Donald Trump, Yellow Journalism, and a Contest of Madmen for the Primacy of the Sewer

By (O)CT(O)PUS

If this title caught your attention, you have come to right place. The art of headline writing is a lesson learned in Journalism 101 and a convention of ‘yellow journalism’ born in the Gilded Age. Yellow journalism is a derisive term that has become synonymous with sensationalism, pandering, and journalistic misconduct. When discussing the failings of contemporary journalism, the era of the yellow press is likely to be invoked. The criticisms are valid because the conventions of yellow journalism continue to live and thrive in the age of cable TV news.

My purpose in writing this post is to critique a column by Paul Janensch that appeared in the pages of our local newspaper: “Trump understands how to feed media to his advantage” [July 22, 2015].  Everyday we witness examples of cringe worthy headlines turned into newsworthy events.  We understand how charlatans and shameless hacks play the media; but how many journalists ask the more pertinent question:  Why does our media allow itself to be played?  In his commentary, Janensch merely scratches the surface.

Yellow Journalism.  The story of yellow journalism begins with publishing legend Joseph Pulitzer.  An ambitious and aggressive newspaper entrepreneur, Pulitzer pioneered the use provocative headlines, pictures, games, and novelties to attract readers and build circulation. Yet, his motives were not entirely self-serving. Pulitzer also believed in journalism as a civic responsibility whose mission is to improve society. In an era marked by immigration, labor unrest, abuses of power, and injustice, Pulitzer transformed his newspaper into a leading voice of reform.

In short order, yellow journalism spread to Boston, Chicago, Denver, and beyond. The staid establishment tabloids of the era denounced the excesses of the yellow press, as evidenced in this 1906 commentary by Harper’s Weekly:

”We may talk about the perils incident to the concentration of wealth, about the perils flowing from a disregard of fiduciary responsibility, about abuses of privilege, about exploiting the government for private advantage; but all these menaces, great as they are, are nothing compared with the deliberate, persistent, artful, purchased endeavor to pervert and vitiate the public judgment.”

Sound familiar? Even in a bygone era, critics called attention to the power of media to shape public opinion, a concern still voiced more than a century later. All told, yellow journalism has been described as irritating yet irresistible, imaginative yet frivolous, aggressive yet self-indulgent, and activist but arrogant. The history of ‘yellow journalism’ informs our concerns about the failings of contemporary journalism:

What has changed since the Gilded Age?

Is modern mass media serving the public interest?

Should we be concerned?

Media Consolidation.  In the Gilded Age, there were thousands of independently owned newspapers, and no tabloid had the market reach or power to influence national opinion.  By mid century after a succession of wars, the focus of public attention shifted to national and world events.  By 1975, two-thirds of all independently owned newspapers and one-third of all independently owned TV stations had vanished.  Today, less than two-dozen companies control 75% of the print market, and only five companies dominate the cable news network segment – the same ones that own the top Internet news sites.

What has changed from the Gilded Age to the present? Media consolidation has concentrated power in the hands of very few players that now have the means to “pervert and vitiate the public judgment.”  In recent times, media conglomerates – grown too big to fail -- measure success in terms of ratings and audience share (which translate into advertising revenue).

Roger Ailes, chief architect of the Fox News stratagem, openly admits: He sees himself as a producer of ratings, not journalism; audience share is his only yardstick. Roger Ailes knows the conventions of yellow journalism.  He also knows his audience better than most: Middle Americans with traditional values who dutifully practice their faith weekly in church pews and want their opinions shrink-wrapped on the nightly news.

Crosstalk.  To avoid charges of promoting a partisan bias, news networks often interview opposing stakeholders to create an appearance of balance and objectivity.  We know this formula all too well:  He claims the sky is falling; she says the sky is blue.  Which one  tells the truth; who among them is the liar?  All too often, the burden of unbundling fact from fiction is left to the viewer.

When broadcasters fail to check the veracity of competing claims (when lies are treated as newsworthy events), deceptions are legitimized upon a national stage.  Staged confrontations further antagonize an angry public already mired in partisanship.  How polarized have we become as a nation?  On any given day, read the opinion pages (and share your impressions here).

Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly are the ‘yellow kids’ of broadcast journalism. When we catch them in the act of dissembling, they reflexively lash out when criticized, or feign innocence by masquerading as entertainers, or defame and demonize their opponents. From the Gilded Age to the present, much has remained the same.  When sensational headlines scream for attention, nothing succeeds like excess, and Donald Trump is the most consummate troll of all.

