Shadow Puppets

Why May Day?

2006-05-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

Friends,

We find ourselves living in a time of danger and tumult. How exhilarating! How lucky we are to have an opportunity to do something meaningful, something beyond ourselves, something that contributes to the advancement of our human family. Let's remember our history. Let's celebrate. And let's kick some serious a**!

-B

http://www.tompaine.com/why_may_day.php

Why May Day?

Geov Parrish May 01, 2006Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange . He can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net

For many older Americans, "May Day" brings to mind images of phalanxes of Soviet soldiers, goose-stepping through Red Square behind massive tanks, while millions of onlookers obediently cheer. For some, "May Day" is a pagan holiday, Beltane, known more (and loved) for maypoles or other fertility rituals than for political struggles. But May Day, the political version, is an American holiday—one celebrated for the last century everywhere in the world except America, and one whose origins are well worth remembering.

Because May Day began as a strike for basic workplace rights we're now in the process of losing. And that strike was largely by immigrant workers, which is exactly what America will see when immigrants and their supporters strike, march and rally across the country on a “National Day of Action for Comprehensive Immigration Reform” on this coming Monday—May Day.

Chicago, in 1886, was a rapidly growing city, a polyglot of immigrant languages and cultures. On the first May Day—May 1, 1886—"International Workers' Day" began as a series of general strikes in Chicago and other Midwestern cities for the eight- hour day. Some 340,000 workers participated; it was a campaign that had already been going on strong for quite some time.

But the strike took on particular significance when, two days later, police attacked striking workers at McCormick Reaper, on Chicago's south side. Four workers were killed and over 200 injured. And at a demonstration to protest the police riot on the following day, May 4, a bomb went off at Chicago's Haymarket Square—the infamous "Haymarket Massacre" that killed eight police and wounded 60. The bombing led to death sentences for eight leading anarchists, including several German immigrants, convicted with no evidence at all for conspiracy to commit murder.

Three of the anarchists were pardoned before their deaths, the other five posthumously. But the public and police hostility to organized labor that was whipped up over Haymarket meant that, in turn, May Day became an international labor rallying cry for the right of workers to organize in general, and for the eight-hour day in particular. By the end of the decade, May Day was a holiday celebrated by workers and workers' movements in every industrialized country in the world.

It still is—now, in fact, it's observed globally. Except, ironically, in the land of the holiday's birth. The holiday's burgeoning popularity led Congress, in 1894, to establish "Labor Day" in September to honor American workers—a holiday established, not by ordinary workers themselves as an expression of empowerment, but by big business and their Congressional apologists as a way to try to dictate what workers were and weren't allowed to celebrate. One day belonged to the workers; the other 365 to big business, and we were to work as many hours of those days as business pleased.

The strategy failed, of course. Eventually. It took another entire generation of struggle, but by 1912, federal workers were granted the eight-hour day; and in 1917, while America was desperate for the cooperation of unions in the war effort, the Eight Hour Act became law. And there, one would think, the matter was settled.

Okay, quick: Do you actually work only eight hours in a day? Only 40 hours in a week? Five days?

Not very many of us do, any longer. We stay longer in the office, we take work home with us, we take work everywhere with us, because at some level we fear that if we don't, either the company will fail or it will replace us with people who'll make those sacrifices. Nor, in the land that gave birth to May Day, do workers here get anywhere close to the vacation or sick day benefits we get in other industrialized countries. And let's not even talk about health care coverage, which isn't even linked to one's workplace in most of the industrialized world—it's accepted as a universal need and right.

Here, our system has already rendered health care too expensive to obtain without insurance. Now, it's denying more and more of the workforce health insurance that covers meaningful parts of the cost of actually getting sick, or, for nearly 50 million of us, any health insurance at all. Income for most working families is not keeping up with inflation. And for all of these effective losses in compensation for our work, we're still working harder and longer hours than our grandparents.

It's not too different now, really, from 1886. Then, as now, big business was exploiting the desperation and relative powerlessness of cheap immigrant labor, and in the process trying to depress the wages and establish exploitative precedents for all workers. Then, as now, much of the rest of the public feared and distrusted a part of the labor force that often didn't even speak English. Then, as now, the immigrants had finally had enough. And marched and struck.

Today the largest yet wave of immigrant marches and rallies will take place in scores of cities across the United States. Their immediate focus is proposed congressional reforms, the most prominent of which is a ruthlessly exploitative “guest worker” proposal backed by President George W. Bush that would leave immigrants' legal standing wholly at the mercy of a single employer. But the larger issue is America's imposition of corporate-friendly trade policies that have decimated economies in Mexico and elsewhere, spurring economic emigration to America, while at the same time exporting millions of better-paying jobs from America itself.

The immigrants' struggle is not just legal, but economic, and a matter of self-respect and self-preservation; it is, in important ways, the leading edge of a struggle all American workers are facing. Today, find the immigrant march in your community. Join it.

Happy May Day.

###

The Logic of Withdrawal

2006-04-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/34122/

The Logic of Withdrawal

By Anthony Arnove, In These Times
Posted on March 28, 2006, Printed on March 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/34122/We find ourselves in a remarkable situation today.

Despite a massive propaganda campaign in support of the occupation of Iraq, a clear majority of people in the United States now believes the invasion was not worth the consequences and should never have been undertaken.

Likewise, people strongly disapprove of the foreign policy of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, particularly their position on the war in Iraq. In a September 2005 New York Times-CBS News poll, support for immediate withdrawal stood at 52 percent, a remarkable figure when one considers that very few political organizations have articulated an "Out Now" position.

The official justifications for the war have been exposed as complete fallacies. Even conservative defenders of U.S. empire now complain that the situation in Iraq is a disaster.

Yet many people who opposed this unjust invasion, who opposed the 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions on Iraq for years before that, some of whom joined mass demonstrations against the war before it began, have been persuaded that the U.S. military should now remain in Iraq for the benefit of the Iraqi people. We confront the strange situation of many people mobilizing against an unjust war but then reluctantly supporting the military occupation that flows directly from it.

In part, this position is rooted in the pessimistic conclusions many drew after the February 15, 2003, day of international demonstrations -- perhaps the largest coordinated protest in human history -- failed to prevent the war. This pessimism was exacerbated by some of the leading spokespeople for the antiwar movement, who misled audiences by suggesting that the demonstrations could stop the war. As inspiring as the demonstrations were, it would have taken a significantly higher degree of protest, organization, and disruption of business as usual to do so.

The lesson of February 15 is not that protest no longer works, but that protest needs to be sustained, coherent, forceful, persistent, and bold -- rather than episodic and isolated. And it needs to involve large numbers of working-class people, veterans, military families, conscientious objectors, Arabs, Muslims, and other people from targeted communities, not just as passive observers but as active participants and leaders.

We will need this kind of protest to end the occupation of Iraq. But we will also need to be able to answer the objections and concerns of thoughtful, well-meaning people who have been persuaded by one or more of the arguments for why U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, at least until "stability" is restored. Below, I outline eight reasons why the United States should leave Iraq immediately, addressing common arguments for why the United States needs to "stay the course."

The U.S. Military has no right ro be in Iraq in the first place.

The Bush administration built its case for invading Iraq on a series of deceptions. The war in Iraq was sold on the idea that the United States was preempting a terrorist attack by Iraq. But Iraq posed no threat. The country was disarmed and had overwhelmingly complied with the extremely invasive weapons inspections. In a rare moment of honesty, Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN in March 2001,"I don't believe [Saddam Hussein] is a significant military threat today."

As the case for war has crumbled, so has the case for occupation, which also rests on the idea that the United States can violate the sovereignty of the Iraqi people and all the laws of occupation, such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, which clearly restrict the right of occupying powers to interfere in the internal affairs of an occupied people.

The United States is not bringing democracy to Iraq.

Having failed to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the first big lie of the invasion -- the United States has turned to a new big lie: George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Negroponte, Condoleezza Rice, John Bolton, and their friends are bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Democracy has nothing to do with why the United States is in Iraq. The Bush administration invaded Iraq to secure long-established imperial interests in the Middle East -- the same reason Washington backed Saddam Hussein as he carried out the worst of his crimes against the Iraqi people, the Kurds, and the Iranians.

By invading Iraq, Washington hoped not only to install a regime more favorable to U.S. oil interests; it hoped to use Iraq as a staging ground for further interventions to redraw the map of the Middle East. Several U.S. bases have been established in Iraq and are likely to remain long after U.S. troops are expelled. All of this has nothing to do with democracy. In fact, the United States has long been a major obstacle to any secular, democratic, nationalist, or socialist movements in the region that stood for fundamental change, preferring instead what is euphemistically called "stability," even if it meant supporting the most reactionary fundamentalist religious forces or repressive regimes.

The U.S. government opposes genuine democracy in the Middle East for a simple reason: if ordinary people controlled the region's energy resources, they might be put toward local economic development and social needs, rather than going to fuel the profits of Western oil companies. Democracy cannot be "installed" by outside powers, at gunpoint. Genuine democracy can come about only through the struggle of people for control over their own lives and circumstances, through movements that are themselves democratic in nature.

When confronted with such movements, such as the 1991 Iraqi uprising, the U.S. government has consistently preferred to see them crushed than to see them succeed.

The United States is not making the workd a safer place by occupying Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq has made the world a far more unstable and dangerous place. By invading Iraq, Washington sent the message to other states that anything goes in the so-called war on terror.

After September 11, India called its nuclear rival Pakistan an "epicenter of terrorism." Israel has carried out "targeted assassinations" of Palestinians, bombed Syria, and threatened to strike Iran, using the same rationale that Bush did for the invasion of Iraq." You don't negotiate with terrorism, you uproot it. This is simply the doctrine of Mr. Bush that we're following," explained Uzi Landau, Israel's minister of public security.

Furthermore, the invasion of Iraq is spurring the drive for countries to develop a deterrent to U.S. power. The most likely response to the invasion of Iraq is that more countries will pursue nuclear weapons, which may be the only possible protection from attack, and will increase their spending on more conventional weapons systems. Each move in this game has a multiplier effect in a world that is already perilously close to the brink of self-annihilation through nuclear warfare or accident.

Meanwhile, the invasion has also quite predictably increased the resentment and anger that many people feel against the United States and its allies, therefore making innocent people in these countries far more vulnerable to terrorism, as we saw in the deadly attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004, and London on July 7, 2005.

The United States is reviled not because people "hate our freedoms," as Bush suggests, but because people hate the very real impact of U.S. policies on their lives. As the British playwright and essayist Harold Pinter observed," People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget. They strike back."

The United States is not preventing civil war in Iraq.

Perhaps the greatest fear of many antiwar activists who now support the occupation is that the withdrawal of U.S. troops will lead to civil war. This idea has been encouraged repeatedly by supporters of the war. "Sectarian fault lines in Iraq are inexorably pushing the country towards civil war unless we actually intervene decisively to stem it," explained one U.S. Army official, making the case for a continued U.S.presence.

But Washington is not preventing a civil war from breaking out. In fact, occupation authorities are deliberately pitting Kurds against Arabs, Shia against Sunni, and faction against faction to influence the character of the future government, following a classic divide- and-rule strategy. Taking this idea to its logical extreme, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman argues, "We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind." Such arguments are not just the fantasy of keyboard warriors like Friedman, however. As the journalist A.K. Gupta notes, "the Pentagon is arming, training, and funding" militias in Iraq "for use in counter-insurgency operations." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said such commandos were among "the forces that are going to have the greatest leverage on suppressing and eliminating the insurgencies."

In addition, the Iraqi constitution, drafted under intense pressure from occupation authorities, essentially enshrines sectarian divisions in Iraqi politics. And, finally, despite all of its rhetoric about confronting Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq, the United States has in fact encouraged it, bringing formerly marginalized fundamentalist parties such as the Dawa Party and the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq into the Iraqi government.

The United States is not confronting terrorism by staying in Iraq.

Iraq has never been the center of a terrorist threat to the United States. Each month, further evidence emerges that the Bush administration went to great lengths to suppress facts that undermined its case for war, while touting bogus evidence in its support. As the New York Times reported in November 2005, "A top member of Al Qaeda in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document."

Al-Qaeda made its first appearance in Iraq only after the invasion, a predictable outcome of the U.S. occupation. In reality, the United States engaged in state terrorism under the pretext of fighting a terrorist threat that did not exist in Iraq, and in the process greatly increased the likelihood of individual and organizational terrorist acts targeting the United States or its proxies abroad.

Even more circular is the idea that the United States has to stay in Iraq until it "defeats" the resistance to the occupation. The occupation itself is the source of the resistance, a fact that even some of the people responsible for the war have been forced to acknowledge.

The United States is not honoring those who died by continuing the conflict.

One of the most cynical reasons for staying in Iraq was advanced by President Bush in response to the growing public criticism over the mounting deaths of U.S. soldiers and the deliberate campaign by the administration to suppress images of the returning coffins.

Speaking to a carefully targeted audience in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he fled to escape the protest of Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son, Casey, in Iraq on April 4, 2004, Bush made a rare public acknowledgment of the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We owe them something," he said. "We will finish the task that they gave their lives for. We will honor their sacrifice by staying on the offensive against the terrorists."

Sheehan herself had the best response to this attempt to manipulate people into supporting continued occupation, asking, "Why should I want one more mother to go through what I've gone through, because my son is dead?. . . I don't want him using my son's death or my family's sacrifice to continue the killing."

The soldiers in Iraq have not died for a "noble cause," as Bush claims. Whatever personal motivations may have brought them into the military, they died for oil, for empire, for power and profit. More deaths and injuries of Iraqis and of U.S. soldiers will only compound the tragedy of the numerous lives already lost.

The United States is not rebuilding Iraq.

The contractors now in Iraq are not there to help the people of Iraq but to help themselves, drawing on their close ties to influential politicians to secure contracts and profit from what Pratap Chatterjee rightly calls the "reconstruction racket."

The reality is, Halliburton, Bechtel, and the other companies in Iraq are looting the country far more than they are rebuilding it. Iraqis have been forced to pay elevated prices to import oil, benefiting corporations like Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, while ordinary Iraqis have to stand in lines sometimes for days to buy gasoline. Project after project remains unfinished. Hospitals are in shambles. Electricity is still at woefully inadequate levels.

As the journalist Naomi Klein eloquently observes, "The United States, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry" of economic strangulation.

The Iraqi people are perfectly capable of rebuilding their own society, in fact far more so than foreign soldiers or contractors. To the extent that there have been any social services or security in the last two years, it is primarily Iraqis who have provided it. During the years of sanctions, Iraqis also showed their immense resourcefulness in holding together their badly damaged infrastructure. Iraqi engineers, teachers, and doctors have long been among the most educated and best trained in the Arab world. It is ultimately a racist worldview that believes Iraqis cannot rebuild or run their own country.

The United States is not fulfilling its obligation to the Iraqi people for the harm and suffering it has caused.

Understandably, many opponents of the war now believe that the United States has an obligation to the Iraqi people and therefore has to stay to "clean up the mess it has created." MoveOn.org, which grabbed headlines and signed up millions of online members with its anti-Bush campaigning, refuses to call for withdrawal of troops from Iraq because, in the words of its executive director, Eli Pariser, "There are no good options in Iraq." [Editor's Note: MoveOn.org's current public position is that it supports an exit strategy including the proposal by Congressman Jack Murtha that would withdraw troops from Iraq.] Using this same logic, leading anti-sanctions and antiwar groups such as the Education for Peace in Iraq Center have formally adopted positions in support of occupation, if somehow a more enlightened occupation, and therefore against immediate withdrawal.

We must confront the bizarre logic of saying that the people who have devastated Iraq, who encouraged and enforced sanctions that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the last decade, who have failed at even the most basic responsibilities as an occupying power, who are the source of the instability in Iraq today, are the only ones who can protect Iraqis from hunger and anarchy. In no other area of our lives do we accept such logic, but when it comes to the crimes of empire, we are supposed to continually ignore history. The "doctrine of good intentions" exculpates all crimes.

The reality, however, is that the U.S. occupation, rather than being a source of stability in Iraq, is the major source of instability and ongoing suffering.

Moreover, those calling for immediate withdrawal do not advocate a position of isolationism and of simply walking away from any obligation to the Iraqi people. Does the U.S. government have an obligation to the Iraqi people? Absolutely. An obligation for the crimes Washington supported for years when Saddam Hussein was an ally. For arming and supporting both sides in the brutal Iran-Iraq War. For the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War. For the use of depleted uranium munitions, cluster bombs, daisy cutters, and white phosphorus. For the devastating sanctions. For the humiliation and deaths caused by the 2003 invasion, and for the great damage the occupation has caused since.

But the first step in meeting this obligation is to withdraw immediately.

If there were any genuine justice for the people of Iraq, not only would the politicians responsible for this unjust war face prosecution for their crimes, but the U.S. government would be required to pay reparations to the Iraqi people and to the families of U.S. soldiers who have been maimed and killed by its criminal actions.

