Leslie Griffith

Wiki-Tiki-Tavi? The Mongoose is Loose

SFGate, The Huffington Post, Reader Supported News

In our United States of Amnesia there is a thin, carefully manufactured line between truth and spin, between real and computer generated and, apparently, between heroes and traitors.

Blowing the whistle used to be a good thing.  On the school yard or in the middle of a busy intersection, the yard duty and traffic cop used the whistle to kept us safe. The ear piercing sound meant, “Stop, before someone gets hurt!”

The fact is, today’s heroes are the whistleblowers. We’ve learned about corruption in our banking and investment firms because of them. We learned about BP’s reckless disregard for the environment because of them. We’ve learned about Pentagon waste, Abu Ghraib, domestic spying, and on and on and on.

Each time, someone blew the whistle to stop us from hurting the innocent, the environment and, in some cases, the Constitution. 

Sadly, we rely on these whistleblowers to do the job reporters used to do when they took the time to blow the whistles they found hanging on the Fourth Branch. Now, we rely on brave citizens to do that job and they do so at great risk to their families, their careers and their health. Remember Karen Silkwood? Remember when those tobacco executives raised their right hands and swore on the Bible that their chemically enhanced tobacco was not addictive?  A whistleblower sounded the alarm. 

In covert America, a society now built upon distrust of everyone and everything, our government consistently lets us down by leaving us unprotected…kowtowing to corporations instead of blowing the whistle on them. The traffic cops of industry who used to man federal regulatory agencies have been replaced by lobbyists from the very industries the government was supposed to monitor.

Regular citizens are out of work, tired, broke and confused…perfectly set up for fomenting division and over-stimulating us to the point of fatigue and indifference. Frankly, Americans don’t have anyone to trust, and they know it. How did we get here?  

Consider this: The day after 9/11 a deeply committed group of men took advantage of a devastated nation by opening up a map of the world and deciding where and how to “expand their empire.”  Neocons such as Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld tied the Taliban and the “war on Terror” to a long desired invasion of Iraq! Richard Clarke tried to blow the whistle, but it was too little, too late.

The media whistled through the graveyard instead of sounding the alarm…refusing to take their whistle into the busy intersection where imperialism and the constitution were speeding toward a collision course.

And those few whistle-blowing reporters who saw through the manipulation after 9/11? They usually got fired.  When President Bush smugly mentioned freedom of the press to former Russian President Vladimir Putin, the old KGB veteran laughed and pointed out that Bush got Dan Rather fired. Putin knew exactly how a controlled media works. He controlled one, too.

Now, we have Pvt. Bradley Manning and the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange  doing what reporters should have been doing all along. Out of fear of being fatally scooped, and in the continued hope of keeping America dancing to their jingoism tune, the Pentagon and FOX News are now calling these whistleblowers traitors.

Oh, my heart.  How messed up is this? Julian Assange and Pvt. Bradley Manning—heroes turned into villains by ratings hungry cable clowns in patriotic makeup who juggle the truth, bow to the Pentagon and stuff themselves into a tiny-minded car that only turns to the right. It’s as plain as the nose on Uncle Sam’s face…here in our once honorable United States of Amnesia.

We are told Pvt. Manning is, essentially, in an undisclosed location, which makes one wonder if a water-board might be involved. If this young man is harmed and his rights trampled, then those of us who did not defend him are the ones with blood on our hands. In America, we were once taught that those who told the truth… those who issued warnings, no matter how personally inconvenient…were heroes.  What happened to that American value?

 

Uncle Sam Needs You…to multiply

 

                                                                                                     ReaderSupportedNews

                         

We’ve got a multi-generational ecological disaster in the Gulf, the gulf between the rich and the rest of us bigger than ever, education in the toilet, budget deficits rising, chronic unemployment, healthcare in the tank…and we cannot stop arguing about gay marriage?

Am I missing something?

Maybe it is something so basic, so seemingly banal that we just can’t see the answer.  Maybe it just comes down to numbers. The sort of numbers military planners use when plotting and planning the next round of deployments.

Perhaps the debate about gay marriage has less to do with the sexual behavior of consenting adults and more to do with future military might.

When Uncle Sam says he needs you…what Sam really needs is procreators…couples with willing eggs and legions of fast swimming sperm high-tailing it to the uterus.  Those embryos will be the future soldiers filling boots on foreign battlefields and putting bullets in expensive guns.

America’s birth rate is stagnant. Since we never really heeded Eisenhower’s warning, the Military-Industrial Complex has emerged as one of the few remaining businesses we have.  We don’t make cell phones or cookware or even those plastic American flags we see every Fourth of July.  What we do make is war.  American arms dealers are the number one exporters of weapons worldwide.

 Dealing arms has become an integral part of our gross national product.  The C.I.A, the Pentagon, and arms manufacturers often sell weapons to both sides of political and, sadly, military disputes.  Not surprisingly, Americans have become more and more likely to become targets of political retaliation.  In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration and the C.I.A. armed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Ayatollah’s Iran at the same time…as they fought a brutal war against each other.  Talk about cornering a market!  And, as we’ve known for decades, American dollars helped to train and arm Osama bin Laden’s followers.  Talk about opening new markets!

As Calvin Coolidge said, “The business of America is business.”

But it was President Eisenhower who prophesied where we are today.  However, Mr. Eisenhower could have never imagined the current debate and histrionics about homosexuals as a confounding corollary to the profiteering militarization of America.  One thing the arms dealers, the Pentagon and the C.I.A. cannot control is the birth rate.

A new baby boom requires a culture of conception.  A quick look at the checkout stand of any grocery store shows that we have become obsessed with conception.  “Stars” are featured on magazine covers for nothing more than sporting a suspected pregnancy “bump?”  Getting pregnant and having babies is now a Hollywood resume builder.  Why?  Look once again at the UN and C.I.A’s reports on birth statistics worldwide.  Notice who is third on the C.I.A.’s list of baby makers.  None other than Afghanistan!  While confused, disillusioned, over-worked, and economically devastated Americans are putting off having children, the Islamic world marches ahead with the Old Testament directive to “be fruitful and multiply.”

The discrimination and outrage targeting Gays may come down to simple demographics.  Uncle Sam needs soldiers, and you can’t make them.

I wouldn’t have believed this had I not seen this played out in the extreme.  Consider the plight of Romania. In 1966, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu noticed his country had a stagnant birth rate. President Ceausescu knew that to be a player on the world stage, he needed soldiers and a very hard working underclass. Mr. Ceausescu began promoting reproduction at any cost. Homosexuality was illegal.  He outlawed birth control and encouraged lots of heterosexual sex.  When a school girl reached puberty, her sex life was encouraged and documented by the Romanian pregnancy police.  Women who gave birth to five children were deemed heroines of the state.  Those who gave birth to ten were akin to national gods…very tired, worn-out, and impoverished gods. Those couples who did not reproduce were taxed into poverty.  Ceausescu’s plan worked in one sense. Tens of thousands of babies were born. Unfortunately, many Romanian families were too poor to feed their own children.  That’s when the self-proclaimed “Father and Mother” of Romania, Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu, encouraged Romanian families to bring their children to a state-run network of crowded orphanages.  The children lived three and four to a crib in these horrible places, often lying unattended in their own waste…until the Ceausescus were assassinated following a military coup in 1989, and the orphans were released into the streets.

When I reported from Romania thirty years later, many of those orphans, now adults, lived in sewers, drug addicted and ravaged by AIDS. It taught me that government should never get involved with the sex lives of its citizens.

Perhaps cloning is the answer.  Allow science to clone an army. Then homosexuals can lead productive lives without leading reproductive lives.  Would the critics of gay marriage support Patriotic Petri dishes? Maybe if they don’t ask, the government won’t tell.   

Rachel Takes Us Back to the Future

Published at Reader Supported News, The Huffington Post, SFgate, truthout.org

Every June, I leave my Northern California home and head south to our annual Gulf Coast family reunion. I might as well be an alien visiting from another planet. My appearance at these soirees is a bit scandalous because, quite frankly, many suspect that my time in California has turned me gay. 

Why do they think I’ve gone to the dark side? “It’s her square glasses,” one redneck “in the know” told my family. “She’s from Cal-uh-forn-eye-eh and single…at her age!” Well, what better proof is there?!

My smarter than usual smart-ass siblings goad me as they playfully drawl out their characteristically slow pronunciation of California. It’s a knowing self-parody. They suspect Californians see Texans as nothing but fossil fuel guzzlin’, rattlesnake humping hicks. And, it’s true…many Californians do. However, the preconceived notions cut both ways. My Texas friends call just about anyone from California a “socialist” or a “homo.” Suspicion of the “dreaded socialist homo” is why they worry so much about the transformation of my appearance. 