Should we be concerned?  You betcha!  We have long known how media can be played and manipulated – by paying journalists to promote an industry viewpoint; by hiring PR firms to feed stories to the press; by faking news with maliciously edited videotape; by using smear tactics to destroy reputations; by repeating hot-button weasel words to spread suspicion and fear; by leveraging the powers of government to shape public opinion; to sell a bogus war on flimsy evidence. We understand intuitively how often our networks have failed in their mission to report honest and trustworthy news -- leading us astray.

Finally, consider the impact of the Citizens United decision that opened a new era of Super PACs and dark money from anonymous donors whose identities and motives are no longer transparent to the public.

In closing, I leave you with this thought. As Hannah Arendt once observed, a disciplined and well-funded minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government -- namely free speech and freedom of the press -- to undermine democracy itself.

This is the state of American journalism, circa 2015. We have finally come full circle when charlatans reprise the excesses of a bygone era and hold us hostage in “a contest of madmen for the primacy of the sewer”  No matter who wins or loses, everyone loses when all standards of civility and honesty sink deeper into an abyss.  Caveat emptor!

Dark Money Shines Bright

I do remember saying just the other day that the first pictures of Pluto would  immediately be followed by "proof" of  space aliens having been there.  We've only had one closeup so far and although there are tongue and cheek observations of the eponymous Walt Disney character we haven't had claims of flying saucers or pyramids or humanoid faces looking down on us from 3 billion miles away.  The Aliens Under The Bed boys haven't faded away of course. Unimaginably huge odds against interstellar travel notwithstanding, the passion for believing in cover ups persists at all levels as we see in the reaction of former senior White House advisor John Podesta, who now runs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to the President's comment about Pluto having its first visitor:

.@POTUS: how can you be sure this was Pluto's first visitor? #justasking https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/621133763385425920 …9:45 AM - 15 Jul 2015

Of course the word "sure" is the fulcrum of his argument.  One has to ask what it means to Podesta since the odds against interstellar travel must be added to the unlikelihood of anyone from the Great Beyond being interested in Pluto in the first place, while being careful not to leave anything behind but rumors, But the question of ancient aliens leaving little clues but no evidence doesn't seem to arise in the willful believer.  I only bring it up as an example of the inevitable reaction of that predictable species the Human Ape.  Odds of a trillion times a trillion to one seem like a real possibility while certainties are uncertain. The argument from ignorance is a powerful one on this planet of the apes.

The first thing I saw upon turning on the TV this morning was a long, image laden scare commercial by "Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran."  We aren't told just how many "citizens" corporate or otherwise are behind it, but we can assume there were a great many dollars. How many of those dollars used to belong to the Israeli Lobby, how many to GOP funded groups we don't know, but inevitable though it might be, it's still a bit shocking to see such direct appeals from anonymous sources to defame and misrepresent a presidential proposal.  It shouldn't be and after all the Republican campaign against the ACA and Planned Parenthood and Civil Rights have been unremitting. Googling Iran, nuclear, deal gives you a page full of diatribes against it, none of which address the fact that Iran has nuclear capabilities and has had all through the embargoes.  It's just another reminder of the corruption of  reason, the corruption of Democracy in the name of Democracy and the undercutting of the institutions of government of our Republic.

The stakes are perhaps higher here though. The safety of the world is at stake and the customary lying, fear mongering and appeals to the ignorant aren't as easily ignored.  Face it, the public isn't going to read the proposed agreement, the public will respond according to unexamined but passionate prejudices and a big one of those is the fondness for belligerent stances against satanic enemies. Witness the intransigent attitude toward our pathetic Cuba policies.  I am certain that this treaty will be voted upon not in terms of whether it's workable or beneficial but under the influence of the bullheaded, xenophobic blowhards and Theocrats.

You just can't trust the heathens to act in their own interests is the call.  You can't expect Congress to do that either, is my response.

Not all Donalds are Ducks

Some are just Schmucks.

The antics of Donald Trump make for good TV. That has been true for much longer than we've had to see him posing as a presidential candidate. It's hard for the tired and cynical public to get away from him but of course it's hard for the GOP to get away from him too.  It's amusing to watch the Machine try to put a gilt frame around him, because while stirring up the muck and the creatures that live in it is what they excel at, those creatures can none the less be quite offensive to some of the people the GOP would like to court:  Like Mexicans and voters who don't fear immigrants quite enough.