In demanding an end to the U.S. occupation, we do not need to call for some other occupying power to replace the United States. We should allow the people of Iraq to determine their own future. This means, as Naomi Klein has argued, that in addition to calling for an end to military occupation, we should be calling for an end to the economic occupation of Iraq and the cancellation of all debts that Iraq still owes from the previous regime (many of which still have not been forgiven).

If the Iraqis ask for outside assistance, that is their prerogative. But it is their decision, not ours, to make, and that decision can only be freely made if the United States, United Kingdom, and other occupying armies withdraw completely and end their economic, political, and military coercion of Iraq.

This article is adapted from Anthony Arnove's forthcoming book Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, due out on April 18 from The New Press.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Weapon of Mass Destruction

2006-04-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

"The industrialised nations spend about 900 billion dollars to defend their national borders," the Brazilian president said. "But they allocate less than 60 billion dollars for development in poor countries, where hunger has become a silent weapon of mass destruction." -- Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva at the '06 Biodiversity Conference

Theft From the Hungry

2006-04-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

very gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children....This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Black to the Future

2006-04-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

A recent report from the Whittier Daily News (in GOP-dominated Orange County) included the following example of the dwarf statesmen running our Democracy into the ground.

........

About 80 percent of those surveyed (by the Pew Research Center) described Latin American immigrants as "very hard working" compared with 63 percent nearly a decade ago.......

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach, chalked up the survey's conclusions to partisanship. "It's a liberal-biased poll," he said. "It's the opposite of the truth."

Rohrabacher, who joined Tancredo to blast the Senate guest worker measure, said a temporary worker program like the one backed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. would only attract more illegal immigrants, he said.

"We do not need more people from foreign countries coming in and taking American jobs - even jobs in the fields," he said. "I say, let prisoners pick the fruits. Let's not bid down the wages of American workers."

(Yeah, baby!!!!)

Porcelain Throne(s)

2006-04-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in few hands and the republic is destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln

A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth

2006-04-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

I've been lucky enough to find someone who's long known the truth of the words posted below. Long before we become entangled in our Western "mind," we are feeling creatures, joyous in the moment, immortal....lacking nothing.

Published on Friday, March 24, 2006 by Inter Press Service

A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth
by Mario Osava

CURITIBA, Brazil - Emotions and sensitivity are "the essence, the core dimension of the human being," said the Brazilian theologian at a panel on "ethics, biodiversity and sustainability". The panel formed part of the Global Civil Society Forum, held parallel to the Mar. 20-31 Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8).

It is not reason but feeling that is involved in our first contact with reality, and "today's great crisis is not economic, political or religious, but a crisis of affect, of the capacity to feel a connection with others," he said.

It is indispensable to "take care of all living things," and science shows that cooperation is the "supreme law of the universe," he added.

"The world is not made up of objects but of relationships. It was cooperation that made possible the leap from animal to humanity, and without it we are dehumanised, which is what occurs in the case of capitalism," the theologian told around 300 activists, most of them small farmers.

He added that the principle of responsibility underlies the criticism of transgenic products, the need to take precautions in the face of unpredictable and unknown consequences, the possibility that genetic modification of food could break down the balance between the "billions of bacteria" and molecules that make up a human being.

Boff, who left the priesthood after suffering sanctions at the hands of the Vatican for expressing "dangerous ideas" over the past two decades, has outlined his ecological concerns in several books. He has been invited to give talks at several panels at the COP8.

Boff is one of the founders of liberation theology, which is based on a "preferential option for the poor", whose proponents' involvement in the struggles of the poor and marginalised sectors of the population often brought them into conflict with a more conservative Catholic Church hierarchy in the past.

The expression "sustainable development" is "a deception to undermine the demands of environmentalists" by joining together two contradictory concepts, he told the participants in the Global Civil Society Forum.

Development "comes from the capitalist economy," which supposes a constant rise in production, consumption and wealth as part of an illusion of "infinite resources," while sustainability has to do with biology, "the dynamic equilibrium of interrelated beings," he said.

In order for the consumption levels of industrialised countries to become universal, "two additional planet earths" would be needed, he said.

But earlier international conferences have already concluded that by continuing along that road, the earth would no longer be sustainable by 2030 or 2035, and would suffer major catastrophes, said Boff. "We have become the earth's Satan," said Boff. "Either we change or we die."

...............

Blackface Environmentalism: Chevron Meets Al Jolson

2005-11-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago Thursday --Nov. 10 to be exact -- writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Nigerian activists were executed as enemies of the state. They somehow imagined they could successfully protest the repression of millions people by a handful of soldiers and a smattering of multinational oil conglomerates. Needless to say, they were mistaken.

To celebrate Saro-Wiwa's quixotic misadventure, Chevron is running full-page advertisements declaring its commitment to bettering humankind. The ads -- which ask if we should worry about "the world" consuming two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered -- feature a bulletin board dotted with a maps, drawings of oil derricks and a cuddly photo of happy-go-lucky Nigerian children mugging for the camera.

The darkies are happy and gay (as they once were at their Old Kentucky Home) because they know the Great Corporate Father loves them. He is concerned with their well-being, and that of the planet. Financial Times in hand, perched on his porcelain throne, he intones, "Inaction is not an option. But if everyone works together, we can balance this equation. We're taking some of the steps needed to get started, but we need your help to get the rest of the way. willyoujoinus.com."

If you're experiencing goosebumps, they're undoubtedly indicative of a healthy appreciation of globalization at its finest.

At the edge of energy's frontier -- or more specifically from inside a Port Harcourt jail -- Mujahid Doubo-Asiri is busy imploring armed followers not to blow the roof of a couple of Chevron oil production facilities. The prospective action threatens some 28,400 barrels a day, about one percent Nigeria's total oil output. It seems the "warlord" spoke too plainly when he called for the disintegration of the government. Lackeys of Chevron and the other companies say Duobo-Asari is running a protection racket and want him to keep his trap shut. He, on the other hand, claims to be fighting on behalf of the Ijaw, the largest ethnic group in the Nigerian delta.

Lord knows the Ijaw help. Most of the delta's 20 million people live in extreme poverty, right alongside an industry that produces billions of dollars in revenue for Chevron, its competitors and a zombie government unwilling to find the money to provide running water or electricity for its huddled masses.

Nigeria is the world's sixth largest oil producer, with oil accounting for more than 90 percent of its income. Yet human rights groups note that in a country where corruption is rife, it is widely understood that a good chunk of oil money ends up in Swiss bank accounts controlled by pilfering officials. Successive strongmen have been loathe to any disruptions of oil flow.

Sadly, the Delta is one of the largest wetlands in the world. The Atlantic Ocean sits at its doorstep and a network of inland waterways crisscross the once fertile region. Oil industry pollution, however, has made fishing lucrative over the years. Essentially, the people have been forced into servitude to the oil companies and slowly being starved to death.

Behind barbwire fences and iron bars, Chevron has operated in Nigeria for almost 30 years. Inside installations spread across the country, bought-and-paid-for police and paramilitaries guard precious corporate assets. Outside, meanwhile, local communities struggle in poverty and squalor, travel in dug-out canoes, sleep in straw huts, and get by without electricity, clean water, roads or health facilities, notes human rights group CorpWatch.

Back at the ranch, Chevron is lauded as a model corporate citizen. Bill O'Reilly, its fearless CEO, is feted with the pomp and circumstance of a feudal lord. Verily he remains the $10 million-a-year flame to which we moths are invariably drawn. The corporation embodies all things bold and beautiful, providing high-paying jobs, comfortable homes, solid moral values and sky-high stock options.

Earlier this year, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a breathless story about Chevron's beneficence toward San Ramon, which in 2002 became corporate headquarters following the oil giant's hair-raising escape from the sinful City. More than the increased consumption and business/property tax revenue generated by an estimated 2,500 employees at Chevron Park, city fathers are ga-ga over the company's "mostly unheralded mostly unheralded contributions to local business, educational and cultural activities" that helped once-sleepy suburb shed the unwelcome nickname "San Remote."

Although short of the tent-city it recently set up for 1,500 displaced refinery workers in Pascagoula, Miss., the company has been awfully busy doing good deeds here at home. The Chronicle reports Chevron spearheaded a fund drive to raise thousands of dollars in corporate donations to save the local library from severe budget cuts. Meanwhile, it's donated about $6,500 a year to fund the San Ramon Senior Center van and given money to support the city's annual Art and Wind Festival, Fourth of July fireworks show and summer concert series.

That's mighty generous for a corporation that enjoyed obscene revenues of $155 billion in FY 2004. Even among clear-eyed detractors, Chevron can seemingly do no wrong. When anti-Iraq War protestors gathered outside the company's pearly gates, they reportedly told the mayor, "Your police are so nice. If we have to be arrested, we'd like to be arrested in San Ramon.''

It's a good thing they weren't Nigerian.

According to a suit filed in San Francisco federal court, Chevron paid soldiers $109.25 a day after they attacked two villages, killed four people and set fire to numerous homes. Stamped with Chevron's logo and the name of its Nigerian subsidiary, the soldiers' invoice surfaced this year as part of a legal action aimed at holding the company accountable for the 1999 attacks. For its part, Chevron acknowledges the bill as a cost of doing business, paying soldiers to guard its facilities in an area purported for "piracy and ethnic combat." A spokesman said the Nigerian government covers the soldiers' salaries but Chevron pays them an additional sum for taking a "hardship" post.

Readers searching for a happy ending will have to wait until oil runs out. Unfortunately, that date with destiny is much closer than we Energy Hogs (as a post-Hurricane Katrina President Bush is wont to call us) are willing, or able, to admit.

It is clear Chevron knows oil production is peaking. Soon, it'll be all downhill from here, right into the abyss. Then, we Americanos will have to hoist our big butts out of our SUV's and pound the pavement, begging cups in hand. Meanwhile, oily egg-zek-u-tives take their ill-gotten gains to Martha Stewart-outfitted off-shore platforms to lavish petroleum-product trophy wives and multi-hued au Peres.

As for Saro-Wiwa's children, they'll just have to keep smiling for the camera and hope the Great Corporate Father doesn't forsake them.

###

DUBYA GOES TO WASHINGTON

2005-06-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

"I think Bush is going to fashion himself a 21st Century Franklin Roosevelt. This is a question of his legacy." -- Stephen Moore, Free Enterprise Fund

DUBYA GOES TO WASHINGTON

On the backlot of our nation's capital, where dreams of democracy are factory-farmed for ever-hungry audiences, this summer's blockbuster is in full production. Starring George Dubya Bush, an upright soul pines for simpler days when God-fearing Americans were unsullied by Big Government. At great self-sacrifice, and considerable expense, he gathers kinfolk and belongings and heads to The Beltway, where he battles -- and, ultimately, triumphs over -- the commonweal's most treacherous enemy: Social Security.

Along the yellow brick road, he meets and enlists selfless lobbyists, broad-minded think-tankers, under-appreciated CEOs and courageous business coalitions eager to help realize his utopian dream. No more will women, children and the elderly be held hostage by wicked Democrats. No more will injured and disabled workers be manipulated by evil New Dealers. In Dubya's free market world, all will be left to their own ingenious devices, free to sink or swim on their own accord, beholden to no other citizen, free to invest and consume to their heart's content. Every man a king; or, at least, an owner.

So the story goes.

If the corporate media are to be believed, the Bush administration's effort to "reform" social security is a straightforward attempt to confront a looming, if somewhat murky, fiscal "crisis." In the he-said/she-said rate journalism, any difference (or similarity) of opinion is simply that. All viewpoints are created equal although not given equal time. Ideology is window-dressing and, therefore, unworthy of serious examination. And what is actually a bitter and long-standing argument about what kind of society we should have -- and what we owe each other as citizens -- is reduced to a horse race on ESPN.

A NEW DEAL

Without doubt, Social Security has done more to help America's poor than any other federal program. It was set up with one goal in mind: making sure old people didn't die in the gutter. The program is based on a formula that pays lower-income workers a higher share of their contributed wages than those who earn more, essentially redistributing income downward. Government figures show old-age poverty in America has dropped from the 1930's rate of roughly 50 percent to about 10 percent today.

Getting that result wasn't easy.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in 1932, the country was mired in the Great Depression. Three years after the stock market crash of 1929, ten million Americans were unemployed; another eighteen million were on relief. Businesses were hemorrhaging red ink and the country was in crisis.

To stem a rising tide of dissatisfaction, Roosevelt's administration opted to "reorganize capitalism... to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system...to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion...(the) organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self-help, (and) general strikes in several cities," writes Howard Zinn.

Brushing aside the privatization-based policies of the Republican administration of Herbert Hoover, Roosevelt called for a "new deal" for working people being hustled in a card game fixed for the rich. His administration closed all banks to assess their fiscal soundness. With backing from a Democratically-controlled Congress, it loosened credit, insured deposits through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking.

Equally controversial was the administration's use of public funds to kick-start the economy. It created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Works Administration, the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration. The administration also took a direct role in developing the country's natural resources, establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration.

But the Great Depression lingered. In California, novelist Upton Sinclair campaigned for governor on an "end poverty" platform. Meanwhile, Louisianan Huey Long took his ''share the wealth'' movement national. In an early version of talk-show radio, populist firebrand Rev. Charles Coughlin blasted bankers and other societal parasites to an audience of millions. Broadcasting from The Shrine of the Little Flower over the airwaves of WJR in Detroit, the founder of the National Union for Social turned the rage of the so-called Common Man into a spiritual crusade.

"We are determined," he railed in 1993, "once and for all to attack and overpower the enemy of financial slavery; to oppose and to defeat those who still support the ancient heresy of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few...In this venture can we rely on you, on every sane American to take his place in the ranks of justice? The real fight is just beginning."

TAKE TWO

Shuffling the deck again, the Roosevelt administration forwarded the Social Security Act, which made available retirement benefits and unemployment insurance, and matched state funds for mothers and dependent children. (It excluded farmers, domestic workers, and old people; and offered no health insurance, prompting historian Paul Conkin to note: "The meager benefits of Social Security were insignificant in comparison to the building of security for large, established businesses." )

Nevertheless, to avoid creating another welfare-type programs vulnerable to future political attack, Roosevelt insisted the program be self-supporting, which resulted in the creation of a trust fund. To build a future reserve, the New Dealers doubled the initial level of the payroll tax to 2 percent, applied up to a cap that was initially set at $3,000 of income. This compromise added a regressive aspect to the plan, shielding the highest income brackets.

"The public, strongly supported the new program, but conservatives attacked it as a socialistic scourge," Roger Lowenstein of the New York Times writes. "Playing on the fact that each worker was to receive a government number, the Hearst papers published front-page illustrations of a man wearing a chain with a dog tag. Henry Ford said Social Security could cost Americans their basic freedoms, like the right to change jobs or to move from one town to another."

Opposition didn't stop there.

In the media scripts of the day, the Hyde Park patrician was denounced as a "traitor to his class." The economic elite -- the same group that Dubya now serves -- considered Roosevelt a threat to their interests and treated him accordingly. On the editorial pages, he was subjected to constant barrages and denounced as a would-be dictator. Foreshadowing media attacks on Clinton, FDR's reputation further suffered from posthumous revelations about an extramarital relationship.

However, "The issue that sparked the loudest protest was one that still burns today: the trust fund," Lowenstein notes. "Alfred Landon, the Republican who ran against Roosevelt in 1936, called (social security) 'a cruel hoax' on the American people. His platform, sounding uncannily that like that of Republicans today, stated, 'The so-called reserve fund . . . is no reserve at all, because the fund will contain nothing but the government's promise to pay.' "

When the New Deal came to an end, the country -- and capitalism -- remained intact. The rich still controlled the nation's wealth, as well as its laws, courts, police, newspapers, churches, colleges......the same system that had brought depression and crisis -- the system of waste, of inequality, of concern for profit over human need -- remained, Zinn notes.

More important was the long-term political impact.

Since the Civil War, Republicans had dominated presidential politics. Between 1856 and 1932, only two Democrats were elected to the White House, with neither gaining a majority of the popular vote. The New Deal weakened previously Republican blocs of midwestern farmers and African Americans, resulting in a new and powerful Democratic coalition. In 1936, Democrats became the nation's majority party and remained so for decades.

In his 1936 campaign against Kansas governor Landon, Roosevelt blasted Republicans as "economic royalists" and "reactionaries." Ultimately, however, it was WWII rather than his policies that pulled the country out of its economic nosedive. Still, this only son of Mayflower descendants became known as the 20th-century president most connected to America's poor and underprivileged.

"I should like it to be said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match," Roosevelt said. "I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master."

