I Am NOT the Beastmaster

Making Light

Tom Spurgeon has been providing ongoing coverage of two important stories related to editorial cartooning:  the protests over the cartoons of Mohammad that ran in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last year, and the letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff criticizing Tom Toles for drawing a cartoon that featured an amputated soldier.  He's also linked to one representative article that compares the two stories, although his description (the piece "contrast[s] the discourse at work in each effort") is either too credulous or too genteel. (Assume the links here come from Tom, since all but one do.)

In that latter piece, Thomas Lifson at "The American Thinker" uncritically recycles arguments from the Joint Chiefs, who claim that Toles's cartoon is "a callous depiction of those who have volunteered to defend this nation" and that Toles "make[s] light of their tremendous physical sacrifices."  Lifson says the cartoon is "making light of an amputee recovering from battle wounds."  (Don't try to follow his link if you want to judge for yourself, though; it points to the wrong cartoon!  Try the Comics Reporter or Washington Post articles on the controversy instead.)

This interpretation is puzzling, to say the least.  The cartoon certainly represents an amputated soldier, but it only mocks "Dr. Rumsfeld" for euphemistically minimizing the soldier's injuries by classifying him as "battle hardened."  The comment is not Toles's invention, as he remarks in this CNN interview (scroll down):

Secretary Rumsfeld dismissed two serious reports about the damage that has been done to the U.S. Army and -- with the expression that it was battle-hardened. My feeling was that, in light of the damage that has been done to the Army, and the catastrophic suffering that has happened to a lot of American soldiers, that that expression did not appropriately cover the situation.

Toles also offers a short, straightforward rebuttal to claims that he was "making light" of injured soldiers:

a depiction of a situation, a reality, a set of facts, is not the same thing as making fun of them.

In fact, his cartoon criticizes Rumsfeld for callously making light of the soldiers by denigrating their casualties.  So why isn't Thomas Lifson directing his ire at the Secretary of Defense?  (I would ask why the Joint Chiefs aren't doing the same, but that question answers itself.)

Although it propagates this misinterpretation of Toles's cartoon, most of Lifson's article is about the often violent protests over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, leading with a contrast between the protests and the Joint Chiefs' letter.  No doubt the letter is the more measured reaction, although comparing it to a series of orchestrated riots is faint praise indeed.  Lifson seems especially touched that "the JCS and our military possess overwhelming physical force, yet nowhere demand anything," while Muslims worldwide protest and occasionally burn and riot.  (The contrast seems a little more hollow now that our own State Department has supported the protesters' position.)

But the difference between the two situations is precisely one of overwhelming force.  The Muslim protesters generally don't have any power in their countries and so they take to the streets; the Joint Chiefs have overwhelming power and write a letter that asks for voluntary silence from the press with the confidence of those who expect to be obeyed.  (That doesn't make the former kind of protest better; it makes the latter kind more dangerous.)  Besides, if the Joint Chiefs did bank on their overwhelming military power to demand the Post censor itself, that would make them exactly the kind of authoritarians the writers of "The American Thinker" decry elsewhere on their site (albeit without the prefix Islamo-).  Granted, these days if the military did pull such a move they could depend on cheers from many corners of the internet and the American public.

Perhaps the most important point of comparison between the Danish cartoon protests and the Joint Chiefs letter is that they both operate on manufactured outrage.  (I highly recommend Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas? for more on how such forced outrage plays out domestically.)  Whether it's the addition of three fabricated anti-Muslim cartoons to make the Jyllands-Posten pieces seem even more abusive or a disingenuous misinterpretation promoted as truth, both parties are magnifying their own offense to claim we can't criticize them.  The difference is one of degree, and response, and power, not kind.

Update (2/8/06):  Today, Tom reports on a very similar Mike Luckovitch cartoon featuring an amputated soldier... except this one makes fun of the media rather than Dr. Rummy.  It hasn't garnered an angry letter from the Joint Chiefs.  As cartoonist Nick Anderson says, "Perhaps it depends whose ox is being gored?"

Situational Awareness

Not much blogging here lately between late-summer travel, the start of the semester, conference planning, and a national disaster that dwarfs my ability to say anything useful.  (And really, that's the greatest tragedy, isn't it?  Not as much blogging.)  I'm always amazed by those who are able to immerse themselves into the political coverage and blogs and spin and come out with something cogent but I have neither the time nor the inclination to keep up with the inundation of words our political classes are trying to pour into the space left by the receding floodwaters.