One of the memes that seem to bear the SKU of  Rove and Co. is that "the Left" is overly concerned and perhaps running scared of Donald.  It seems to be popping up on blogs all over the place as planted memes, buzzwords and Tea Party tropes do.  I find it puzzling since I don't know anyone who thinks Trump is a serious contender. I admit watching the coverage the Chump gets, produces a certain existential angst, a concern that such a character from a cheap, sophomoric farce could be happening in the real world,

The only thing I fear is that by distracting us from the real problems here on Planet Earth that need to be addressed, the entire campaign can continue to be a cheap, sophomoric farce concerned only with the fears of Xenophobes, Homophobes, Crusaders for God , Guns and extremists of all sorts. To be sure, I sense a sort of Newtonian opposite force as well, but it's harder to find a single Democratic clown who embodies all the neurotic and extremist views of the always embattled Left. Please pardon me Mr. Shakespeare for saying this again, but methinks the Republican Lady doth protest too much. Trump is only worrisome in as much as he distracts from the horrible recent history of the Republicans, their "leaders" and the damnation they dearly deserve.

The facts alone provide damnation enough for GOP economic policies,  They gave us massive unemployment and negative job growth for 8 years, exploding debt and deficit spending and of course their deceitful propaganda campaign, their gross lies and appeals to Chauvinism gave us the longest and most expensive war in American history and a war we quite dramatically lost and all with no attempt to pay for it.  They allowed the profiteers for the most part to avoid taxation while providing the madmen who rushed into the power vacuum sufficient cash, weapons and equipment to destabilize a sizable part of the world and continue the gruesome slaughter of innocents.

Donald Trump is there to prevent such thoughts from getting in the way of  the attempt to begin act two of Armageddon, but making him seem like a hero to those who hate Liberals isn't enough.  He needs to be his own opposite so that all bases can be covered and pay no heed to the contradiction. Republicans as it appears,  are totally blind to contradiction when it provides them with the rage-fix they crave; when it provides them the juice that makes them feel smart, superior and powerful -- when it feeds the Denialism and love of conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump, you see, is a  Democratic plant.   Perhaps it's true that he creates such loathing in non-Republicans that it would draw the notoriously non-voting single purpose Democrats to the polls, but once he fades away, and he most assuredly will, he will pass and be forgotten like the rest.  Someone like Jeb will be waiting, made more credible and trustworthy in comparison to the circus clown in the ratty wig -- someone ready to give us a more economically divided America, another economic collapse and another opportunity to revel in contempt for science, objectivity, and prosperity for those whose names don't end in INC.  Perhaps yet another opportunity to support our troops in yet another hopeless military enterprise?

Whatever happened to Trump University?

The Republican party has been trying to reach out to the Hispanic community to garner votes, and it's been a struggle for them. A struggle that Donald Trump made worse two weeks ago, saying that all illegal immigrants were drug dealers, rapists and criminals. ("And some, I assume, are good people," he grudgingly added.)

The Hispanic community was understandably outraged. And Trump, as he does, refused to back down from those statements.

Obvious anagram Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, had to call Trump to tell him to tone down the rhetoric, because it was hurting the Republican brand. That's not likely to work - whether it was negative or positive attention, he got attention for his remarks, and that's what Trump lives for.

(On a side note, who was the first person to call him "Obvious anagram Reince Priebus"? Because I'd like to shake that guy's hand.)

Donald Trump has been called "the id of the Republican party," which is accurate enough. He is the embodiment of the basic, instinctual drives of a person, the reptilian forebrain slipped into human skin. But more than that, he is also the Ego of the Republican party. By any definition. He is a self-serving, self-centered evangelical preacher of the Word of Trump. He, himself, is the center of his entire universe, and nothing is more important to him than building himself up, so that others can marvel at how important he is.

Trump feels the need to keep reminding people that he's "really, really rich." Well, of course he is: his father was a multi-millionaire real estate developer. The children of rich people tend to be rich, too.

The man who's filed for bankruptcy four times wants us to trust him with America's economy. That seems like an obviously stupid idea to anybody who thinks about it, but Trump is trusting most of America to be as stubbornly ignorant on as many subjects as he is. (And sadly, that may be a good bet.)