What they don’t know is that my 22 years in television, endlessly coloring my hair and plucking my eyebrows and exercising into a size six has cured me forever of the desire to work hard at looking plastic. Still, though, they wonder…sometimes out loud…why I “let myself go,” which simply means I refuse to wear make-up in the Gulf Coast heat. They think not “gettin’ dolled up” means I’ve gone to the dogs. What my Southern friends cannot grasp is that I am no longer preoccupied with looks because I no longer have to be. I’m no longer in broadcast news.

Enter Rachel Maddow. Rachel’s simple, clean and decidedly muted appearance harkens back to a time when credibility made the newscast what it was, and when sleeveless shirts and mini-skirts were the stock and trade of game show sidekicks and soap opera vixens. She is buttoned-down and smart and knows how to stay out of the way of a story. How does she manage it? Easy, she does not let sex get in the way. Is the hot button issue of “being gay” comforting in some way to viewers? Especially when juxtaposed with the alternatives? Rachel has somehow made it clear her “gayness” is not the sum of her identity. If only the vixens could rely more on grey matter than sculptured legs, perhaps we could take them more seriously.

Sometime during the 80s, “sex sells” crept in from the dark corners of advertising and into the bright lights of the newsroom. By the 90’s, “sex” became an adjective.  “Sexing up a show,” became a newsroom mantra. I heard the word “sex” used so often in the world of news broadcasting, I wondered if we’d become pimps instead of anchors, call girls instead of reporters. 

But there is Rachel, sitting smartly in her square glasses and easily disproving the conventional wisdom. Maybe sex sells some things, but smart sells the news. And the two should not go together. In a masterful stroke of genius, she appears a-sexual by simply refusing to put sex on display.

Normally this formula wouldn’t make corporate stockholders happy. But, Rachel is focus group friendly and demographically delightful. 

Both men and women like her. 

Women watch her mostly because she represents their Jungian shadow self. The good shadow, that is. Smart, funny, sarcastic, playful…Rachel’s the sort of woman other “down to earth” women look up to. She’s un-plucked, unbleached, easy to relate to, and there’s an added bonus. Rachel’s not competing for their man’s attention.

Men like to watch Rachel Maddow for some of the same reasons. They are not threatened by her. They can trust her because she’s not leading with her cleavage. Rachel’s power comes from the synapses between her lobes.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp and FOX News, has been quoted as saying he is not prejudiced against smart women and that he “lets them ‘do’ the news.” He’s typical of many men and, in a strange twist, some women in corporate news today. Sex sells, and right now it’s selling wars, corporate agendas, disrespect for government, and inane celebrity gossip. 

Rachel gives broadcast news credibility by refusing to make it about her.

There’s no sex for sale on Rachel’s highly successful broadcast. Hey, Consultants…are you watching?

Put reporters on the ground and ground the helicopters

                                           The Huffington Post ,Truthout.org and SFgate                                                                                                                     

Moments after the 1992 not guilty verdict came down in the Rodney King trial, the first violence I witnessed at the Los Angeles county courthouse came from a White man.  He ran out to the courthouse parking lot screaming “You’ve got to be kidding me!?”  He then busted a car window with his well-made briefcase.  It was a sign of things to come.

That night, we’d planned on using CNN’s van to transmit live shots from the streets of Los Angeles back to our Bay Area viewers.  Our best laid plans unraveled as quickly as an angry South Central Neighborhood.  Suddenly, a mob of young people poured gasoline on rags as they made an arsenal of Molotov cocktails.

The CNN crew got spooked, slammed the doors on their “live van” and left us for dead with the crowd. We stayed with the angry mob for 48 hours and saw firsthand that, although the riots may have been sparked by the verdict in the Rodney King trial, King’s memory was little more than a dying ember in a bonfire of misdirected anger and unrequited rage.

The LA riots were about racism double square to the third power—no doubt about it.  The melting pot was boiling over.  White police, Black police, White people, Black people, Korean people, Chinese people, Mexican people, Vietnamese…all the people seemed to have as many grudges as guns.  The black and white racism of Blacks and Whites, stoked by a long history of police brutality, faded to gray during the hours of chaos that followed.  People of different races became targets of arson and random violence.  Economic fault lines rumbled as it became clear other dramas were moving to center stage. A hatred-soaked environment of poverty laid the foundation of anger long before the verdict. The Los Angeles riots had become an all-encompassing, broad brushstroke, time for payback.

The racism blew me away, but it was the legion of television and police helicopters overhead that, quite literally, whipped it all up into a frenzy.  If there was an organizing force to this chaos…a single element egging on the rioters…it was the half dozen noisy helicopters following the roving mobs’ every move.  Like a competent cattle herding dog, the helicopters gathered the crowd and propelled it into a larger and meaner force of nature.

When people on the ground cannot hear themselves think, forget about them reasoning with one another. The war zone feeling of mayhem created by the helicopters practically dares people to become more reckless. The noise drowns out their voices…giving the impression that authority is forcing them to shut up.  What is a person without voice?  There’s no greater sign of disrespect than to take a voice away.

Imagine helicopters so loud your ears ring.  Imagine lights so bright it hurts to look up. Imagine helicopter blades swirling so fast they fan the flames of discontent…herding and goading young people with reality TV culture mentalities to do just about anything to get on camera.

Are you getting the picture?

Bay Area, let’s be smart after this Mehserle verdict.

If local television stokes anger with uncontextualized images, turn off that station forever. Those who run it care more about profit than the communities they promised to inform.

Get experienced reporters on the ground. Keep  the over bearing, loud, chaos provoking helicopters out of the sky. At least we can do that for our beloved Oakland.

 Without all that noise, we might even hear the voices of our future leaders.

 

 

 

 

Goldman Sachs: The Marie Antoinette of Our time!

Published SFgate and Reader Supported News.

"I have ever believed that had there been no Queen, there would have been no [French] revolution.”

-Thomas Jefferson-

Thomas Jefferson said many things in his wide-ranging autobiography, but he rarely spoke ill of anyone. He made a notable exception in the case of Marie Antoinette. In describing the infamous cake-distributor, he painted a biting portrait of the contemptible Queen:

“Her inordinate gambling and dissipations…her inflexible perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine…and plunged the world into crimes and calamities which will forever stain the pages of modern history.”

According to Jefferson, Marie Antoinette treated French citizens as little more than lice under her well-powdered wig…until tax collection time, of course.

   

Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein pushes a camera lens away as he finishes testimony before the Senate, 04/27/10. (photo: AP)

Enter Goldman Sachs. A modern day financial monarchy, Goldman acts with the impunity once reserved for kings. Controlling legislators. Electing Presidents. Filling the Executive Branch with well-heeled lackeys, manipulating world markets and betting against the welfare of its own clients…the American people. When their equivalent of “tax time” came, they squeezed the peasants for billions of bail-out bucks.

Marie would be proud.

Is there any end to Goldman Sachs greed? Since the Supreme Court recently expanded a ruling that gives corporations the same individual rights as human beings, I’d like to ask Goldman Sachs…human to human…why they have such disdain for the American people and such a lack of love for the country that made them rich? How do their managers manage to skip merrily along, collecting hundreds of millions in bonuses after breaking the backs of this economy?

No contrition.

No apparent remorse.

Good Ol’ TJ described Marie as “proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will and eager in the pursuit of pleasure.”

It’s eerie how much his Marie matches our Goldman.

They certainly showed no restraint in gaming the market. Sachs knew the market would fail, that’s why they bet against it. This is not an opinion, the emails are there.

Sachs clearly knew Americans would lose their homes. They bet “short.” They counted on it all failing. Come on, charming Tin Men. Where is your heart?

Watching the coverage of the congressional inquiry on C-SPAN, I wondered if, perhaps, this was our Marie Antoinette moment.

Charles Dickens wrote of Americans, “they will believe anything but the truth.” Now, the truth stares us in the face.  It’s an epiphanic moment in time.

Again, remember that those hearings were not mere commentary. They produced evidence. The emails tell Goldman Sachs’ story. It’s right there in writing, even as their pretty lips and forked tongues tell contrition-free tales and contradictory stories. This bipartisan committee worked like good old fashioned gumshoe reporters. They dug up the proof.    

Remember when the leaders of big tobacco raised their hands and swore on the Bible that they didn’t know nicotine was addictive?

This is that moment…double squared.

