Today's Unknown News
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Today's Unknown News
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Archive of Cheryl's past columns |
Cheryl's Daily Diatribe: Sunday, March 31, 2002 Rich, White, and Republican: the American Dream for a Few is Everyone Else's Nightmare This morning, I listened to part of Washington Journal on C-SPAN. The host was interviewing Deborah Simmons, a black woman who not only identifies herself as a conservative but who is on the editorial staff of the rightwingnut rag Washington Times (which is owned by rightwing cult leader Rev. Moon, a major Bush family supporter). I must give credit to the host (can't get hold of his name right now). He pointed out that despite the high profile that blacks like Colin Powell and Condy Rice are being given by the media, only ONE PERCENT of blacks consider themselves conservatives. He went on to also point out that despite the extreme lopsidedness of this reality, the media's representation of liberal and conservative blacks — including C-SPAN is invariably old 50-50. I mentioned this propaganda strategy a few weeks back. I called it the "Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other" ploy. Using this scam, the media can pretend to be presenting balanced coverage by giving equal time to two sides of an issue — even when the two sides are extremely unequal. So, though only 1 in 100 blacks are conservative, this whiny little voice is amplified 50 times over, while the true roar of the majority is muffled to barely half-volume. Back to Simmons. Listening to her, it was obvious how hard she worked at trying to be not just white, but like some crusty old member of the Daughters of the American Revolution at an Arlington tea party. She slipped from time to time and sounded halfway real, but quickly snapper herself back "into character." Listening to her, I was reminded of the mother of a friend of mine back in high school. I spent my high school years in Connecticut, not far from New York City, having moved from the Midwest. The area was dripping with new money and people jockeying for social position. My friend was also from the Midwest — from northern Arkansas. Her father had landed an executive position with a big law firm in New York City, and had gone overnight from being a small town lawyer of modest means who liked to square dance on Saturday night to being a corporate legal rep who made the cocktail party rounds. My friend was miserable, not because of the change in geography, but the change in her parents. She herself was warm, real and honest and comfortable with herself. So, no one cared if she was a little rowdy, had a twang or listened to Tammy Wynette But her parents — especially her mom, weren't so comfortable with themselves. In Arkansas, her mother (we'll call her "Marge") had been an exuberant country girl who laughed a lot — was loud but full of fun and had a great big kitchen where the coffee pot was always on and ready for her many friends. Everyone loved "Marge." Having been transformed into a "corporate wife" Marge had apparently embraced the role a little too eagerly. The first time I went over to visit, I was taken aback because her home was so far from what I expected ... it was so un-homey. The house, my friend, explained, had been completely decorated when they moved in, by some guy a boss at the law firm has recommended. Everything was new, flat, and matched up like a page from a catalogue, even down to the prints hanging on the wall, which were chosen for color, not content, to "echo" the carpet and curtains. "She got rid of all grandma's stuff," my friend told me. Their house in Arkansas had been filled with relics from her grandparents — each piece with a story. But when they had moved East, Marge had decided it was too "countrified." Worse yet, in the sterile-looking new designer living room, every piece of furniture was covered with plastic. "She only takes it off when guests come," my friend told me. "Rest of the time, we aren't even supposed to come in here." This was not a home — it was a set. I never liked Marge — she always made me uncomfortable and it was very hard to picture the country girl my friend described. What I encountered was a stiff, self-conscious woman who was painfully aware of her every move, every gesture. When she spoke, she sounded like someone doing a poor imitation of Katherine Hepburn. My friend told me that it had creeped her out to watch her mother changing. "She imitates her rich friends! I swear, she studies everything they say, even how they hold their hands and stuff like that!" Like Eliza Doolittle without the humor or happy ending. The biggest joke of all, to my friend, was that during the 1968 election, her mom, a life-long Democrat who had adored JFK, had voted for Richard Nixon! Why? "Because that's who all her rich friends voted for." Since then, I have known a lot of Marges — and their male counterparts. People from humble backgrounds who