The watchdog group Media Matters for America called out the hypocrisy of Fox News yet again today. Highlighted above is a picture from “The Fox Nation” of President Barack Obama with his feet up on a desk with the subtitle reading “Is Pres. Obama Disrespecting the Oval Office?” Media Matters was quick to point out the biased politicization of this suggestion by posting a photo of President George W. Bush doing the same exact thing. Of course, The Fox Nation posed no similar question back then:

What’s missing from the analysis is the key racial dynamic in U.S. society. The suggestion that the first African-American president was disrespecting his office by putting his feet up on his desk signals racial stereotypes that were prevalent during the times of post-Civil War Reconstruction. During that historical period, pioneering black lawmakers from the south integrated political institutions such as in the case of U.S. Senator Hiram Revels and Governor P.B.S. Pinchback. The response to the rise of blacks to positions of authority was predictably racist more often than not. The gross racial stereotypes of the times are forever encapsulated in film thanks to “Birth of a Nation.”

In its distorted re-telling of history, black lawmakers were depicted as woefully incompetent and wholly undeserving of their legislative seats. White actors in black face were filmed sneaking in swigs of whiskey on the job, eating chicken, throwing the bones on the floor, snoozing and putting  their bare feet up on their desks! The Fox Nation’s jab at President Obama echoes the racism of Birth of a Nation as all the core distorted assumptions are present. The more things change, the more they stay the same…

Tricky Dick Couldn’t be Kicked

Back in the day on November 6th, 1962, Richard Nixon lost the race for Governor of California. Despite the fact that tricky dick had fallen just short of 120,00 votes to his opponent John F Kennedy two years prior in the national Presidential election, his margin of defeat to Governor Brown in the statewide contest was nearly 300,000. Such a defeat had many commentators and analysts wondering if Nixon’s political ambitions had finally come to an end. Angered by what he considered an adversarial media, Nixon appeared before a press conference at the Beverly Hills Hilton to utter words of defiance that would become infamous. Tricky Dick told the members of the press, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

Unfortunately, the society of the U.S. allows for politicians like Nixon to reinvent themselves time and time again. Just six years after he uttered his infamous words Nixon did not retire from politics. Instead he went on to be elected President where he would kick us all around.

Lou Dobbs must be sweating it worse than a gringo who just bit into a searing habanero! The heat against him is coming from every which way. Earlier today, Media Matters for America and America’s Voice issued a press release announcing that a new ‘Drop Dobbs’ ad would air during CNN’s heavily anticipated “Latino in America” series. Unfortunately, late word now is that the cable news channel has decided against running it. The spot, which follow the youtube video put out by the Basta Dobbs campaign, would have been all the more important  since the Soledad O’Brien anchored special completely sidesteps the issue. The two involved groups lay out the “why” behind the ad that should run by pointing out the numerous abuses of the public trust Dobbs has committed including:

• Dobbs’ failure to disclose his fundraising for the Hazelton legal defense fund while reporting on immigration ordinance

• His forced retraction of a smear about the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

• His show’s use of a hate group graphic to push the “reconquista” myth

• His unwavering defense of his show’s wildly off-base leprosy reporting

• His pushing a North American Union myth that his colleagues called a “conspiracy theor[y]“

• His injecting loaded “amnesty” graphics into CNN journalists’ news reports

The Atlanta-based media empire can’t have it both ways. The hypocrisy of CNN is too evident to stomach. It’s unacceptable to give hate mongers posing as journalists the credibility of a prime time programming slot! It’s unacceptable to provide cover for Dobbs by refusing to air the ad. His ratings are down and the chorus against him is rising. What are you waiting for CNN?  Drop Dobbs or kiss your Latino market adios!

The ‘Basta Dobbs’ national campaign is moving forward by pointing out the schizophrenia of CNN vis a vis Latinos. With the upcoming ‘Latino in America’ series set to air this October 22nd on the network, activists are saying to the cable news channel that it can’t have it both ways.  Lou Dobbs continues to be granted a prime time platform on CNN to carry out his shoddy journalism that is more often than not lobbed against Latino immigrants. The Basta Dobbs campaign is a twenty-first century multimedia movement that is utilizing text messaging, internet and other forms of digital communication to reach a critical mass that effectively says “enough!”

Now, as the New York Times has mentioned, The Fox Business Network and Roger Ailes may be courting the CNN host as a potential hire. Basta Dobbs, ahead of the ‘Latino in America’ series, which reportedly sidesteps the Dobbs issue entirely, has launched a youtube video as part of its campaign to get him off our airwaves. (If Dobbs is acquired by the Fox Business Network, his media prominence, rest assured, will be greatly diminished) The video portrays the host’s penchant for fact fudging regarding Latino immigration in the U.S. and ties his hate spewing to the rising statistics of crimes of such nature targeted at them.