We cannot afford to ignore it. How many neighbors have had their homes repossessed on your block, Mr. Goldman Sachs? I’ve witnessed two. These neighbors cry as they drive away with the contents of their lives crammed into the back of a car or pick-up truck.  One couple was well over sixty. How do they start over?

I’m not saying we should dislike those golden Sachs boys. We don’t have to hate them. They are just doing what they were taught. But what they were taught was wrong. The story of Jesus in the temple comes to mind. It seems applicable. Jesus ran the money changers (bankers) out of the temple. Why? Because the temple is not to be defiled with commerce of any sort. This democracy is our temple. So, please keep your sullied hands off our Congress, our Treasury Department and our President. Stay away from our temples.

Sachs can and will spin the “Dickens” out of the truth. I heard an interview with one Golden Boy yesterday on National Public Radio that made me laugh out loud. His sleight of hand was masterful!

Because of those hearings and because of Goldman Sachs, we are smarter than we used to be.

Thanks again, Goldman Sachs for the Marie Antoinette moment.

Never Underestimate a Beauty Queen

This piece published in The Huffington Post and SFgate.com

Reporters used to laugh when beauty contestants began saying they wanted to someday be television “anchorwomen.”  They did not say “reporters.” They wanted the lights! They wanted the camera! They wanted the action and attention that comes with “anchoring.”

No one is laughing now, except for those former beauty queens occupying those chairs. Most are smart enough to take the catapulting beauty queen experience off their resumes. Consider this: Would you be willing to don a bikini, stiletto heels and tape your body into perkiness just to parade in front of lusty crowds fawning for attention?

Giving away power and agreeing to be objectified from the “get go,” as Sarah Palin might say, is a form of ambition taller than the Transamerica building.  The comparison is intentional, because it was here in San Francisco that George W. Bush was handed a wedge issue that helped him get re-elected. And, Palin is all about wedges…one in particular. She’s playing the “Sarah the Saint” card, ready and willing to tear an already torn apart county into shreds with an issue that should never be politicized to begin with.

Before getting to that, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. It’s November, 2004 and George W. Bush wins Ohio, pushing the Electoral College count in his favor. Here’s what the New York Times wrote: “Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates.”

In Ohio, residents began coming to the polls just before they closed, spurred on by watching gay marriage ceremonies on the nightly news. Those images of men and women rushing to marry their same sex partners got Ohioans fired up and primed to punch any chad located next to Republican names.

Fast forward to Friday as Sarah Palin delivers a mean-spirited address to the all White, middle-aged Tea Party crowd. Following the manic hiccups and incomplete thoughts, she came right down to her own wedge issue—abortion. It’s an oldie. But, in terms of stoking passionate fires, it’s a goodie.

In a new book-- “Game Change”-- Palin is re-named “Saracuda.” The book describes a woman fighting hard not to look like what she is—a woman way over her head and certainly not ready to be president. In the book, Palin is often quoted as saying, “I know, what I know, what I know.” By that she hopes to highlight what she considers her instincts for relating to the people. What Palin knows is that her anti-abortion comments got the most raucous ovations of the night. The beauty queen with the “special needs” child—Saint Sarah—who implies she would have continued with her pregnancy in spite of any dangers related to her advancing age, and no matter how “special” her child’s needs might be. The reasoning is Palineque, taking huge leaps in logic to get to the coveted wedge. Why? Because no one ever knows for sure why such intensely personal decisions are made, but a beauty queen can spot a wedge and an advantage like a Neiman Marcus store. (Palin apparently had Neiman Marcus bags full of clothes all over her hotel room during the campaign.)

Make no mistake; she’s willing to use whatever it takes.  She’s already signed up with FOX News.  So, she’s already got the conservative bully pulpit and the coveted anchor chair.

Writer Len Colodny, who co-wrote “The Forty Years war: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama” said recently on C-SPAN that “Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in drag.” I took that to mean, ambitious without the brainpower, and therefore, easily used by the Dick Cheneys and Karl Roves of this world. The names will be different, but they’ll use her up as “Saint Sarah” and then likely throw her away. From the ridiculous to the sublime:

Sarah—the renegade—is really just another rote. 

 
 

Plucked Peacock

(This piece also published in the Huffington Post 2/8/2010  and at SFGate.com)

We, Comcast  take you, NBC, to be our wedded peacock—to have and to pluck as we see fit.

Let the nuptials begin with a quote from one of Comcast’s current bedfellows. Drum roll please! He’s the king of the threesomes. Hell, he’s the king of the quadruple-somes.  A man who famously brandishes his First Amendment right to say and show anything. A man who will now have indirect access to one of broadcasting’s once honorable “family” networks. Let’s hear it for Larry Flynt!

Felled by a would-be assassin’s bullet, a subsequent stroke and a sub-subsequent addiction to drugs, he’s a surprisingly affable guy, a plucky fellow who keeps rising despite adversity.

Is the drum still on a roll? It should be. Larry Flynt is something of a best man to put these strange bedfellows in context.  He is a man reflective of his country’s inherent contradictions. Many years ago, he boldly showed what no man dared to show before—the “pink shots.” Flynt once took Jesus as his savior, promising to “hustle for God.” Then, presto! He’s an atheist again. He is nothing if not pliable and resilient. Stronger than Mount Rushmore and Rush Limbaugh combined! Unflinchingly pornographic, unapologetic and prolific, Flynt’s corporation produces “about a thousand films a year” for Comcast and others.

Larry laments:  “The world is not what it used to be and will never be that way again.”

By that, he means “innocent.” Flynt’s an expert on lost innocence. He has an infamously high tolerance for helping others lose theirs. But, even he sounded confused by the upcoming 30 billion dollar wedding. He was not, however, objecting at the altar since he stands to profit from the union.              

     ###

So, let us bow our heads in honor of the NBC/Comcast union.

I, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company and, therefore, one of the largest purveyors of double X pornography in the country…

TAKE YOU

NBC, as our corporately wedded partner, to have and to molt, until stock price death do we part.

It is now NBC’s turn.

I, NBC, promise to cross promote, product place, placate and propagate Comcast's propaganda. And, that’s not all.  We promise to do it with a shiny smile while skipping to Bri-tunes, waving red, white and blue pom-poms and singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

We at NBC have shown that we are a compliant partner, proven to have and hold tightly all unsightly corporate secrets. You see we have been married before.  During that marriage, we learned loose lips sink ships—the military kind—with engines made by our first corporate betrothed, GE. Neither were NBC’s lips loose when the New York Times won a Pulitzer for reporting on the cabal of retired flag officers who worked for defense contractors and pimped the progress of the Iraq war for NBC and other networks while posing as “independent” military analysts. The Bush administration was happy; the Pentagon was happy; and GE and other defense contractors were happy. Brian Williams, a very cool dude, was so happy he was speechless. To this day, Williams has never informed his viewers of the Pulitzer won by the Times or the fact that his “independent “military experts were pimping for God, Country, Bush, and the military-industrial complex. Sometimes words can just fail a guy, even a cool one.

General Electric claims to “Bring Good Things to Life,” and we were a peacock that never tired of parroting that slogan. At NBC we rarely brought bad things to light. Like the fact that General Electric is one of the world’s leading beneficiaries of war. GE makes military aircraft, fighters and tankers, helicopters and surveillance aircraft and bombers. GE builds and tests nuclear bombs, is known for making billions on questionable international arms deals and has a history of large-scale air and water pollution. But never mind all that! Corporate marriage vows, like those exchanged between all brides and grooms, say “for better or for worse.”

Forever faithful, NBC will kiss GE goodbye and be a loyal mouthpiece in its new corporate marriage to Comcast. GE is divorcing itself from the old, tired bird. It no longer needs a marketing network. Perhaps that’s because this bird has been well trained and can be released safely from its gilded cage. And, during wartime, GE’s war record speaks for itself. I guess when corporations buy the line…they get to decide where to draw it. With the bird in hand, NBC was an ally with a far reaching, mouthpiece.  A thirty billion dollar mouthpiece that now will look the other way for Comcast.

So, don’t expect the FCC or any other regulatory agency to stand up and protest. They are bound to smileJ, look away, and permit by demurring.

Larry Flynt might call that a head job.

 Final Marriage pledge:

NBC, the Nothing But Complicit network, promises to never rat on anyone with the potential to deflate its stock prices or the stock of those who peddle in greed, war, spying or sex. Unto Comcast, NBC now pledges its troth.

 ‘Till death, or a better offer, do they part.

Ethics revolution

published by The Huffington Post and SFgate.com

The San Francisco Bay Bridge and an Ethics revolution

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is the artwork right outside my family room window.  But, last night it was Van Gogh without his ear.

