Rain. Famine has killed off one third of our population. Rape and pillaging are common from coast to coast, in our cities as well as our countryside. Race riots abound, and throughout the country the “New KKK” is doing guerilla battle with the “New Black Panthers”. Three nuclear bombs have utterly destroyed Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma — and we have no idea who did it or how to respond to these attacks.

I’m here to tell you all: the state of America has never been stronger! (Applause)

I wonder what the Other Party’s Response would be to President Smith’s declaration.

Actually, in the end I could care less. Even if building a stadium collides into general tax payer funds, there are worse wastes of money out there (say… The Tram), even if, as I’d expect, the team languishes into revenue-not-generating mediocrity. But I laugh at it, because I tune in and out of “Sports Radio” and it’s become their crusade… and to just listen to them is to become someone who wants to create a bumper sticker saying “Keep Major League Baseball Out of Portland”. In pondering the political situation of Portland, Oregon and what anyone can focus on — we have a boondoggle of a useless Tram sucking up money — the ghost of previous regimes and a show-trial of Public Input; and Potter makes the headlines by proposing Temporary Tax for the purpose of funneling some money into “saving” public education; the supposed blight the city faces as its late 90s perception of moving into a bright tech-job providing city runs through a dark recession and emerges into a sort of low-class deepest bohemia (a constant focus in Oregonian editorials and letters to the editor, but they use different phrases than I just did)…

Let’s consider the plight of bringing baseball into Portland.

At his “State of the City” address, Tom Potter was asked by a ten-year old about major league baseball. It was really a very minor part of the day’s proceedings, but Tom Potter answered that he’d love to have major league baseball or major league football , but not one cent of tax payer money (or voter money, theoretically two different constituencies?) will be spent on such a project, and… Hey! Hey! Hey! … We have major League LaCrosse!

That we have Major League LaCrosse placates nobody. I am sure that the San Diego Padres, operators of the AAA Portland Beavers franchise, are happy he didn’t mention that we have AAA Baseball, as that may aggrivate and certainly wouldn’t placate the relatively small swarm of Sports Radio listeners whose main political beef is that there is no political will to negotiate with the Florida Marlins for a major league baseball deal… indeed, Tom Potter has placed a not unsubstantial amount of political chips in a giving the Florida Marlins the back of his hand platform. (Consider, if you will, his campaign promise to give a cursory ride with “Critical Mass”, one of the very few campaign promises he made, and a campaign promise he followed through on — to the chagrin of the Oregonian, which isn’t necessarily in conflict with tying yourself to efforts to build a stadium for a lame Major League Baseball team to transfer to Portland, but nonetheless gives a tell that they that brought him here differs from the average Sports Radio listener.)

Did I mention that Portland has a Major League LaCrosse team? Haven’t you seen the side-of-the-wall billboard right near the Rose Garden, a cute tart-looking woman with an oversized “Lumber Jax” shirt on, and only an oversized “Lumber Jax” shirt? Only two ad campaigns removed from the “Party like a Rock Star” bikini model — meaning that is the spot for sex-fused advertising. (Well, I guess nobody’s getting hot off of the “U of O versus Illinois Basketball Game” ad which stands in the middle of the RockStar Energy Drink ad and the Lumber Jax ad.)

Meanwhile, there’s the basketball team. “Ready or Not — Here we Come”. Nate McMillian’s head as the sun, and a bunch of the basketball players as the constellation of planet. I think that is what they are going for… with a knowing nod that… um… the team’s not ready for primetime. Thus… “Ready or not”. Charming idea it is to place low expectations into your ad campaign.

Unfortunately, Tom Potter is never going to have the opportunity Vera Katz did in addressing a large crowd before a big playoff game with the Los Angeles Lakers. Or maybe fortunately, as Potter doesn’t seem to be able to fake a fanship with sports. So I wonder: why was there a ten year old asking the mayor questions about his interests for city government (Major League Baseball) at the “State of the City” address? Potter answered him in a pandering and condescending manner, but that’s what always tends to happen when a politician comes up to a youngster like that in front of a group of adults. And it’s not going to be a terribly mature question… frankly, I listen to the hosts of Sports Radio, and see… they careen back to being the ten years of age wanting a baseball team in the city. Something that is supposed to be a virtue — nostalgia for when you loved sports as a young tyke. (Myself, I can trace my small modest interests in the professional sporting worlds to… maybe age 15. Well, except I was a good Recess soccer player.)