At one point, Dobbs is shown on CNN declaring Mexico to be our “enemy.” To show the causal link, the screenshot then turns to anti-immigrant protesters on the street frothing similar hatred towards the country and its people. “Fuck Mexico!” says one pendejo. The scene quickly shifts to another street corner demonstration where another idiota spews bigotry – only this time on Ross Street in Santa Ana! In none other than a classic Naui Huitzilopochtli confrontational film, the agitated man calls the OC citizen journalist a coward after bashing Mexico! To which Naui replies, “I’m surrounded by minutemen and I’m the coward?”

It just goes to show that even for a national effort like “Basta Dobbs,” Orange County always manages to insert its “finest” into the mix…

Let’s face it. The two most reviled right-wing television personalities right now are the anti-immigrant big head bigot Lou Dobbs and the dry drunk idiot Glenn Beck. Where does that leave poor ol’ Sean Hannity, now free of his milquetoast Liberal counterpart Alan Colmes, in the current scheme of things? Nobody cares! To an ego such as that exhibited by the Fox News host, this must be a truly devastating reality. I came to the conclusion of the inferiority of his program – even by right-wing standards – after viewing a number of episodes of the Hannity show and assessing its basic parameters. Where to begin? The cheesy country music beds that are a weak appeal to red states? The ‘great American panel’ which features some of the dumbest political opining found on television? The segments on ‘liberal translations’ that fail to be snide in an entertaining sense?

Without Colmes, Hannity’s show is shit. On his own, he can’t ‘out-asshole’ O’Reilly no matter how hard he tries, and he is an absolute GOP lapdog providing for softball interviews that don’t include any questions hinting to some semblance of independent thought. All this makes for boring demagoguery by the tragic standards of right-wing rhetoric. Does Hannity sense this? Does he suffer from professional jealousies? Media Matters for America recently analyzed the desperate reaches of the green with envy Fox host. Wanting a ‘Van Jones’ moment of his own, the watchdog group asks “Is Sean Hannity’s jealousy driving him to reckless smears?” Of course, Glenn Beck’s racist campaign against Jones was quite reckless, but in desperation is Hannity overreaching even more? Media Matters seems to think so. They quite easily debunk the host’s recent claims that the openly gay Obama Department of Education official Kevin Jennings covered up a” statutory rape.”

What’s motivating this latest attempt at the ‘czars’ of the Obama administration? Is the homophobe Hannity hoping that playing ’smear the queer’ on his show will translate into big ratings like his counterpart’s ‘fear of a black planet’ crusade against Jones? Media Matters punches the numbers that illustrate the fact that Hannity is indeed getting his ass handed to him by Beck despite enjoying a much more lucrative time slot for his program.

Remember your Othello Hannity. Remember your Othello!

I’ve focused a lot of attention recently on this blog on right-wing demagogues like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. How could I not? We now have racist radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh calling for segregated buses! As the so-called “August Revolt,” was a pinnacle moment for such hot air windbags, where did this modern day right-wing shock jock persona first begin to emerge? As with almost everything extremely conservative, look no further than Orange County for the roots of such phenomenons!

Wally George, who hosted “The Hot Seat,” on KDOC was the definitive pioneer of modern conservative television personalities. He had a worse “is it a whig?” hairdo than “the Donald,” screamed down political opponents long before Bill O’Reilly was a bold, fresh piece of shit and did it all before a live audience of useful idiots! With the portaits of John Wayne and “Tricky Dick” Nixon in the backdrop, George cultivated a downturn in political discourse that was sadly but undeniably entertaining. I would always come home from a night of partying and watch reruns of “The Hot Seat,” at two in the morning howling in laughter at the stupidity.

When I first began working in media at KPFK, I was told of an incident on Wally George’s program involving our very own Blase Bonpane of the Office of the Americas. The Sunday morning radio host, as I was told, made an appearance on “The Hot Seat,” and reacted to George’s provocations by overturning the conservative firebrand’s desk! For years, I’ve kept this in mind until having had the opportunity to finally see it (View youtube video posted above)  Bonpane, a pacifist, going “Jesus to the moneychangers” on the show was every bit as hilarious as I had expected!

The moment was definitive for George’s show which served in many ways as a template for today’s modern conservative landscape. Now, all we need is for someone to get righteous and overturn the media tables like Bonpane did so many years ago!

Tim Wise is a noted anti-racist activist whose books and speeches dissect the continuity of white supremacist structures in our society. I have broadcast and promoted his work on several occasions as I find his information generally useful. Tonight Wise will be bringing his message to an audience in Los Angeles addressing racism and the progressive left media. There’s only one problem. The event is sponsored, in part, by  ‘The Ad Hoc Committee for KPFK Community Radio” and is being framed within the context of racism at LA’s liberation frequency. If Tim Wise wants to lend his credibility and line of work to this particular critique and those who are behind it, that’s fine. He is free to do so, but he doesn’t work at KPFK and is not brown like me. So if it’s ok, this brown person will speak for himself here on the issue of white supremacy and community radio.