So I'm grateful to those who have waded in with the goal of keeping our attention, our sympathy, and our ire focused right where they belong.  Doug Tonks has been providing a steady supply of clear-minded commentary on Katrina and the aftermath.  In his most recent post, Doug links to this article in which the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin observes that the mainstream media have finally started admitting what these folks were saying long ago.

It's about time the press started observing that Bush's willing departure from the "reality-based community" has led to terrible consequences, not just abroad but right here at home.  Like the hero of one of those postmodern novels his base claims September 11th rendered irrelevant, Bush has decided to create his own reality from the comfort of his seemingly permanent vacation.  Unlike most of those characters, reality has lashed back at him.  Maybe the jury's no longer out on global warming?  How about the importance of civic infrastructure?  The Department of Homeland Security?  The benefits of patronage?  Brownie?

Anyway, it's nice to see our media growing its adult teeth back, at least temporarily, although it's come a couple thousand people too late.  Apparently letting Americans die needlessly only becomes a problem once you start doing it at home.  (Incidentally, the Froomkin article ends with a discussion of how the Bush administration has used Katrina to hand out more no-bid contracts to old friends.  Read the whole thing.)

So the last couple of weeks haven't been any fun at all.  Well, not entirely: if I want incisive commentary on current events I can always go straight to old Flash covers.

Follow the Leader

I've been following the G-8 summit closely this week, hoping that last weekend's call for African aid and debt relief would amount to more than just another well-meaning symbolic gesture.  But it's become impossible to talk about the summit without talking about yesterday's abominable terror attacks.  I'm somewhat appalled that my first thoughts wavered between I hope this doesn't derail the talks and at least it didn't happen last Saturday.  Either one is cold comfort to those who were caught in the attacks or know someone who was.

(Update:  At least it wasn't "Hmmm, time to buy.")

And make no mistake, this one does strike a chord. I was evacuated from an underground station once during a false alarm in 1999, shortly after the nail bombings.  At the time I was staying on Upper Woburn Place, less than a block away from the site where the bus exploded yesterday.  In a sinister bit of synchronicity, I received a package yesterday that included a touristy London T-shirt.  A souvenir from my dad, who was there a few weeks ago and will no doubt be back soon.

This is not an abstract problem; this is not somebody else's problem; and those who imply that the British somehow deserved this because they have committed the crime of tolerating Muslims have sacrificed the most basic human sympathy for the opportunity to score a cheap and false political point.  It wasn't so long ago that these vultures were blubbering about our own tragedies and thanking the British for their tremendous show of support but that kindness hasn't been repaid; I guess Africans aren't the only people looking for 100% debt relief.

I am glad the attacks didn't happen last weekend when London Transport was flooded with an extra 200,000 people.  Still, that can't be any consolation to those who were riding the tube or the buses on Thursday morning instead of Saturday night.  You have my deepest condolences.

I'm also glad Tony Blair and the other G-8 leaders apparently didn't allow the attacks to deter them from discussing African aid and debt relief.  (Naturally it's too early to say how the agenda did or didn't change after the bomings but Blair at least seems undaunted in his commitment.)  Africa has been a home to Al-Qaeda before and it could be again, and ending the cycles of debt and poverty is one of the best things the West can do to prevent future attacks - certainly better than starting superfluous wars against Al-Qaeda's Arab enemies.

Ah, but that war is difficult to ignore, especially when the political leader of the poverty reduction movement is also one of the war's chief architects - the one we might reasonably have expected to know better.  It's interesting to compare this take on Tony Blair by comics creators Mark Millar and Sean Philips with this one by Washington Post columnist Jefferson Morley.  The main difference is that one is about the G-8 summit and one really isn't.

I suppose the comic is more subtle than most of Millar's work, but that bar isn't set very high.  (The comic isn't any better written, as Millar can't even distinguish between Bush's voice and Blair's.  Of the two, which one do you think is saying "all about you and me and the war and stuff"?)  Although Millar is obviously critical of Bush, and Blair's collaboration with Bush, he gives all the best lines to Bush's cynicism and condescension and claims of necessary evils.  This problem is by no means limited to Millar; some people might say it's easier to imagine greed than idealism, that good is harder to write than evil, but I think it's for lack of trying.