There’s a AAA baseball team in Portland. I hear that it’s good cheap family entertainment. A minor league team for a city that has little interest in being a major league city. (Oh wait. The city has no families in it anymore. It’s becoming “Deepest Bohemia”, whose mayors ride in “Critical Mass” functions. Maybe we oughta drive the minor league baseball team out of the city as well?)

Those are the three Democrats who have gone on record saying that they will vote for Samuel Alito.

We may as well toss in:

Who have come out opposed to a filibuster, thus assuming a united Republican front assuring the votes necessary to make a filibuster impossible.

I’ve covered Ken Salazar enough times. I’ll mention that Mary Landrieu’s political base blew away in a hurricane. I’ve covered Ben Nelson enough times.

So I focus on Robert Byrd and Tim Johnson. And mostly just Robert Byrd. I do not understand Robert Byrd. For all his speeches during the run up to the Iraq War and beyond, waving the Constitution that he keeps in his shirt pocket, and running his mouth about the President’s usurption of authority… a performance that makes it easy to forget that he is basically a pork-hound of a politician (it is no accident that Senator Stevens of Alaska — he of the “Road to Nowhere” fame, in his melodramatic exhortations that if he doesn’t get his money he will quit the Senate — singled out Byrd as someone he goes swimming with on a regular basis), with an… um… shaky past (google image search Byrd, and you will see legions of homages to his stint in the KKK), for he was on the right side of history at a time when somebody needed to be on the right side of history.

And yet… he is casting his vote for the, quote-in-quote, “Unitary Executive”.

Et tu, Byrd? Et tu? So, fade to black Byrd.

Tim Johsnon? Back-bencher from South Dakota. Won his last re-election in 2002 by three-digits full of votes, late in the night as some Native American precints came through for him (standing atop Tom Daschle’s thin mantle, if you can believe that). The Republican Response to his victory was to accuse the Democrats of stealing the election and to subsequently work to repress the Native American vote. Make of him what you may. This makes no sense:

Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota said he had concerns about Alito on such matters as his “narrow interpretation of certain civil rights laws.”

“Even so, I cannot accept an argument that his views are so radical that the Senate is justified in denying his confirmation,” Johnson said in a statement.

But it’s the kind of silly putty you will hear these six Senators, save Nelson who’ll be whole-heartedly behind his vote, speak. Fun times ahead!

http://p197.ezboard.com/ffreedomofspeechfrm17.showMessage?topicID=293.topic

Zenman: I’m not sure if the Freestaters would take him in. Interesting issue–issue being: did he initiate force when he killed the guy before eating him. True, it was consensual, but I’m not sure there still wasn’t initiation of force.

If, for example, someone requests that you beat the holy hell out of him, and you proceed to do so, have you not initiated force, regardless of consent?

For extra credit: what if he asks you to beat the tar out of him and he tells you not to stop even if he tells you to stop?

How about if someone specifically asks you to initiate force against him. Are you violating his rights if you honor his request?
………………………….

MOI: I’m thinking: is there really such a difference between the following two scenarios?

(1) Man walks up to a guy, and asks “Do you want to be eaten?” Guy replies, “Sure.” In this case, the eater initiates force, I’d think.

(2) Guy walks up to a man, and says “I want to be eaten.” Man replies, “I’ll oblige.” In this case, the eaten iniates the force, right?

Is that the difference that you’re getting at? If so: why split hairs, and are we going to go before a judge and argue the matter of who came up with the idea that it was a good idea for Guy to be eaten first?
……………….

http://p197.ezboard.com/ffreedomofspeechfrm17.showMessage?topicID=968.topic

A German cannibal is taking legal action to stop the release of the horror film “Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story,” which he claims is based on his life.