TRUST FUND BABY

As previously mentioned, the social security trust fund was created not for budgetary reasons but political ones. For decades, the fund was left alone. In 1983, supply-side economics and swelling unemployment pushed the system into a modest deficit (it was taking about a nickel less than each dollar spent). Declaring doom's pending arrival -- in about 31 years -- current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan led a commission that proposed a series of benefit cuts and tax increases later embraced by President Ronald Reagan and Congress.

Not everyone agreed. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York called Greenspan's scare a phantom. The proposed increase, Moynihan said, just masked the drop in tax revenues stemming from Reagan's tax giveaways. Characterizing the plan as "thievery," he said the rich were benefiting from stolen goods, essentially keeping income tax cuts while the people below them paid more.

Ultimately, Greenspan's plan generated more money than was needed to pay benefits and the trust fund began to swell, first by tens and then hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This allowed Mr. Reagan and the first President Bush to present annual budgets showing much lower deficits.

"What the government actually did with the excess Social Security taxes was use them to allow the rich to enjoy big tax cuts. It used the excess Social Security tax to make up for part of the taxes from which the rich were excused in 1981. If effect, the government took dollars from Joe Lunchpail so the rich could stuff even more into their silk pockets," writes David Cay Johnston.

"That is, the money was used in a socialist scheme to redistribute income. Only instead of taking from those with big incomes to dole out money to the poor, this money was used to redistribute income up."

Because social security is a pay-as-you-go system, current workers contribute payroll taxes to provide benefits for the retired, the disabled and their families. Program administrators estimate payroll taxes will start falling short in 2018. By 2042 -- with the trust fund exhausted -- the only money left to pay benefits will come from annual payroll taxes, about enough to pay 75 percent of scheduled benefits.

THE BIG FIX

Off-stage, Dubya's war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich have plunged the federal budget back into an ocean of red. Shouting the system is "broke," he wants to let workers divert one-third (up to 4 percent) of their payroll tax deductions from the trust fund into 401(k)-type accounts called Personal Investment Accounts (PIAs).

Touting an "ownership society," Dubya claims he wants workers to have their own piece of Wall Street. What he doesn't say is that the stock market remains the privilege of an elite group with nearly 90% of all shares held by the wealthiest 10% of America's households.

Worse still, his plan, if enacted, would deplete the trust fund even faster. At the same time, these PIAs would be managed by banks, Wall Street brokers, insurance companies, mutual funds. These financial institutions would levy administrative fees and other surcharges if participants switched from one fund to another, left or re-entered the workforce, or arranged for annuities at retirement.

At the same time, these financial institutions would make huge profits from the interest they would charge for financing the federal government's additional borrowing of $2 trillion in "transition costs." (Dubya's administration plans to offer Treasury Bonds at above normal interest rates.) And more profits will be had from reinvesting the several trillion dollars worth of PIAs.

A REGULAR GUY

Within the myth-making factory that is our political process, Dubya has been re-costumed from a silver spoon baby into a hard-scrabble, up-by-his bootstraps, bible-totin' oil man. With regularly scheduled leg-ups from media squires, his family has "elected two presidents in close succession...gained control of two of the four biggest states and developed their extended family into an entourage akin to the lesser royals who deputized for Britain's House of Windsor," writes Kevin Philips.

Hollywood production's aside, however, Dubya's inheritance is unmistakable. "Dynasties," Philips notes, "tend to show continuities of policy and interest-group bias -- in the case of the Bushes, favoritism toward the energy sector, defense industries, the Pentagon, and the CIA, as well as insistence on tax breaks for the investor class and upper-income groups." Just as he wanted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's head because he "tried to kill my daddy," Dubya has long been gunning for Social Security.

While a prep school senior at Andover, he got a copy of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign manifesto, "Conscience of a Conservative." Goldwater -- who 40 years ago was considered a little too edgy by middle-of-the-road Republicans -- claimed the program "it is not actuarially sound" and said he wanted "to make Social Security solvent, to improve it."

In 1978, while running for a West Texas congressional seat -- using money from raised from Daddy's business buddies and Mommy's Christmas card list -- Dubya told an audience at the Midland Country Club social security "will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes." Ideally, he said, people should be "given the chance to invest the money the way they feel."

Two decades later, as he prepared in 1997 to run for President, then-Texas governor Dubya consulted with Jose Pi?era (architect of Chile's ill-fated conversion to private-market retirement under a military dictatorship) and Ed Crane (head of the Cato Institute and a determined crusader for toppling Social Security). At the time, he said: "I do believe that privatizing Social Security is the most important issue facing the nation."

Another right-winger puts it more bluntly.

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," said Stephen Moore, president of the Washington-based Free Enterprise Fund, which backs privatization. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

STICKING TO THE SCRIPT

But that stuff isn't in the script.

In the Age of Dubya, the name of the game is spin. Think tanks, supposed experts, public relations flaks, editorialists/propagandists and network talking heads are all enlisted in an unrelenting campaign of disinformation.

"Back in 1981, the symbolism of a television show like Dynasty might have been acceptable to the Regans, but two decades later, Republican officials had a warmer kind of screen image in mind for the Bushes. 'When you're talking about Clinton fatigue, part of it is that we loved Ozzie and Harriet,' explained Ron Kaufman, George H. W. Bush's former political director. 'We really did. People want Little House on the Prairie to be real, and the Bushes represent that.' "

In a recent New York Times story, reporters David Barstow and Robin Stein wrote: "Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies...have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years."

"Many" segments, they continued, "were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgment of the government's role in their production...In essence, (these) video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters."

Unfortunately, this kind of propaganda seems a lot more reliable than having Dubya explain his social security plan himself. In a February public appearance in Tampa, he said: "Because the...all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those...changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be...or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled."

So much the better, then that faux reporters like Karen Ryan, Armstrong Williams and Jeff "Gannon" Guckert shill for Hack-in-Chief Karl Rove, whom GOP apparatchiks gleefully describe as running the social security scam like any other political campaign. The typical Rove (formerly senior presidential adviser and now deputy chief of staff overseeing domestic and international policy) campaign targets key constituencies; marshals the Republican Party apparatus; enlists allies among Democrats; encourages well-heeled outside supporters to mount attacks on the opposition.

"I don't think there is any question that Karl Rove is masterminding the whole Social Security strategy," Stephen Moore said. "There are regular meetings the White House has with all the groups to make sure everyone is singing from the same hymnal."

"The White House feels it can't afford to lose on this," he said.

As they did during the last presidential campaign, the Republican National Committee geared up a research operations center and an online petition drive. (The committee manages a database of 1.4 million volunteers.) "We're setting up an operation that is employing a campaign- type infrastructure, campaign-style tactics and really bringing election-year intensity to the debate,'" said Brian Jones, RNC communications director.

In January, the Washington Post reported Dubya's buddies were launching a market-research project to figure out how to pitch privatization "in the most comprehensible and appealing way" while Republican marketing and public-relations gurus were building consulting teams to promote it.

"The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away," the Post said.

The key is to stay "on message."

To make Republicans just that, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, came up with a 108-page social security playbook outlining political benefits and communications strategies. Among the main points -- 1) Suggest That GOP Lawmakers Create a Sense of Panic, 2) Insist This Won't Hurt Their Chances of Re-Election, 3) Tell Them to Sell the Plan With Idealism, 4) Suggest That This is a Possible Huge Conservative Victory.

Talking points, meanwhile, include directions to use "simple language" and "small numbers;" say "personalization" not "privatization;" emphasize "building wealth" as opposed conserving "nest egg(s);" acknowledge concerns but don't get trapped by them; and never, ever admit "social security lifts seniors out of poverty."

The sales strategy also instructs Republicans to write constituent letters saying, "If social security disappears, 15 million seniors will find themselves living on the streets. No one wants that to happen. That is why I support moving only a portion of current payroll tax into personal accounts, while the rest continues to support the guaranteed floor of protection."

MOVIE NIGHT

Instead of getting meaningful information about who stands to gain from social security "reform" -- i.e., a scheme to redistribute money from the majority of people who work to the minority of people who work for and own banks and brokerage firms -- we get a remake of Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in which Dubya fights for us little people. (In the 1939 classic, Jimmy Stewart plays a boy scout leader and local hero. When a senator from an unnamed middle America state dies, Stewart gets appointed by a corrupt governor. He goes to Washington where he learns the harsh realities of politics. The David-and-Goliath plot was one of the first movie portrayals of government as corrupt.)

An example of the "typical American" Dubya's trying to help is Tad DeHaven. On December 9th, the CBS Evening news profiled DeHaven in a report on social security. He was characterized as a "poster child for Social Security reform: 28 years old, a college graduate, in the work force for six years, getting married next May, expected to retire in 2042. That's the year Social Security goes broke."

CBS doled out candy about DeHaven's personal life but never said he worked for the National Taxpayers Union, a conservative lobbying group dedicated to Social Security privatization. Nor did it report he has also worked at the allied Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. Still, the network noted DeHaven "is fully on board the plan to establish private accounts for Social Security" and "argues doing nothing is not an option."

Meanwhile, on January 11th, ABC's Good Morning America profiled Bill and Vicki Wilson, a two-income couple with two kids and "retirement 20 years off. The show enlisted "expert" Michael Tanner (of the Cato Institute) to analyze their situation. Tanner said under the current system, Bill should receive approximately $2,250 and Vicki $2,200 per month-- but that there's a "catch."

Not having to bother with an opposing viewpoint, he wrongly claimed that if the Wilsons turned over some money to private investment accounts it "would be enough to bring you back up above what you otherwise would get" after proposed benefit cuts. But the numbers he gave showed them worse off after privatization. With benefit cuts and "a small investment in a private account and a modest return," their total Social Security benefits under the privatization plan were estimated to be about $300 less per year than the income that they would get if the system were unchanged.

MEDIA LOBBY

Dumping social security is big business. There'll be plenty of money to go around. It just doesn't make sense for corporate media to rock a boat holding one big happy family. In fact, many of the business groups backing "privatization" share lobbyists with the same media companies that are supposed to provide the information necessary to an engaged, responsible citizenry.

In 2000, the parent companies of the Big Five television and cable broadcasters (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox) dole out nearly $27 million on lobbying firms. Meanwhile, between 1998 and 2003, "the lobbying expenditures by the broadcast industry jumped 74 percent while the Federal Communications Commission considered further relaxation of monopoly ownership regulations

More specific examples include Walt Disney (ABC) and General Electric (NBC, MSNBC) which share the lobbying firm Verner, Liipfert et. al, with Aetna Inc., the Heritage Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, PhRMA, General Motors, Philip Morris, Citigroup, and weapons makers Raytheon, Harris Corp. and the Carlyle Group (which employs Dubya's Daddy). The News Corporation (Fox News Channel) and GE shared lobbyists with Enron a year before it imploded, as well as with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a major player behind the privatization plan.

With billions of dollars up for grabs, corporate America is pulling out all the stops. Republicans and their business allies plan to spend anywhere from $50 million to $200 million pitching privatization. Supporters include representatives from the conservative 60 Plss Association, America?s Community Bankers, the National Retail Federation, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Business Roundtable.

The Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America's Social Security -- which counts the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the corporate-funded USANext as members -- has launched a $20 million "Generations Together" outreach effort. The counterfeit grass-roots campaign hopes to recruit 100,000 volunteers to pack town hall meetings and rallies, and make phone calls and write letters to Congress.

Meanwhile, Progress For America, a group of Dubya backers like A. Jerrold Perenchio, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Univision Communications Inc., is airing commercials using images of FDR saying: "It took courage to create Social Security; it'll take courage and leadership to protect it."

FADE TO BLACK

In the climactic scene of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," Jimmy Stewart exercises his (pre-Patriot Act) First Amendment right to speak his piece. Standing before a pre-dominantly cynical audience of fat cat legislators, Stewart filibusters -- another quaint vestige of democracy -- for 23 hours to stave off trumped up corruption charges and keep himself from being tossed out of the Senate.

As he does so, a radio commentator observes:

"Half of official Washington is here to see democracy's finest show, the filibuster, the right to talk your head off, the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form. The least man in that chamber, once he gets and holds that floor by the rules, can hold it and talk as long as he can stand on his feet providing always, first, that he does not sit down, second, that he does not leave the chamber or stop talking. The galleries are packed. In the diplomatic gallery are the envoys of two dictator powers. They have come here to see what they can't see at home. DEMOCRACY IN ACTION."

Later, he stalls for time by reading portions of the Declaration of Independence, then trots out some down-on-the-farm insights on American ideals:

"Now, you're not gonna have a country that can make these kind of rules work, if you haven't got men that have learned to tell human rights from a punch in the nose... I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a - a little lookin' out for the other fella, too...That's pretty important, all that. It's just the blood and bone and sinew of this democracy that some great men handed down to the human race, that's all."

Railing against "jungle law" and trumpeting "human liberties," an exhausted Stewart winds up his speech saying, "You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked, and I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these, and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place. Somebody'll listen to me. Some... "

Stewart staggers, faints and collapses on the floor, dumping over a basket of telegrams. The female love interest screams from the gallery. The tragically corrupt senior Senator from Stewart's unnamed state rushes from the floor toward a cloakroom. Shots ring out. He struggles with lawmakers who prevent him from killing himself.

In true Hollywood fashion, he screams in a public confession: "I'm not fit to be a Senator. I'm not fit to live. Expel me! Expel me! Not him." Returning to the Senate floor, he proclaims, "Every word that boy said is the truth! Every word about Taylor and me and graft and the rotten political corruption of our state. Every word of it is true. I'm not fit for office! I'm not fit for any place of honor or trust. Expel me!"

Unlike Stewart, Dubya's "ownership" America is strictly dog-eat-dog.

"I love the idea of people being able to own something," he says. "People from all walks of life, all income levels are willing to take risks to start their own company. ... And I like the idea of people being able to say, I'm in charge of my own health care ... I particularly like the idea of a Social Security system that recognizes the importance and value of ownership."

So it is written, the financially fortunate -- the five percent of the empire clutching 60 percent of its wealth -- hold no civic obligations to the rest of us. With the "law" on their side, they can rape and pillage to their hearts' content, free to roam in tricked-out Humvees in search of fresh consumables. In this global context, social justice is the cost of doing business, ownership "a populism born in the Hobbesian belief that we all struggle alone in a world where life is nasty, brutish and short."

Verily, the words of the prophets Smith, Friedman and Greenspan have been made flesh. Even the lowest among us is merely a capitalist unborn, a sacred fetus of the Free Market awaiting re-birth amidst not 73 virgins but a bottomless trust fund and unlimited credit. We are God's little entrepreneurs, celebrated Masters of the Universe, sanctified and infallible, spreading goodness and democracy through merger, acquisition and the occasional "police action."

If there is anyone among us who knows why we may not be joined together in this holy fantasy, let him not speak but be scorned as "liberal," "traitor," "perverted" and "God-hating." Let us pray the evil-doers find Christ's love -- under the owner's manual and a 9 mm Glock -- in the glove compartment of a brand new Cadillac Escalade. And forgive them the sin of considering their brother's future in poverty's gutter.

###

SOURCES

"A People's History of the United States," Howard Zinn
"The Populist Persuasion," Michael Kazin
ibid Zinn
"A Question of Numbers," Roger Lowenstein, New York Times, January 16, 2005
"Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich And Cheat Everybody Else," David Cay Johnston
ibid
"American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," Kevin Phillips
"Neutering Social Security," Jim Hightower...
ibid Philips
The Complete Bushisms, http://slate.com/id/76886/
"CBS, CNN Mislead on Social Security," Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, December 13, 2004
"ABC Muddles the Social Security Debate," F.A.I.R., January 14, 2005
"The Media Lobby," Alexander Lynch, March 11, 2005
"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," http://www.filmsite.org/mrsm.html
ibid
George Bush, on his "Ownership Society" agenda, Dec. 16, 2004, from "Corporate Americans," by Joshua Holland, AlterNet, posted January 18, 2005
ibid

Joshua (Part II)

2005-05-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

By the time Monday arrived, Joshua was his cheerful self again. Although he saw Ms. Navidad every day, he had little opportunity to speak more than a few sentences to her during regular class hours. From his desk, he surreptitiously lifted his head to watch her move about the classroom. Whenever she leaned down to instruct and support another student, the sight of her breasts made him dizzy.

He grew increasingly agitated as the week wore on and rushed toward his tutorial like a thirsty man to an oasis. By mid-day Friday, bright sunshine had burned off the morning fog and filled everything with a pleasant glow. Picking his way through pockets of students, he swung by his locker to drop off his jacket. Shielding the lock with his left hand, he leaned close and turned the dial with his right. He opened the locker, removed his jacket and tossed it inside.

Turning around to leave, he spotted Ray Young and Lamont Thomas.

"Hee-ey boy," Ray gave Lamont a nudge in the ribs. "There's the claw." Pushing themselves off the wall, the two boys stepped forward and blocked Joshua's path.

"Whassup Captain Hook?" Ray said.