either make it into the upper-middle-to-upper class or who desperately want to be part of that world. Instead of using success to affirm who they are in themselves, they believe that being successful means they have to extinguish themselves and fit some vague "rich person mold." This is why so many "nouveau riche" become overnight Republicans. They see their voting card designation not as evidence of their right to stand up for what they truly believe as Americans, but as their ticket into an exclusive club. Instead of having a strong political philosophy founded on a personal belief system and knowledge of their party's history, they simply ape the boss or the rich neighbor down the street. When you question them too closely, you discover they don't really have any clue what being a Republican really means, what the party's pathetic history is. All they see is that "rich powerful people are Republicans." Therefore, if you vote Republican, some riches and power might rub off on you, too. My husband recently worked for a man who came from an extremely poor family from a tough section of Baltimore. The guy had worked his way up to a middle-management position and into the middle class. Having talked to him on a personal basis many times, my husband came to know that the fellow was, as a human being, very liberal — was a natural environmentalist, generous, non-judgmental, pro-choice for women, etc. So hubby was shocked to discover that "Jack" calls himself a Republican! When pressed about it, Jack kinda crumbled. Well, he said ... it's because the people who run the company are Republicans so it might help him out. Well ... yes, and it was because all the wealthy people who had looked down on him and his family growing up had been Republican. So, instead of affirming his own identity, instead of rising ABOVE the people who had once sneered at him, he felt compelled to join them! And that brings us back to Simmons. Simmons's studied tone reminded me so much of Marge! Both of them adopting phony "stage roles" because they so desperately want to be accepted by the very people whom they perceive as once having looked down on them or "their kind." While Marge and Jack never even came up with a plausible rationale for their newfound allegiances, Simmons babbles about the "moral values" of the Republican party. What "moral values"? The Republican Party as a moral force died and was buried with Abraham Lincoln. Since then, this has been a party that has represented one thing and one thing only: Money — and at the expense of every other real moral value. This is the "moral value system" that helped ram through the Jim Crow laws back at the turn of the century ... The one that viciously fought against social security, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour week, every welfare program, unions, and even, earlier on, child labor laws. This is the party that fought Martin Luther King's quest for civil rights tooth and nail throughout the 50s and 60s. The party responsible for the nightmarish persecutions of the McCarthy era. The one that has failed to author one single fundamental social program of any worth since the 19th century. The party that has, in short, actively and consistently opposed every effort made to safeguard protections for children, minorities, workers, women, and the environment in this century and that now wants to dismantle the ones that do exist. If that's Ms. Simmons' idea of moral values, then she's right — she has no place in the liberal black community — which is a vibrant, progressive world despite it's many burdens, that still nurtures a living faith built on compassion and hope. The Marges, Jacks, Deborah Simmons, and Condoleeza Rices of the world all have one thing in common: for them, money and power = safety and approval. To gain the latter two, they have sold out the only two things that count in this life (besides love, which, without these, is also meaningless): honesty and ideals. Bush Manipulation of Polls Exposed First, you'll forgive us if we gloat a bit! After all, it was Unknownnews that was one of the first to accuse Bush of manipulating polls — we weren't sure just how he did it, but things just never added up right. For example, if Bush is so wildly popular, why is it no one is signing up for the military in droves? Why is it every GOP candidate for local and regional nonCongressional offices are being beaten in recent primaries and elections — not beaten, but FLATTENED? Why are almost all web newslogs and commentary sites leaning toward the left and critical of Bush gaining new readers at an almost geometric rate while network pro-Bush news are losing viewers? We knew that the rightwing organized poll-stacking drives when the opportunity presented itself. And I had noticed that every poll I saw that showed an astronomical level of support for Bush policies seemed to be by some obscure, never-before-heard-of little company. Well, now the "Washington Monthly" has reported the "REST OF THE