Meiwes has given Hamburg production company Stampfwerk the rights to his story. Stampfwerk is producing a 90-minute documentary on Meiwes and his trial.
………………

Sassy: i am just puzzled that someone would “volunteer to be eaten”

Zenman: Which position would you be more freaked out in–being in a room full of people who want to eat other people, or being in a room full of people who want to be eaten by other people?

Hmm.. I’ve just given this a little thought and it seems that the obvious answer might not be as obvious as it might seem. Even to a vegetarian.

I think as long as there were no utensils readily available, I’d rather be with the eaters. There’s something so pathetically revolting about the others that I’d just rather not have anything to do with them even if consorting with cannibals was my only other choice.

I guess I’d just clack my teeth a little if anyone were looking at me funny. You probably wouldn’t want to do that with the eatees. You’d be making friends.
………………..

From Afar: Zen, I think you’re onto something, should that ever happen but you’re also leaving something out.. It depends on the AGRESSIVENESS factor in each group.

FA, for instance, would rather be among the eatees (as long as there was extreme security against a break-in by the eaters). AS LONG AS the eatees were non-aggressive. I mean, not forcing their arm into your mouth if you made the clatter sounds. I’d be too afraid of being among the eaters, lest they detect that I was insincere, if you catch my drift. Wouldn’t want to trigger a pack response.
…………………………

Remm: I think I’m with Zenman. I’d prefer the predator bunch. The ones who would want to be eaten would scare me.

We live in the vicinity of Truckee. The Donner Party headlines have really shaken up this area. For some reason people find it difficult to question something they’ve heard from Professional Educators every year of their life. It’s like suddenly finding out that George Washington was really a woman. Shock!

The most obscure presidential candidate you’ll ever see me (and probably anyone else) mention, and I toss up that qualifier because I recently mentioned him on this blog and I’m about to do so again — DeWitt Clinton — had a three-prong strategy to win the White House. First: tell electors who want to hear that he opposes the War of 1812 and will end it when in office that he opposes the War of 1812 and will end it when in office. Second, tell electors who want to hear that he supports the War of 1812 that he will do a better job of carrying it out than James Madison. And thirdly, most importantly for my purposes here: stoke up anti-Virginia feeling, and the creeping sensation that Virginia is controlling the nation.

George Washington — #1, Thomas Jefferson — #3, and James Madison — #4 all heralded from Virginia at the time DeWitt Clinton made his bid for the White House. James Monroe came in next, making Virginia citizenship the Skull and Bones of the day. (Okay. It all had to do with the population pull the state had on the nation’s slate of electors. The post – Civil War era brought a bunch of Ohioans into office — a sure sign that the democratic process had altered to an entirely different set of criteria. Today we elect one affected souther drawal after another.) Carrying on with Virginia — the state has flatlined: William Henry Harrison — #9, John Tyler — #10, Zachary Taylor — #12, and then finally Woodrow Wilson snuck in ages later as an aberation at number 28.

Today, we have a specter looming of a possible presidential campaign between George Allen and Mark Warner. George Allen having recently won an Insider’s Game over key advisors. Reminds the Republican Bush-lovers of Bush — “Compassionate Conservatism” redux. (Shrug.) Senator of Virginia.

Mark Warner. Former Governor of Virginia. Turned the state purple, polls show him beating George Allen in any hypothetical race in Virginia. Is credited with having a Democrat take his spot in the Gubernatorial seat. Moderate — and we all love moderates, don’t we?

There was this weird article in the midst of the 2000 recount fiasco which had a Literature Professor claim that he would find a book on America that ended with the 2000 election as conclusion to the democracy a book too trite. The literary cues are too obvious… we start with a “W” and end with a “W”. We start with an uncontested election, we end with of a bitterly split election.

Mark Warner versus George Allen brings to mind that we start with Virginia and the Free Masons (Free Mason mania coming in due time) and we end with Skull and Bones (one election back) and Virginia. The symmetry of starting and ending a Democracy is there once again.

Virginia in 2008. Watch for it by name.

“When the histories are written, I’ll bet that the Old Right and the New Left are put down as having a lot in common and that the people in the middle will be the enemy.” == Karl Hess.

