The vulture culture is flapping away

The Aberdeen American News has amassed an incredible record for incompetent journalism. Its editorial page and its handling of news both radiate the regressive agenda and the petit-fascist philosophy that it is okay to censor news that does not fit its political agenda and to hype up news that does. The American News has decided to abandon any but a few pretenses to journalism for a role as a partisan medium.

On Sunday, June 29,the rag's editorial called into question Sen. Tim Johnson's health.

It's time to start asking some tough, yet very legitimate, questions. Primary among these questions are: What exactly is Sen. Tim Johnson's state of health? Is he ready - physically, mentally, emotionally - to tackle another six years in
the Senate with the energy and vitality that South Dakotans expect and deserve?

...

The public has a right to know - and to ask - if the senator's health will allow him to be as effective in 2009 as in 2003. The senator has a responsibility to make sure he makes a full disclosure about his health.

Roland Walter, chair of the Brown County Democrats, pointed out the journalistic errors in the editorial both in a letter-to-the-editor and in an e-mail to the Brown County party members. A former journalist, Walt stressed that the editorial suggested that Sen. Johnson's health and ability to serve are called into question even though the facts--some of which have been published in the American News--are readily available and clear. Walt points out:

• Tim has made numerous public appearances since returning to the Senate last August.
  


• Tim has not missed a vote since his return.
  


• Doctor's tell him he will continue to make progress physically, and that his speaking ability will improve greatly over time.
  


• With the exception of the time spent in initial recovery, has there been a noticeable difference in the performance of the Johnson office?
  


• The American News asks if Tim will be as effective in 2009 as he was in 2003. In fact, he can be far more effective despite any physical limitations. His is now the majority party in the Senate which enhances his power and thus his effectiveness and there is little chance that will change in November. Plus, Tim has an additional six years of seniority which also adds to his effectiveness.
  


• The editorial says it is legitimate to ask if the Tim Johnson of today can provide the same energy as the pre-AVM Tim--implying he must do this in order to be worthy of our vote. That is not the question faced by voters and is not a legitimate comparison. The legitimate question for voters is whether Tim Johnson or his opponent will do the better job representing South Dakota over the next six years.
  


• There is an implication that Tim's long term medical prognosis is somehow being hidden by staff. His doctors have stated publicly that there is no danger of a second AVM and that continued recovery will be steady, but may be slow. The question isn't whether his recovery will be fast and complete, but whether he capable of doing his job. Every indication is that Tim and his staff are fully capable and all Senators of any account do rely heavily on staff. Nothing is being hidden and there is nothing to hide.
  


• The editorial states "Senator Johnson has served South Dakota well for years." Indeed he has and what is there to indicate he will not continue to do so?

When Tim was in Aberdeen last Saturday for a fund-raiser, he told the people present that his doctors said that in terms of continuing to recover from the AVM, he could only get better. For the sake of fluency, Tim generally addresses audiences--as he did at the State Democratic Convention and at the fundraiser--by reading prepared remarks. He goes to this effort in extra preparation to communicate efficiently with his audiences.

However, last Saturday after reading his remarks, Tim invited questions from his audience. He received some tough inquiries about issues before Congress, such as point-of-origin labeling, bio-fuels, and the economic downturn--and he answered them with a command of the issues, knowledge about where the Senate is in addressing them, and clear, concise language.

As Roland Walter points out, Sen. Johnson has demonstrated this kind of performance since his return to the Senate floor last August. An organization which purports to be a news medium would be well aware of these facts.

Newspapers have the right--and the responsibility--to express opinions. But they do not have the right to ignore, distort, or falsify the facts. Distorting the facts was the purpose behind the editorial questioning Tim Johnson's state of health.

The tactic used in the editorial is the same one used in the archetypal question "When did you stop beating your wife?" The purpose behind that prosecutorial question is not to elicit an answer, but to plant the assumption that the person being questioned beat his wife--whether he did or not.