And isn't it amusing how Bush's lines sound so similar to so many left (or stage-left) critiques of Live8 and the debt relief movement?  "This was just a pop concert to those guys... somethin' to make them feel better about their cheap import sneakers and their aerosol deodorants [...] That's just the way the system works and they just ease their conscience by singin' songs about us every once in a while."  This confluence should tell us something, even it it's only that Millar is a deliriously, exuberantly defeatist leftist too.  No, that's too snide - Millar actually offers a nice illustration of the process by which cynicism supports the status quo under the guise of deflating the idealists.

The last panel suggests Blair has abandoned that idealism and is simply trailing in Bush's wake.  (Remember, this is Jamesian subtlety by Millar's standards.)  Blair deserves that slap and worse for following Bush into optional war in Iraq, even to the point of taking part in the fabrication of the cause for war.  If this comic were about Iraq I'd have no objection to Millar's points.  (Just his execution.)

But it's nominally about the G-8 summit, where Blair isn't cast so easily as Bush's poodle.  Jefferson Morley effuses about Blair's leadership, his ambition, his idealism, all the things Millar says he's lost.  Morley oversells his case for "Tony Blair, World President" but at least he's been paying attention.  Blair set the tone this week - I don't think the terrorists succeeded in wresting it away from him, although American cable news did its damnedest to let them yesterday - and for once he set it for something worth doing.

Many of the journalists at Blair's post-summit press conference today expressed a palpable disappointment that the summit didn't accomplish more (the notable exception being the gossip-obsessed American - sigh).  Most of them asked about the global warming part of the agenda, although more than a few were skeptical about the aid to Africa.  Perhaps it isn't enough; personally, I'd like to see more discussion about what the summit accomplished in terms of debt relief.  But simply by raising the standards to the laudable goal of ending African poverty, Blair has raised our expectations for what our nations can and should do - unlike his American pal, who's lowered them so far that I briefly mistook his admission that global warming is a man-made problem for a major achievement and not a belated statement of the obvious.

Blair and the protesters that Millar attempts to juxtapose so poignantly against him are working two different but crucially complementary approaches towards the same goal.  The past six years of protests have pushed the issues of debt relief and global justice literally to the top of the world agenda; Blair, to his credit, has worked to see that something tangible comes out of that push, although he should by no means stop with the promises that were made this week.  It may not be enough for some people; in the end it may not be enough for me.  But it's almost enough to make me like Tony Blair.

S for Symbol

Last month I joined Amnesty International.  I probably should have done it long ago, but I never quite got around to it until after they released their report condemning in unflinching detail my government's torture and abuse of detainees around the world.   Actually, it was the manufactured, shoot-the-messenger furor following the release of that report that finally got me to send in my money; I hope Amnesty's willingness to do the right thing and speak out against torture even in the face of such withering (and appalling) hostility and denial earned them many more new members.

A few weeks later they sent me a letter asking me to contribute more money to their Urgent Action Network, which sends appeals on behalf of prisoners of conscience around the world.  In addition to asking for a donation, they included a small card - I'm sorry, a "Message of Hope" card - which they asked me to sign and return with the promise that they'd try to deliver it to a prisoner.  It says simply "Do not be discouraged.  You are not forgotten" in five languages.

It's been sitting untouched on my desk ever since.  I can't help it; I'm skeptical of calls to action that appear to be nothing more than symbolic gestures.  What is the card really supposed to do?  Is it just a way of making members feel involved in Amnesty's work?  Is it the bait to reel in the contributions, which conceivably do more good than the cards?  What's the point?

This week, of course, all the cool boys are mocking the Live 8 concerts, which had the double gall of dusting off aging rock stars and attempting a mass political intervention in the upcoming G-8 summit.  The concerts, the London one in particular, really did look like rock's last hurrah, one final albeit impressive manifestation of the revolutionary liberation that was always inchoate but never quite realized in its glory days.  It was a broadcast from some parallel universe where rock stars do this sort of thing every summer and Yoko Ono never sold her dead husband's songs to Nike - interspersed with transmissions from our own Philadelphian timeline, where hip-hop superstars talk about helping Africa while wearing diamonds.