It was horrible to find out that two, newly-installed cables broke and that this left the remaining cables straining to hold up tons of  bumper to bumper commuter traffic. Could they hold all those cars with less support or would they snap?

We can safely assume that skydiving without a parachute was not how anyone beginning the commuter slog home from work envisioned ending their day.

Without sounding pushy, don’t you think it’s fair to ask WHY those hundreds of lives were hanging by fewer threads yesterday?

Reporters where are you?

Here’s the dialogue I heard:

Reporter:  Jenny Martinez-Steinberg-Wo: “What happened to the cables?”

Caltrans officials: “Don’t know yet, our investigators will find out!!!“

Reporter:  Jenny Martinez-Steinberg Wo: “Uh, okay.”

Then a short silence and an artless throw back to the studio. No follow up

I’ve been thinking about the mainstream media and its new role in our conformity conscious, televisual world. A world where it is considered rude to ask the “WHY” question, even when lives are in danger. I watched and listened and worried about those commuters, but never saw Caltrans feel any heat from reporters. Amazingly, the only thing I learned from the coverage was that Caltrans and reporters are very nice and get along swimmingly. Caltrans got a chance to give the perfunctory “We’ll be looking into this” public relations response, and reporters met their deadlines. Regarding both Caltrans and the reporters, I wonder if their families had been the ones stranded on the Bay Bridge…held up by fewer cables…if perhaps their questions and answers would have been more relevant?

Here are a few things to consider:

·         Exclusive government bids

·         Inadequate rods and cables

·         Enormous bonuses for Caltrans for finishing the job early.

Let’s take these one by one.

My sources are builders and engineers and architects, and I don’t expect Caltrans to answer any questions honestly right now. But, they should still be held responsible. Reporters have to get their hands on evidence. That takes time.  Blueprints and cable contracts might be worth asking for. Caltrans has to turn them over if asked by reporters, they are public records and, if they have not been altered, will tell us what we need to know.

Exclusive Government Bids: Remember that Caltrans, a public agency, has exclusive rights to award government contracts such as the Bay Bridge to whomever it chooses. Here’s how that works to our disadvantage. No one bids against Caltrans. No scrutiny…no comparisons. We have to depend on the unreliable to keep us safe. I wish the press would point this out.

Inadequate rods and cables?  It is public record Cal-trans hired suppliers who sub-contracted the fabricated steel from China for the New Bay Bridge. Apparently the bids were lower than American Steel fabricators. Did that same steel used in the Labor Day repairs come from the same Chinese source?  We cannot even trust pet food or children’s toys coming from China. And just yesterday it was discovered that toxic sheetrock from China has forced thousands from their homes in the South eastern United states.

Early finish incentives: Caltrans received huge monetary incentives to finish before their scheduled date. Guess what? Lo and behold, twenty-two hours before the designated deadline. Voila! Caltrans took the bonuses and the bows.  Holy bridge over troubled waters! The politicians and the press loved it…praise be to Caltrans. Can you hear me laughing?

Final thought: Remember the New Bay Bridge is built by Caltrans, too. Even as the foundation piles were embedded deep below the water onto concrete blocks, it was reported that the concrete on the new bridge was “adulterated.” That was good reporting at the time, but it was never followed up by public outrage or additional reporting.

And think of this:  Anyone who’s ever seen a concrete block that’s pure knows how tough it is.  “Adulterated” concrete is much weaker because it’s been broken up and used in the past. Re-using concrete saves money. So our new Bay Bridge sits on piles held up by “adulterated,” re-mixed and re-used….concrete.

We need an ethics revolution in this country.  

There are still those who believe American government agencies are there to protect the people. And, there are those who believe the government’s an ATM machine with no limit. If you were sitting bumper to bumper in a very compromising situation last night and still are naïve enough to believe these government officials are looking out for you….I’ve got a couple of bridges you might want to build.   

 

Getting closer to a vaccine for HIV

sfgate.com  and The Huffington Post - Sept 24

Dr. Don Francis, San Francisco’s scintillation vial-wielding version of Indiana Jones, is getting ever closer to finding the 21st Century’s Holy Grail.Today, Dr. Francis and his colleges at Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a non-profit in South San Francisco, announced they are close to creating a vaccine for HIV.

Working with an international team, GSID has discovered a “boosting vaccine regimen—a “prime boost combination” that appears to reduce HIV infection rate by more than 31 percent. If this works, imagine how many children will not become orphans, or how many family members will not have to grieve the loss of their loved ones. Apparently, San Francisco Jones, who helped discover HIV and AIDS is now determined to swash–buckle this Sybil-psycho, ever-morphing virus into submission for good.

For those of us who once attended several AIDS related funerals a day, this news, coming from a once-vilified savior is nothing short of Shakespearean, but then, drama always follows heroes. 

I was just a young cub reporter when I first witnessed Don Francis’ courage. He screamed from the mountaintops in a herculean effort to explain to anyone willing to listen—AIDS was becoming a deadly beast. He understood its nihilistic capacity long before others did. AIDS and its chameleon-like nature exhausted most epidemiologists, but Francis kept working and learning and chasing this most complicated and illusive retrovirus. As soon as scientists reached an “a-ha” moment, HIV morphed into some new and ever-more horrifying disease. 

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s Bay Area hospitals brimmed with once-vital young men who were quickly reduced to boil covered skeletons with dementia. It was brutal.

But, Dr. Francis fought on, warning those most vulnerable to awake from denial and stop covering their ears. He told them to cover other body parts with latex instead. Because of that warning, he was called a homophobe by some and forced to hire body guards to protect his family.

A critically acclaimed book called The Band Played On was written by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts, who died of complications of AIDS in 1994. The book describes what I witnessed at the time. Don Francis seemed to be taking on the entire world. He battled an indifferent government’s political posturing, a resistant medical community, greedy pharmaceutical companies and Pavlovian reactions from a Gay community who dismissed Francis as just another bigot telling them how to live.

I watched as he ignored it all and fought a good fight to save untold numbers of lives. And, apparently, Dr. Francis still has his bullwhip and tattered fedora hat at the ready. In a world ruled by greed and personal promotion it’s comforting to see “San Francisco Jones” still reaching for the Grail.

Everyone on the planet who is potentially at risk for HIV should thank Dr. Francis and his colleagues, including Carter Lee at Global Solutions. We should all wish for a world where integrity, selflessness, and concern for others are the ingredients that define our heroes. It should not go unnoticed that this and so many other hopeful findings today are discovered by non-profits.  

For anyone who has ever loved and lost someone with AIDS—for those who honor life over profit—it is a bright day indeed.

Weathered Channel

(First published at sfgate.com and The Huffington post August 26th, 2009) I certainly had no idea that two days after writing this Charlie Gibson would be fired. I wonder if editorial decisions such as the one I wrote about below had anything to do with his leaving? We will of course never know.

                                                             ###

The search for a fresh episode of Nurse Jackie left me looking down at my remote for a split second. It took no longer than that to get an injection of America's daily dose of Dick Cheney's patented fear mongering via talking knucklehead, ABC anchor, Charlie Gibson.

In television news everyone knows that the first words out of any anchor's pie-hole are the most crucial, most pertinent words of the newscast. Those verbs and nouns reflect what the editorial management considers to be the most important point to be made that day. ABC revealed much about itself last night.

As a clumsy finger accidentally punched up ABC World News Tonight, my painful, ongoing education in the recklessness of television news broadcasting graduated to a new low.

The long overdue release of CIA torture documents was the lead . . . well, sort of. In advance of the breaking the news, Mr. Gibson offered a pre-lead caveat. It was a quote from the nation's ubiquitous former Vice President and foremost king of national hysteria - Dick Cheney.

This story, about newly released CIA documents, is crucial to maintaining a democratic, transparent, open, accountable government . . . one in which the press is truly free to tell its citizens what the government's doing in their name. It cannot be interpreted by logical minds as anything but an attempt to become wiser, more knowledgeable and, therefore, more free.

But, as usual, up was down and down was up and in walked the unrelenting, omnipresent, Mr. Cheney. He was allowed to speak on the merits of the CIA story before it ran. His words were the first to set the context of the subject and, therefore, the most memorable and powerful.

As always, Mr. Cheney told Americans they were "less safe" now that the torture documents were released. It was no surprise that our national fear monger and professional pot-stirrer told Americans what he always has . . . that we should be shaking in our boots, paralyzed and afraid.