"Yeah, whassup, hook?" Lamont echoed.

The greeting surprised Joshua. Both basketball players, they were popular in the way that bullies are. They rarely spoke to him. Still, he craned his neck upward and returned the salutation. "What's up?"

Ray grinned. A sliver of gold framed one of his front teeth. "I hear you're going out for the team." He pointed at Joshua's left hand. "Can you dribble with that thing?" Lamont snorted.

Joshua raised his left hand and smiled. "It is very strong but not as good as my old one." The prosthetic was state-of-the-art. He'd been fitted for it when he'd arrived in California. He was very proud of it, even though its cocoa brown hue didn't match his own charcoal black coloring.

"How you s'posed to get some with that?" Ray asked. "You like to squeeze a girl's booty clean off." His mouth resembled a grimace more than it did a smile. Lamont tittered and raised his head like a small animal sniffing danger in the air.

Joshua was unruffled. "I have this." He wiggled a stiff middle finger forward and back. A slight whirring sound accompanied the gesture. Using his other hand, Joshua grabbed his crotch. "And I have this."

Lamont guffawed, then fell silent under a sharp look from Ray. "You hecka funny," he said, returning his attention to Joshua. "Hecka funny." He stepped closer and barked loudly so nearby onlookers could hear. "You won't be so funny with my foot in yo' ass." His stale breath made Joshua squint.

Before Joshua could respond, a stern voice came from several feet away. "What's going on here?" Arms crossed, Ms. Navidad glared at Ray and Lamont. Neither spoke. Softening her eyes, she turned toward her Joshua. "Is there something going on here that I should know about?" she asked.

Joshua's eyes swept across the two boys in front of him. Ray's face was impassive but his clouded eyes threatened. Lamont's sense of humor receded. He inched backward, as if to go after it. Looking past them, Joshua answered. "Nothing, mademoiselle."

"In that case, let's break this up," she said.

"We have a lot of work today." Using a brushing motion, fingers pointing at the ground, she waved Joshua to her. "Let's get started." Joshua flashed broad teeth as the boys parted to let him pass. Stepping between them, he said, "See you, brothers." Joining the teacher, he continued down the hallway and rounded the corner.

Once inside the classroom, Ms. Navidad asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yes, mademoiselle." He set down his backpack and pulled out his lunch and workbook. "Why would I not be?"

Ms. Navidad twisted her nose as if fending off a noxious odor. "You shouldn't hang around boys like that."

"They were just playing around."

"They're thugs."

"What is thugs?"

"Gangsters."

"Like MTV?"

"No, not like MTV."

"I'm sorry, mademoiselle," Joshua said. "I don't understand."

"Never mind," she said. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. Taking a slow, deep breath, she smoothed the front of her dress with both hands. "Let's get started." She dragged a plastic chair next to her desk and tilted her head toward it. "Start with exercise thirteen."

Slightly confused but warmed by the teacher's obvious concern, Joshua resolved not to make matters worse. Content to be near her, he worked quietly, stopping only for an occasional bite of his lunch. The day's exercise, a series of word associations, needed little explanation.

After a half-hour, Ms. Navidad broke the silence. "I'm sorry about that."

"About what, Mademoiselle?" Joshua asked.

"Losing my temper."

Was she embarrassed? Joshua wasn't sure. "For what did you lose your temper?"

"Why did you lose your temper?" she corrected.

"Why did you lose your temper?" he said.

The young teacher paused, uncertain how to answer the question. "There are a lot of things about America you haven't learned about yet, dangerous things."

Joshua chuckled.

"I'm serious," Ms. Navidad said.

The boy adopted a more serious expression "What kind of things?" he asked.

"Many things," she said.

"In Berkeley?" Joshua appreciated the teacher's sincerity but could not hide his skepticism.

"And people," Ms. Navidad said.

"What people?" Joshua asked.

"That's not important right now," the teacher said. "You just need to be careful about who you spend your time with."

Oh, I see, Joshua thought. "You mean Ray and Lamont?" He saw the truth flicker beneath the teacher's mascara'd lashes.

"I worry about you." Ms. Navidad tried to lighten her tone. "In America, you are defined by who you associate with."

Joshua smiled. "My mother used to say that."

Smiling in return, the teacher wagged a long fingernail. "Well, your mother was right." She gave him a look so tender he let loose a small gasp.

"I'm serious," Ms. Navidad said. "Those boys are not like you. They will never be like you."

"What do you mean?" Joshua asked. Her words confused him. He wondered whether the problem lay in his deficient English skills.

"You're different, that's all," she said. "Special."

Special, he thought. His heart swelled. "Thank you, Mademoiselle."

"It's true," Ms. Navidad said. "And you need to pick your friends very carefully." She reached out and touched his arm. His skin tingled beneath her fingertips. A tiny wave of electricity swept through his body.

"You do not need to worry about that, Mademoiselle," Joshua said, happily. "I already have the best friend I could have."

"Oh, really?" The teacher asked. "And who might that be?"

Joshua lowered his eyes then raised them again. Giving the teacher a shy smile, he said, "You, mademoiselle."

* * * * * * * * * * *

For the rest of the afternoon, bliss hovered over Joshua. It buffeted his eardrums like a conch-shell's quiet roar. It brushed his face and the back of his neck, leaving him giddy, light-headed. He hadn't felt such delirium since his ninth birthday party when, inside the compound of his grandfather's house, he sang and cavorted with his father's kinsmen. And had his first taste of cane wine.

Later, when he settled into bed, he plunged into deep slumber. As he fell, his spirit wriggled loose and swam among the shadowy faces in the darkness above him. A girl no older than five had an empty socket where her right eye was supposed to be. An old man was missing his left ear.

Beyond these trunkless heads, past the ceiling but below the sky, a crowd began to form. Milling closely together, the group was segregated by sex. Men and boys on one side. Women and girls the other. All were dressed in bright robes that flowed about them as if blown by a gentle breeze. From below, the horde threw off colors so varied and bright that it seemed they stood locked inside a giant prism.

As he floated near, they parted like water beneath a ship's bow, enough to let him between them but so close he could feel their rustling garb against his skin. They leaned toward him, as if trying to speak, but their gaping mouths stayed mute. Their faces were strange yet familiar. He didn't recognize them but felt he should have.

Suddenly, a young woman appeared before him. She held a baby in her arms. She turned sideways to better show its face. As she did, it began to cry. The wails hurt Joshua's ears so he covered them.

The silence broken, the previously mute horde let loose a torrent of shouts. "We are hungry. Why do you not feed us?" As one, they stepped and opened their robes. Their ribs and stomachs were torn apart. Squirming maggots and damp earth nestled amidst glistening entrails.

Bony fingers scooped out wriggling mounds of dirt and worms. Raising their hands, they cradled the squirming mass as supplicants might before an altar.

Joshua retreated. Stumbling, his feet came out from under him. He plunged backward, headlong into what felt like a ever-darkening funnel. Eventually, he found himself nestled inside a cramped space. A hard flatness pressed against his shoulders and back. He was unable to lift his head. He twisted and squirmed but could not escape.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm himself. Stale air enveloped him. He peered down the length of his body to his toes. It seemed like he was inside some sort of box. Not a box. A coffin.

Panic seized him. His muscles tightened, as his body prepared for flight. Unexpectedly, the coffin's lid dissolved. Sunlight flooded the box. A rain of dirt quickly followed. Earth settled around and on top of him, growing heavier by the moment. Tiny rocks and sand filled his mouth and nostrils. He began to suffocate.

Coughing, he awoke.

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Did you see the volcano story on television last night?" Ms. Navidad asked. "Isn't that near where you come from?"

Joshua had seen the story, too. "No, mademoiselle. That happened in Goma. I come from Kabinda, which is...." He searched his mind for the correct word. "To the southwest, not far from Mbuji-Mayi."

The teacher rose from her chair and reached high above her head in an effort to relieve some of the pressure that had gathered in her lower back. "Do you still have family there?" As she lowered her bare arms, she caught sight of Joshua's thirsty gaze. She indulged him with a smile.

Embarrassed, he yanked away his eyes and hurriedly gathered his belongings. "Those who are left moved north to Kisangani. Most of them are from my mother's side," he explained. "Things have been very difficult for them. They wanted to take me in but had no more room."

The teacher's demeanor turned sympathetic. "What about your father's family?"

"All dead."

A thick quiet shouldered in between them. This was the first time she'd ever asked about his family. He'd said little about them, even to his adoptive parents. Regardless, he wanted her to know everything about him.

"My parents were killed when my father hadn't enough money to pay the monthly tax to a local warlord," he continued. "The Kioko family has been in the diamond business for ten generations. Everybody knew we were fair. We never cheated anybody. Even when rebels seized the Senga-Senga mine, they still came to us to have the diamonds appraised and prepared for sale.

"As payment, my father withheld the customary portion for himself. Soon, even that became too much. The warlord cut the portion smaller and smaller, telling my father it was a 'business tax.' He also did not like my father because we were Mongo while he was Luba. When my father protested, they beat him."

Joshua went still for a moment. He sighed, then continued.

"They killed him in front of us, me, my brother Jacques and my mother. When they shot him, I yelled, 'Papa, papa!' I was very small. There was nothing I could do but clutch my mother. My eyes were full of tears.

"Then, the rebels pulled her from the arms of me and my brother and dragged her into a back room. When my brother moved to protect her, an older boy banged his head with the butt of a rifle. They left him bleeding in the middle of the floor.

"One of the younger soldiers stood over me with a gun. I crawled into a corner and wrapped my arms around my head to keep out the sounds of her screaming." Joshua folded his arms. With the fingertips of his right hand, he scratched the crease inside his left elbow, just above the plastic sleeve of his prosthetic hand.

"A long time passed. When they finally came out, the warlord ordered the boy with the rifle to take me with him. When I hesitated, my brother nodded for me to go. I was afraid and could not speak. With my eyes, I begged him to let me stay with him. His face became rock and he turned way.

"I lifted myself and walked toward the door. I felt sick to my stomach. My legs were like rubber. The shot came before the screen door closed behind me." A teardrop trickled past Joshua's nose. "The soldier told me, 'Turn around and the same thing will happen to you.' "

He sat, head bowed, rocking almost imperceptibly, for several minutes. Laughing footfalls slipped under the classroom door and clattered around them. Roused, he lifted puffy eyes to Ms. Navidad's.

"That's horrible," she said, breaking the silence. "Your poor mother."

Joshua kept quiet, opting instead to gaze at this woman's face, the shape of which somehow reminded him of home. Still, her eyes, recently wide with horror, began to narrow. They jerked back and forth, as when dreaming. He watched dark clouds gather above her brow. Slowly, her words began to fall.

"I don't understand how your father could do business with.....with criminals?" Ms. Navidad looked strange. Perhaps spirits had taken hold of her. "How could he do that to your family?"

Joshua's eyes skittered over the tile floor as if searching for the truth of what had happened. Despite his teachers' praises, his English still wobbled on spindly legs too weak to carry the weight of what he'd endured.

"How could he do it?" Her voice was shrill. She clasped her hands in her lap, wringing them so hard the muscles of her forearms and biceps flexed in angular displeasure.

Joshua knew his father loved him. But he was dead, as were his mother and brother. How could that be his father?s fault? ?My papa was a good man, a kind man."

"A good man takes care of his family," Ms. Navidad said. "He protects them and keeps them from harm."

"What can you say to a man with a gun?" Joshua asked.

The teacher's mouth twisted as if she'd bitten a lemon. Her brown eyes receded into a field of white scorn. "He did such a wonderful job that you landed here in California living with people you barely know, people who, out of the kindness of their hearts, took it upon themselves to do something your own parents couldn't."

The implication struck Joshua so hard his ears rang. Her indignation reverberated inside his skull as loudly as any church bell. The din made him woozy and nauseous. A damp heat began to envelope him. His fugitive forearm throbbed inside his plastic limb. Absently, he cradled the contraption in his right arm. "My papa loved me," he said, voice cracking. "He loved all of us, no matter what you say."

Realizing she'd gone too far, Ms. Navidad forced a brittle smile. "I'm sure he did." She patted him on the shoulder. "I'm sure he did the best he could."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Ms. Navidad's slack of sympathy cut Joshua deeply. His bruised heart seemed to be drawing blood inward from his extremities, sapping his enthusiasm and leaving him more lethargic by the day. His adolescent mind had no words for what he was experiencing. The stultifying isolation was vaguely reminiscent of his time spent at St. Leopold's orphanage.

Before his disagreement with Ms. Navidad, Joshua had never imagined his father responsible for the misfortune that had befallen him and his family. When he thought of his father, Joshua remembered long fingers caressing his face or playfully pinching his ear. Unlike Joshua, his youngest son, Mukunzo Kioko had never hurt anyone. He had treated his wife with reverence and respect, neither raising voice nor hand to his children. Despite his risky vocation, he?d never owned a gun, believing his honor and faith were protection enough.

Had he been wrong? If so, how could Joshua hope to atone for his survival, much less for the things he'd done along the Congo River's shadowy banks. Sure, he was not alone. Many children had done the same. They had chosen life. He wondered if Ms. Navidad would have done the same.

Meanwhile, his father began to call on him. Hovering in the darkness, he remained silent. Instead, Joshua's older brother chided and admonished. "Titi, how can you say nothing?" Jacques asked again and again. "How can you let that woman talk about our papa that way?"

Jacques' words grew stronger with each passing night, unraveling Joshua's sleep and resolve. As he flayed under sweat-stained sheets, the nocturnal anger gradually took hold of him. "What has happened you, Titi? How can you let her dishonor our family?" his brother asked. "What do you think she's going to say about you?"

"I'll tell her," Joshua, still sleeping, answered. "She'll understand."

* * * * * * * * * *

Joshua was in no mood to study. He didn't care that the state-wide exam was scheduled for next week. He just wanted to sleep. When he plopped down beside Ms. Navidad's desk, rather than opening his notebook and preparing to get to business, he started blurting out the thoughts that had been consuming his nights.

"Would you kill for food?" he asked abruptly.

She bent forward and, using her left hand, reached for the desk to steady herself. She held the poise for several seconds, then answered. "What kind of a question is that?"

He raised his face and searched her eyes. "If you had to, if there was no other way, would you kill for food?"

Crossing her arms tightly, and folding one leg snugly over the other, the young teacher leaned back in her chair. It let loose a tense squeak. She sat coiled and still, like a voluptuous yogi. "I don't think I could ever kill anyone, for any reason.?

Joshua shook his head. "You've never been hungry? Really hungry?"

"Not in the way I think you mean it."

"Hungry enough to eat whatever you could get your hands on," he said. "A monkey. Snake. Crocodile. Bugs. Worms. Tree leaves."

The teacher could not hide a look of disgust. "I -- "

Joshua broke in. "In some parts of my country, the only people with food are those with guns." He began to rock back and forth, as if burrowing into the chair and below it into the floor. "I want to tell you a story about a boy I knew," he continued.

"The last time the rebels crossed the Burundi border, many people in Kabinda found it hard to find food. Jumokwe was my age. His family was not as prosperous as mine. His father did odd jobs around the town. He sometimes drove a truck.

"On one of these trips, he never came back. Jumokwe's family thought he'd been killed but his body was never found. Afterward, the family still lived on the eastern edge of town. It had became too dangerous for Jumokwe's mother and sisters to find water or collect wood. My mother began sending me over with a basket of food. It was not far by bicycle and not too dangerous.

"One day, I was stopped on the road by a group of rebels, a dozen boys or so. Some were no bigger than me. One was the Jumokwe's younger brother. He was eight-years-old.

"Before that time, I had never seen a Kalashnikov rifle. The one Jabare carried seemed as tall as he was. It hung from a big strap slung over his shoulder. He had no shoes but wore two belts of bullets across his chest like a white man I saw on a move poster.

"He was small but very mean. When I saw him, I said, 'Jabare, what are you doing here? Does your family know you are here?' At first, he said nothing. He just stood there, looking at me with empty eyes, as if he did not know me.

"So I said, 'Jabare, don?t you recognize me?' He walked up and stood beside me. I stayed on my bicycle. I was too scared to do anything else. The barrel of his rifle was close enough to touch.

"Using it to point toward the ground, he motioned for me to take the basket from the handle bars and set it on the ground. The other boys laughed when I did so. A tall boy with a machete and a scar on his neck picked up the basket. When they started to go, Jabare whispered to me. 'Tell my mother I am safe.'

"Later, after my family was killed, I learned most boys come from villages that had been attacked by the army or by rebels. Some were orphaned. Others kidnapped and used as minesweepers. More than a few, like Jabare, ran away."

Ms. Navidad's arms still guarded her front but she had placed both feet flat on the floor. The forward shift of her body made her seem closer. "What ever happened to him?"

"I never saw him again." The response resonated in the air between them, creating a phantom who drifted in the warm currents. For a moment, they shared an invisible embrace as ghostly hands drew them together at the shoulder.