As a Chicano radio producer and a freelance journalist, I’ve experienced a thing or two regarding white supremacy in the realm of journalism. I do not in any way deny that such a phenomenon exists even in community radio. To state such would be counter to what I have come to know personally in my life and work. However, if we examine some of the agendas and contradictions of those behind the event tonight featuring Tim Wise, we can better grasp the situation with a more sober reasoning. We will be able to understand how the politics behind the accusations are that of a snake pit and how some of the protagonists are not true allies of people of color, but rather are quite the opposite.

Let’s then begin with the Ad Hoc Committee for KPFK Community Radio. An article in the Examiner describes it as the “principle organizer” of the event taking place tonight with Tim Wise.  A visit to the website for the Committee reveals that it has indeed posted a flyer for the event that purportedly addresses the ‘censuring of radical voices at KPFK.’ Interestingly enough, debate on the blogscript website is itself censored by the very fact that no one can post comments on any of the entries on the front page including the story on Tim Wise! If you click ‘read more’ on that very post you will see a companion flyer which lays out the specifics of the pushing out of brown folks at Pacifica.

Where KPFK is concerned you are presented with outright lies. Armando Gudino, Fernando Velasquez and Jerry Quickley are all listed as “unfairly fired.” I won’t speak to Quickley for reasons that can’t be discussed here, but I can and will speak to the other two. First off, since when does being laid off = a firing? It doesn’t, and that’s the first distortion. Gudino and Velasquez were not fired despite the appeal such hyperbolic language has. As in the case of the former Program Director, it must be nice to be “fired” with a negotiated severance package. This is just a small portion of the misinformation that Tim Wise is waging his credibility on tonight.

To continue, the website also contains in its sidepanel a slate of ‘recommended’ candidates for KPFK’s upcoming Local Station Board elections including the “copyrighted” candidacy of Ian Johnston©. Take a look at his appeal to voters which is exhaustively long to the point of self-importance, but focus attention on the following. In response to the question of how KPFK might better serve its listeners, Johnston© wrote: “I personally think that we could cut costs and improve our programming by replacing paid on-air talent with well trained volunteers, and replacing paid off-air talent, with people good enough at making radio, that they could teach those volunteers how to do so, too.” I ask readers to reconcile this with the listed “unfair firings” bemoaned in the companion flyer to the Tim Wise event!

According to the candidate’s plan, Armando Gudino, Fernando Velasquez and Jerry Quickley would have all been ‘replaced’ anyway! Not to mention people of color such as myself that are off-air talent would suffer the same. What more is needed to underscore the naked opportunism and usage of people of color to further an agenda? Furthermore, if this plan were to be implemented, it would present a question very relevant to white supremacy. If many of the people of color on staff currently receiving meager wages for their hard work were to be dismissed, who would replace them as volunteers? Could it be mostly white people of privilege who can afford to dedicate the time necessary to properly produce and execute radio? Who is much more likely to have that privilege of such leisure time and wealth? Anyone care to answer that? Where is Tim Wise when you need him? Oh, he’s going to be in Los Angeles speaking at an event sponsored by a Committee that is encouraging folks to vote for a person like Ian Johnston©.

Now, of course, there are folks of color in the mix who are brown like me. It’s important to examine their claims just as it is important to examine mine. I stand for Spanish language programming, an ethnic diversity of paid/volunteer staff and radical voices on KPFK. I don’t care if this is what Grace Aaron or anyone on the national level of Pacifica has or doesn’t have  in mind. I may or may not have a dog in the fight, but this is what I believe in and what I will consistently stand for. On the other hand, I will not stand with ‘incompetent Mugabes’ who utilize the accusation of racism to further their personal agendas while clouding their own inadequacies. These folks are an embarrassment to the left and people of color everywhere. They do not serve the community’s best interests.

There is a tremendous amount of disinformation to sift through that I haven’t addressed here but may do so in the future. Unfortunately, it’s true that snake pit politics are necessary to address, even if they waste time that could be spent constructively building movements. With that in mind, I speak solely for myself in regards to these matters, because Tim Wise will not be speaking for me tonight. Afterall, he is not brown like me…

Last night, I watched the latest installment of Glenn Beck’s crusade against Van Jones as a “communist czar” in the Obama administration. Taking in his brainless conversation with extreme leftist apostate David Horowitz was amusing to the point of laughter. I had to twitter my amusement at the coming idiocracy. Sure, demagogues can mouth stupidities on television and radio.The problem is when the crazies drive changes into our public policy. This morning, Beck’s idiocracy took a leap from the platform of his show on Fox News to the White House. Jones, under constant harrasment from Beck and others, resigned today from his green jobs advisory post.