I'd like to refer Mr. Cheney to a quote from one of my favorite Civil War movies, and dedicate these words to his ongoing performance.

"They call this war a cloud over the land. But, they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining.'"

It's raining alright. And Mr. Cheney seeded the clouds and helped deliver the downpour. Now he baits us still . . . with fear of biological and nuclear war.

What Mr. Cheney is really afraid of is prison. If we count the lies he's told, it's nothing less than reckless unprofessionalism to let this man deliver a pre-emptive lecture on any network at any time. Let's count the duplicity, shall we? Although it may be redundant to point out, we cannot allow these facts to swirl down some memory hole. This is particularly true when the masters of news seem to be caught in the hole's gravity.

Mr. Cheney lied to Congress and got Americans into an illegal, self- serving war. He's dodging his own prison cell by screaming "fire" in our crowded, national movie theatre.

As he tells this nation's citizens over and over that they are on the verge of being attacked by Weapons of Mass Destruction, we should ask him if those frightening, silence-inducing WMDs are the real kind or the imagined ones he told us we'd find in Iraq.

And while I am at it, this is a man who committed grievous offenses against his own nation by promoting the outing of a CIA operative whose job was, ironically, but not coincidentally, to look for WMDs!!!

As we finally see a modicum of effort by the mainstream media to focus on stories that shed light on the past nine years of dark secrets . . . why in the world would the one who gets to speak first be the person who made the rain in the first place?!

Charlie Gibson, it seems, should be demoted to weatherman. He certainly knows how to show us . . . even if by accident . . . which way his network sees the wind blowing.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/griffith/detail?entry_id=46298#ixzz0PbiXovO2

Man in the Mirror - How death becomes us

first published in USAToday.com, The Huffington Post and SFgate "City Brites."

 

 

Michael Jackson is dead. Now we love him?

Farrah Fawcett’s dead. Now we love her? And, finally, in death, a death bed proposal!

Death just brings out the best in us all! Aren’t we special?

And, if one is terminally ill and at death’s door…that’s really sweet. People look up from their Palm Pilots and stop Twittering, or tweeting, or whatever it is they are doing…if only for a moment. In the final hours, perhaps one even gets to communicate with their loved ones by spoken word! Holy trifecta! It’s almost worth dying for!

Perhaps it is easy to get worked up about all this celebri-tainment. But, this fascination with other people’s train wrecks has got to stop distracting us from connecting to each other. Think about it people. If we “social network” with actual conversations and exchange ideas, perhaps we can create a government afraid of the people instead of the other way around. As we spiral into a third world country…how exactly do we tweet our way out of that?  

News producers…can you hear me?

I had the misfortune of traveling cross country over the weekend. That meant waiting for hours in airports with nothing to do but watch our corporate-owned mass media spin out of control over Jackson’s death and, like a carnival freak show, work the public into an absolute manic frenzy.    

CNN news, once an internationally-recognized source of information, has devolved into Entertainment Tonight  periodically juxtaposed with feeble efforts to convince us otherwise. How does that work? So glad you asked. It works like this: Hours upon hours of talking about M.J’s tragic life interspersed with promotional video showing a correspondent with a Hijab on her head. Note to reader: Hijab is not the same as jib-jab.

Here’s the real news flash: CNN is no longer serious news. No matter how many reporters wear an Islamic head-dress.

Our brains are being hijacked and our memories are shorter than the lifespan of a Med fly. The mass media is Anna Nicole Smithing us into a coma. And here’s another news flash for ya’: The mass media loves death because it’s cheap. Let me be more specific. It cost little or nothing to send reporters to Los Angeles and stand outside a dead celebrity’s home.

But, putting boots on the ground reporters in places where U.S. bombs are killing civilians? To cover a drone-strike that leaves behind dead Afghani children? No one wants to see that. We like celebrity death. We ignore all those other deaths. Not to mention the “cost-ineffective” expense of sending unbiased correspondents (Dahr Jamail proves that’s not always an oxymoron) to places like Afghanistan and Iraq .

No way Jose! Instead, America ’s mass media shows the world what it thinks the American people care about most…Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Laundry.”

“We can do the innuendo.

We can dance and sing.

When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing.

We all know that crap is King

Give us dirty laundry!”

From the scathing words of Don Henley to the sweet innocent words of Michael Jackson’s hit song, Man in the Mirror:

“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change!”

In Jackson ’s honor, let’s look into the mirror of our national psyche and make a change by turning off the television, putting down our micro-blogging devices and actually speak to one another out loud and face to face. Perhaps then a word could lead to a desire to listen, then listening could lead to open hearts, then open hearts could lead to….well, dare I say it …perhaps a kind word or even a hug.

One good honest caress is more powerful than all the oxycontin in Michael Jackson’s body…and that simple act certainly would have done him a world of good.

Will the Real Melissa Huckaby Please Stand Up?

The woman on the left is from Manteca, California. That’s very near Tracy, California where the woman on the right, also named Melissa Huckaby, was arrested in the maddeningly hard-to-believe rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl.

Both are single moms, and both around the same age.  One key difference is that the Melissa on the left, although publicly accused of the same crime as the Melissa on the right, is the victim of mistaken identity.

Herein lies a multi-layered problem in journalism, one that could have led to a rush to judgment. But the person writing this now has watched this metastasizing and malignant metamorphosis first hand and learned--- never rush to judgment in the rush to air.

Melissa Huckaby on the left was mistakenly identified as the suspect by a local Bay Area television station. An employee in a television newsroom got the name of the suspect and then, apparently, found a picture of a woman with the same name living close to where the killing took place. Proximity her only crime, the Melissa Huckaby on the left used the social networking site—MySpace. Her picture was found there, then put on the air.

The falsely identified woman’s MySpace account is now closed, and she and her family no doubt wonder if or when they can walk Manteca streets safely again.

What the free and likely disillusioned Melissa Huckaby learned in this cruelest of ways is when journalists don’t do their jobs well, lives get broken and innocents harmed. What she likely does not understand is how endemic this problem is in newsrooms across the country, where life altering mistakes happen every day—mistakes that often damage much more than reputations. Some “mistakes” have the power to bring democracy to its knees, leaving citizens without access to diligently checked, thoroughly vetted information from various sources—so they can decide for themselves what to believe.

Hoisted on its own petard, mass-produced corporate media is an animal in a trap willing to chew through its own flesh to survive. But survival is at great expense. Corporate greed, with sales people essentially in charge of newsrooms and the profit motive directing the news, has crippled the Fourth Estate.  Still, citizens limp on—looking for nuggets of truth on-line, in a television news story or the local paper. They often find journalism is collateral damage. Those who dare to practice it in corporate media conduits are often labeled “resistant to change”—the death knell.

Over the last ten years, massive lay-offs damaged journalism’s most important collateral—the people who believe in getting the story straight.

Fact checkers were often the first to go—or the first to quit in protest as newscasts across the country multiplied like gerbils.

“All news all the time” is the new motto of television news: “Quantity over quality.”  Helicopter shots of traffic jams replace reporters with years of experience, and reporters once given time and encouragement to walk the beat with “boots on the ground” in an effort to find truth are now forced to do so many other jobs, it’s humanly impossible not to makes mistakes when compromises are demanded.

Those who stayed for the pension and the health insurance and the paycheck are filled with cold acquiescence. Marching, marching, marching—in conforming stupors. The spirit of a good reporter, the spirit of a revolutionary who questions both the corporate media itself and the government it’s beholden to, are mostly just shadows of their former selves. The owners of most corporate media are too far lost to understand by quelling the spirit of the town criers, they are destroying themselves in a perversely fascinating lemmings-off–a-cliff sort of way.

The internet now makes it possible to ruin a person’s life in seconds, not just locally but across the country.  Newspapers, web sites,  MySpace, Facebook and a myriad of other conduits have the potential of posting the same inaccurate information in the wink of an eye—or a “Poke” in it.

If those attempting to find reliable information are tempted to scream, “That damn so and so media corporation is so irresponsible I’ll never watch, or read or listen to it again!” Good, that’s certainly a start, but misinformation and out and out lies are so pervasive now, it’s not that simple.

About the same time Melissa Huckaby was misidentified in local media, the national media was called on the carpet for a headline that was pejorative, provocative and either a lie or a mistake.  Unfortunately, mistakes are not exclusive to television. Information is now so loose and people have such short, easily forgotten spurts of outrage, the mistakes flow down an ever-widening, ever-darker memory hole. The Fourth Estate in some cases has become a trash compactor, crushing stories into smaller blocks of garbage.

