See Me

If you are in New York City tonight, come check me out at the Brecht Forum at 7:30. I’ll be discussing the anti-immigration movement on a panel sponsored by the North American Congress on Latin America. Info is here.

I may be discussing the same topic on Democracy Now! tomorrow. Still waiting for confirmation…

The Contrarian Delusion: How Hitchens Poisons Everything

Update: KKK paypal and friend of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, Tony Perkins, has orchestrated the hacking of this post. In doing so, he has drawn greater attention to his links to and ideological support for white supremacists. The photo of Christopher Hitchens posing with the Family Research Council’s Witherspoon Fellows was scrubbed from FRC’s site today out of fear that I would link to it again. Not only does the FRC want to suppress Perkins’ links to white supremacists, it wants to suppress its own association with Hitchens. This begs the question: who embarrasses Perkins more, the Klan or Christopher Hitchens?

Christopher Hitchens has made a career out of offending polite society. Among his greatest hits are his observation that women aren’t funny, his pooh-poohing of the Haditha massacre, and his defense of the jailed Holocaust denier David Irving, who he hailed as a “great historian.” More recently, Hitchens has volunteered himself as the licker of Wolfowitz’s comb, claiming that the corrupt World Bank president “did nothing wrong.”

Hitchens has cast these seemingly untenable positions as “contrarian,” lending himself not only an air of intellectual bravado, but a veneer of integrity as well. Despite his myriad personal flaws and political contradictions, Hitchens has managed to appear principled by trafficking in opinions that consistently outrage conservatives and liberals alike. He poses as a maverick, an intellectually macho literary gun-slinger who loves nothing more than provoking the indignant howls of the madding crowd. For Hitchens, everything is sacred, and therefore, everything is fair game.

Those who have followed the trajectory of Hitchens’ career knew it was only a matter of time before he set his sights on religion. What better way to piss off (and on) the masses than to unleash a full-frontal assault on God himself? So to great fanfare and perhaps nobody’s surprise, Hitchens has produced “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” an atheist manifesto intended to supplement Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion,” and (New Age torture fanatic) Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith.”

Hitchens spares no sacred cows in his latest work. He blasts religion as a form of child abuse, claims Jesus Christ never lived, and declares that those who give their children bar mitzvahs are “planning your and my destruction and the destruction of all hard-won human attainments.” The requisite attacks on Islam, so satisfying to his newfound neocon pals, are also featured at length.

Hitchens’ book might be mean-spirited and even bigoted; little more than a barely legible screed larded with predictable arguments and a scattershot of pretentious literary references, but who can say its author is unprincipled? This is contrarianism, right?

Please.

“God Is Not Great” represents little more than the disingenous posturings of a certified fraudmeister who has openly cavorted with the most reactionary elements of the Christian right. If Hitchens had any principles at all — if he truly feared the cultural and political consequences of the encroachment of religion into public life — he would have used his still-considerable influence to support organizations and causes that shore up the wall between church and state and which defend the rights of non-believers. Instead, Hitchens has done exactly the opposite.

In the Fall of 2005, Hitchens gladly accepted the invitation of the Family Research Council to speak before its Witherspoon Fellows. Hitchens subsequently regaled an audience of young Christian right cadres with excerpts from his book, “Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.” For attending Hitchens’ lecture and participating in several similar events, the FRC’s Witherspoon Fellows received academic credit for study at Pat Robertson’s Regent University, a school that has placed 150 of its graduates in Bush administration posts.

Presumably Hitchens was aware of the mission of the James Dobson-founded Family Research Council. How could such an intellectual giant be unaware of the FRC’s charge to “promote[] the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society?” How could Hitchens have missed the FRC’s many “Justice Sunday” rallies staged at mega-churches and telecast across America to advance the confirmation of George W. Bush’s most theocracy-minded judicial picks? (To my knowledge, these rallies occured well after happy hour). And how could Hitchens have been ignorant to the FRC’s vitriolic crusade to ban abortion and undermine gay rights?