So there was a certain undeniable grandiosity to the proceedings, but grandiosity - hell, pomposity - for a good cause is better than invoking cynicism or derision as a safe, comforting, morally superior alternative to action, and that's exactly where many of the Live 8 criticisms have been pitched from.  But I have to admit, lambasting a campaign for debt relief because you don't care for Pink Floyd isn't so dissimilar from my reaction to the Message of Hope, which is as much a recoiling from the style, from the unbounded intimacy with strangers, from the name as it is a reasoned doubt about the little card's practical effects.

And then somehow I always end up thinking about the graphic novel and soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture V for Vendetta. This recent discussion over at the Howling Curmudgeons first sparked my thoughts about the sixteen-year-old comic in relation to the Amnesty card and our government's torture practices.

Towards the end of Book 2 the jailed and tortured Evey Hammond receives a strikingly similar message of hope.  (Speaking of whom, it was rather disconcerting to see Natalie Portman at Live 8, addressing this mass political mobilization while sporting Evey's shaved head. I kept waiting for Big Ben to explode.)  It's written by a fellow prisoner from the next cell over (in a sense), not a well-meaning charity donor who sits in provisional freedom halfway around the world, and it's scrawled on toilet paper rather than eco-friendly recycled paper stock.  It's the story of a woman who is arrested for being lesbian, who has her head shoved in a toilet bowl - at least there's no waterboarding, eh? - who is finally subjected to fatal medical experimentation, and who writes a testimony that inspires at least two other prisoners not to give in to the dehumanizations inflicted upon them by their captors.  In fact, it leads to the destruction of the government that tortures and kills her.

It's the moral center of a book that compromises every other moral stance, including the stance of inaction, and one of the most memorable passages in a book that does not lack for quotable quotes.  When I was 18 I was more likely to find a slogan in V's all-but-final words ("Ideas are bulletproof").  And any number of lines are creepily appropriate today; V's injunction to Lewis Prothero ("Admirable concern, commander.  Yet it's deuced odd, isn't it?  How you can show so much concern for porcelain and plastic... and show so little for flesh and blood") seems all too applicable to those who can get worked into a lather over analogies about torture or representations of torture but don't have any outrage to spare for the actual torture. 

But the more I read V for Vendetta, the more I realize that every other cool-sounding Alan Moore action-movie line - everything V says or does, for good or ill - is set into motion by Valerie's letter.  It ends with a simple assertion of her and her fellow prisoners' worth as human beings, and their refusal to surrender that worth to their captors:

I don't know who you are, or whether you're a man or a woman.  I may never see you.  I will never hug you or cry with you or get drunk with you.  But I love you.  I hope that you escape this place.

Do not be discouraged.  You are not forgotten.  From the filth of the "fraternity pranks," Valerie creates real human fraternity.  An Amnesty note that included selected portions of her letter would be truly inspirational - but Moore doesn't own those words anymore, and besides, the thought of sending real political prisoners letters of encouragement penned by fictional characters is unspeakably depressing.

But they are a reminder that even the simplest words of support can have a profound impact.  So can all those gauche public declarations and protests and grandiose message concerts, whose main purpose has always been to remind people at home that they're not the only ones who feel something isn't right.  Six years ago debt relief was supposed to be a pipe dream, something only the fringes cared about; now it isn't so fringe or so unrealistic.

When Moore's words are written up there, pulled out of their emotional context, they can look just as maudlin as any rock-concert Message of Hope.  Maybe genuine conviction always does, especially in contrast to the no-risk variety of the cynic.  But style and aesthetics and a lingering adolescent concept of cool are horrible reasons not to take part in a just cause.

The card and the check go out in the mail tomorrow.  What else can I do?

Ethical Experts

You know a debate has reached a dead end when Tom DeLay starts offering ethical advice.  He offered some yesterday as the House of Representatives did the right thing and voted to lift restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.  Unfortunately, DeLay doesn't have a monopoly on the double standards and willful misinformation that are fueling the fight against stem cell research.

I met someone last year who, in a viewpoint that I'm afraid is indicative of many people who oppose embryonic stem cell research, was strongly in favor of in vitro fertilization - a relative had been conceived that way - but felt using those same embryos for research was equivalent to both abortion and murder.  She didn't see any contradiction in those two views; not only was she not aware that the embryos used in stem cell research come from surplus products of in vitro fertilization that otherwise would be destroyed, she did not want to know this and never acknowledged it.