"You were a soldier?" Despite the question, there was something in Ms. Navidad's eyes that suggested she didn?t really want an answer.

"Yes."

The teacher uncrossed her arms and rubbed her palms together. Taking a deep breath, planted her elbows on her upper thigh, folded her hands and propped them under her chin. "Have you ever killed anybody?" She peered at him, as if he possessed something of great value. A tiny sheen of perspiration shone above her top lip.

Joshua felt bare, as bare as the time he'd been stripped and beaten for taking another boy's rations. He hadn't been told the rations of a dead soldier became the property of the officers. Still, he'd considered himself lucky at the time. He'd largely avoided the belt's buckle.

"Yes." Joshua spoke in a hush, not conspiratorial but intimate. He could see the tension in the teacher's neck and shoulders. Her breath brushed his face. It was the closest he had ever been to her. He was sorry she was afraid. The moment's intimacy wrapped itself around him, exposing buried words and distant visions.

"How did it happen?" she asked.

"The first time?" he answered.

She tilted her head back slightly. For his part, Joshua turned his head a little, as if catching the memory in the corner of his eye.

"I had been with the group for only three days. We were patrolling south toward Karnira. Three boys were sleeping under a tree when we came across them. They must have walked far because none of them had stayed awake to keep watch.

"The oldest was the same age as I am now. He was dressed in Khaki shorts and a black T-shirt. It had a logo on the front of it. I had never seen it before. A few months ago, not long after I arrived in the United States, I saw the same logo which read, 'Miller Genuine Draft.' On his head, he wore a faded red beret.

"The middle boy wore just a pair of slacks. He was the only one with boots. The smallest wore tennis shoes that were too big for his feet, with Velcro straps. He had a pair of green cotton shorts with a piece of white string for a belt, and a stripped T-shirt with the figure of a Samurai on the left shoulder and a small orange sweatshirt with a torn zipper in front. His beret was newer and had a small silver star in front.

"The young captain who was our leader woke the oldest with a kick to the face. Seeing that, the other two had no desire to fight. They never reached for their weapons. Besides, we were too many.

"For many reasons, the captain was angry that day. We had traveled 10 kilometers in three days. The jungle was very thick around the river. He did not want to waste ammunition on hunting.

"Still, he told the three boys he would give them a chance for their lives. He would give them a five-minute head start, then send us after them. In that way, their fates would be in their own hands.

"The smaller boys began to cry. At the same time, they eyed each other like animals, sizing up their chances for escape. The oldest one, the one who was kicked in the face, proposed that they split up. I suppose he thought he was stronger and would have a better chance without the younger ones.

"Hearing that, the captain laughed but agreed. The older boy looked relieved. The others became angry and wiped away their tears. We opened a space in the circle around them to let them run through. The two younger went first. Together, they ran across an open field toward a stand of Acacia trees. Beyond the trees was a dry gully leading to a river.

"The captain then told the oldest boy that his turn had arrived. As he turned to run, the captain took out his pistol and shot the boy in the leg. He fell to the ground and screamed wildly. 'Liar. You promised you would let me go.'

"The captain's smile disappeared. He walked over and said, 'You have no right to your life. Those smaller boys trusted you to take care of them and protect them like an older brother. Instead, you sought only to save your own skin.'

"The color drained from the boy's face. He could see his own death. The captain called me over and said, 'Joshua, look at this boy. This is what a coward looks like. We will have no cowards among us.'

"Then he looked at me for a long time. I didn't know what to do. I looked around at the others. Their faces were blank. An older boy, Augustin, was cradling his rifle in front of him. He walked over and handed it to me. It was very heavy.

"My legs were trembling and the Kalashnikov shook in my hands. It was very quiet. I could hear the breathing in the boy?s throat. I don't know how much time passed but after some time I raised the barrel, pointed it at the boy's chest and squeezed the trigger.

"I had heard gunfire before but I had never fired a weapon. The sound startled me. A look of surprise was on the boy?s face. Dark, red blood poured out of him and piss ran down his leg. He started to moan, louder and louder

"Although I knew better, the whole thing seemed like a dream, very far away. Only the rifle felt hot in my hands. I was happy to return it. The captain nodded to me and we left."

Joshua stopped and stared off into middle distance. He kept still, as if ready for ambush.

During his recitation, Ms. Navidad had retreated into the back of her chair, as if withdrawing from an open furnace. She remained seated but had withdrawn with such intensity as to suggest toppling over in awkward escape. With each new detail of the story, her eyes rounded in ever-increasing horror, revealing yellow puddles at the bottom of white irises.

Joshua turned and looked at her. She stared back like prisoners he'd seen, all eyeing the chain saw, transfixed by its whirring teeth while wincing at its devilish whine. His heart sank.

"Is that what you wanted to know?" Joshua's voice remained that of someone eager to please. He squinted in youthful hope.

"There's more?" She squealed rather than spoke. Above her flared nostrils, her eyebrows played tug-of-war as her thoughts wrestled behind her forehead.

Joshua immediately regretted asking the question. "I don't understand," he sputtered. He thought she wanted to know about him, about his life. Now, he wasn't sure. "More?"

"More killing." Her fear became fury. "More death."

"I thought you wanted -- "

"I wanted to know about your incredible journey.....how a boy like you had come so far." Water welled up in her eyes. She dropped her head and pinched the bridge of her nose with a manicured hand.

"Journeys are not only about ends, mademoiselle," Joshua replied. "They are also about beginnings."

* * * * * * * * * * *

In bed that evening, feelings of despair filled Joshua. He stomach was queasy. He felt fatigue and anxiety. He wanted to flee yet felt unable to move. He seemed barely able to fill his lungs from one moment to the next.

It was not a boy's despair but that of a soldier. In the darkness, he began to feel the weight of the lives he'd taken. They sat squarely on his chest, like some red-eyed carrion awaiting the sound of his last exhalation.

He cradled himself in his small arms. Closing his eyes, he carried himself back in time to his dead mother?s embrace. Shortly, he felt the softness of her cheek on top of his head, her breast and heartbeat against his ear, her hard, gentle hands on his back and shoulders, and the expanse of her lap.

After a while, he could hear her soft laughter, her teasing and coaxing. "Give mama a smile, boy. Don't cheat me." His eyes drew water at the beauty of it.

-- THE END --

Joshua

2005-05-19T03:00:00.000-07:00

Joshua had not killed in more than two years.

Spirits filled his dreams but did not rouse him. Above his bed, they bobbed in pools of shadows. Lips torn, teeth broken, they spat and gurgled. Yet Joshua's was the sleep of the dead.

He was in love.

In his thirteen years, Joshua had never seen anyone as beautiful as Carmen Navidad. From ten after eleven until noon, he watched her jet-black hair caress her neck and her backside rise and fall as she walked.

He beamed at her praise. His tingled under her smile. His head spun at her scent of cassava and red peppers. He could hardly believe his luck.

At his previous school, more than one hundred orphans packed a single classroom. Bigger students shoehorned into wooden desks. Smaller ones huddled on dusty cement.

Everything was shared. Pencils. Books. Sweltering claustrophobia. Knuckle-stinging reprimands. The wooden, dangling Christ. Blue-eyed looks of disapproval.

By contrast, the fourteen classrooms at Ronald V. Dellums Middle School sported new carpet and tall windows. In Joshua's social studies class, a string of ten clocks topped a double-length chalkboard. White placards hung above them. Written in block letters were the names of famous cities.

SAN FRANCISCO -- 11:18. NEW YORK -- 2:18. LONDON -- 7:18. PARIS -- 8:18. CAIRO -- 9: 19. MOSCOW 10:18. KARACHI -- 12:18. HONG KONG 3:18. TOKYO -- 4:18.

Two yellow and brown maps -- one depicting the ancient world, another the new -- draped the right wall adjoining the hallway. Below them sat honeycombed shelves stuffed with maps, travel guides and navigational aids. A computer work station stood in the corner. Six high windows, opened with the aid of curved brass handles, dominated the opposite wall. Against the windows pressed a field of black asphalt, rusted crabgrass and silver chain link.

Joshua intrigued Ms. Navidad. He was unlike other blacks she taught. He said "Please" and "Thank you." His white shirts, pressed slacks and polished shoes reminded her of the uniformed schoolboys of her youth. He devoured books with the earnestness of her immigrant father. Tom Clancey. Now that's a guy who knows how to tell a good story, he liked to say. A real American.

Despite being displaced by civil war, Joshua had a solid academic grounding. He was strong in math and geography. His seventh-grade teachers marveled at his spoken English, which they all agreed excelled that of his peers. It's not even his native language. Can you believe it? He hasn't even been in the States for a year.

Still, he needed help if he was going to this semester's state-wide proficiency test. That being the case, Ms. Navidad had during a recent departmental meeting volunteered to tutor him once a week during lunch. Besides, he was already in her fourth period class and, modest protestations aside, her colleagues noted he'd clearly taken a shine to her. Lastly, the school's principal and counselor felt her degree in French Literature, with a minor in developmental psychology, would help Joshua overcome any remaining cultural difficulties. What did she have to lose?

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Well," Ms. Navidad said, glancing at her watch. "We're about out of time. You've got fifteen minutes before fifth period starts."

"It's okay, mademoiselle." Joshua smiled at the thought that he was exactly where he wanted to be.

Using his left hand as an anchor, he wrapped wrinkled cellophane around a half-eaten tuna sandwich. He stuffed it, and a spotted banana peel, into the paper bag he'd used as a place mat, then shoved the parcel into his backpack. With his good hand, he swept errant crumbs off the teacher's broad desk and into a green, plastic trash can.

Ms. Navidad crinkled her eyes at Joshua's lanky frame. "You don't eat very much."

Joshua grinned. "That's not what Sister Marie-Claire used to say." He hoisted his shoulders and planted a fist on each hip. In a high-pitched voice, he said, "Boy, you eat more than a whole village."

The teacher laughed at his imitation. "The Sister was a friend of yours?" She leaned back in her swivel chair, crossed her left leg over her right, removed a high-heeled sandal and pressed her thumbs into the bottom of her foot.

Joshua stole glances at her calves and thighs. They were the color of honey. The nails on her hands and feet were tapered into points and shallaqued red. Dime-sized circles of white and red appeared and disappeared on her pale sole. Suddenly self-conscious, he grabbed the test workbook from the desk and jammed it on top of his leftovers.

"She was at St. Leo's, the missionary school I attended before coming to America. She was more like a big sister than a nun. We all loved her very much." It's all right, just keep talking, he told himself.

"Every day," he continued, "She would come into the courtyard and play soccer. She was very fast." He hunched over like a sprinter, alternately jabbing one arm ahead of the other. "Not even the oldest boys could catch her."

Ms. Navidad nodded. "She sounds very fast."

"Oh yes, mademoiselle. Even in her, her.....I don't the word, q'uest que c'est, outfit -- "

"Habit."

"Yes, habit. Even in her habit, she slipped like a fish through the opposing team." He snaked his head from side to side. "And her left foot. Magnifique!"

"It sounds like you play pretty well yourself." She replaced the shoe, re-crossed her legs and began working her opposite foot.

"I play a little." Joshua's cheeks grew hot.

"Sounds like more than a little." Ms. Navidad's voice was playful, almost teasing.

Joshua said nothing but pleasure brightened his lowered gaze. She raised foreign desires in him yet reminded him of home. He stole glances at her olive skin, her brown eyes, her full, pink lips, the flowing curves of her waist and hips, her bare legs and pedicured feet. Warm waves rolled off her body. He squirmed under a sudden erection.

"Is she still at the school?" Ms. Navidad asked.

Joshua leaned over and fiddled with the zipper on his backpack. Beads of sweat blossomed above his brow. His excitement poked the bottom of his belly. "The Sister?"

"Who else?" The young teacher replaced her sandal, settled her feet together on the floor and straightened her skirt. It fit snugly, despite half-foot slits at the bottom of each side. It was a dark blue and matched her short-sleeved silk blouse.

"Oh, yes, Sister Marie-Claire." Joshua hoisted the backpack onto his lap, as if preparing to leave. Look her in the eye, he thought. When he finally did so, he saw dark chocolate. He jerked his eyes toward the door, as if seeking an escape route.

"Are you all right?" Ms. Navidad touched his forehead with the back of her hand. "You seem a little warm. Are you coming down with something?" She furrowed her brows in concern.

"I'm fine, mademoiselle." He drew away from her hand. Keep talking, he told himself. It will go away if you just keep talking. "A few months before I left, she was sent to a mission in Mambasa. The other sisters said help was needed at a new refugee camp near the Rwandan border. But an older boy, Jules, said Sister was being punished for being too much like us."

Joshua paused, reliving the memory in his mind. The moment seemed to settle upon him like a cool mist, dampening his voice and spirit. His erection ebbed. "Jules, he was from Brazzaville, said Father Delacroix wanted to remind Sister where she was from, that she was an orphan and could be sent back."

"Why would the Father do that?" Ms. Navidad sounded skeptical.

"She was fun." A sad smile punctuated the explanation, which to Joshua seemed more than sufficient.

"I'm sure she's all right," Ms. Navidad said breezily.

Despite her assurances, Joshua wasn't so certain. He glanced at the clock. Six minutes remained until the beginning of fifth period. He intended to savor every one of them. "Are you from the Bay Area?"

"Born and raised." Ms. Navidad stood, turned round and faced the blackboard behind their chairs. Using a dusty eraser, she swiped across it in long arcs. She then plucked a piece of yellow chalk from box resting atop the board's grooved aluminum sill and began writing lecture highlights for her next class.

Joshua ignored the hint. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Two older sisters, Noel and Danielle." She shuttled back and forth across the board as she spoke. "Noel's three years older and lives in Daly City with her husband and her two sons. Danielle is a year-and-a-half older and lives in El Cerrito, just down the street from my mom and dad. She has three daughters."

"Such a big family." Joshua smiled his appreciation.

"Both my parents come from big families," the teacher replied. "My mother has three brothers and two sisters. They live over in the City. My father has four brothers." The chalk briefly hovered as she recounted her lineage. "They'd planned about moving the whole family from Manila and starting a restaurant business but my dad was the only one who left. My grandfather died and the brothers decided to stay and take care of my grandmother."

Joshua glanced at the clock. "Did your grandparents have a restaurant?"

"It more like a big roadside food stall, really." Ms. Navidad set down the chalk and returned to the desk. "My dad said it was enough to support the family but I'm sure it wasn't anything like his place here. Maybe you've been there, Celia's, down on Fourth Street near the freeway?"

Joshua nodded but said, "I've never been there."

Still standing, she shuffled some papers on her desk. "Maybe you can go there with your step-parents some time. My sisters and I worked there growing up. Bussing. Waiting tables. Running the register." She unfastened the strap of her watch and placed on the edge of the desk between herself and the boy. "I worked there all the way through college and graduate school, even though my dad said I didn't need to."

"Where did you go to college?"

"Cal-State Hayward." She crossed her arms and looked squarely at him. "It's time for you to go, young man. You don't want to be late."

Although tempted to linger, Joshua thought better of it. "All right, mademoiselle." He scooped up his belongings, slung his backpack over his right shoulder and ambled toward the door. When he reached the crescent-shaped door handle, he looked back over his left shoulder. A bientot."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Remembering Sister Marie-Claire pulled Joshua out of his amorous reverie. His family was gone yet he was no longer an orphan. He knew he was supposed to feel thankful but instead felt a vague emptiness. The realization made him feel guilty. He imagined Father Delecroix squinting behind gold-rimmed glasses atop his bulbous nose, chiding Joshua and "his kind" for their innate ingratitude.

During the months he'd been with them, Fred and Audrey Gilreath had been diligent about making Joshua feel at home. Immediately upon his arrival at Oakland International Airport, they piled into a rented minivan and, after satisfying themselves that the boy wasn't too tired, hit the road.

They told him all about how they'd first met while undergraduates nearly 20 years ago at a little restaurant/bar called Spat's, located just beneath the university on Shattuck Avenue. They shared stories about their families. Both only children, he'd been born in Sacramento while she was from Boulder, Colorado. And -- with the help of photographs Audrey had packed in a box from Crate & Barrel -- they reminisced about their annual vacations to Africa and the Caribbean. When we travel outside the U.S., Audrey explained, we like to be around black folks.

In four weeks, they swept through twenty-one states, twelve baseball stadiums and thirty-seven rib joints. Between stops, they sang lyrics by the Commodores, the Ohio Players, and Earth, Wind and Fire. Ultimately, Joshua's undeniable talent forced Fred to yield the falsetto tenor leads. Audrey opined the words sounded better with Joshua's French overtones. Fred grudgingly agreed.