Regarding FRC President Tony Perkins’ ties to white supremacists, I would like to paraphrase Scripture and say, forgive Hitchens for he knows not what the hell he is doing. My well-publicized report detailing how Perkins once purchased the phone bank list of former Klan leader David Duke for the price of $82,500 and how he headlined a 2001 fundraiser for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens had only been out for a few months. Maybe Hitchens was too busy dancing with Wolfowitz to read it.

But there is no excuse for Hitchens’ hypocrisy. With the release of “God Is Not Great,” Hitchens owes his readers an explanation for his appearance at the Family Research Council, the nerve center of a theocratic movement determined to weaken the foundations of constitutional democracy. Hitchens must explain why he accepted the FRC’s invitation to speak and whether he was paid for his appearance.

While awaiting Hitchens’ response, I will pray that in the future his version of the Straight Talk Express designates a driver.

Israeli Anti-Semitism

Paging Abe Foxman:

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Rabbi Avraham Levine never imagined that years after immigrating from Russia to Israel he would fall victim to a brutal anti-Semitic attack in the heart of the Jewish state.

But less than three months ago, he was beaten up by teenage skinheads as he walked home in the city of Petah Tikva on Tel Aviv’s outskirts.

“They jumped on me, beat me and cursed my mother in Russian, then they returned with sticks and beat me up. My arm was broken but only God saved my life,” said Levine, 38, who arrived in Israel from Russia in 1995.

“They shouted ‘Zhids leave Russia!’ In Russia, I would hit someone if he said ‘zhid.’ How can someone do it in Israel?” he said.

The Klan is back and they’re taking orders from Michelle Malkin:

Hitchens Still Dancing With Wolfowitz

Hitchens left the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in a petulant frenzy:

Christopher Hitchens, the writer and Vanity Fair columnist, walked out of the dinner at about the time Mr. Little got around to his Ronald Reagan impression.

“The event was disgraceful, so lame and mediocre that it is beyond parody,” he said later. “It is impossible to decide which is more offensive: the president fawning over the press or the press fawning over the president. It expresses everything that the public means when they talk about inside-the-Beltway and access journalism.”

But later on…

Mr. Hitchens didn’t storm out of the city. He stormed back to his house, where he co-hosted (along with fellow Vanity Fair contributor Todd Purdum and former Clinton aide Dee Dee Myers) the magazine’s post-dinner party, a much sought-after ticket.

Mr. Hitchens, a one-time pariah for his support of the Iraq invasion and his savaging of Mother Teresa, still serves as something of a social arbiter in Washington. And following the strange-bedfellows theme, Paul Wolfowitz, the embattled World Bank president, was chatting amiably in a roomful of journalists at Mr. Hitchens’ home.

Disgraceful indeed.

Pulling an Imus

Tommy Thompson: Earning money is part of the “Jewish tradition.”

Hitchens, Still Dirty Dancing With Wolfowitz

I had a strong suspicion Hitchens would leap to his boy Wolfowitz’s defense. Finally here it is.

Some choice lines:

The relationship between the two of them is none of my damn business (or yours), but it has always been very discreet…

Aha, you say, but why did Wolfowitz take so long to release these nonincriminating internal memoranda? Who acts so defensively if they have nothing to hide? I have no private information to impart here. But it could be that two grown-up people, both with previous marriages and with growing children, did not feel much like undergoing yet another round of “disclosure.”

I Thought Cho Seung-Hui Did It

Franklin Graham thinks otherwise:

Evangelist Franklin Graham said Cho Seung-Hui, the killer at Virginia Tech University, was “filled with evil,” and that Satan is responsible for Monday’s mass killings of 32 people at the Blacksburg, Va., campus.

The Enablers of Imus: A Study in Careerism

Mahatma Ghandi called forgiveness “the virtue of the strong.” Certain presidential candidates and political insiders pride themselves on forgiveness. They are so forgiving, in fact, that they were willing to forgive Don Imus, the nationally syndicated radio kingpin with a long and well-documented history of bigoted remarks.