The man has had to close or sell off almost as many casinos as he's opened. And it's really hard to lose money with a casino. But it's easy to set up a scam, isn't it?

People, it's only been two years. Has everybody forgotten that Donald Trump got sued by the State of New York for a scam called Trump University?

The lawsuit, which seeks restitution of at least $40 million, accused Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization and others involved with the school of running it as an unlicensed educational institution from 2005 to 2011 and making false claims about its classes in what was described as “an elaborate bait-and-switch.”

In a statement, Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general, said Mr. Trump appeared in advertisements for the school making “false promises” to persuade more than 5,000 people around the country — including 600 New Yorkers — “to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got.”

The advertisements claimed, for instance, that Mr. Trump had handpicked instructors to teach students “a systematic method for investing in real estate.” But according to the lawsuit, Mr. Trump had not chosen even a single instructor at the school and had not created the curriculums for any of its courses.

...

The inquiry into Trump University came to light in May 2011 after dozens of people had complained to the authorities in New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois about the institution, which attracted prospective students with the promise of a free 90-minute seminar about real estate investing that, according to the lawsuit, “served as a sales pitch for a three-day seminar costing $1,495.” This three-day seminar was itself “an upsell,” the lawsuit said, for increasingly costly “Trump Elite” packages that included so-called personal mentorship programs at $35,000 a course.

The details of this story kept getting more and more bizarre as press conferences were held and details were leaked.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says many of the 5,000 students who paid up to $35,000 thought they would at least meet Trump but instead all they got was their picture taken in front of a life-size picture of "The Apprentice" TV star.

...

The lawsuit says many of the wannabe moguls were unable to land even one real estate deal and were left far worse off than before the lessons, facing thousands of dollars in debt for the seminar program once billed as a top quality university with Trump's "hand-picked" instructors.

(More details can be found here and here.)

There is very little in Donald Trump's business dealings that aren't self-serving, shady, or both. This might make him the perfect Republican, but it would make him a very, very bad president.

Failure at the Bully Pulpit

On Wednesday, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink confronted Lindsey Graham at a press conference, and really didn't do a particularly good job.

Benjamin was supposed to be asking the Republican presidential candidate a question, but instead held onto the microphone for more than two minutes before security escorted her out of the room. While she still had the floor, Benjamin implored Graham to speak out against beheadings in Saudi Arabia and the Israel’s “repression” of the Palestinians, among other issues.

Graham had a chance to respond appropriately, and instead he chose to flounder.

“Is there a question?” an uncomfortable-looking Tapper asked as Graham chuckled to himself and rubbed his eyes.

“I’m going to put her down as undecided,” Graham joked after Benjamin’s mic had been taken away. While he said he respected her right to express her opinion, the senator said, “I couldn’t disagree with you more.”

“I think people like you make the world incredibly dangerous,” he continued. “I think people like you are radical Islam’s best hope.” He argued that the Iraq War did not create ISIS just as American intervention did not set the stage of 9/11. “You’re not going to fool me that somehow we brought this upon ourselves,” he said.

So, apparently, despite being a US Senator, Graham is either willfully ignorant or a liar. (I'm willing to say "both," but perhaps I'm too forgiving.)

OK, let's go through this quick: in the 80s, the CIA funneled money to train fighters in Afghanistan. One of those fighters was the son of a rich architect, a guy named Osama bin Laden who would go on later to create a little social club called Al Qaeda. So, already we see where American intervention over there didn't do us much good.

Then we went into Iraq and started blowing shit up. People lost their homes, their families and their hope. And like many hopeless people through history, they turned to religion.

On top of that, we left former Iraqi soldiers and former Al Qaeda operatives with no jobs, and since all of their training was in the area of "urban destruction," and they suddenly had plenty of time on their hands, they needed a hobby as well. So, Lindsey, that was how we helped create ISIS. Simple, right?

But both Lindsey and Benjamin held the national stage for a moment and neither one used it appropriately. Benjamin came to the Atlantic Council knowing that Graham would be there, and had plenty of time to prepare. She could have asked him a question that he could have been forced to respond to in some way.

For instance, "Senator Graham, you supported the invasion of Iraq. You consistently support our relations with Saudi Arabia, a repressive regime where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from. You have been consistently wrong in every way in dealings with the Middle East. Why do you think we should listen to you now, and especially why do you think we should put you in the White House?"