I can at least understand not wanting to accept that your beloved relative's life is dependent on a process you have been told is tantamount to murder.  Many other stem cell opponents don't have that personal excuse but replicate the determined avoidance of the facts. Their logic is perverse, but on its own terms it takes on a sinister consistency:  it's okay to cultivate embryos for in vitro fertilization, and it's just fine to destroy the surplus embryos created by this cultivation, as long as it's done solely for pregnancy.  (Which suggests the money quote from this Katha Pollitt column on  conservative Christians' attempts to block an HPV vaccine that would help prevent up to 70% of all cervical cancer cases:  "Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep women in their place.") But if you use stem cells from those same embryos to help cure or ameliorate diseases that afflict the living - to do anything other than knock up a woman - you're somehow committing murder.

And slavery.  The Congressional debate on the stem cell bill was marked, on the conservative side, by all the usual bankrupt analogies to slavery and Dred Scott that have been so successfully deployed by the Christian right as no-longer-quite-code words for abortion and fetuses.  The great thing about this analogy is that it allows antichoice and antiscience forces to try to steal a little reflected moral authority from the abolitionist and civil rights movements while comparing blacks to nonsapient, nonsentient, undeveloped embryos.

But the hyperbole prize goes to Henry Hyde, who not only trotted out the Dred Scott fallacy but also said, "For the first time in our national history, taxpayers' dollars are going to be spent for the killing of innocent human life."

For the first time in our national history.  It's not even the first time right now, as taxpayers' dollars are also supporting an optional war that's killing U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike - mostly at the hands of insurgents, at this phase of the war, but our leaders chose to walk into it - and the torture, humiliation, and murder of prisoners in Iraq, Afganistan, and Guantanamo Bay.  Yes, many of those prisoners are probably guilty of something, but almost certainly some are not, and in any case they're all still human - inarguably human, and alive, at least until we chain them to the ceiling and beat them to death.  (Via Jim Henley.)  The Republican leadership pushed that fabricated war (no, simpler still:  fabricated the cause for war) and signed on for everything it's created; surprisingly, Tom DeLay and Henry Hyde haven't been so concerned about the opinions of millions of taxpaying Americans who oppose that.

I can understand a certain religiously-based stance that opposes stem cell research; I may not agree with it, but I can understand and respect that if you honestly believe life begins at conception, then you would feel morally compelled to oppose anything that destroys such life after it has begun.  (There is no medical basis for equating a fertilized or implanted egg with a human being, but I can recognize such things as a matter of faith - although our government isn't supposed to be in the business of enforcing one group's articles of faith on everyone else.)

Yet the Republican leaders in Congress, and the religious extremists who own their votes, only follow that principle when it's convenient.  Their "culture of life," as so many have noted, begins at conception and ends at birth; there is no room for sympathy, outrage, or aid when the already-born are suffering; and most hypocritical of all, many of them don't seem to mind and pretend not to notice the cultivation and destruction of embryos when it's done for the purpose of getting a woman pregnant - or getting rid of the leftovers.  This is the difference between an authentic moral stance (however fallible) and a cynical, utterly amoral manipulation of the language of morality for political gain.

My deepest appreciation goes out to those Republicans who were willing to defy their party leadership and their increasingly close-minded base to do the right thing - and, of course, to that vast majority of Democrats who have been fighting to do the right thing on this issue all along.  Their support and more will be needed again to overturn an expected, and unconscionable, presidential veto.

Be! Aggressive!

What do you do when your far-right-wing ideology depends on the constant maintenance of persecution fantasies, but your ideological soulmates control all three branches of government and a substantial chunk of the mass media?  If you said "blame the queers," nice try, but if you were really hardcore you'd know the only answer is to start smearing the moderates on your own side.

And that's why you'd be worried that "Pro Abortion Feminist" Laura Bush is an ally of the feminist enforcers and the United Nations world government. (Via Greg Burgas via Tom Peyer.)

(Does "Pro Abortion Feminist" mean she's a professional feminist?  Or a professional abortionist?  Maybe all the conservatives who are so enamored of Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves can field that one.)

Far and away my favorite detail, the part that really makes all the linkhopping worthwhile, is the "USA Survival" site's frantic question,

Who is Laura Bush's new friend Queen Noor?  A former cheerleader at Princeton.