Last week, as public pressure for the resignation of Imus increased in the wake of his characterization of Rutgers University’s women’s basketball team “nappy headed ho’s,” the I-Man received a much-needed boost from an old friend.

“He has apologized,” Sen. John McCain said of Imus. “He said that he is deeply sorry. I’m a great believer in redemption.”

“I’m a great believer in redemption.”

For decades, Washington’s political class has relied on Imus and his massive audience of politically independent white males for notoriety and book sales. McCain is no exception. He has been one of the most frequent and favorite of Imus’ guests since his maverick 2000 presidential run earned him national name recognition. Imus’ impending departure from the national airwaves threatened to deprive McCain of a key platform going into the ‘08 primaries. McCain was determined to protect that platform, whether or not it simultaneously served as a constant launching pad for the crudest of racial slurs.

Only one prominent Republican denounced McCain for defending the indefensible. Michael Steele, the black former Maryland gubernatorial candidate, told the right-wing webmag Newsmax, “In my view, [McCain’s defense of Imus is] not presidential. I don’t know the kind of advice that he’s being given right now, but as a candidate, I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t go near it. In fact, I would make it very clear that there is no place in our dialogue in this country for those kinds of remarks.”

(In 1983, McCain joined ranks with then-Rep. Dick Cheney to http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Sen._McCain_once_against_King_holiday_0115.html”>oppose designating Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday.)

With his defense of Imus, McCain revealed himself as a creature of Washington’s careerist political culture. The one-time maverick had merged with the herd. Indeed, his remarks were echoed almost word-for-word by a potential opponent for the presidency, John Edwards.

“I believe in redemption, I believe in forgiveness,” Edwards said about the Imus controversy last week. As for whether he’d appear on Imus again, Edwards just wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure whether Imus’ racism merited an unequivocal condemnation. Whether you’re John Edwards or John McCain, you never know. Maybe you’ll need Imus when the campaign heats up.

“I believe in forgiveness.”

Not to be outdone by his rivals, Rudy Giuliani joined the ranks of Imus enablers. “He seems sincerely sorry about it and seems like someone who will endeavor not to do that again and I take him at his word,” Giuliani stated.

While McCain, Edwards and Giuliani counseled understanding for Imus’ plight, the Washington press corps that had embedded itself with Imus despite his pattern of racism was thrown on the defensive. Appearing on Imus in the Morning a week after the controversy began, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman admonished his buddy not for making explicitly racist comments, but for falling behind the political zeitgeist.

“[I]t’s a different time, Imus.. it’s different than it was even a few years ago, politically,” Fineman said. “I mean, just looking specifically at the African-American situation. I mean, hello, Barack Obama’s got twice the number of contributors as anybody else in the race.” He concluded, “[T]hings have changed. And the kind of — some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can’t do anymore.”

“It’s a different time Imus… the kind of humor that you used to do you can’t do anymore.”

In Fineman’s guide to winning friends and influencing people inside the Beltway, going along to get along is rule number one. Imus’ sin in Fineman’s book was not bigotry, but a failure to go with the flow.

For other Beltway media stars who delighted in bantering with Imus, silence was the order of the day. On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill grilled Tim Russert and David Brooks about their mum reaction to the controversy. “Tim, we didn’t hear that much from you,” Ifill said, turning to the husky standard bearer of Sunday morning talk. “David, we didn’t hear from you,” she said to Brooks. “What was missing in this debate was someone saying, you know, I understand that this is offensive.”

Whatever white liberal guilt Russert and Brooks had, they left the task of holding Imus accountable to Ifill and the black employees at NBC and CBS. If newsrooms were as racially homogenous as they were in the past, Imus would still be on the air and Glenn Beck would have a show at CNN. Oh, wait… he does.