Instead she chose to do what CODE PINK does most of the time and just disrupt the proceedings with some incoherent rambling and unfocused anger.

Lindsey could have found a way to respond graciously, or could have begun discussing Middle Eastern policy. Instead, he make a lame joke and tried to dismiss with non sequiturs and lies.

“I think people like you are radical Islam’s best hope.”

How is that, Senator? Because she chose to exercise her right to free speech (even if she didn't do it well)?

Lindsey Graham showed that, at his best he would probably be an ineffective president; at his worst, he would most likely be that most dreaded of all natural disasters, a third Bush term. Medea Benjamin and Lindsey Graham met Wednesday night. But they were both prisoners of their own ideology.

What's in the Sausage

We've just had a weekend of waving flags and telling ourselves what it stands for as though it were something you could say simply and be honest about it. Does it "stand" for freedom, or independence or Genocide and the slaughter of innocents. The stars and Stripes flew over slavery for more years than any of the various Confederate flags did but it's not politic to mention it nor to question the absurdity of honoring the flag that waged war on the lag you also honor to the point of religious fervor.

The word is not the thing itself, nor is a symbol a symbol without the cooperation of the viewer, but nonetheless, we do make a terrible fuss about them.  Justice Anton Scalia recently told us that words don't have a meaning any more, and although he was making a rather pathetic argument and although his intention was to disparage a rather reasonable argument by setting himself up as a dictionary and encyclopedia of terms, he's right.  Words have a history, words are self-reproducing entities and so evolve, but words are not absolute, particularly in the vernacular.  The same applies to symbols.  The Confederate Battle flag, used as a Naval 'Jack' after 1963 and on some battlefields a bit earlier isn't subject to copyright. It "means" what you want it to mean.  To some it's the symbol of  a valiant effort to form a new country, to others it's toilet paper.  Symbols also mean what someone says they mean and authority is such things is hard to come by. It's very hard to make an argument that a symbol should mean something I tell you it should mean or that it doesn't mean what you say it does. Sometimes, said Freud, a cigar is just a cigar and perhaps he would agree that a flag is just a flag,

Nearly everyone has an opinion of what the Confederate Battle Flag means.  To people who sell them, and who use it as a symbol of  "Southern Pride" tend to tell you it has nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with respect for the Confederate effort and it's all about "States Rights."  Am I a cynic for adding that the States Right most in question was the right to own slaves?  It's a matter of opinion. Some maintain a firm belief in some property of  "Southern" culture that is easy to feel but very hard to explain. What better way to pretend there's something to be proud of than waving a flag? What better way to hide the contents of a dubious burrito than to wrap it in a flag?   Who wants to see how their favorite sausage is made or what goes into it? Pride, Heritage, Liberty Are these fancy words for dog meat?  Do we think about Upton Sinclair and ask how many workers fell in the meat grinder to make it?

Perhaps the Union missed an opportunity to ban the symbols of the Rebellion in 1865. the way we forced Germany and Austria to do in 1945. They missed the opportunity to launch a long term and rigorous re-education effort that's so very impossible to do today  It would have had little to do with how it's seen by modern sympathizers to "the Cause" but it might have prevented the 150 year old custom of flying that flag publicly and plastering it all over license plates, truck bumpers and '69 Dodge Charger roofs to make it a symbol of something more noble.  Permission once granted is hard to revoke and people who have been wrong are too adept at redefining what happened, what they were really about and so show that they weren't really wrong and they didn't really lose.  Would we be better off shedding light on the true nature of the "noble cause" than arguing about semiotics and making declarations of faith?

Somehow no one is questioning the sudden obsession with that flag or its sudden identification with a hate crime no more or less egregious than the thousands of  other hate crimes, but it wasn't spontaneous in my opinion.  The notion that all politics is local is hard to maintain when one sees the work of choreography by well coordinated political entities ready to pounce on an event, defining it, decrying it and using it to steer the public to act in a certain way.  Issues like police brutality, racist law and racist people have been issues for many more years than you or I have been around, but we address such things suddenly and with extreme emotion when only days before we would have shrugged and yawned and asked what else was new.   I have to ask why a flag suddenly become the cause of 9 murders in South Carolina?  Why did our way of dealing with murder become our way of dealing with symbols and when did a passionate movement suffer by repressing its semiotics? It's not that there is no correlation, no connection, but are we substituting a symbol for something much bigger, more pernicious and vastly harder to eliminate?  By making it about a flag are we avoiding more rigorous and objective thought?