Folks, if you're worried that the first lady has gotten too close to blue-blooded cheerleaders, I have some bad news for you.

March 16, 2005 in Lunacy.

News Guaranteed to Piss Off Matt Rossi

Famed novelist, pompous chickenhawk, and lying bigot Orson Scott Card has been hired to write Marvel Comics' Ultimate Iron Man.

Between this and hiring an AEI flack to write a comic about Iraq, the Dan Buckley-era Marvel is rapidly becoming a neoconservative mouthpiece.

By the way, look for the morbid and unintentional hilarity in Card's war piece as he frets about the disastrous consequences of leaving Saddam Hussein in power:

A vicious power struggle, certainly, with a lot of killing. Just as certain is a revolt by each of half a dozen rival anti-Saddam forces within Iraq.

There is also a high likelihood of outside intervention, probably sponsored by Iran, Syria, and/or Saudi Arabia, probably in the form of a well-funded terrorist-linked force stepping in to try to take control.

[...]

What happens then to his stockpiles of nerve gas, biotoxins, missiles, nuclear weapons, and dirty bombs?

Well, thank God we threw in our 1300 dead and 8150 wounded soldiers, then, not to mention the 10,000 or more civilian fatalities; otherwise Card's nightmarish dystopia might come to pass!  Anyway, wasn't it worth it just to verify that there weren't any nuclear weapons and dirty bombs?

Of course, Card follows it up with the obligatory invocations of Hitler, appeasement, and World War II.  That was so 2003.  I'd like to think that by now we all realize how sad and fraudulent the comparisons of antiwar protesters to Neville Chamberlain are, but as long as conservatives and hawks still stand to benefit from playing this card - as long as they need it to justify their initiation of an optional and disastrous war based on false pretenses and fought without a clear plan for the rebuilding - you can bet it'll continue to be played.

More Fun With Sinclair

I don't know if online petitions have much effect, but this one comes with a nice sidebar collating all sorts of useful information, from Sinclair affiliates to advertisers to shareholders.

It also links to the DailyKos Sinclair Broadcast Group Resource Center, with even more good information and strategies.

And the petition links to the Boycott Sinclair blog, which among other tactics has called for protests beginning Monday, October 18 at 6:00 pm outside the offices of Sinclair affiliates (in those cities fortunate enough to be graced with one) that offer local news coverage. I'm not convinced there's enough time to organize an articulate, effective protest by then, nor am I convinced that a picket line would do anything other than bring free publicity to Sinclair's stations and its fraudulent coverage. However, this comment thread offers some great suggestions for what people can do at a grassroots level. The best ideas I've seen have been for free counter-programming events (the documentaries "Going Upriver," "Brothers in Arms," or "Uncovered" seem to be popular choices) on the days of October 21-24, which has the double benefit of providing a counterpoint and falling into the same news cycle as Sinclair's documentary.

If you do organize or participate in a protest, the first comment in that thread stresses the importance of having a clear, calm, and fair message to deliver to any reporters who show up. I'm inclined to agree that counter-programming will be more effective than simple outrage.

"The Facts Are Biased"

Let's pause for a moment to consider some Republican party values.

Yesterday, as I was leaving for work, I noticed that somebody had removed my wife's Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker from her car. Two friends, the heads of the local Democracy for America chapter (full disclosure: Christy and I are working with them on the local Kerry campaign), tell me that in their neighborhood Kerry/Edwards signs are repeatedly stolen or torn down while Bush/Cheney ones are left unmolested. In Alabama, a woman was fired for coming to work with a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on her car, and in Nevada, a private voter registration firm destroyed hundreds of registration forms - all from Democrats. (UPDATE: Apparently this is only part of a nationwide Republican strategy of fraudulent voter registration.) Apparently some Republican partisans care so deeply about defending democracy that they can't trust the American people with it.

Now the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 62 local television stations across the country and can reach about 24 percent of the American public, is ordering its affiliates to pre-empt their prime-time programming in late October to air a 90-minute anti-Kerry documentary.

This documentary is sponsored by the same people who were behind the highly deceptive Swift Boat ads, and it's directed by a man with deep ties to the Republican party - a man who previously wrote a whitewash of Sun Young Moon's Unification Church (after working for Moon's archconservative Washington Times), then worked for Tom Ridge and, later, for Ridge's Department of Homeland Security.