Even the New York Times’ liberal standard bearer, Frank Rich, appeared compromised by his relationship with Imus. In an uncharacteristically defensive and barely coherent column last Sunday, Rich bemoaned the “media lynching” (“lynching?!”) of Imus, and assured his readers that his friend is not a racist “in real life,” because, as everyone knows, radio is not real.

“If we really want to have this conversation, it also means we have to have a nonposturing talk about hip-hop lyrics.”

But for some reason hip-hop is. In Rich’s mind, it’s mad real. “If we really want to have this conversation,” Rich declared, “it also means we have to have a nonposturing talk about hip-hop lyrics.” Without citing any offensive lyrics or naming the wack rappers, Rich seemed to suggest that hip-hop — and by extension, black youth culture — had somehow planted the terms “nappy headed” and “ho” on the tip of Imus’ tongue. No word from Rich on whether country star Toby Keith and Willie Nelson’s ode to actual — not media — lynching deserves a “nonposturing talk.”

(By the way, what’s up with Imus’ trademark ten-gallon hat? Where’d he get that from? Certainly not country music.)

It’s hard to predict when you will be confronted with a moral test. The Imus controversy arrived suddenly and challenged the vital interests of the Washington press corps and political pantheon. In the end, they willfully overlooked Imus’ bigotry, advocating forgiveness to protect their platform, their careers — and their paychecks. For the enablers of Imus, it was never about freedom of expression, it was about themselves.

Regent Scrubs its Site

A reader tip from JStraight:

Regent University has scrubbed from its web site any mention of its 150 graduates that work for the Bush administration.

Google cache has a screen capture from April 6 2007 of a Regent University’s “facts” web page where they proudly boast “150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration”

Their current “facts” page has that info removed: http://www.regent.edu/general/about_us/facts.cfm

Hmmm. Isn’t Regent University proud of those graduates anymore?

Good question.

Correction/Update

Several readers, including a Regent law student, have pointed out that Regent did not in fact scrub its website of information regarding “150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration.” That is mostly correct. It appears, however, that Regent did alter that sentence. Currently, the schools website boasts that “150 students have served in the Bush administration.”

Slow Blogging

Apologies for that. I’ve got a lot on my platter. But look out this afternoon for a long post on Don Imus, race and the culture of Washington insiderism.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Neil Cavuto just now:

“I mean, a ho is a ho, right? So if Imus uses the expression and then you use the expression, then you’ve both said it.”

Proof That Racism Is Dead

Michael Savage channeling Imus and MC Rove: “If she’s got ten toes, she’s a ho.” But don’t worry, Imus has been dropped by NBC so we have slipped the surly bonds of racism once and for all.

Now back to Lou Dobbs Tonight’s “Broken Borders” series.

Imus a Liberal?

I couldn’t allow this comment to be buried. It’s a treasure:

Name: Lizard | E-mail: wl944s@aol.com | IP: 64.12.116.210 | Date: April 11, 2007

Nice “popular” site you have here. You spend hours
(days?) coming up with your Christian bashing crap
and only get one or two positive responses from
your choir?(no anti-semite pun intended). Also,
time to update your rhetoric about Republicans
calling blacks “hos,” or didn’t you realize
that Don Imus is one of your liberal bretheren?
Funny how things can come back and bite you in
the ass, eh?

Remember This?

“Stinking Animals!”

Don’t Recall? That’s probably because nobody said a damn thing (except Media Matters, of course).

Silence from the Washington press corps. Silence from advertisers. Silence from NBC employees.

Why has Imus lasted this long? Time permitting, I’ll offer my best guess by the end of the week.

The Hate Talk Express

Expect nothing less than one of the few senators who joined Jesse Helms in opposing making Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday. What a maverick:

WASHINGTON — Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said Monday he stands by radio host Don Imus, who has been suspended for making what his employers called racist comments on the air.

“He has apologized,” McCain said. “He said that he is deeply sorry. I’m a great believer in redemption.”

McCain, whose presidential candidacy has been backed by Imus, said he would still appear on Imus’ program.