Recently the following conversation took place with a trusted reporter who not too long ago was allowed to help the citizens she serves put stories into perspective with some degree of context and sense of proportion. Now her corporate media company tells her viewers are too stupid to understand hard issues. Now she is told to tell her stories in 20 seconds and write twice as many stories to fill the never-ending newscasts.

My question: “How do you do that? My fingers would have whiplash!”

My friend paused, issued a sarcastic nose snort and said, “I write the story the way I used to, explaining all sides—then I take out the facts.”

To quote a lovely, young, bright, promising television producer who quit in protest over the inability to do her job, “I thought I was going to work for Chez Panisse and I ended up at McDonalds.”

No nutrition, just filler…and sometimes they can’t even get that right. Just ask the Melissa Huckaby on the left.

22 May 09: Leslie writing on this issue caught the attentsion of the Columbia Journalism Review

Cheney’s Toys

Published on The Huffington Post, Salon.com, USAToday.com,SFgate,com,Alternet.com--April 6th, 2009

How many times did former vice president Dick Cheney whisper undermining, surreptitious words into the ears of Israeli and high-ranking Pentagon officials? Every day? Once a week? Several seditious rumors a month?

Those who listened are simply Cheney’s Toys. Sadly, Dick does not understand his play date is done and his tinker toys need putting away. In the words of Shakespeare, “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”

This week Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported some sobering news. Now that the clock has run out on Bush/Cheney, the former vice president has, according to Hersh, not only called Israeli officials and told them “not to trust Mr. Obama because he was pro-Palestinian and not ready for the major leagues,” but Hersh went on to report that Cheney/Bush “Stay behinds,” loyal senior officials in the Pentagon, National Security Agency and even inside the White House, are still reporting back to Cheney. Those of us who regard Hersh as one of the greatest journalists of our generation tend to believe him.

Sleep deprived and soaked in worry after stomaching that gaseous news, a startling look at an often-ignored declassified military document leads one to consider how back-room whispers can stir up funnel clouds capable of causing long-term hurricanes.

Past is prologue. Shakespeare wrote it and it is carved in stone on the National Archives Building. Many secrets are buried in the piles of paper held in that building, but one document gives a clue to just how far those who proclaim love of country, but seem to prefer love of power, will go to destabilize it in the name of a poisonous “patriotic” ideology. Although seemingly unrelated to JFK’s murder, a plan for attacking Cuba called Operation Northwoods was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. It remained clouded in obscurity until James Bamford wrote about it his book on the National Security Agency titled “Body of Secrets” back in 2001. Even so, it has remained unknown to most, another victim of the mainstream media’s memory hole.

Written in May of 1962, a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco; five months before the Cuban missile crisis; and a year before President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated; the Northwoods document illustrates in horrifying language that Kennedy, like Obama, had “hold over’s” and “loyalists”  willing to risk millions of American lives to further their own agenda.

Despite a legion of Soviet Missiles pointed toward America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, guided by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and goaded by Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, were itching to kill themselves some Communists—even after Kennedy made it clear he did not want a war with Cuba. Scorning the wishes of the President and the restrictions of the US constitution, the Joint Chiefs contrived and plotted a way to stir one up. Duplicitous whispers no doubt echoed through the halls of power then, too. Mr. Cheney cannot keep his telescopic gun scopes from covertly targeting Iran, just as The Joint Chiefs’ fixation on Cuba led them to concoct a chaos-inducing secret plan to undermine their President, as the follow memo proves:

 

 

How far were the Joint Chiefs of 1962 willing to go? 

      

• "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute (sic) from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Pamama or Venzuela.
• “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo bay and blame Cuba.”
• “We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even Washington.”

For the complete Joint chiefs/Cassius collage see: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

We all remember how plotting and conniving against a democratically-elected president ended in November of 1963. And we have heard the comparisons between the young, vibrant JFK and this new President. May the parallels end there. Past cannot be Prologue.

“Forever and Forever farewell Cassius.”

Reckoning at Ringling Bros.

Huffington Post/ San Francisco Bay Guardian.

 Kenneth Feld, the sole owner of Feld Entertainment and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus did not appear in U.S Federal Court today. Feld stayed true to his reclusive reputation and played the role he always does: the illusive circus master who calls the moves behind the scenes.

Still, in true P.T Barnum fashion, the sleight of hand and manipulation of words got precision delivery on his behalf. In the first few hours of the trial, some of the most famous and expensive mouthpieces money can buy, sang the praises of Ringling Bros. An entourage of Fulbright and Jaworski attorneys turned a weapon of torture, "The Bull Hook," used by Ringling handlers with reckless disregard against the endangered Asian elephants into a harmless sounding "guide." "Advocate" (one who speaks for those who often cannot speak for themselves) became a dirty word. A world renowned elephant expert, who testified today, was accused of advocating for the elephants. What gall. 

As seeds of affirmation were sown by the high powered defendant's attorneys, the plaintiff's attorney scorched the earth with a DVD disc and a finger -- pressing play. The video appearing on the plasma court televisions were, in some cases, heart-breaking and in others horrifying.

For world renowned elephant expert Dr. Joyce Poole, who was the first expert witness of the trial and has studied elephants her entire life, watching Ringling's handlers seemed to physically cause her pain.

 "These animals should not be chained 20 hours a day, beaten with bull hooks and forced to perform these un-natural acts. They are extremely intelligent creatures, they mourn their dead, they use tools, they help their friends up when they are ill, they are extremely social." At one point, while watching a Feld Entertainment video of an Asian elephant "Shirley" giving birth, (Shirley's named after Kenneth Feld's aunt who raise him after his mother died) Dr. Poole choked up.

"In the wild it's a matriarchal system. The women teach the mother how to deliver a baby; they stroke it and talk to it for months. What you saw there is very un-natural."

The Humane Societie's attorney, Katherine Meyer, says  Ringling immediately takes the baby away from the mother and the bonding process never takes place."Often, they will say the baby would not bond, but they don't want the baby to bond, it causes discipline problems later when the baby is torn from the mother."

This has been an almost surreal process for me. After 10 years of waiting, Kenneth Feld just a week before this trial, settled an obstruction of justice lawsuit filed by a journalist. It was a strong case and put on display the lengths to which Kenneth Feld  will resort in order to protect what he considers his "all American" reputation. That journalist wrote things Feld found offensive. His former chief financial officer turned on Feld, revealing a plot of deceit and a slew of private investigators paid to ruin the reporter's personal life and her career as well. Her story reads like a John Le Carre spy novel. Feld employed former CIA deputy director of covert operations for the CIA -- Clair George for a little hanky-panky -- really---Clair George worked for the circus! Let the circus act began.  Tah-dah!

Kenneth Feld is no fellow we journalists want to piss off. As a fledgling journalist, Finley Peter Dunne once taught us that our job was to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." But, that's not the way the job is allowed to work much anymore. Not if one wants to keep it. The journalist, whose career lay in ruins, asked a court for several millions in damages and  ( I'm told behind the scenes) she got it. When her attorney was reached for comment, he said, "Just say we are all smiles today." But, it took ten years before Feld forked out the settlement. He had to do it before going into Federal court for the trial taking place in Washington D.C. now. According to David smith, Kenneth Feld's former Vice President, has said in court documents that his former boss used any means posible to keep people from talking.

Beyond all that, I still cannot get over feeling as if the animal rights groups, the plaintiffs in this Federal courtroom are yelling "A tree's on fire, a tree's on fire!" as the forest is burning.The real issue that no one is talking about during this trial...the real elephant in the room is M-TB and its transference to humans. In my opinion, that is a national health crisis.

M-Tuberculosis was mentioned just one time during opening arguments in the trial. Most, if not all of Kenneth Feld's performing endangered elephants have had Mycobacterium Tuberculosis. As many as 26 have died over the last 15 years. Necropsies indicate most had tuberculosis when they died. While Kenneth Feld claims he is saving the species, he is systematically destroying it. Health documents released...only ofter Feld's attorneys fought not to do so...prove Feld knew and still knows his elephants are sick. Even the USDA sent out memos to inspectors and superiors on the M-TB decimation of the herds. As a side note, Feld's attorney's argued they should not release the health records because of my "wreckless" habit of making them public.

 

 Tah Dah! And on with the show.

For more information on this story, please read The Elephant in the Room"

Lowering the Bar

It's Twat FOX calls the news.