The question about Sen. Johnson making a full disclosure about his health is not to elicit information, but to plant the assumption that he is hiding something about the state of his health. The editorial contains no summary and analysis of facts. Its sole purpose is to plant the idea in the public mind that the state of Sen. Johnson's health is being hidden from the public.

The real question is raised by this old, cheap, and malicious tactic. It concerns the state of intellectual, moral, and health of the Aberdeen American News.

The editorial stance of the American News is clear. While its editorial page gives token space to progressive commentary, it has assembled a stable of local regressive columnists that range from those whose writing displays severe symptoms of dementia to those who use their professional offices to give credence to tiresome and foolish regressive cant. At this point, that is all their political party has going, and they spout it endlessly.

But the opinions of the editors and columnists are not the issue. The fact that they habitually ignore, suppress, and often misrepresent the facts is the issue. In northeastern South Dakota, the Aberdeen American News has no competitors covering the area. So, it is the major source of information and its pretenses to reporting news are far outweighed by its partisan agenda--both in the opinions expressed and the news covered.

When John Thune last ran for election, the American News reported his stump speeches and slightest utterance in great detail when he came to town. When the Democrat candidates came to town, the American News "reviewed" their speeches for their repetition of campaign issues and their performance.

When the Knight Ridder company, which owned the American News, was dismantled, people hoped that a new owner would improve the journalism in the newspaper. It was purchased by Schurz Communications, whose major newspaper is the South Bend, Indiana, Tribune--the home of Notre Dame. Schurz owns 13 daily newspapers, 7 weeklies, 9 television stations, 13 radio stations, 2 cable companies, plus some regional magazines and shoppers. Its holdings in South Dakota besides the American News are 5 radio outlets in Rapid City and one in Sturgis. As is true of the news business nationally, Schurz is not as interested in the quality of journalism as it is making a dollar or two in markets where straight and competent news reporting has little entertainment value for audiences conditioned to having diversions, not sound information.

During his recovery from his AVM, Sen. Johnson earned some enmity from the press by not revealing where he was undergoing his rehabilitation and by being selective about which journalists he worked with concerning his health issues. He, his family, and his staff realized that it is not good for one's physical or political health to let the journalistic vultures cast their ominous shadows.

The Aberdeen American News has given us a demonstration of why that is so.

What the language signals

We are at the SDDP convention. Many laptops are flickering away in the room. Cedar Shores has great wifi service. Epp is across the room atwittering away. Where I come from "twitter" is used to designate the semi-covert passage of gas. Cyber space has its own twists of language, however.

The significant thing I have noted about this convention is a general impatience with tentative language. Many of the items in the platform from previous years are couched in language that is weak in its assertions. It reflects the fact that Democrats are aware of being in a one-party state and have chosen a gentle mode of language to register their concerns in deference to a majority party that treats its opposition with disdain.

The attitude is changed. First of all, there is a strong possibility that the Democrats can make big gains in the state legislature and that issues can receive a hearing rather than the usual dismissal by the Republican leadership. But most of all, the deceptions and bumbling foolery of the Bush administration has left people with little tolerance for the semi-fascist attitudes of Republicans at either the national or state level. The Democrats and disaffected independents and Republicans are very serious about restoring the integrity of our democracy.

Some platform planks are changed in their predications from "should" to "must." The language reflects an attitude that bodes ill for Republicans, even should they win. Obama is seen as a great conciliator, but his supporters are in no mood to quietly endure what W. Bush and his state-level compatriots have done to the nation. The Republican notion of politics is seen as an erosion of democratic principle. If the nation is not restored by the firm intelligence of Obama, the protests against the degradation of the democracy will not be polite and gentle.

Language is the barometer of genuine change.

Drilling for Columbine

Among the silliest things the regressives believe is that big government is bad but big corporations are good--as if corporate bureacracies are virtuous but government bureacracies are inherently evil. Regressives long for the repressions and inequities of the Dark Ages, and huge corporate bureacraces are as close as they can come to the lavish and oppressive monarchies of the time. So, they revere and cherish huge, global corporations. To them, Enron, Worldcom and the merry band in the mortgage business were just exercising the royal prerogative to be stupid, venal, and dishonest. It all has to do with the worship of power, no matter how it is exercised.