I saw this quotation in the American Conservative article on George McGovern. The next paragraph shows McGovern saying:

“[M]ost Americans see the establishment center as an empty, decaying void that commands neither their confidence nor their love. It is the establishment center that has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster—a terrible cancer eating away the soul of the nation. … It was not the American worker who designed the Vietnam war or our military machine. It was the establishment wise men, the academicians of the center. As Walter Lippmann once observed, ‘There is nothing worse than a belligerent professor.’”

I’ve gone on record on many matters. I’ve never known what the “Center” is supposed to be, and tend to view it as whatever the elitists who control the flow of political debate have decided it to be — thus I favour “moderation” over “Centrism”, and thus the DLC is a shaky and useless organization for moving the nation anywhere. I’ve also smirkily, and mostly jokingly, said that there will be a new framework of American politics where the left-wing paranoids and right-wing paranoids and paranoids in general will join to become the electoral block that does away with the current paranoia-inducing government complex.

But seriously. New Left and Old Right? While both see the political apparatus as something like this, and both are impratically driven, you have to believe that much… um… stands in the way with them being drawn in as part of the same force, or part of the same twentieth century crusade.

He [McGovern] asked Wallace for his endorsement, though as he recalls with a smile, “He said, ‘Sena-tah, if I endorsed you I’d lose about half of my following and you’d lose half of yours.’”

The American Conservative article takes a faintly fond view of George Wallace, much I guess as Trent Lott takes a fond view of Strom Thurmond’s 1948 run for the presidency. And therein the roots of the isolationist Old Right (I guess once epitimized within the Republican Party by Senator Robert Taft, power within the party garnered as a whiplash against Woodrow Wilson and World War I and the League of Nations… the distrust of the League of Nations being what survives of this outlook through the Cold War, ie: Barry Goldwater would inherit Bob Taft’s following and he was a hyper-Cold Warrior– and as suggested in this McGovern article Taft would’ve been the only other presidential candidate challenging the framework of the Cold War — not Barry Goldwater — but the shred that unites Taft and Goldwater in the happy cause to some semblance of “America First”itis: Boy did Barry Goldwatar hate the United Nations) and the anti-Imperialism New Left (which I’ll trace within the Democratic Party to the second or third presidential run of William Jennings Bryan — power within the party garnered as a whiplash against Theodore Roosevelt and his “Rough Riders” persona and the Spanish-American War — and note that these sentiments transcend past the narrow confines of party) do not converge happily.

So Lyndon Johnson said goodbye to Democratic victories in the South by signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And that was that. The Old Right is on the wrong side of history. The New Left, for all its excesses, (and please note that when the Black Panthers sold Mao’s Little Red Book, it was a cynical fund-raising tool outwitting white radical-wannabes), your 60s protest culture came out of the forefront of the most noble movement in the twentieth century.

Nonetheless, the American Conservative magazine is a happily quirky magazine — prone to a celebration of George McGovern and a celebration of the Vermont Secessionist Project. And… prone to anti-gay and anti-immigrants diatribes. I note that I receive weekly an email plea to subscribe to the New Republic Magazine, this week I read this:

You may want clear opinions from The New Republic or from any magazine of political commentary. But you certainly don’t want predictable opinions or simple opinions, which, alas, is what you get from The Nation and the National Review, The Weekly Standard or The American Prospect. Why, I bet that you could write their articles in advance. No challenge, no mystery, no surprise, no puzzling through of argument. Not like The New Republic.

The problems with particularly The Nation I’ll leave alone for the moment… Actually The New Republic’s Stuffy Centrism I find suffocating, and I think I see the basic problem inherent in an ad featured in the magazine these days. “Most Read and Trusted by Congress”. And the problem is: Politics as Washington-Insider Game. See the Money-head cartoon again. Read the McGovern “Centrist” quote again. Read the opening Karl Hess quote.

And thus I conclude another entangled and largely theoretical blog post. I hope you enjoyed it.

One of the tricks I used to work with the Sim City game (and its immediate sequal) was to build a pro- football stadium, a baseball stadium, maybe a hockey stadium, and a basketball court — and speed to the end of each year with treading-on-water development of the city. I’d then take stock of the record of the teams, and stick up a sign for an imagined championship of one or more of the teams — sometimes divisional, sometimes conference, and sometimes “World” (as we Americans smugly call our nation-wide titlists). Perhaps to bemuse myslf, I’d unlease a riot — riots frequently happen after a city’s franchise wins a championship, you see.