Will the hate culture, the Racist, politically and religiously extremist and anti-Federal Government, quasi-anarchist culture be adversely affected if the flag is taken down from any public property?  Experience suggests otherwise to me.  Some movements, like some vermin, proliferate better in the dark.  Perhaps it's time to make up some cardboard signs saying "It's about the hate, dummy."  Maybe it's time to stress that this symbol is the symbol of defeat, not of the hope for the South to "rise again."

Will repainting the roof of the General Lee make any racist think twice or impede the KKK's ability to recruit or will it help make them more romantic to paranoids?  Do the myriad atrocities and the deaths of millions of innocents stain the flag we paid respect to yesterday?  What I'm asking is whether the good is best served by playing Chess with symbols, by "raising awareness" and other possibly useless or counterproductive gestures.  What I'm suggesting is paying more attention to more subtle and more consistent efforts to re-educate, to fight false history, to promote respect.  Should we be focusing our efforts at reeducation on the young before they are captured by legends and reinterpretations and Chauvinism?  Should we insist on more objective teaching of history and ethics and critical thinking?

Ah, but that costs money and takes time and isn't as much of a social event as cutting down flags and having parties while ignorant armies recruit by night.

Thank you for your service

It's that wonderful time of year in New Mexico, when we pack dried-out tents full of explosives, which are sold by sweating meth-heads smoking cigarettes.

Every year, this state loses thousands of acres of land to wildfires. And we celebrate independence by firing pyrotechnics into dried grass. Because that makes sense. But let's not worry about little, unimportant questions like "physics." Instead, let's consider the realities of living in the 21st Century.

For example, a few years ago, we had the C-Student President, whose advisers felt we needed a permanent base in the Middle East. So he took us to war. Around 68 hundred American soldiers died for this idiotic attempt to flex our military muscle. But, more importantly for (but oddly related to) the following issue, 970,000 soldiers were damaged (mentally or physically) in the course of fighting in those two related wars.

I figured out, some years back, my own minor insanity. I have the mildest case of PTSD ever reported - I just get cranky and irritable when shit starts blowing up. Which, if you think about it, just qualifies more as "survival instincts" than truly being PTSD.

But here's the problem: explosions have somewhat lost their thrill for a certain percentage of the American populace.

Remember, more now than for any generation of American people in decades, when shit blows up, it doesn't make you want to stand proud. It reminds you of a time when you didn't have control. When your friends and comrades were getting killed around you, and there was nothing you could do.

There was a time when the Republican party celebrated the sacrifices of the American fighting forces. Now, they'd like to forget they exist.

But maybe, just maybe, you can remember them, just for this year. Every time you blow something up, you're reminding them of a time that they'd rather forget. Every firework you set off hurts someone in ways you can't begin to imagine. Be respectful of our troops.

Some of them sacrificed more than you think.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Politics of Two Plus Two

In the morning newspaper, syndicated columnist George Will, whom I regard as a vapid lunkhead at best, titles his column:  “Candidates Unhinged.”  Sad commentary when a conservative commentator takes his own slate of candidates to task over “the changeable meaning of words” when referring to language written in the Constitution.  He presents the concept of 'judicial deference' – an argument put forth by John Roberts that excuses 'inartful' language when the 'intent' of a legislature is clear.

In recent editorials published by the Washington Post, various conservative writers regard the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage as an assault on democracy – invoking this concept of judicial deference.  Their claim?  Legislatures represent the 'will of the people' through their elected representatives, and any decision that overturns laws written by legislators – meaning the manifest will of the people -- is deemed undemocratic.  Bottom line: All matters of law are a popularity contest.  Years ago, conservatives who disagreed with a court decision groused with derision and scorn, regarding such decisions as examples of 'judicial activism' and 'legislating from the bench.'  The term 'judicial deference' is merely the latest iteration of a stale talking point. In his dissenting opinion on same-sex marriage, John Roberts hits the same sour note:

“Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it."