After returning home, the couple took Joshua to the recently opened Ikea outlet in Emeryville. After visiting the showroom, they wandered through the adjoining warehouse where, with the help of a forklift, they pulled a queen-sized bed, a chest of drawers and a desk from a labyrinth of quadruple-decker metal shelves. Despite renting a pick-up truck from U-haul, ferrying the furniture required two trips. Assembling the booty took several hours.

The next afternoon, they searched for finishing touches at Stonestown Mall. After some debate, Audrey permitted Fred to purchase a 15" television and Sony Playstation. To their surprise, Joshua opted for a poster of Michael Jordan to go with one of Liberian soccer star George Weah. "I am not, how do you say, a space man," he explained. "How could I not know 'Be Like Mike?' "

Joshua liked Audrey from the start. Her grace and quick wit echoed that of his maternal aunts. An attorney, she never hesitated to tell her husband what she thought, invariably eliciting blustery objections trailed by conciliatory chuckles.

Try as he might, he could not love her as he had his mother. Her embrace was too lean, like the long-distance runner she once was. Her tuna casserole was too bland. And in the evenings, when she bid him goodnight, her gaze was studied in a way that made him uneasy.

Fred acted nothing at all like Joshua's biological father. Although he never hesitated to accompany Joshua to his monthly checkups at Children's Hospital, he wasn't much of a conversationalist when Audrey wasn't around. Unfortunately, his inherent shyness was misinterpreted as aloofness, a feeling reinforced by long periods spent away from home during which he tutored students and chaired faculty meetings at UC Berkeley's African American Studies Department, or acted as informal advisor to Dorthea Davis, the city's sole Aframerican city councilmember.

In truth, while initially ecstatic over Joshua's presence, the couple wasn't used to sharing their time. Child-rearing was more exhausting than they'd presumed. As the weeks and months passed, guilt and apprehension generated increasing tension. Actualized and self-aware, they sought advice from friends and colleagues with children, none of which proved particularly enlightening. I don't think that really speaks to the issue, Fred often groused.

That Saturday, Joshua was left largely to his own devices, which given the feelings dredged up by the recent conversation with his teacher, he was more than happy to deal with. After assuring Audrey he would be okay, he shooed her to the 10 a.m. session at the Seventh Heaven Yoga Studio. Fred, meanwhile, escaped to the tennis courts at San Pablo Park. Much later, they gathered in the living room for veggie pizza and a Blockbuster version of "The Titanic."

The next morning, they brunched at Saul's, poked their heads in Black Oak Books, then headed up the street to the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists. Although not deeply spiritual, Fred and Audrey appreciated the church's tolerant, activist bent. Indeed, its pastor, Stephen Hightower, was a long-time friend who'd played a significant part in helping with Joshua's emigration. He'd even recommended a medical specialist who wound up fitting Joshua with a prosthetic hand.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Esmarelda Navidad was in one of her moods. Big trouble brewed whenever she started flapping her arms and hands around. When they were young, the girls nicknamed their mother "the chicken," though they'd have gotten a slap across the face if she'd ever heard them say it. Carmen decided the best thing to do was just ride it out.

"Really, dear," the older woman said, peering over her daughter's shoulder to survey the restaurant floor. "I don't understand why you're spending so much time on this one student. He'll probably end up dropping out anyway."

Carmen checked the impulse to roll her eyes. "I told you, mama. He's not like the others." She craned her neck and followed her mother's gaze. The latter watched as Jackie, a recently hired waitress, chatted with Izzie, a long-time patron. "She could rest a tray on that butt."

Esmerelda stifled a giggle. "She's a good worker." Her attention returned to her daughter. Lowering her voice, she said, "I just wish she'd get here on time. I know she doesn't have a car but what is it with these people?"

"It's not easy getting around on public transportation, mama," Carmen said. "Have you ever ridden the bus?"

"Of course not," her mother replied. "You know better than that."

"All I'm saying is it's not easy," her daughter said. "Still, it was nice of you to hire her."

"We all have to do our part."

"That's all I'm doing, mama."

Esmerelda sighed. "I suppose so." She uncapped a small, glass bottle and began applying a clear finish to her nails. "Where'd you say he was from?"

"The Republic of Congo."

"The Republic of Congo."

"He's had a hard life," Carmen said.

"We've all had it hard," the older woman said. "Your father had it hard, coming here by himself at 18-years-old, $300 dollars in his pocket. That's hard."

"I know, mama."

"At least this boy has a family, not like the others."

"His step-parents are very nice," Carmen confirmed. "I met them at the last open house."

"Are they black or African?"

"Mama!"

"Don't 'mama' me," Esmerelda said. "It's a simple question."

"They're African American."

It was her mother's turn to roll her eyes. "What's the difference? Negro. African America. Black is black." She paused and peered through her glasses at the nails on her left hand. The rectangular frames were perched low on her nose. A thin gold chain snaked behind her head from the top of one ear to the other.

"You know better than that," Carmen said.

"Oh, please," Esmerelda said. "Every class you were in, the blacks were the dumbest ones, from grade school on up." She pursed her mouth and puffed on her nails. "I don't care if it's politically correct or not." She pawed both hands in the air for emphasis. "It's true."

"There weren't very many in Catholic school, anyway."

"See what I mean?"

"That doesn't prove anything."

"Doesn't it?"

"What about Bobby Dawson?" Carmen said. "He was third in our senior class."

"You mean the basketball player?" Esmerelda snorted. "He was third in your class?"

"Yes, he was."

"Well, there's always an exception," the older woman said, shifting her efforts to her opposite hand. "That doesn't prove anything."

"White people used to say the same thing about Filipinos, mama."

"That's true." Esmerelda's brows furrowed. "But I don't see Filipino kids selling drugs and shooting each other on TV." Her forehead stretched out in triumph. "What do you say to that, Miss Smarty Pants?"

Carmen laughed at her mother's audacity. "Nothing, mama."

"Well, then," her mother said. "Now, don't you have anything better to do than bother me on a Saturday?" She finished coating the nail on her right pinkie and replaced the small brush inside the bottle. "You know I have to do the books."

Carmen played along. "I know, mama."

"Then why don't you go home and correct some papers or something?" She slid the glasses off her nose, leaving them to dangle over her collarbone. "Better yet, go find a nice young man and start making me some grandchildren."

Carmen reached down to retrieve her purse from the floor. "I told you, mama. I already finished the papers. I'll do the tests tomorrow."

"On Sunday?"

"After mass."

"I guess I should thank God for small favors." She crossed herself, replaced her glasses and watched Jackie as she moved behind the cash register. "What time are you coming by in the morning?'

"The same time as usual, mama. Eight-thirty, just like always."

"Well, don't be late." She continued looking over her daughter's shoulder. "You know how your father gets when we're late."

"Am I ever?"

"Just you don't."

"Yes, mama."

* * * * * * * * * * *

Son(s) of Papa II

2005-05-17T13:00:00.001-07:00

GALVESTON, OH GALVESTON

The next time John Muhammed and John Malvo want to snipe somebody, they oughta go to Galveston. And buy a couple of dresses.

The terrible twins in last year's terrorization of Washington, D.C. and its vanilla suburbs, M & M have the dubious honor of being tried in Old Virginie. Despite long-standing evidence the contrary, it seems Lone Star juries are feeling a might friendlier these days.

In early-November, touchy-feely Texans opened their hearts and cut loose Robert A. Durst, a transvestite millionaire who'd bow-sawed a 71-year-old neighbor before dumping pieces and parts into Galveston Bay. Despite what looked like a straightforward murder, the whole thing was an unfortunate misunderstanding. An accident. Really.

Initially, Durst high-tailed it to Galveston from New York after hearing the local district attorney had re-opened an investigation into the disappearance of his first wife. It seems he feared being victimized by a perpetually pre-menstrual lawyer looking to further her political career. (I don't know why anybody in Texas would think this was a way to get ahead.) So, Durst, doing what any red-blooded American male would, dolled himself up, played dumb, literally, and rented a seedy apartment on the wrong side of the tracks.

How he spent Saturday nights is unclear but wearin' a wig and pumps became a chore. Durst chucked the get up and started spendin' time with Morris Black, a "cantankerous former seaman," who lived across the way. Black was argumentative with friends and strangers alike. No matter. He and Durst got on just fine, watchin' TV and shootin' at stuff.

One night, Durst came home and found Black in front of the tube. For reasons unknown, he raced into the kitchen to discover, much to his dismay, that his .22-caliber pistol wasn't where it was supposed to be. When Durst turned around, Black was his turning the gun his way. "I was," he said, according to The New York Times, "concerned that Morris was going to shoot the gun, most likely at my face."

Don't that beat all?

Not surprisingly, they "struggled" over the gun. It found Black's face instead. Then, "in a haze of drugs and alcohol," the panicky Durst carved up his old buddy 'til he was "swimming in blood," triple-wrapped him in plastic garbage bags, and chucked short-ribs and all into Galveston Bay. Being relatively inexperienced, he neglected to weigh down the load sufficiently. Soon afterward, pieces and parts -- minus Black's head -- were found bob, bob, bobbin' along the city's scenic shoreline.

Now comes the juicy part.
Durst gets busted, is charged with murder, jumps bail, then skidaddles to the Quaker State. Hungry for food and information, he wanders into a supermarket, pilfers a newspaper, Band-Aid and chicken salad sandwich, gets busted again, and is perp-walked back to Baghdad by the Bay.

By now, the perpetually premenstrual district attorney is feeling pretty good. She's got an open-and-shut case against the slime-ball son of a real estate developer responsible for blotting out parts of free-range sky above Manhattan. The same sumbitch is also a social misfit whose primary talents are smoking pot and belching at cocktail parties. We know how Texans feel about such things.

Even better, the same sumbitch is suspected of killing his wife after stumbling into a police station in 1982 and claiming he hadn't seen her in five days. It seems he'd dropped her off at a train station after a weekend in the country and never saw her lovely face again. In an odd coincidence, his wife had told a friend, "If anything happens to me, don't let him get away with it."

No problemo.
Durst invokes plutocratic privilege and the ruckus dies down. He breaks with his family and starts meandering between estates in Trinidad, San Francisco, New York and Connecticut. With his talented throat, he's the life of the party everywhere he goes.

After years in luxurious wilderness, he marries a New York realtor on the sly. Meantime, another lady friend is found dead in a Los Angeles apartment with an extra hole in her head. The same friend was of particular interest to law enforcement types because she'd acted as Durst's mouthpiece after his first wife vanished from public view.

Well, folks in Galveston don't need, or want, things spelled out. If a millionaire nare-do-well with a history of trouble keepin' female friends alive sneaks into town to check out personal matters at the local DA's office while wearin' a lady-like disguise, then happens to take up with a down-and-out sailor before shooting his ugly mug and chopping up his body, there's got to be a reason.

Still, from the picture in the paper it looks like Durst nearly pooped his pants when his non-peers decided to cut him loose. Explaining the verdict, one jury member said there were a few loose ends but hell, "The defense told us a story and stuck to it." His momma must be awful proud.

Now, if those poor, black sumbitches M & M can somehow manage to find the appropriate at-tire and sashay down to Galveston, they'll no doubt find a similar helpin' of Texas-style justice. It won't matter how many white folks they're accused of killin'. Galvestonians don't give no mind to eth-nicity, personal history or circumstantial evidence.

The only thing they care about is how you manage in high heels.

###

Son(s) of Papa

2005-05-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

INCONSIDERATION

The murderous John Muhammed has proven immensely inconsiderate. Rather than lending a helping hand and coughing up fur balls of contrition, he's shown a lack of requisite remorse and forced Virginians to demand one hundred eighty-odd pounds of flesh.

"You could see the wheels turning in his head," one juror prophesied. "Sooner or later, he's going to fabricate something or find an opportunity to hurt someone else, whether it's prison personnel or another inmate." Evidently, the burden to pre-empt such clear and present danger was great, the strain too much for those tainted by the sniper's shadow.

As from an orbiting space telescope, the colors of this emotional phenomenon were captured on front pages of leading newspapers across the country: a variegated triangulation of Muhammed's chilly, stamp-sized profile above a sweeping mural of the sunny supervisor of the Sniper Task Force consoling a pot-bellied, puffy-eyed FBI agent.

Never before have some many done to so few.

Some 50 detectives, 1,200 or so task force members, dozens of "experts," the sound and fury of the appointed leader of the Department of Justice all stoking the fire of a six-week legal theater. On garish poster and glimmering marquis funneled by cable into U.S. living rooms, blossomed the detritus of "emotionally wrenching" experience.

Get it while its hot. Blood-curdling forensic detail. Crime scene recreation . Tearful testimony of scarred , approximate witnesses. An "arrogant" accused who briefly, if not foolishly, acted as his own counsel. Fire-and-brimstone rhetoric from the prosecution. The whole shebang liberally doused with the teary wailing of victims' relatives.

"If he's allowed to live in prison, he's drawing breath, he's watching TV, he's getting three meals a day," growled the mother of one shooting victim. "The fact that he has been sentenced to death, I do feel some relief. They (the jury) came to the same conclusion I did, that the man needs to be removed completely."

For the rest of their natural lives, the hearty band of bartenders, hardware store clerks, medical technicians, intelligence officers, naval aviators and other right and honorable jury members will be revered as American heroes. From this place onward, they will bear witness to the day they sanctioned the death of an evil-doer. These model citizens did what they were chosen to do; did what they were paid to do; did their Christian duty.

"It would take a great leap of faith to think justice wasn't served today," conformed one smiling brother of Dean H. Meyers, whom Muhammed was convicted of killing. (He was sentenced to death for two counts of
capital murder, one under an untested new state antiterrorism law, another for committing multiple murders in three years. Muhammed was also sentenced to
10 years for conspiracy to commit murder and 3 years on a gun charge.)

Yet tummies rumble. And hunger rages on. In acid-racked bellies remain holes, voids and spaces that lethal injection can't fill. Muhammed's dusky flesh and woolly head are not enough. He owes catharsis.

How else to explain jurors' abundant tears when the court clerk read the sentencing decision while Muhammed "stood calmly at attention, looking straight ahead and barely blinking?" How else to explain the sound and fury over what an "arrogant," "calculating," "cunning," "manipulative" and "ruthless" killer "deserved?"

Surely, this unrequited desire doesn't stem from the prosecution's failure to prove Muhammed pulled the trigger. No matter. More easily proven was his undeserved participation in polite, i.e., living and breathing, society. Or so went the prosecution's line.

"It's never a pleasure to have to ask for the death penalty," opined commonwealth attorney Paul B. Ebert. "But there are cases that deserve the death penalty, and this certainly was one of them."

Ebert also proved deserving. With the zest of a hangman -- and a beltful of death row scalps -- he made flesh the word of Attorney General John Ashcroft who last year yanked the case from Maryland -- where 6 of 10 shootings took place -- down the river to Virginia, where Muhammad was tried by a group of peers for a gas station attack. (In god-fearing tonality, Ashcroft decreed his primary rational was the state's most excellent capital punishment credentials: since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Virginia has killed 89 prisoners to Maryland's 3.)

Clearly, our tely-tubby town deserves more, too.

Like a rampaging river that has jumped its banks, the sniper's deadly flood has wrought havoc on hearth and home. It demands nothing less than a FEMA-esque response, if not in cold, hard cash than in something equally valuable. America's full might must be brought to bear on this disaster.

Fortunately, we have in the past proven capable of righting such wrongs, of harnessing untamed forces, of channeling unnatural emotion through constructs of public works, means by which citizens of good conscience can have, and eat, their cake. I recommend a return to the practice of lynching.

Like Alaskan wilderness, its benefits are obvious and manifold. As a wholesome form of family entertainment, lynching is tried and true. Its moral and educational powers were long the subject of the leading masters of American literature. For example, in his essay, "The United States of Lyncherdom," Mark Twain pondered lynching's appeal.

"Why," Twain wrote, "has lynching, with various barbaric accompainiments [sic], become a favorite regulator in cases of 'the usual crime' in several parts of the country? Is it because men think a lurid and terrible punishment a more forcible object lesson and a more effective deterrent to a sober and colorless hanging done privately in a jail would be? Surely sane men do not think that."

History proved Twain wrong.

Thus, lynching's reinstatement meshes neatly with the neo-conservative desire to return to the Golden Age of traditional values. It also offers the opportunity to do a patriotic duty. Corporate beneficents such as loggers, hemp spinners, picnic basket makers, television manufacturers, cable operators and advertising mavens will enthusiastically contribute to our communal effort.

Equally important, such spectacle will provide requisite salutary benefit to the public at large. With televised lynchings, town square strollers, stadium attendees, law enforcement professionals, victims' families, jury members and television viewers (provided with real-time feedback devices in the arms of chairs and sofas) can -- with judicious application of iron, fire and rope -- rightfully enjoy inspired pleas for liberty and freedom.

Cherished moments (or hilarious bloopers) can be captured digitally and downloaded to the waiting computers of friends and family. Scribes at Hallmark and BlueMountain.com can compose odes of joy, sympathy or revenge. On Sunday mornings, deacons of moral deterrence can hammer tales of just society into parishioners' stony skulls.