The author of “The Green Collar Economy,” had been lambasted by Beck and others for comments made in his past in the East Bay Express about having had an affinity for communism. The subtitle of the feature, however, charted Jones’ trajectory from radicalism to progressive politics – a fact with little importance to Beck and his ‘fear of a black planet’ cohorts. Not only that, but anyone with half a brain that can distinguish the intricacies of  political philosophies must know that a book extolling the virtues of a greener capitalism hardly fits within the ‘red scare’ paradigm. It’s not like Jones is an Ecosocialist whose book fits alongside the Marxist inspired works of John Bellamy Foster or Joel Kovel, so let’s get real. Jones shifted to the right to get where he was. The right-wing can not comprehend that and instead insists upon a conspiratorial framework where his radical politics had not been jettisoned at all.

The final nail in the coffin of Jones’ position within the Obama administration came when he himself lent his signature to a 9/11 truth statement in 2004. Here is where the last conspiratorial framework comes into play. The letter, where Jones found himself among others such as Howard Zinn and Ralph Nader, opened with an introduction that professed a ‘conspiracy light’ theory that supposed that members of the Bush administration may have known that the 9/11 attack was coming but let it happen anyway. This is a departure from the more controversial conspiratorial framework that says the Bush administration carried out the attacks themselves.

Jones apologized and denied agreement with the introductory statement – and I can believe him on that. Many signatories have not spent their public life advancing that particular notion, but have wanted a more honest inquiry into the possible ineptitude of the Bush administration before, on and after 9/11. This is not controversial and doesn’t need to be apologized for. He, like others, probably didn’t read the petition carefully enough and now is paying for it. Of course, don’t expect to see these nuances play out in public discourse, just as you won’t see Jones advising public policy anymore either.

The crazies are running the agenda. Idiocracy is rising, just like Glenn Beck’s ratings.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Back in the day on August 4th, 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident took place – or did it? If one were to read the headlines of newspapers such as the New York Times or the Washington Post the morning after the North Vietnamese supposedly renewed attacks on the USS Maddox, the story seemed clear; the United States had been provoked into launching retaliatory strikes. President Lyndon B. Johnson even went on television to address the nation citing a Pentagon report claiming as much. In the days that followed, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was overwhelmingly passed in both the House and the Senate and spoke of deliberate and repeated attacks on US navy vessels in giving the President the power to take “all necessary measures” in going to war. However, in the aftermath more than a large shadow of doubt has been casted over the justification. A year after appearing on television speaking so resolutely, President Johnson himself offered the skeptical statement, “For all I know, the Navy was shooting at whales out there.” More concretely, Robert Hanyok, historian of the National Security Agency, reviewed all intelligence in 2001 and concluded that no attack took place that day.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident was the impetus for the escalation of U.S. hostilities that claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. Yet further proof that the U.S. government engages, in the words of the Thompson Twins, in “Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah!”

I was driving along my daily commute back from work today when I noticed an enormous billboard even though I tend to avert my eyes from the sort of thing. The question, “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” beckoned from its  green background risen high above and to the side of the 5 south Santa Ana freeway around the City of Commerce.  Of course, this is related to the conspiracy theory that proposes that President Barack Obama has not put forth valid proof that he was born in the United States and thus is not entitled to occupy the oval office!

The wack-job website World Net Daily is apparently financing the billboards in locations across the country to sway public opinion. The truthfully disturbing part of this is that despite contrarian reports in the media, few have put forth the analysis that the ‘birther craze’, by in large, stems from the collective racist psyche that cannot accept the reality of an African-American president.

Sure, there will be people who will say race has nothing to do with it and will admonish me to do the “research.” That’s fine and dandy, but I live in a nation where a Boston policeman can go on CNN’s Larry King Live and tell the host of the program that he isn’t racist despite writing an email calling Henry Louis Gates a “banana eating jungle monkey!” There are no more honest racists in this country and I don’t expect any birthers to fess up anytime soon.

What is also disturbing about this billboard on the 5 freeway is that it illustrates that there is an awful lot of money behind stupid! Juxtapose this nonsense with the fact that Media Matters for America largely can’t get its 30 second anti-Birthers commercial aimed at Lou Dobbs aired on CNN as five of six private cable providers have declined!

I guess there’s no hope for a stillbirth of the movement…Nor is there any hope for any real truth regarding my ‘birther’ question: How did the mother of Lou Dobbs manage to squeeze out that huge acorn head of the CNN host when he was a baby? Or was it a CNN-section? Where’s the live birth certificate?