Neither history nor 'the changeable meaning of words' supports his view.  The 'will of the people' has not justified slavery; nor the implementation of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws; nor gender discrimination; nor any other form of bigotry and oppression. The Constitution has everything to do with it, and the phrasing of the 14^th Amendment is clear:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Equality under law is not a popularity contest; state legislatures cannot pass laws that abrogate civil rights and human rights; and a majority cannot suppress the legitimate aspirations of any minority.  One might think a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, schooled and experienced in law, can read simple words on a page without resorting to arcane equivocation and sophistry.

The legal controversy over same-sex marriage reminds me of an old joke.  An accounting firm is hiring new recruits.  The qualifying exam consists of one question:  What does two plus two equal?  ‘Four’ is not the correct answer.  The winning reply that lands the job:  Two plus two is whatever you want it to be.

In an era of confrontation, spin, and partisanship bordering on tribalism, words and numbers have lost all objective meaning. These days, the law -- and everything else -- is whatever you want it to be.

The Fat Man's Protest

So did you hear Mike Huckabee's opinion on laws requiring one to have a birth certificate to confirm one's gender at birth before using public toilets?  Did you cringe, like I did?  With recent advances in upholding the civil rights of gay people, the "Christians" seem to be running scared and that usually means trotting out the hyperbole, the ridiculous analogies and the bogus scenarios.

"I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today'"

Said the chubby man who would be President.  That's not a pretty picture and not a picture I enjoy holding in my mind, but the point is that the rabble rousing that involves scenarios of some guy dressed as a woman raping your daughter in the Lady's Room is fiction. If some dude wanted to dress up and explore the fabulous world of toilets, there would be no law likely to stop him, no DNA test or passport control at the door.  Indecent exposure laws, where they apply, are still in place.

Transgendered people have been using washrooms of choice  for decades and so far, I don't know of a problem, nor (and I've asked) do women normally walk around naked in public toilets.  Sorry, Mike, the athlete formerly known as Bruce Jenner isn't going to molest your wife or your darling daughter nor will anything be exposed outside of a toilet stall.  You'll never know. 

Frankly, remembering the alarming record of Republican politicians who rant about sex and gender and protecting the world from homosexuality being caught doing naughty things to boys in cloakrooms or sitting with "wide stances" in airport mens' rooms and sleazy motels, I'd rather not share a bathroom with Mike at all.  Methinks the fat man doth protest too much.

Pyramids on Pluto

The New Horizons space craft has about two weeks to go before it screams past Pluto. All right it can't scream because as we all know: in Space no one can hear you do that, but it will take the closest pictures we're ever going to get in our lifetimes.

Current pictures are still rather blurry, with some hints of at least one bright polar cap and a dark spot of some sort, but here's my prediction: within hours, or perhaps within minutes of the first pictures of the encounter being put on the internet, some proof of an alien presence, a humanoid face, a pyramid, Golden Arches or a Twistee Treat will be seen by NASA and immediately covered up and suppressed by "the government" only to be uncovered by an intrepid seeker of truth and put on the internet. Hell, it may already be there, intrepid truth seekers being as quick as they are to get at the real stories behind the stories.

It's a very safe bet, since Mars, as were so often told, is literally littered with such things and NASA and the European Space Agency have a vested interest in keeping us in the dark. So good are they in covering up things they have spent billions to find -- thus making sure their funding will not ever increase -- so good are they that thousands of people can be involved over a period of half a century with no leaks and no confessions nor any whistles blown. Scientists after all, are noted for never telling anyone of discoveries lest they get credit and win Nobel Prizes and have women buy them drinks in bars.


Giovanni Schiaparelli's "canals?" What makes you think they're not there, built by the same aliens of 2 billion years ago who came back in a time machine and taught Dwight Eisenhower to create the National Highway system in the 1950's before disappearing in their flying saucers? Without a doubt, our Mars rovers carry brooms and have since swept them away.  After all since we don't know what they are, they must be a product of alien life -- come on, that's just basic logic.

One has to ask how we know NASA or the ESA or the Chinese or Indian versions of the same aren't actually the aliens themselves spending our billions to erase their footsteps?  Don't bother to look into it, by the time you boot up your computer those green eyed lizards will have a hundred blogs, tweets and web sites with cover stories.  It's important that no one knows they're here or about their deep connections with Obama, the Pope and the metal robots they call the Aluminati who are planning to start the gun-grabbing invasion of Texas and the mass arrests of  Patriotic Republicans everywhere.

The total absence of evidence proves it true because only aliens could be so good at fooling us and remember, you saw it here.