Sinclair VP Mark Hyman (insert your own joke here) has been working the press to claim that Sinclair's actions are not politically motivated. This is the same company, you may recall, that ordered its ABC affiliates not to broadcast the Nightline episode that ran the names of fallen soldiers because they considered it to be a political statement. As you might imagine, in trying to argue that Nightline was a political attack and "Stolen Honor" isn't, Hyman floated a number of falsehoods in his CNN appearance yesterday.

Hyman claimed that Sinclair is just "presenting a side" and that his company has no anti-Kerry bias. Steve Soto at The Left Coaster has thoroughly debunked that lie, chronicling Hyman's virulent attacks on Kerry. Even more disturbingly, Hyman tried to equate "Stolen Honor" and the nightly news:

However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?

If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry. Weak job performance ratings that came out last month would have been an in- kind contribution to John Kerry. And that's just nonsense.

This is news.

Let's see - if the facts of mismanagement and violence in Iraq and an economic slump at home reflect poorly on the President, then that's exactly equivalent to a group of Republican donors and Republican aides producing a video attacking the Democratic candidate, and then airing it on stations owned by still more Republican donors. If Sinclair's biased "documentary" is an in-kind contribution to the Bush campaign, then the news from Iraq and at home must also be an in-kind contribution to Kerry since it shows Bush is doing a terrible job. Because, as Rob Corddry memorably said on The Daily Show - in reference to another case of Sinclair's highly partisan coverage, the Nightline affair - "the facts are biased."

First of all, if the facts are that uniformly negative about Bush's failures then I'd say that right there is a pretty good case against re-electing the man. But more disturbingly, Hyman's comments show no acknowledgement of the difference between reporting the news and creating or fabricating it. (Naturally, CNN's Bill Hemmer didn't attempt to call Hyman on this distinction - you've got to love that liberal media.)

And finally, because the Republican rhetoric in this election hasn't been vicious enough, Hyman followed those comments up with this:

I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist.

Yes, he said any networks that don't parrot the Sinclair/Swift Boat line are the moral equivalents of Holocaust deniers.

Hyman also insisted, repeatedly, that Kerry can "put this whole issue to rest" if he sits down to meet with the POWs - presumably on the air as part of Sinclair's programming - and that Sinclair's invitation of Kerry to appear on a panel somehow takes care of the stations' equal-time requirements. This is deeply disingenuous, and by "deeply disingenuous" I mean "completely dishonest, but in a such a way that Hyman is carefully covering his ass."

He knows that Kerry has nothing to gain from appearing on Sinclair's panel. Meeting with the Swift Boat/POW group only endorses them, gives more life to their non-news story, lends credibility to Sinclair and allows them to pretend they're offering equal time. Hyman knows this, and he knows he risks nothing by extending this hollow invitation. He's just fabricating the illusion of journalistic integrity and impartiality while simultaneously continuing to hammer away at Kerry and to promote his company's 90-minute attack ad.

At some point I should probably mention that Sinclair is in deep financial trouble and that it's desperately counting on a second Bush term to relax FCC ownership restrictions, shouldn't I? When of course their behavior is one of the best cases you could make for maintaining or even strengthening them.

I opened this post by saying we'd consider "some Republican party values" - and then I hit you with a litany of lies, theft, discrimination, violation of election law, and above all else, fear of an open and honest democratic election. I know these aren't the values of many rank-and-file Republicans (including, just as an example, many of my own in-laws), who will often tell you they're Republicans precisely because they believe character and integrity matter.

I'd like to know when they will start demanding character and integrity from their party's leadership, its candidate, and his allies. I hope they start soon. Kicking Bush and his corrupt cronies out of office, and consigning the ailing Sinclair Broadcast Group to the dustbin of trash-journalism history, would be a great first step.

Steve Soto has suggested numerous actions that you can take if you're offended by Sinclair's lies, its flagrant violation of election coverage laws, and its abuse of power. So has Kevin Hayden at The American Street, who offers a detailed plan for organizing Sinclair advertiser calls and boycotts.

What, Me Negative?

I had no idea that MAD Magazine was still this brilliant.

I hope they run a follow-up ad, "Disciples for Truth":

"I served with Jesus and I never saw him feed the crowds or heal the sick. All I know is that he left us right in the middle of Passover."

- J. Iscariot