One parable might go like this:

As it is written, so shall it be. In the book of Ralph Ellison, in the story of "A Party Down at the Square," the men, women and children of the town gathered to consecrate the punishment of a dark and rancorous evil-doer.

As the fire raged, spurred on by gasoline and the blood of Christ, one townsman asked, "What you say there, nigger?"

And it came back through the flames in his nigger voice: "Will one a you gentlemen please cut my throat?" he said. Will somebody cut my throat like a Christian?" And Jed hollered back, "Sorry, but ain't no Christians around tonight. Ain't no Jew-boys neither. We're just one hundred percent Americans."

###

I Likes It When You Call Me Cool Papa (Part IV)

2005-05-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

"To put it drastically, if war, as (Prussian political theorist Karl von) Clausewitz insisted, is the continuation of politics by other means, it requires little imagination to see American Life since the abandonment of the Reconstruction as an abrupt reversal of that formula: the continuation of the Civil War by means other than arms. In this sense the conflict has not gone unresolved but the line between civil war and civil peace has become so blurred as to require of the sensitive man a questioning attitude toward every aspect of the nation's self-image." -- Ralph Ellison, Introduction to 1960 reissue of Stephen Crane's, "The Red Badge of Courage"

You can bet Muhammed the Elder knows history. And like his griot predecessors, he conveyed it to Malvo the Younger, who frequently corrected his teachers at Bellingham High. M & M are no doubt familiar with Crispus Attucks, another Invisible Man whose bodacious acts foisted his name into the country's consciousness. They surely know you can't keep a bruhtha down.

Attucks -- the first American to fall in the Revolutionary War -- was initially whited-out from the "official" history. This sanitation is much like how George Dubya's misstatements are routinely airbrushed from White House transcripts. It was only after Abolitionists began demanding freedom for AfroAmerican slaves that Attucks was included in depictions of the Boston Massacre.

Sired by an African and a Natick Indian, Attucks grew up as chattel. When he audaciously expressed a taste for freedom, he was sold. His next owner proved little more tolerant. Yet he somehow let Attucks, a first-generation slave, go along on a business trip to Boston, where the 27-year-old slipped onto a whaling ship.

Attucks returned to Boston nineteen years later. At the time, King George III was busy showing the colonists who their daddy was. He didn't mind using soldiers to make his point. Somehow, those freedom-lovers didn't appreciate the lengths to which Boy George was willing to go.

After returning from sea in February 1770, Attucks walked into a ruckus. Enraged by taunts from townspeople, a Redcoat fired on a young boy. The outraged Attucks mounted a platform and fired up the crowd to "Get up, stand up, stand up for yer rights."

A month later, the townspeople, hearing fire bells, filed outside to see Attucks leading a small group up the street. He encouraged all within earshot to gather at the town square for a confrontation with the British. Eventually, he rounded up enough men for some fisticuffs. The Brits, those famous proponents of fair play, gunned him down with four others.

As always in America, this AfroAmerican man became a cultural Rorschach Test. Attucks' courage in the face of dehumanizing bigotry became one of the colonists' greatest inspirations. Then, he was cast aside like a couple of other brothers.

Prince Whipple appears in Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. His presence may not count for much, though. James Monroe, the fifth President, also appears, despite being nowhere near the chilly river on Christmas Eve 1776.

At ten-years-old, Whipple's "comparatively wealthy (African) parents" sent him and a cousin to America to be educated. Upon their arrival in Baltimore, they were sold into slavery and purchased by William Whipple of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. During the Revolution, Whipple served as an aide to Washington, rising to the rank of general. Meanwhile, the Prince served at his master's side and "was emancipated during the war."

James Roberts wasn't so lucky.

He served his master, Colonel Francis De Shields, throughout the Revolutionary War. After the colonel's death, Roberts carted De Shield's belongings from Philadelphia to Maryland. When he reached the homestead, he was summarily separated from his wife and children, stripped of his uniform, and sold to a Louisiana planter for fieldwork.

Ashcroft appreciates history, too, although he's partial to a dash of revisionism.

No better expression can be found than his 1998 interview in Southern Partisan Magazine. Published in Columbia, SC, the magazine promotes an unblemished view of Confederate Life, regularly running defenses of slaveholding practices and avowed racists like David Duke. Other esteemed senators who've graced its pages include Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Phil Graham (R-TX).

Ashcroft said, "Your magazine helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like (Gen. Robert E.) Lee, (Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall") Jackson and (Confederate President Jefferson) Davis."

"We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect," he said. "Or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."
Now that's what I'm talkin' about. A man willing to stand up for what he believes. Someone willing to battle the wicked armies of tolerance and liberalism. Someone who knows what America is about. Someone willing to stand up and say, consequences be damned.

Just kidding.

When questioned about the interview during his confirmation hearing, Ashcroft claimed ignorance. "I can't say that I knew very much at all about the magazine. I don't know if I've ever read the magazine or seen it." He said he'd been told "that they were involved in a group that opposed revisionism. It was presented to me as a history journal, and on that basis I made the remarks."

Disclaimers aside, Ashcroft's kow-towing garnered mucho brownie points from white supremacists. After the interview, the newsletter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (the suit-and-tie wearing wing of the Ku Klux Klan, whose ghostly garb recalled Confederate dead returned from the battlefields ) urged readers to support a petition saluting Ashcroft "for your courageous comments concerning Southern heritage."

A little more than a year ago, council founder Gordon Baum issued a plea for an "American Renaissance conference of people who believe in white superiority to become more politically active," the News stated. Baum said he created the council to address racial issues, telling them, "If politicians think we'll help or hurt them more than the liberal media, they'll pander to us."

I'm all for pandering. In fact, the more pandering the better.

Let's start with those devotees of "tradition" and "family values," the reactionary (defined as "one who seeks to undo political progress or revolution") descendants of Mosby and Barnes and Davis and Lee. We can sit down at a Texas-sized ash table plopped in the middle of a great hall where brown-skinned men with downcast eyes wait on us hand and foot, making ever so sure not to soil their starched while jackets and cotton gloves with the blood of peacenik rabble-rousers and pussy communists.

Being well-trained (with scarred backs as proof positive), these "uncles" (calling them "fathers and sons" would be too much an acknowledgment of manhood) won't be so rude as to mention how many generations their families have scrabbled in American soil. They won't pull out their wallets and shove before our faces pictures of their children, aborted Reconstruction and swollen-bellied Civil Rights. Nor will they impose and bore with woeful tales of pockmarked Jim Crow and dim-witted Dixiecrat.

Instead, they'll serve up what George Dubya kilt this mornin':

A big ol' helpin' of truncated civil liberties bleedin' at the stumps (readin' USA Patriot Act on the menu), laid next to a mess of disinformation (a.k.a., the War Against Terrorism) and a helpin' of emancipated regulation (another way of saying, "Free Markets"). And if we're real good, we'll suck on the irradiated bones of starving Afgans and Iraqis for dessert, or use them for toothpicks, at least.

When we're full (but still unsated), we'll retire to the porch for a tumbler of sippin' whiskey, a cigar and a little entertainment. After Ashcroft and Lott and the other Singing Senators regale us with "Amazing Grace" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy," the DOJ Boys will fire up the cotton gin and start choppin' the heads off those black sumbitches M & M.

Meanwhile, we'll backslap O.T. Fears, the "tragic" yet celebrated bass fisherman from Sallisaw, Ok., whose 18-year-old son, Daniel, went on a shotgun shooting spree that left two people dead and eight wounded during the same period the dynamic duo did their evil, if alleged, deeds.

Ashcroft: What were you thinkin', son?
Muhammed the Elder: I'm not sure.
Ashcroft: What do you mean, you're not sure?
Muhammed the Elder: I don't know. I was just so...angry.
Ashcroft: Anger is good. Anger is strong. Strong like America. But you've got to control it, make it work for you. Didn't we talk about that?
Muhammed the Elder: Yeah.
Ashcroft: Excuse me?
Muhammed the Elder: Yes, sir.
Ashcroft: Well, you know I have to punish you, don't you?
Muhammed the Elder: Yes, sir.
Ashcroft (opens desk drawer and withdraws a bullwhip): Before we start, is there anything you'd like to tell me?
Muhammed the Elder: It was my idea, sir. Please spare the youngster.
Ashcroft: You know I can't do that.
Muhammed the Elder: Please, sir.
Ashcroft: Sorry. No can do.
Malvo the Younger: I can take it, sir. Gimme your best shot.
Ashcroft: I like your spunk, son.
Muhammed and Malvo (together): Spank me, pappy. I've been a bad boy.

###
__________________________________________________________________________________________
SOURCES

"Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America," 2002 Exhibit; Tuskegee Institute Archives
"Suspects Spent Year Traveling, Nearly Destitute," October 25, 2002, New York Times
ibid
ibid
ibid
"Ashcroft's Iron Will Molds the Law," June 2002, San Jose Mercury News
"Mentor and Disciple," Nov. 3, 2002, New York Times
"Snipers Strange Odyssey," Oct. 27, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle
"In Trail of Red Flags, an Ex-Friend's Warning to the Authorities Stands Out," October 28, 2002, New York Times
ibid
"The History of the British Sniper"
"Some Important Sniper Moments," www.cybersniper.com
ibid San Jose Mercury News
case descriptions from Missouri State Archives and St. Louis Historic Old Courthouse websites
ibid San Jose Mercury News
ibid
"High Degree Of Terror Swayed Military To Act," October 17, 2002, Los Angeles Times
"No Posse Can Stop Them," George F. Smith
["Freedom-loving people have always been distrustful of the military, and our colonists were no exception. The troops that King George III garrisoned here in 1763 after he kicked the French out were a major grievance with Americans, and not just because they were taxed to pay for them. The signers of the Declaration of Independence specifically attacked military independence from civilian control, a standing army in time of peace, and the quartering of troops in private homes. The Washington University Law Quarterly in 1997 notes that fear "of a standing army helped to motivate the enactment of the Bill of Rights . . . ."
But the lessons learned slipped from memory. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, federal marshals were empowered to use the military to help return a slave to his owner. The marshals went beyond the letter of the law, frequently calling out the army to control hostilities between pro-and anti-slave forces.
During Reconstruction, the military became the enforcers of the North's political agenda for the South, a situation that fomented massive injustice, corruption, and crime, and led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. The election of 1876, in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Samuel J. Tilden by a single electoral vote, turned on Grant's imposition of the military. Hayes won the disputed votes of South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida after Grant had sent troops to those states for use at the polls, if needed. "This misuse of the military in an election--the most central event to a democracy (sic)--led Congress to enact the PCA in 1878," the Law Quarterly notes.]

"In Absence of Parents, a Voice for the Accused, " January 19, 2003, New York Times
"The Fundamental John Ashcroft," March/April 2002 issue of Mother Jones Magazine
"Prosecutors in Sniper Cases Are Death Penalty Veterans," November 10, 2002, New York Times
ibid
ibid
www.mosbysrangers.com
ibid
"The difference between DC democracy and DC representation: A Fact Sheet," Progressive Review
ibid "Mentor and Disciple"
AfroAmerican soldiers serve in the military in numbers disproportionate to those of the general population. Most serve in the enlisted ranks, many as noncommissioned officers, or NCOs. Increasing numbers are in the officer corps. They occupy more management positions in the military than they do in business, education, journalism, government, or any other significant sector of American society, according to "Success Story: Blacks in the Military," May 1986, Atlantic Monthly
"Harlem is Nowhere," Ralph Ellison, 1948 essay
"Moving On," April 29 & May 6, 1996
Like today's semiconductor industry, the whaling business enjoyed a prominent place in the early-American psyche. The novelist, Herman Melville, transformed his oceanic experiences into a series of increasingly biting social commentaries culminating in the 1851 publication of "Moby Dick." Some modern literary critics believe the story of Captain Ahab's pathological pursuit of the Great White Whale was a critical and commercial failure because of its apparent refutation of the period's social and racial hierarchy.
"This hierarchy put white males as most important, then white females, then all people who did not qualify as white were considered 'niggers.' Any non-white, including Native American, Indian, African, Chinese, Arab, Palestinians and Polynesians would fit into this biologically inferior class of human or sub-human beings," wrote Gregory D. Shell in "Racism in Moby Dick."
Scientists of the era, foreshadowing modern day proponents of the Bell Curve, argued "there is good reason for classifying the Negro as a distinct species from the European, as there is for making the ass a distinct species from the zebra; and if, in classification, we take intelligence into consideration, there is a far greater difference between the Negro and the European than between the gorilla and the chimpanzee," Shell noted in "Cultural and Racial Hierarchy in Antebellum America.
"America's Forgotten Patriots," The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Autumn 2000.
ibid
ibid
ibid San Jose Mercury News

I Likes It When You Call Me Cool Papa (Part III)

2005-05-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Neither a wrongdoer nor an evil-doer be, particularly in Fairfax (VA). Unfortunately, the D.C. suburb -- which enjoys the economic benefits of a paunchy, law enforcement-related jobs program) is where Malvo the Younger sits cooling his heels.

Farmers "settled" the city in the early-1700s. In 1742, Fairfax County was established when Alexandria, seat of the county court, temporarily became a part of the District of Columbia. The "historical" county courthouse houses the Fairfax Juvenile and Domestic Relations General District Court & Clerks Office. On Chain Bridge Road, the Jennings Judicial Center holds the circuit and district courts, the commonwealth's attorney's and sheriff's offices. Connected to the Center are the Magistrate's office and the Adult Detention Center where Malvo is being detained.

(In nearby Centreville, a crack team of 50-odd detectives keeps scratching and sniffing. At its height, the sniper posse included 1,200-plus investigators and a military spy plane. One breathless report described marshaling the winged bounty hunter as "a tantalizing opportunity for the military: a difficult training mission applicable immediately in military hotspots from Afghanistan to Iraq."

"I cannot imagine a tougher surveillance mission," said Ralph Peters, an author and former Army intelligence officer. "If you can find someone in Washington, D.C., you can find anyone in Baghdad." Even more exciting is the prospect of "mission creep." "I do feel that in the future we're going to see more use of the military domestically," Peters added. "When terrorism strikes domestically, the military is often the best tool."

This breach of Constitutional etiquette elicited nary a discouraging word from Plutocrats. That's good news to George Dubya, who's itchin' to gut the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which specifically prohibits the military from engaging in domestic law enforcement. In the battle against "terrorism," the administration doesn't want to be hung up on trifles like civil liberties.)

After federal authorities whisked Malvo the Younger out of Maryland -- like "patrollers" who made their livings apprehending runaway slaves -- a juvenile court judge opined that "strong" circumstantial evidence permitted his being held, and tried, as an adult. The hasty change of venue -- coupled with Virginia's long-standing death penalty statute and an untested "terrorist" law -- makes a death sentence more likely.

Meanwhile, Muhammed the Elder remains in Maryland. Besides murder and terrorism, sundry prosecutors will likely argue M & M conspired to "intimidate the public" and "influence the government" in a scheme to extort $10 million.

I doubt the gentlemen at the detention center celebrated Malvo the Younger's eighteenth birthday on February 18. It is more likely they still keep him in solitary confinement within a 6-by-15-foot cell. They reluctantly provide vegetarian meals rather than a meatless loaf (which caused bloating, diarrhea and bleeding) typically reserved for unruly prisoners. After initially denying him television, radio or reading materials, overseers reportedly allowed magazines and books from the jail library, as well as a copy of the Koran and Gulliver's Travels."

More than likely, his sole visitor remains Todd G. Petit, a 31-year-old lawyer and court-appointed guardian described as "the new parental figure in his life." Virginia law requires that juvenile defendants be given a guardian if their parents are not available to help them in court.

As such, "Petit has risen vigorously to the defense of his charge, speaking of him in more humanizing terms than other lawyers, often calling him Lee," the Times stated. "Prosecutors have been so annoyed by Mr. Petit's advocacy that they have twice tried to have him removed from the case and objected to his questioning of a witness at hearings......in which a juvenile court judge ruled that Mr. Malvo could be tried as an adult and could face the death penalty."

Ashcroft has a jones for the death penalty.

As attorney general, he has ordered federal prosecutors in New York and Connecticut to pursue death penalty in a dozen cases they had already recommended for lesser sentences. Meanwhile, he presided over the first federal executions in four decades, maintaining that a department study had found no evidence of racial bias in the application of the death penalty.

Virginia's prosecutorial sons are as blood-thirsty as Cool Papa.

Paul B. Ebert and Robert F. Horan, Jr. have 17 scalps dangling on their belts. A national media report characterizes them as "tough, savvy and unrelenting veterans with some 70 years of trial experience between them."