The latest act of venal worship is to propose drilling offshore and in Anwar. That would reaffirm the privilege of the big energy corporations to gain further control over our energy future. Those folks who held their secret meeting in Dick Cheney's office have not exactly expressed much concern about $4-a-gallon gasoline, nor have they offered to turn some of their obscene windfall profits into enterprises that would help the country. While sitting on millions of acres that they can drill without any special exemptions from current law, they and their regressive idolaters can only wail about be allowed to drill offshore and to stick their nasty little drilling apparati into Anwar.

One regressive member of the blogosquare accused Rep. Herseth Sandlin of being responsible for the $4 gasoline because she voted not to drill in Anwar. Such is the level of reasoning enjoyed in our neo-Dark Ages.

The last thing the progressive world needs is for global energy companies to be given more power and authority to diddle with the economy. And while a few corporations run smarmy advertising saying that they are supporting alternative forms of energy, their record of energy leadership makes such statements preposterous. Only those longing for the Middle Ages can envision energy executives as King Arthurs.

If energy policy is taken over by progressives who don't keep their heads where the sun doesn't shine, it may well be that some drilling offshore might be allowed to help the country make the transition to alternative energy forms.

But at this time, we have only the word of coal companies that coal can burn clean without causing pollution and more global warming.

We have not the foggiest about what to do with nuclear waste.

We do have great potential to put wind and solar technology to use. We could be spending money on the development of alternative energy instead of the wasteful crusade the regressive knights imagine they are waging in Iraq.

And we could embark on an energy conservation program.

But that would jeopardize the feudal lifestyle that energy executives have come to think of as an inalienable right. Come November, we'll see if the American people have the will to release themselves from corporate serfdom.

Oh, how they danced around the N-word

Nothing is more absurd than regressive commentators and bloggers who offer what they seem to think is influential commentary on the Democratic Party and its candidates. Sometimes the absurd can be very funny. But usually it is despressingly stupid.

I have refrained from commenting much on the Clinton-Obama contest because I don't think there is much that needs to be said about it. It simply needs to be accurately reported without all the conjecture and contrived accusations. In cable news and blogs, one gets all sorts of prognoses from those suffering delusions of intelligence.


Obama did not win South Dakota. He did get 45 perecent of the primary vote, which is a strong showing nevertheless. They say he has problems with attracting the non-college blue collar and the women votes.

The real problem in South Dakota is probably that he is a black man.

A few weeks before the primary, I was in a Congressional field office when a prominent man in Democratic politics burst in with a letter he'd gotten off the Internet. It was one of those letters claiming that Obama is a closet Muslim (whatever the hell that is supposed to convey) and anti-American. This letter went so far as to say that Obama is being promoted by forces that are trying to set up America for its final destruction.

Even the most casual attempts to verify the claims of this widely circulated letter quickly show it to be an absurdity. But to this former legislature, it had to be true because was right there in black and white.

A few nights before the primary, we were having dinner in restaurant where another former Democratic legislator was at a neighboring table. He was discussing the primary with his friends, and he said loudly that he could not vote for a person like Obama.

People believe whatever affirms their prejudices and their hatreds of preference. They like to hate other people. And they love to make up malevolent nonsense to justify their hatreds.

Such hatreds are bipartisan. As the saying goes, they reach across party lines.

I can understand how people might prefer another candidate to Obama based upon political stance. People can have preferences for many reasons. But when their objections take the form of personal malignity and destructive speculations and falsehood, naked racial/sexual/ethnic hatred is hard to mistake. Do these regressive bloggers and commentators really think that the whole world is a bunch of semi-literate retards who can't see through their intolerance, their prejudices, their hatreds?

God. Please send us a little more elitism. And give us the courage to call a racist a racist.

Where have all the women bloggers gone?