My Publisher is Better Than Yours

Katrina on Colbert: “The Nation magazine opposed this war from the outset because we understood what a disaster it would be. We never lost our head while too much of the media gave head.”

Today I Meet Roseanne

I grew up on episodes of “Roseanne” and finally I’ll get to meet Ms. Barr today. I’ll be on her radio show, “Roseanne World,” at 8pm ET discussing Mitt Romney. If you’re not as much of a fan as I am, at least tune in to check me out. Word on the street is I’ll be paired up with some wingnut.

Through Monica Goodling, the Press Discovers Pat Robertson’s Real Influence

Monica Goodling on her Regent University homepage: “If I only had two seconds to tell you why I’m here, I’d have to say this: I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. Tough assignment, but, worth a try.”

When Monica Goodling’s name erupted into the news last week, the mainstream press discovered suddenly that Pat Robertson’s Regent University exists. Not only that, the press learned that it has made a deep footprint in George W. Bush’s Washington.

Since Robertson’s failed presidential campaign, coverage of him has largely focused on his mercurial and bizarre personality. He seemed only to appear in the news when one of his many entertainingly outrageous gaffes or false prophecies earned publicity. While Robertson’s hysterical episodes deserved all the coverage they generated, with a few notable exceptions, the mainstream press habitually ignored his political machinations. Robertson and his cadres exploited this lack of scrutiny to quietly erect a sophisticated and far-reaching political network that today propells the Christian right’s ongoing march through the institutions.

The mainstream press could not have made its recent discovery of Robertson’s influence on its own, of course. As is so often the case, they needed a little push from the blogosphere and independent media. I am confident enough to claim at least a small portion of credit for moving this story forward when I reported in the Huffington Post and on my blog that Goodling was among 150 Regent grads currently working in the Bush administration.

Days after the Goodling-Regent connection was introduced by the liberal blogosphere, the New York Times noted that Goodling “is a 1995 graduate of Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., and received her law degree at Regent University in Virginia Beach, according to many Web site postings.”

“According to many Web site postings?” Which “web site postings?” Were Times reporters David Johnston and David Stout referring to postings on the casual encounters section of Craigslist, or did they mean liberal bloggers? If they meant the latter, then why were those bloggers not named? Is the Times ashamed of its reliance on the “blogofascists” of the left for leads and context? And does the Times even have a coherent policy on sourcing blogs?

Some more questions for the Times: Were Stout and Johnston suggesting that Goodling’s graduation from Regent was some web conspiracy theory? If they harbored any doubts about the story’s veracity, they could have picked up a phone and called Regent’s alumni office, or at least paid a visit to Regent’s web page, where Goodling is pictured in various archived photos at alumni events.

The right has exploited the mainstream press’s ignorance about Robertson to avoid weathering the blowback from his most embarassing gaffes. Case in point: Two years ago, after Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, Fox News’ Brit Hume introduced what would become a central talking point for spinning the controversy. On the August 23, 2005 episode of Fox News’ Special Report, Hume declared, “The televangelist Pat Robertson’s political influence may have been declining since he came in second in the Iowa Republican caucuses 17 years ago. And he may have no clout with the Bush administration.”

Morton Kondracke echoed Hume, exclaiming that “Pat Robertson’s day has long since passed.”

Predictably, the right’s spin seeped into the mainstream press. The day after Hume and Kondracke’s exchange, Knight Ridder asserted that Robertson’s influence “has waned.” As evidence, the news service quoted one “leader” of the “evangelical movement” claiming, “He’s an old man and there’s a group of old women and old men who watch him.” Old men can’t be influential, don’t you know?

(Sorry for the lack of links; I could find the three preceding clips only through Nexis.)

The usually sagacious John Green, a University of Akron professor who has emerged as the go-to guy for virtually any reporter covering the Christian right, swooped in to join the parrot jungle chirping about Robertson’s death knell. In an interview with the National Review’s Byron York (who recently blew his wad trying to discredit the jury that convicted Scooter Libby), Green concluded that while Robertson is “certainly a consequential figure,” he is “more in tune with what was happening with evangelicals 20 or 30 years ago” than his contemporaries.