The signs sat next to the signs I had up that declared the name of the stadium — which I dubbed with such names as “Corporate Welfare Stadium”, and “Generic Corporation Field”.

I wasn’t the only one who did this, and I believe it was Job who I spied working the sports franchises of his Sim City who I asked if this a product of public financing, “Yes. The city loves their teams, so they’re going to pay for them.”

We were so niavely cynical back then.

I was thinking about the bond measure for Qwest Field that Washington State voters approved in 1997 while the Seattle Seahawks won their “Big Game” yesterday. I remember it as something that failed the first time on the ballot, which Paul Allen more or less bought a redo for a ballot measure, which failed in the actual city of Seattle (bunch of liberals there) — though I could be wrong about that one, which failed in every single Eastern Washington county excepting — for some reason — Benton County, and passed through strong support in the Seattle suburbs. I also recall thinking that that was a clever move in moving the Seattle Seahawks pre-season practice to Cheney, Washington — gain some support for the team and the ballot measure in the Spokane-area. It took a lot of strong arming on Paul Allen’s part to get the public to accept the idea of financing his team’s future — (it is a franchise, after all, which since 1984 has finished with a record of less than 6-10 one time, and above 10-6 one time — that one time being this year.) The stadium deal, from my eyes, looked quite a bit more heavily tax-subsidized than the Mariners’ stadium — the Mariners, by the way, had less trouble getting public financing (who, incidentally, were much more beloved than the Seahawks since they had a better recent record of winning). The Seahawks stadium deal seemed to me a continual case of upping the rich corporate-meisters of the economy upping the ante on what the public pays in financing their city’s sports team.

I was hoping that I could find an article like this one when I set out to do a blog entry this morning. And, well, there it is. The line that I find myself musing over is:

It is not a stretch, then, to say that about a third of the player payroll is subsidized by state taxpayers, that each player is on the public dole.

It’s a sloppy statistic, “one third”, but I wanted to stick an estimated number to the statistic of what part of the team’s payroll Washington state taxpayers “bought”.

I repeatedly reference the attempt on the part of the New England Patriots to move to Hartford, Connecticut for a sweet stadium deal because, for whatever reason, I was keeping my reading-glasses and eyes and ear to that story. It would have been the most egregious example of public-stadium financing, and it’s difficult to think of any way of laughing at Hartford, Connecticut for its attempt to be “Major League”. (Hartford, Connecticut had just lost its NHL franchise, the Hartford Whalers.) In the end, the deal fell through. The Patriots stayed put in Foxboro.

I remember one quote from someone during this story. An about-face to the idea that the newly developed super-stadiums are going to bring a huge influx of revenue into their cities. “In the end it’s about civic pride. If you support these matters because you think the sports team is going to significantly improve your city’s economy, you’re supporting it for the wrong reason.”

Good enough. As the article of the “13th Man” suggests, Paul Allen is pocketing a lot of money on the Seattle Seahawks, and he brushed aside any risk in his ownership of the Seahawks with the stadium bonds. Congratulations to the Titans of Finance, and enjoy your superbowl — state of Washington.

I start with this caveat, which is only mildly tin-foil hat (a decent fashion statement, that):

A Duke professor says he is doubtful about Thursday’s audiotape from Osama bin Laden.

Another element that Lawrence takes issue with in bin Laden’s latest message is its length – – only 10 minutes. Previously, the shortest was 18 minutes.

And after I toss up that as a caveat, I ponder the meaning of:

HANNITY: It’s more than that. I think it’s also the leaders in the Democratic Party that, from the very beginning, have undermined this war. If I were to give you a quiz, Mr. Speaker, and if I would say to you, “You know, was it [Sen.] Ted Kennedy [D-MA], [House Democratic Leader] Nancy Pelosi [D-CA], [Rep.] John Murtha [D-PA] who said, ‘George Bush gives continuous, deliberate misinformation. Polls reveal that we want to withdraw from Iraq.’ ” You would have guessed either of — any of those. Well, it was bin Laden who said that.