A contributor to the DakotaWomen web log recently announced a suspension of her contributions when the discussion of Hillary Clinton became less than civil and valuable. This resulted in the observation that so few bloggers are women and some questioning of why. The Beacon has a perspective on the matter.

When the NVB started out, it was intended to be the electronic version of the newsletter of the Brown County Democrats, which was called the Northern Valley Beacon. The print version was very expensive and required a great deal of work. We thought the web log format provided a much less expensive option and made it easier to get the work done. The contributors included three women and one man, me. The idea of using the blog format was to develop talking points that party members might find edifying and useful. We had an editorial board that critiqued items before they were posted.

Blogging is very time-consuming. One of the women found very soon that the demands of the blogging process conflicted with family and job obligations, so she withdrew from the editorial board and asked to be an occasional contributor. However, she also was perturbed by the blog that John Thune paid for against Tom Daschle and resented being identified with that kind of activity. The nature of blogs has been a constant point of concern in the NVB.

Initially. we identified the individual writers at the end of their posts. One woman member of our board. Val, is a professional writer and editor who has worked for a number of prominent publications. Another board member, Erin, had worked on a number of campaigns, was manager of a congressional campaign, and had developed a critical interest in the theory and practice of rhetoric as applied to political discourse.

For a short time. the NVB worked fairly well as a web log, although we quickly realized that it did not have anywhere near the audience penetration of the print version in getting out factual information and posing talking points.

When members of the opposition party discovered the NVB, circumstances changed drastically. Val has a very forceful and evocative writing style. Her expository writing is meticulously documented and the cases she builds are frustrating for those who prefer not to believe the facts she presents. Val's posts received some insanely vicious comments. which we deleted. However, her detractors also began telephoning her with insult and abuse. The breaking point came when one of her children answered the phone and became the target of an obscenely abusive and menacing call. At that point, most posts were made over my name. but the experience created doubts in Val about the value of blogs in political discourse. Her husband was also in the field 9f communications and believed that it would be necessary to leave South Dakota to d0 significant work in his and Val's professions. After the election of 2004, Val also wondered if South Dakota was the place she wanted to raise her children. The family decided it would be better for all to relocate and devoted their efforts to making that happen. While Val intensified her writing, her blogging posts became infrequent, but very critical of South Dakota. Eventually the family left the state, and Val said the move did wonders to improve family attitudes.

Meanwhile, Erin had to assume the major role in producing the NVB web log. I was called away to help family members during times of extended illness and provided Erin only occasional posts, although nearly all of the posts in the NVB appeared over my name. At this time, South Dakota Politics began to make malicious accusations and comments on every post on the NVB. Erin found the attention obsessively perverse. She said it was cyber stalking. Our policy was not to engage other blogs in pissing duels, but on occasion we felt it necessary to respond.

Erin decided that the blogging atmosphere was so dementedly mean that she did not want to be associated with blogging. After some intense reviewing, we decided to intensify our e-mail efforts and the use of printed materials to reach our party members. We decided to close the Northern
Valley Beacon down, which act produced some revelations of character and mentality among other bloggers.

Erin who majored in social science in college had developed an interest in the theory and practice of rhetoric. The blogging experience convinced her that there had to be a higher level of thought and expression than what could be witnessed on most blogs. She went on to graduate school to study writing and rhetoric. She used her blogging experience as the basis of a thesis paper.

After some encouragement, I revived the NVB as largely a personal commentary blog. One of the people who encouraged resumption of the NVB was hoping we could lure more women
bloggers. We could not. Most women see blogging as the province of adolescent males. Val put the matter in a way that the women we contacted agreed with. She said blogging is like trying tp play with playground bullies with pretenses toward the macho. They carp and bicker and insult and abuse and try to dominate under the delusion that they have something worth saying. Most women have grown tired of their bully games before they are out of high school, said Val, and most blog posts and comments resonate with adolescent belligerence.

This may not be a definitive reason there are so few women bloggers. I suspect Val is largely right, as I find most that blogs, except for a few national ones. devolve into indignities on the language and the intelligence. There are exceptions. but blogging has developed a culture of petty meanness that taints the whole enterprise.