2009: The Murdoch girls lowering the bar and hiking up the skirts while delivering "news" to the masses.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

------- Thomas Jefferson, 1816

One Lone Bureau in Mumbai and an Actual reporter

Published in The Huffington Post December 1st, 2008

CNN made two scrupulous decisions before the tragedy in Mumbai. Both illustrating to the nation and the world the capacity of television news to be more than, as Edward R. Murrow put it, “Wires and a Box.”  If the other handful of networks owning America’s major conduits of information take notice, perhaps television journalism will not remain an oxymoron and the people’s trust in television journalists can be restored.

CNN proved ready for this tragedy by inherently understanding a bureau in India could become a strategically important move and possible open a window for the rest of us to peek through.  No other television news corporation had a bureau and a reporter there.

How did CNN figure that out?  With Pakistan to the northwest, generally considered to be one of the most dangerous places on the planet, Afghanistan next to Pakistan and Iran and Iraq next door, it did not take remarkable sagacity, but it did take money, and that’s why there were no other American television network bureaus there.  Stockholders these days often consider education excess.

Sectarian and political violence surround India, but until Thanksgiving Day, India was considered relatively safe. Relative being the operative word in that sentence.

The second thing CNN did right came in the form of a scrappy, brilliant, formidable reporter manning the lone bureau in India.  Sara Sidner barely flinched when explosions erupted and drunk and angry mobs surrounded her. She lives in India; she knew her stuff.  But then, Sara Sidner always had “Game” and a “Send me in coach” attitude.

Sara Sidner sat in the same chair as I for many years. She worked as an anchor on weekends and a reporter on week days.  Local news did not fight for her to stay. She had no contract keeping her from walking away-- so she did. She’s a rarity in television news today. She did not cover herself in airbrush makeup and flap her eye lashes or purse her dimples for the cameras. She wanted to be a reporter.

Few local corporate television executives notice Sara Sidner qualities these days, so she did what big fish in small ponds do. They either shrink or swim away and grow.

The pond Sara left was crowded with beauty queens toting beauty pageant sashes as resumes. Objectification to reach a goal is not Sara’s style.   Instead she chose the unknown. She chose to walk away from the comforts of home toward potential terror. She has a reporters heart and mind and if she could be cloned, American’s would be better informed and democracy safer. She chose to immerse herself in Indian culture while surrounded by countries with itchy- trigger- fingers, twisted loyalties and sectarian and political killing fields.

Following  the massacres in Mumbai one former intelligence member told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, that the “human intelligence networks” have collapsed---that there is complete reliance on “technological intelligence gathering. ” The same former intelligence officer said, “That contributed to the intelligence failure that perhaps could have stopped the “Thanksgiving day bedlam.”

Reporters based in foreign countries once helped fill that “intelligence void.” And anyone who has ever sent an e-mail to a friend, who misinterpreted the message, knows technology cannot replace human nuance. The lump in my throat melted when I saw Sara reporting from Mumbai. I knew her ability to gather information and relate it to others, and I also know America cannot avoid another 9/11 without understanding these conflicts.  People love Sara and sense her sincerity, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she did not come up with some answers as to whom the culprits were and the points they were trying to make.

 One personal note: When the contradictions of television news got too much for me, Sara Sidner sent flowers to my home and pleaded with me to return to television broadcasting. She indicated current destructive trends would change and reporters would be allowed to become public servants again. With those gestures, she considered my friendship more important than climbing the ladder to the anchor chair that in local and national news turns reporters into actors and creates myopic minds promoting corporate cronyism and corporate agendas. She was not looking for a camera close up, she was looking to be the real thing.

Bullying-Buffed-Up-Times

Dear friends, in my job as a journalist,particularly when reporting on events in other countries,at times it was necessary to use photographers or editors from other stations. During those times, we often did live shots for CNN and numerous other television stations across the country and the world. I reported from Moscow for instance during the Cold War. Those interviews were used by networks around the world. Since I worked for an Independent station then, we gave our stories to any network requesting them.

Any reference to editors or photographers should not automatically be assumed to be associated with any particular media corporation.

A journalist learns picking questions carefully is one of the most important tenants of the job.

On this particular day, the object of my inquiry was the biggest, meanest, mood-altered, high maintenance-millionaire- bully around. What motivates a man like that? And why--during the nightmare of the last 8 years-- did such specimens seem to procreate like a nasty virus in a Petri dish?

We had worked together for years, but having never asked me a question about my life or my family, resignation set in, and I kept my distance.

He began to symbolize a certain segment of men today, many running mass conduits of information (television networks) and what he valued and how he lost his way seems socially relevant today.

Who he was, and why his penultimate included being "BIG," I considered to be theoretically crucial information. Why the hours-long workouts? Why the steroids? Why take a substance that makes your looks and performance a lie, and causes cancer? Why work unrelentingly for the muscles making the outside appear formidable, but the content of the character angry and mean, and the content of the trousers unable to stand up and look around?

So, after confessing my own flop- sweat- fear- on dreaded election nights while figuring voting percentages and numbers of precincts at warp speeds live on the air, perhaps quid pro quo could occur. My curiosity, more powerful than my ability to keep quiet, propelled me forward with a well chosen question hoping it would tell me who he was and how he got that way. Turned out, I already knew.

"What is it YOU fear?" I asked without looking up from my paper work as not to alarm him and create suspicion.

He did not twitch a huge muscle.

"I fear being small."

Bulked up to not only beat the band, but beat UP the band, his honesty gave me a Shakespearean look at his values and the values of many running our steroid nation.

"You mean you fear feeling insignificant?"

"No, I mean I fear being a little man. Little men get pushed around."

After 22 years of observing him, it was the first time I felt his pain.

Bulked up to keep the demons away, he was just another little boy in the playground making sure no one hurt him by hurting anyone else. He could not truly measure up, so he beat others up, especially those who saw through the bully-beef-cake image.

In pursuit of false power and literal self-inflation, he hid behind his stature pushing everyone else and everything else out of the way. But in the dark when no one is looking and character is truly measured, he likely came up short, if he came up at all. He, like his country, reflected a false image of health and security.

The news room monitors told his story over and over in various degrees of separation: from the stock market bullies betting on America's failure, to the mass media's - bipartisanship, to government agencies protecting corporate profiteers while ignoring its duty to American citizens, to a president who ignores laws, compassion and intellect.

Pump the iron, make the threats, be the boom-box without the logic.

I have a dream. Perhaps his noisy, misbehaving days are over. Perhaps the country is tired of his kind. Perhaps the bullies big-bad-self indulgent days are numbered and the muscles that make the man will be sapient in nature--turning the boom box down and resolving conflicts the bullies created.

Silencing the Town Crier

First published in truthout.org  2nd September, 2008

"Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
    - Thomas Jefferson.

    How in the world can this happen? How in the world can citizens remain ensconced in their homes watching "American Idol" when a true American, who should be idolized, is getting arrested for nothing more than asking a few questions?

    Amy Goodman, who hosts one of the rare alternative news programs in the country, "Democracy Now," is not known for attracting attention to herself.

    She is not a Bill O'Reilly, shouting and screaming at anyone who disagrees. She is a journalist who loves diverse voices and putting events into perspective - helping American citizens get the information they need to make informed decisions.

    Yesterday, Goodman witnessed and experienced something very frightening that likely was not mentioned on your local news.

    During the opening of the Republican National Convention, she was arrested for asking police where her two producers were. They had been arrested, and because SHE asked a question police did not like, she was arrested too.

    After more than 20 years as a journalist, Goodman was doing what reporters are supposed to do. She was gathering news inside the Republican National Convention as well as seeking opposing views outside. Heavens to Betsy - a real journalist telling both sides!

    The video of a demure Goodman walking into a group of police who were dressed in riot gear - looking like guards outside a dictator's palace - is surreal. It also convinced me that Republicans would love to provoke citizens practicing their constitutional right of civil disobedience into acting like misguided idiots. Then the mass media, which have been lifting pom-poms for the Bush administration for years, can blame them and make them look like lunatics worthy only of dismissal.

    If Amy Goodman had been wearing an American flag or a Republican emblem on her lapel, I doubt she would have landed behind bars.

    Voices of dissent have always restored balance after times of extreme, and if those voices are silenced, can we still call ourselves a democracy?

    Goodman is one of the few working news persons to ask tough questions of powerful people, and they don't like it.

    This is the age of the bully, and those bullies don't want anyone showing America or the world that there is concern about where our country is headed. Bullies don't like discussion, and yesterday Amy Goodman was bullied right into the paddy wagon.

    Today, many of those in power want to convince sleeping Americans that dissension is evil - that it's unpatriotic and should be feared.

    How can a country formed by revolutionaries not understand that there is no democracy when there is no free press?

    To kill those who question is to kill democracy itself, and the end product is a dictatorship.