STORY." Seems that not only is Bush a bald-faced LIAR ("We don't care about polls in this White House!"), he has spent more than twice as much as Clinton on polls so far. And unlike Clinton, Bush's polls are NOT designed to determine what Americans really think or want. They are designed to find new devious ways to spin his unpopular policies. "Bush's principal pollsters received $346,000 in direct payments in 2001. Add to that the multiple boutique polling firms the administration regularly employs for specialized and targeted polls and the figure is closer to $1 million," writes the Monthly. "This is typical of how the Bush administration uses polls: Policies are chosen beforehand, polls used to spin them. Because many of Bush's policies aren't necessarily popular with a majority of voters, Steeper and van Lohuizen's job essentially consists of finding words to sell them to the public. Take, for instance, the Bush energy plan. When administration officials unveiled it last May, they repeatedly described it as "balanced" and "comprehensive," and stressed Bush's "leadership" and use of "modern" methods to prevent environmental damage. As Time magazine's Jay Carney and John Dickerson revealed, van Lohuizen had poll-tested pitch phrases for weeks before arriving at these as the most likely to conciliate a skeptical public. (Again, independent polls showed weak voter support for the Bush plan.) And the "education recession" Bush trumpeted throughout the campaign? Another triumph of opinion research. Same with "school choice," the "death tax," and the "wealth-generating private accounts" you'll soon hear more about when the Social Security debate heats up." To boil it down, Bush pays people to hit on "sales pitch terms" that will deceive the public into thinking an unpopular policy is something other than it is — like a real estate agent calling a house in a high crime hopeless slum as "an urban renewal area with great house value for the dollar" or the a multi-level marking scam claiming it is merely "selling dreams." Then, once he has the catch words intact, just like some small-time racketeer con artist, he takes the pitch to the street. Then, he uses the same catch words in carefully designed polls so that he can fish out selective approval ratings. Anything but be a real leader, eh? AOL Becomes Pimp for Bush and the Tobacco Industry Unbelievable! Just heard a report from a friend that proves that the corporate media is owned and in active collusion with the rightwingers. The friend said they went up on the AOL "Greetings" site to send out a holiday card and made a disturbing discovery. First, let me say, the greeting site is one of the MOST visited on the entire web — which indicates the size of the "captive audience" AOL was trying to hook in the scam my pal discovered. When she tried to send a card, she found she had to sign up for an annual membership (they're no longer free). After she filled out her credit card information, she was forcibly whisked into a page where she was slapped with a short list of promotions. NUMBER ONE ON THE LIST a sales pitch for the GOP! (I checked it out and found she was right. The promo had a little photo of Bush's head; the headline read : "President Bush and the Republican Party Needs Your Support (beneath this are these lines: "President Bush needs your support. Receive updates on important issues that affect our nation. Get involved! *Must be over 18 to participate." If this is not a plug for funds, then why is the credit card number required FIRST? And, of course, nowhere on the site is a plug for the Democratic Party, Independents or Greens (yeah, fat chance on AOL!). Seems to me this sort of "bait and switch to a GOP plug" foisted off on people who just want to buy a damn Easter card should be — and perhaps IS — illegal! For those of you with AOL, go up to this URL. If you don't have aol, just go to www.aol.com, then when you get there, put in keyword "greetings". When you get to the greeting site, go through the motions of signing up — they have a free month trial — and you will see the plugs. Oh, but it gets Worse … Right below the "Bush fundraising headquarters" hook, there is an ad for one of Bush's favorite donors: the Tobacco industry. Here's the ad: Headline: "Buy Cigarettes online by the carton and stop paying high cigarette taxes! Never run out again! Text: "Sign up today to find out how you can buy cigarettes online from the Smokers Co-op's trusted member merchants who can legally avoid paying state & local sales taxes on cigarettes (eg. Marlboro, Camel, & more) & other tobacco related products. " In other words, all you teens and pre-teens out there using AOL, all ya gotta do to get your smokes without ID is get hold of a credit card and the tobacco folks will bring the stuff right to your door. Not only that, but AOL can help the tobacco industry get around state lines! Cheryl may be contacted at cherylseal@hotmail.com. | Cheryl may be contacted at cherylseal@hotmail.com. |