Like Erin, I am convinced that better use can be made of the Internet. We are working on some different approaches.

How many times do you have to kick this rock over?

Although The New York Times says that Scott McClellan's book that details the Orwellian deception and mangling of information by George W. Bush and his bully buddies is the first by an "insider," there is, in fact, quite a library by former cabinet and staff members on the subject. But it doesn't take inside information from White House workers to understand the neo-fascism which Bush and his "conservative" faction have imposed on the U.S.

About one-third of the peple knew that the information disseminated by the Bush regime leading up to the invasion of Iraq was phony. They knew that it was called into question, if not contradicted, by the reports of weapons inspectors and assessments by the governments of allies. They realized the war was a device of mass black mail to use patriotism and fear to garner support for a regime with totalitarian designs. And anyone familiar with the propaganda techniques of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, and Red China--and other totalitarian states--recognized what the Bush 43 regime was doing, even if some members of the regime were too dull to understand it themselves. A distinguishing feature of the propaganda technique is to slander and libel individuals who pose a threat to the regime--just as Bush allies Swiftboated John Kerry and the John Thune campaign used character assassination on Tom Daschle. Neo-fascists consider such demented destruction as shrewd politics. Dominating other people is their purpose in life.

The Scott McClellan book is no surprise to anyone but the Bush leaguers. Members of the White House press corps noted a growing tentativeness in McClellan in regard to the Bush talking points before he was forced out as press secretary. Cable and network news do not pick up on such matters, but members of the print media commented on McClellan's obvious discomfiture, especially in regard to the war on Iraq.

Put the McClellan book along side those by former state department officers, former cabinet members, national security officials. and journalists such as Bob Woodward, and you have quite a history of an intellectually and morally bankrupt regime. The saddest part is the number of people who defend and support it. At this point, just over 25 percent of the people approve of Bush's performance, but the question is how many who disapprove do so on the substantive exploits the administration has taken against democracy and our Constitutional protections. By 2004, a huge portion of the electorate was cowed or duped intoperceiving Bush as their protective Big Brother, and Orwell's 1984 was a reality in America.

How many times does the neo-con rock have to be turned over before we see the things writhing beneath it as America's most imminent threat. Scott McClellan has exposed them once again. We can only hope no more books need to be written on the matter.

All the gas about gas

Dennis Jones over in Bath who hosted Hillary Clinton and is one of the owners of Tacoma Park Place is vigorously promoting the return to the 55 mph national speed limit as a way to address the spiraling cost of gasoline.

When the national speed limit was put into effect in 1974 in response to the Arab oil embargo, I was commuting more than 100 miles a day round trip. I did it in a manual shift American Motors Gremlin, mostly driving on I-80 between the Quad-Cities and Iowa City. When the 55 mph limit went into force, the difference in mileage on a gallon of gas was immediately apparent. Where I made three round trips on a tank of gas before the speed limit, I was making four round trips at 55 mph.

At the time I was also working part time with a news organization that operated a fleet of staff cars. After the speed limit was imposed, the fleet manager recorded a significant drop in the amount of gasoline he purchased each month for vehicles that were driven outside the city.

On the national level, the government recorded that the demand for motor fuel stopped increasing and actually declined in some months.

However, the conservative think tanks went right to work producing "studies " to show that the 55 mph speed limit did not save gas nor increase safety on the highways. The government and the insurance industry found the speed restriction effective. But those who chafe at any government intervention on behalf of the people were moved to inventing arguments against it.

Had we learned anything from that episode 32 years ago, we would have power grids for transmitting power from the sun and wind and an array of affordable and dependable energy alternatives. But we let the oil companies and other corporate entities keep charge of managing our energy future.

We were warned about our dependency on oil three decades ago, but we chose the conservative option of letting the corporate world determine our future.

If we people take our country back, perhaps we can declare our inpendence from oil companies.

Perhaps.