    When Iraq was invaded and the town criers lost their voices for not asking why, Americans lost their faith in journalists who are charged with protecting them.

    Now, as a small group fights to wrestle control away from a rich and powerful few owning our conduits of information, dissenting voices are rarely heard - these few own the people who should be asking the questions.

    But they don't own Goodman, and that's why she was arrested.

    Mass media owned by Viacom (entertainment) General Electric (arms dealers) Disneyland (let's just have some fun) and Fox (Rupert Murdoch, who likes to give John McCain a lift in his jet once in a while) are not about to give newsrooms across the country back to its citizens.

    Those sitting in anchor chairs reading the news are often there because they will say and do anything the corporation tells them to, and every one of those corporations has an agenda - and it's not protecting the public.

    Our conduits of information have been hijacked; a man, acting like a dictator, is in the White House; the town criers of democracy are getting arrested, and Americans' heads are so full of infotainment, Prozac and Zoloft that getting off the couch seems like a real inconvenience.

    There is a reason Americans rally. It is our right, and it is our way of pulling a country moving toward self-destruction back into the arms of the people who love it most - those who believe in all sides getting told; those who believe information without perspective is harmful; those who believe infotainment is not news, and those who believe corporate control of newsrooms is destroying a democracy.

    What a sad time for journalism. What a sad time for America.

    What will it take for journalists to put down their pom-poms for corporate media, get out of bed with the Bush administration and start fighting to do their jobs again?

    Perhaps Amy Goodman's illegal arrest will get Americans to stop listening to those who tell us the enemies are all around us and understand that the enemy is here within these divided states.

Life is sweet today

First published in The Huffington Post

Life is  Sweet today. The California sunshine is bright and full and there's an easy,  warm breeze helping to relax the lump in my throat.

After 25 years of  reporting--surprises are rare, but my pride in my country today put some life  back into my step and took the hitch out of my get-along.

She did all that---that fresh-real-woman at the Democratic convention--Michelle  Obama.

"Did you see her?" My daughter called to ask.

"Mom, dad  said watching her made him cry." (Her dad is a psychologist from the deep south.)

"I'll watch her online right now." And thus the unplugging of tear ducts began.

It's hard not to get sentimental. My editor says it's  a sappy form of communication--my tendency toward it is rarely effective in writing.

Keeping that in mind, I will only say this:  Racial  hatred here and around the world has consumed me with anger. After 25 years  of reporting on it, my eyes needed a doctor.       

As a young girl  growing up in the south, police were called when a neighbor saw black friends  swimming in my family's backyard pool.

The quarterback of the football  team at my high school in Texas was thrown in jail and beaten to a pulp after he was found at Lookout Point in Tomball, Texas with a white  girl.

There are still hanging trees in antebellum front-yard  courthouses in the south with proud plaques explaining what those trees were used for.

Sins committed on those southern branches against those  hanged there usually far outweighed any perceived crime--the real culprit was  Melanin levels.

In my lifetime, it seemed unimaginable that a strong,  intelligent, loving, articulate African American woman would be standing on the stage of the Democratic convention---giving a speech that could help heal a country bruised and battered and divided. It covered me with hope.

It also made me wonder if the plaques from the old hangin' trees could  be taken down in her honor.

The Greatest Lie on Earth

published in The Huffington Post on 7/28/08 Truthout.org

Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus paraded endangered Asian elephants through Los Angeles streets while fools born every minute watched.

People were foolish -- or perhaps naïve -- because all the Asian elephants have been exposed to -- or have had full blown mycobacterium-tuberculosis.

Several of them have fought hard to live and several have taken one or all three of the same drugs humans take to try and cure this deadly communicable disease.

The circus is a tuberculosis Petri-dish because it's impossible to tell when a 10,000 pound animal is cured.

According to health records -- a Federal judge ordered Ringling to release -- few of owner Kenneth Feld's elephants have managed to avoid exposure to tuberculosis, and most have taken a hard and sometimes deadly regiment of drugs to try and cure it.

But, there is no X-ray machine in the world big enough to produce evidence the animals is cured.

According to L.A's head of the health department, Patrick Ryan,

"Once these animals have been exposed to M-tuberculosis -- the same disease humans catch -- they (the elephants) should never be allowed to be around the public again."

Instead of lining the road to see the animals, circus patrons

"Should be given a disclaimer when they come into the arena explaining they could be exposed to a deadly contagious disease."

World renowned epidemiologist, Don Francis who fought hard to get the world to take HIV seriously, and was the first head of the Centers for Disease Control AIDS Division goes on to say, "Potential drug resistance is a distressing problem,"

"When humans give tuberculosis to the Asian elephants and the elephants become drug resistant and go back out into the public, the elephants could then not only infect others with TB, but with a drug resistant form of TB."

Consider this:

Every animal on the blue unit now performing in Los Angeles, then heading to San Diego and on to the San Francisco Bay area has either tested positive for tuberculosis, or has had a full blown case of M-TB.

With no way of looking at an elephants lungs until after death, there is no way to tell if they are cured. The test veterinarians give -- a trunk washing -- is notoriously unreliable.

At least two Ringling elephants have died after giving negative trunk washings for M-TB and during necropsies, tuberculosis- lesions were found on their lungs -- they were contagious the entire time they traveled the country and the world.

Every few days I get a Google alert on elephants and tuberculosis. When I first began writing about elephants and M-TB, many, including high ranking USDA officials refused to admit publicly that the disease is transferred from the elephants to humans and back again. The USDA now admits this.

As for the spread of tuberculosis, organizations that follow the disease know its trending up. A study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, reported that 55 percent of elephant handlers from one herd -- caught tuberculosis. In some areas tuberculosis rates are soaring such as Santa Clara County where the circus will be headed in a few weeks.

According to one former elephant handler on the blue unit -- six of the elephant handlers working with the blue unit -- the one performing in Los Angeles County right now-- tested positive for tuberculosis.

Their bodies are ticking bombs as they wait to see whether they will come down with the disease itself.

Humans passed the M-tuberculosis to the elephants and the elephants pass it back to the handlers and presumably circus goers -- in an endless merry- go- round of heartache and death that not one government official is concerned enough to stop.

Why would the owner of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus carry tuberculosis infected elephants across the country and around the world? It's simple -- you already know the answer -- money.

Kenneth Feld, owner of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus -- was at one time -- the fourth richest man in America according to Forbes magazine, and he wants to keep it that way.

Since 1993, he has known his elephants were infected with tuberculosis...at least 30 died during the last 10 to 15 years.

His herds have been devastated. While he promises to conserve the species -- he systematically kills them -- while hiding the proof that they carried M-TB from one American city to another. His circus is not alone.

A circus that gives elephant rides to children just left Oakland. One of the elephants is so sick she can barely stand -- she tested positive for tuberculosis, and still the families come to let their children ride these animals.

http://www.lesliegriffithproductions.com/my_weblog/2008/04/circus-elephant.html

With heightened concern by the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control that a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis is emerging -- why not consider elephants with tuberculosis blowing moisture from their trunks inside a closed area -- a possible TB Petri dish?

Unimaginable greed and desire for money at the expense of human life keeps this cycle going.
Kenneth Feld has said the circus is not the circus without elephants. Cirque de Soleil has dispelled that myth.

The diseased animals would still be a secret except for health records Ringling was forced to release in Discovery after a Federal judge threatened to throw Kenneth Feld in jail if he did not turn the records over.

Feld is not facing criminal charges for knowingly taking the animals across the country, but many believe he should.

One former Ringling Bros., -- employee said -- under oath, "As the elephants enter and exit the arena, they blow moisture from their trunks hitting people in the face, exposing them to tuberculosis."

In depositions from a former chief financial officer and a former private investigator, both say as far back as 1993 Feld knew and hid the fact that his animals had tuberculosis.

Joel Kaplan, one of Kenneth Feld's Private investigators, says a Ringling veterinarian told him:

"About half the elephants in each of the shows had tuberculosis and the tuberculosis was an easily transmitted disease to human beings..." "I think it is immoral to have elephants traveling in every arena in the country with tuberculosis. "

Kenneth Feld will finally face charges in court for allegedly abusing the endangered Asian elephants. After 8 years and millions of dollar in a Herculean effort to put the court date off -- a gutsy Federal judge finally set a trial date for October 7th.

Feld is also entangled in another law- suit -- one that has been on- going for 10 years. He is charged with trying to ruin the career of a reporter who exposed his family's history.

http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2001/08/30/circus/print.html

The forest is burning and your government officials are either whistling through the grave yard or too busy to notice.