But in the wake of Goodling’s hotly publicized resignation, the mainstream press suddenly — and correctly — decided to judge Robertson by the fruits he has borne. In the Washington Post-owned Slate Magazine, Dahlia Lithwick published a penetrating look at “How Pat Robertson’s law school is changing America.” Lithwick notes that as early as 1997, when Goodling was enrolled at Regent and working as a spokesperson for the school’s Office of Government, she was ducking pointed questions from reporters.

The Boston Globe also ran a insightful look at Regent Law’s impact on public policy. The Globe cited (as I did earlier in the Huffington Post) Kay Coles James as the key link between Regent and the Bush White House. The Globe’s Charlie Savage wrote, “In 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent’s government school, Kay Coles James, to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management — essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni.”

The sudden interest in Robertson’s political network spread to the L.A. Times on April 6 when it profiled Christian Broadcasting Network’s star political reporter and blogger, David Brody. The Times correctly notes that despite his affiliation with the supposedly discredited reverend, Brody has “developed a real web base among followers of the presidential races.” Indeed, Brody’s blog has become a critical window into evangelical opinion on candidates from both parties. In the process, Brody has lent newfound credibility to Robertson’s flagship news network.

The Christian right is far more than a pantheon of charismatic backlashers with automatonic followers of “old men and women.” It is also a sophicated political operation with a coherent long-term strategy. Goodling may be out of a job, but thousands of capable Christian right cadres remain, waging the culture war from inside the White House, federal agencies and Republican congressional offices. Together they will continue to inflame conflicts that were previously unimaginable.

Anyone insisting in spite of continuously mounting evidence that the Christian right is going to simply shrink into oblivion because the Democrats control Congress, or because Christian right leaders are prone to scandal, should learn from Goodling’s example and take the fifth.

Read This If You Want to Feel Dirty

Via Salon, we learn that Ann Coulter has Goebbelsed her way down to a previously unknown moral sewer, complaining that the genocide of Darfurians is not being handled efficiently enough by Sudan’s government, otherwise known in Coulter’s trademark racially-coded parlance as “these people.”

I pass the mic to the cold, man-hands of Ann:

“These people can’t even wrap up genocide. We’ve been hearing about this slaughter in Darfur forever — and they still haven’t finished. The aggressors are moving like termites across that country. It’s like genocide by committee. Who’s running this holocaust in Darfur, FEMA?”

In his book, “Blinded By The Right,” David Brock describes bearing witness to the simultaneous chain-smoking, chardonnay-guzzling and Jew-bashing of Coultergeist. Apparently she has not changed since those halcyon days. Coulter writes:

“On this week, let us remember the message of Passover is that freedom doesn’t come easy. Moses had to grab Jews by the scruff of their necks and drag them to the desert for 40 years to get a generation capable of living in freedom — and even then the Jews were complaining about it being too drafty … Once free, they complained about the food … Even in the desert, the Jews would not stop with the golden calves. God nearly let the whole lot of them perish in the desert, he was so angry about their idolatrous ways. Only when he had a new generation, born in freedom, that didn’t complain about the food, did he lead them to the promised land.”

Ah, if only we chosen people had Bush to rescue us back in desert…

A lot of people have urged me to ignore Coulter, and claimed that by paying her any mind, I give her the undue publicity she craves. Sorry, but I’ll start ignoring Coulter when she is finally cast into the punditry wilderness inhabited by her Holocaust-denying friend Joe Sobran and the ghost of Sam Francis. Why papers continue to syndicate her Der Sturmerisms is beyond me.

Thankfully, Media Matters has created the Ann Coulter Action Center. Pay that site a visit and tell the last remaining vestiges of Coulter’s mainstream press publicity machine to drop her.