Hm. George Bush gives continuous, deliberate misinformation. Polls reveal that we want to withdraw from Iraq. Those are the controversial things that Osama Bin Laden said that Sean Hannity (shown on the sidebar with robotic arms in a futuristic visage, for what it’s worth) would have as unacceptable conversation talk? Can we no longer cite polling information if it hampers the president, cloaked in the robe of “Commander in Chief” though he may be?

The “more than that” Hannity refers to is the guest, um… Former House Ethics King (?) Newt Gingrich, regarding Michael Moore. This is a line of thought that has permeated the entire post-Osama tape discussion on the Idiot Box, from right-wing to numb-minding conventional wisdom (I’m looking in Chris Matthew’s direction.)

The basic problem is a reversal on a question that Trent Lott once asked when some Democrats somewhere or other poked about with questions on why we’re going to Iraq: “Who’s the enemy here: George W Bush or Saddam Hussein?”

Who’s the enemy here: Osama Bin Laden or Michael Moore? Would you rather fight a, quote-in-quote “War on Terrorism” (permeate it anyway you want, but assume that it’s successful conclusion would mean the popular-support and financial and bankruptcy of terrorist groups seeking the destruction of America and a Holy “Islamo-Fascist” middle East), or a cultural war against groups of Americans with a different political vision for America than you?

Bush, March 13, 2002: So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.

A bit after the disappointment in Tora Bora…

If I want to snidely work my way to the Democrats, it’d be that they too are considering Cultural War matters in deference to Military Matters. John Murtha, I would think, would be the most amiable choice in giving the Democratic Response to Bush’s “State of the Union” speech (which will have some echoes of “either with me or with Osama” layered into it), they select newly elected Virginia Governor Tim Kaine — a political decision seemingly based on Kaine’s liberal use of Jesus and faith references.

There’s this advertisement, a public service announcement thingy that radio stations pop in to fill both a quota and unbought advertisement time, for the Lewis and Clark BiCentennial Celebration that has, for the past year, irked me a bit. More to the point, I am stuck pondering two simple words and what they encompass.

It’s a Native American, in the background we hear some generic pow-wowing, who speaks of how “Lewis and Clark travelled a journey of discovery only to discover dozens of Native American tribes who…

… DESPITE EVERYTHING…

… are still with us today. Travel the Lewis and Clark Trail. (and the clencher) Their journey winds through us all.”

Despite, quote-in-quote, “Everything”? That would be the Genocide (best personified by the man on the twenty-dollar bill, who’s credited with raising small d democracy for the masses), the early form of chemical warfare that I can with dark humour laugh at as “blowing blankets”, the movement and removement of the tribes into less and less desirable parches of land, the Trail of Tears, the wanton destruction of the Buffalo and the encroachment of the Trains, naming a sports team after a racial slur, introduction of alcoholism, and — a sometimes unspoken bit of ugliness from the latest Congressional scandal– fleecing money out of various Indian tribes by playing one tribe’s Indian Gaming Casino against another tribe’s to pocket money to Jack Abramoff.

That’s a lot of “everything”. I guess there’s no other way of phrasing it, as they have to acknowledge that stuff happened in as positive a manner as possible. It’s a bit of a token ad in the series, and I imagine the thing being written and re-written and reviewed by a long series of consultants for “political correctness”.

Later in the series of “Lewis and Clark Bi-Centenial ads” we have a set of ads of how Lewis and Clark would “view their trail today”, somewhat carefully couched as a “shame that we have highways and that the Buffalo and beavers have been knocked out”, with a requisite “As you think about what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost, think about how to save what is left”. As if to make up for an “oh. wait” moment, an ad or two chimes in by inserting the “American Indians” back into the picture… a bit awkwardly… cojoined with Lewis and Clark in their concerns of the toll the development of the West has had on the Environment. But I do mention this: Lewis and Clark both speak, saying “Something must be done to save this great forest”. The Native American… does not speak in the ad. Partly because Lewis and Clark’s 21st century visage are lifted from other ads that do not feature the Native Americans, and partly because… well… I imagine it’s a bit of an insult to insert a living Native American next to two dead European Americans.