Ebert, the commonwealth's attorney for Prince William County, is just a good ol' boy at heart. A humble man, he can't explain why he's had a dozen capital cases. "They say I've had as many as anyone in the commonwealth," Ebert said. "It's kind of a dubious distinction. I
don't take any pleasure in seeking the death penalty."

His sidekick shows more flair.

In 1997, Horan (who as commonwealth attorney for Fairfax, gets to nibble on young Malvo) caused riots in Pakistan when he talked about a reward for information about shootings at the Central Intelligence Agency. "I am sure there are people there who would turn in their mother for $20,000, let alone $2 million," he told a television interviewer. After things hit the fan, he and the State Department issued an apology for the remark, which he claimed had been taken out of context.

Malvo the Younger: Do you think they got the note?
Muhammed the Elder: They got it.
Malvo the Younger: Are you sure? I haven't seen anything on TV.
Muhammed the Elder: They got it.
Malvo the Younger: Maybe we should send another one.
Muhammed the Elder: We just did.
Malvo the Younger (confused): What do you mean?
Muhammed the Elder: Think about it.
Malvo the Younger: The Home Depot!
Muhammed the Elder: Very good. Now try to get some rest.
Malvo the Younger. Yes, sir.

Horan has a lot of momentum behind him.

Fairfax has been the scene of several notable Civil War events. It is the place where Captain John Quincy Marr, the first officer casualty of the Confederacy, was killed (at Fairfax Courthouse on June 1, 1861). By late-1862, Union forces under the command of Brigadier General Edwin H. Stoughton occupied the town. In an "audacious" raid led by Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby in March 1863, Stoughton was captured while he slept in a house belonging to Truro Episcopal Church.

Mosby is a Lion of the Confederacy, celebrated in libraries, museums and Civil War re-enactments. It's a certainty more than one red-blooded American will don his uniform during Civil War Weekend, which will be held May 3-4, 2003 at the Historic Blenheim Estate located on Old Lee Highway in Fairfax. Events will include Mosby's Fairfax Raid, infantry skirmishes, wagon rides through camps, pony rides for children and candlelight tours.

Officially the Forty Third Battalion of Virginia Cavalry, Mosby's Rangers was a unit of "partisan rangers" operating in Northern Virginia from the winter of early-1863 until the end of the War Between the States. During that twenty-eight month span, the Rangers "became the most effective and feared partisan command in the Confederacy."

In January 1863, Mosby -- a cavalry lieutenant who had been Confederate Major General "Jeb" Stuart's chief scout - and fifteen men undertook operations in the Virginia counties south and west of Washington, D.C. Within five months, so many volunteers joined the unit that Mosby received permission to organize the command into a unit of the Army of Northern Virginia. By war's end, the command consisted of two battalions of eight companies. Nearly 1,900 men served in the unit.

The Rangers operated from a base in Fauquier and Loudoun counties, which became known as "Mosby's Confederacy." Local civilians concealed, sheltered and fed the Rangers. The locals also served as an early warning system. Rangers were famous for guerrilla tactics, typically utilizing cover of darkness behind enemy lines, and depending on the element of surprise. As part of their cover, Rangers played daytime civilians. (A century later, Americans criticized certain Vietnamese for employing similar tactics.)

After the war, Mosby -- a renowned brawler and duelist whose boyhood hero was Francis, the "Swamp Fox," Marion, a Revolutionary War guerrilla fighter -- settled in Warrenton, the heart of his Confederacy. There, he was surrounded by men who fought under him. Later, the former law clerk to the Commonwealth's Attorney established a lucrative legal practice and made a killing in real estate.

He remained an unrepentant Confederate.

After Mosby's pardon (he disbanded rather than surrender his forces) in April 1866 in Leesburg, Va., he defied Union orders that no Confederate insignia be worn on the streets. When challenged by federal soldiers, he confronted them, stating that there were "not enough damn Yankees in Leesburg" to strip his uniform of its identification. The insignia stayed, and Mosby "rode out of town triumphant."

It's easy to imagine Rangers in bedsheets.

The dictionary defines a "partisan ranger" as an "adherent to a party or faction; especially, having the character of blind, passionate, or unreasonable adherence to a party." (The original "partisan" was a "weapon having a blade with lateral projections mounted on the end of a long shaft, used chiefly in the 16th and 17th centuries.") To my ear, "partisan ranger" sounds like "nightrider," a "member of a secret mounted band in U.S. south after the Civil War," committing acts of intimidation and revenge.

I'd advise Malvo the Younger to steer clear of rangers -- park, forest, Texas or otherwise -- as well as anyone named Mosby or Barnes.

In 1859, John Horace "Jack" Barnes, Jr. became Deputy Sheriff of Fairfax County, having served as constable in 1857-59 (while helping work the family farm and operate the family mill). When he was six-years-old, Barnes moved from Maryland to Fairfax County where his parents bought "Hope Park" plantation, southeast of the Fairfax Courthouse on Pope's Head Road.

In April 1861, Barnes enlisted as a private in Company D of the 17th Virginia Infantry, the celebrated Fairfax Rifles. So did younger brother Samuel and elder brother William, the latter being the company's first lieutenant. Frank Fox, Barnes' brother-in-law, also served in the 17th and later also become a Ranger.

In May 1861, Barnes was promoted to corporal. A few weeks later, he was captured near Fairfax Courthouse and sent to the Old Capitol Prison. More than one week after his imprisonment, he was sent to a Federal hospital, suffering from "rubeola." He was paroled and exchanged (as was customary during the Civil War) in January 1863.

In March, he joined Mosby and participated in the Fairfax Courthouse raid. The following week, he was captured again. He was paroled March 30 and sent to Petersburg, where he was appointed Sgt. of the parole camp. Around April 25 he rejoined Mosby, only to be taken prisoner again two days later near Cub Run with two other Rangers.

SWAT team leader: Get your hands up and get of the vehicle!
Muhammed the Elder: Stay calm, son.
SWAT team leader: I said get out of the vehicle!
Malvo the Younger: How can we get out with our hands up?
SWAT team leader: (pause) Lower you hands, slowly. And open the door.
Muhammed the Elder: Take it easy son. Do as he says.
Malvo the Younger: Yes, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: We're getting out.
SWAT team leader: On the ground, face down. Now!
Muhammed the Elder: I know the drill. Hey, take it easy on the boy.
SWAT team leader: Shut your mouth!
Malvo the Younger: Why is he shouting?
SWAT team leader: You, too. Quiet!
Muhammed the Elder: I'm not sure, son. Maybe he can't hear himself think.

At this stage of Jeopardy prosecution game, M & M's tongues have been cut out and plopped onto porcelain plates. They'll receive no sympathetic nods from graven-faced Senators. They'll utter naught on "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation." They'll remain black and tan fantasies. Stern eyes. Mug shots.

It's no surprise M & M remain invisible to the D.C. plutocracy. They're not in the same class. The Senate boasts at least 40 millionaires, the richest being "liberal" Democrats. These Fat Cats -- and presidential wannabes -- include Ted Kennedy ($10.2 million), Jay Rockefeller ($82.1 million) and John Kerry ($139.7 million).On the other side of the aisle, "liberal" GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee weighs in at $53.6 million while the new majority leader, Bill Frist sports an pocketbook of $17 million.

Each day, these Mandarins of Freedom are carted about in air-conditioned rickshaws, their black-capped drivers dodging the progeny of former slaves, to lofty ceilings and burgundy carpets to carry out nation's business. That business does not include the unwashed, even those on their own plantation.

The District is run like a slew of Third World dictatorships in Uncle Sam's employ. In return for creature comforts (and seeming social standing), black-faced elites keep their boots atop natives' necks. This lackeydom is best expressed in federal takeover, limited Congressional "representation" notwithstanding.

Like colonial governors, the Plutocracy wields plenary power over all aspects of local governance, controls the budget, controls the prosecution and adjudication of, as well the imprisonment for, crimes, has the power to deny the city a commuter tax, and is able to pass laws in contravention of the will of DC citizens.

As for the Plutocracy's constituents -- that narrow band known as Middle America, a downtrodden minority of faith-based, SUV-drivers who vote) -- M & M might as well be O.J. and Tyson, Farrakhan or.....what was that fella's name, Rodney something? (King probably had it comin'. Turned out to be a dope fiend, ya' know.)

What can you say about a fatherless, 17-year-old kid whose mother left him as collateral for a loan to buy forged immigration documents? Somebody had to help him grow up, show him how to be a man. Who better than a ex-infantryman and former National Guardsman? He must have taught the kid something.

Immediately after their capture, M & M were separated and interrogated. Despite being isolated and grilled for hours by detectives -- without benefit of legal counsel, parental guardian or a Miranda warning -- Malvo refused to offer up Muhammed in return for leniency. When his interrogators took a break and left the room, he tried to escape through the ceiling.

A forensic psychologist has suggested Mohammed's "Svengali"-like dominance of Malvo be viewed against the failed relationships with his own children. It is unclear whether this same psychologist (or like-minded colleagues) contributed to the egregiously erroneous "serial killer" profiles proffered before M & M were finally collared. Among several things they turned out not to be were loners, unequal opportunists, white.

The "experts" certainly had no inkling as to motive.

Media pundits suggest attitudes about American foreign policy toward the Middle East signal "anti-American sentiments." This conclusion is based on testimony from Harjeet Singh, a Bellingham resident who tipped authorities that his "friend" Muhammed during dinner "once praised the fact that 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were able to accomplish more than entire armies." Singh said: "He said America needed to learn this lesson a long time ago."

My father, a Korean War veteran who served twenty years in the Air Force, would have liked Muhammed. The Elder sounds a lot like the men I grew up around. To the last, they remained upright, AfroAmerican men valuing honor, duty and sacrifice, adroitly using the military to hoist themselves up the greasy ladder of social mobility.

Any doubts about foreign policy or domestic egalitarianism, they kept to themselves. Instead, they tucked packs of Marlboros or Benson & Hedges or unfiltered Camels into dark stockings razor-creased slacks, snapping salutes with alacrity. They celebrated Presidents Day and the Fourth of July with gusto. They shuttled their young families to outposts in Europe and Asia and Africa, doing their duty. They loved America and taught their children to love it, too.

To my mind, media befuddlement about Muhammed the Elder stems from a National Geographic superficiality and a studied lack of historical perspective. Vietnam and JFK are reduced to stock footage wielded by marketers peddling BMW's and mutual funds. One of the most spine-tingling orations in world history -- King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- is capitalized by a Paris-based communications company named Alcatel.

Yet a tentative scratch at history's gilted surface reveals a number of clues about the Elder's psychology. My personal favorite is a concept that dominated the discourse of the Sixties -- Black Rage.

I refer neither to kitchy black-and-white posters of beret-wearing brothers toting rifles and machetes nor to televised fogies mouthing remembrances of things past. I'm talkin' 'bout the kind of clutch your purse, piss your pants, tear the roof off this muhtha grip black folk briefly wielded round MizAmerica's throat.

Remember that? Eldridge Cleaver? Huey Newton? Malcolm X?

In their seminal work, psychologists Price M. Cobbs and William H. Grier in 1968 articulated what many white folk struggled to remain blithely unaware of -- the parents and siblings of Cleopatra Jones and Homie the Clown were pissed off. The steroid-enhanced, technologically-turbocharged atom of institutional racism had split their AfroAmerican brains, kicking off a chain reaction that threatened to singe everybody's behind before floating off in Mt. Rushmore-sized mushroom cloud.

The idea was in no way novel.

Two decades earlier, Dr. Frederick Wertham had observed a "free-floating hostility" among clients at Harlem's Lafargue Clinic. The condition was characterized as "a hostility that bombards the individual from so many directions that he is often unable to identify it with any specific object." In an essay, Ralph Ellison asked, "And why have these explosive matters -- which are now a problem of our foreign policy -- been ignored? Because there is an argument in progress between black men and white men as to the true nature of American reality."

"Following their own interests," he continued, "whites impose interpretations upon Negro experience that are not only false but, in effect, a denial of Negro humanity.....Too weak to shout down these interpretations, Negros live nevertheless as they have to live, and the concrete conditions of their lives are more real than white men's arguments."

By the time Ashcroft rode into town, "free-floating hostility" had tranmorgrified into suicide by bootstraps. The state-of-the-art psychosis -- for which Big Pharma offers no palliative -- reached its highest and purest embodiment in Justice Clarence Thomas, who raved and lynched his way to the highest court in the land. Raised by Jim Crow and a slavish devotee of Booker T. Washington , Thomas rails against the crippling affects of affirmative action and its patronizing premise of inherent inferiority. He is a conservative wet dream: a black man who despises his lucious lips.

Who other than Muhammed the Elder (he of the "crushing handshake") to grasp the next wrung of assimilation? The product of a distinguished psychological lineage, he has been so well acculturated as to adopt the ultimate privilege of the White Male -- to kill that which you cannot control, even if it be your own family.

I Likes It When You Call Me Cool Papa (Part II)

2005-05-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

M & M met on Antigua sometime during the summer of 2000. Young Malvo landed on the island first, in January of 1999, to join his mother, Una James, a Jamaican "in search of opportunity and men who would help her." Una's desire for "the best for her son" did not prevent her from regularly leaving him alone or in the care of others.

Some years had passed since Malvo had last seen his biological father. While dating Muhammed, Una obtained a false birth certificate from him (forgery was a alleged side business) and used it to entered the U.S. Before bolting, she enrolled Malvo in a Seventh-day Adventist school where he hung with a group of boys who dreamt of becoming naval aviators. At that point, he entered Muhammed's home, joining three children whom the latter had "abducted" from his estranged wife.

Several months later -- after sneaking into Miami with his mother aboard a smuggler's cargo ship -- Malvo hooked up again with Muhammed, who had returned to Washington state. At the time, the Elder was struggling to keep afloat an auto repair business and was mired in a divorce battle. By the end of 2001, he'd fallen into Bellingham (WA) homeless shelter.

In October, Reverend Al Archer, the shelter's director, called the F.B.I. report the presence of a "strange man" with a Muslim surname. "I just felt like he was into something that was no good, and it had to do with maybe some kind of group or something," Archer said. "I thought that might be where he was getting his money. I felt like he needed to be investigated." Muhammed, whom the reverend described as "almost too nice," stayed at the mission for two more months. The
F.B.I. never showed up.

Despite hard times, "Muhammed took Malvo under his wing, teaching him karate, American manners, enrolling him in schools -- and exerting the same sort of iron hand that he had used on his own children before losing them to his ex-wife." By then, Muhammed had divorced and Malvo had left his mother -- who had married an American in Florida -- and was calling "father."

Malvo the Younger: Why do you think my mother left?
Muhammed the Elder: I'm not sure, son. Maybe she felt she couldn't take care of you, and your brothers and sisters.
Malvo the Younger: Do you think she still loves me?
Muhammed the Elder: She's your mother.
Malvo the Younger: But does she love me? It's been two years.
Muhammed the Elder: Una's complicated woman. Two years or twenty years. It makes no difference.
Malvo the Younger: Then why doesn't she want me with her in Florida?
Muhammed the Elder: (long silence) Target acquired.
Malvo the Younger: It doesn't have anything to do with those papers?
Muhammed the Elder: Concentrate on the task at hand, son. Access the target.
Malvo the Younger: Where?
Muhammed the Elder: Over there, the couple in the parking garage, packing the shelf in the back of their car.
Malvo the Younger: By the Home Depot?
Muhammed the Elder: Affirmative. Take your position in the nest. I'll reconnoiter.
Malvo the Younger: Yes, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: Caucasian male, caucasian female, mid-forties. Range 250 yards. Wind 2 knots, north-by-northwest. Elevation, zero degrees.
Malvo the Younger: Check.

As a weapon of mass destruction, the rifle holds a place of prominence in American military history. During the Revolutionary War, German and Swiss craftsmen developed a .45 caliber weapon known as the Kentucky rifle. It had an extreme range of 300 yards and was "deadly accurate" to 200 yards, capable of firing three rounds a minute.

Before then, weapons lacked the range and accuracy to reliably hit a man-sized target at ranges much more than 100 yards. Meanwhile, shooting somebody who was unaware of being engaged in combat was considered dishonorable. Consequently, guerrillas and rebels first employed the tactic.

The term itself is derived from bird-hunting. In Imperial India, British soldiers pursued a small, alert creature called a snipe. Shootists who "showed a flair" were dubbed "Snipers." The Brits were less appreciative when such skills were demonstrated by uncooperative colonials in America and Afghanistan.

"U.S. military doctrine," explains www.wikipedia.org, "uses snipers in two-man teams attached to companies or brigades for anti-sniper missions, civil pacification, assassination, scouting and surveillance. Snipers are usually far more highly trained than others, but doctrine limits their usefulness to small unit commands, the bread-and-butter of the Army."

Training is critical.

Snipers are trained to "reliably place bullets in a 30cm circle at 300m in all weather at all angles. Training selects personnel for talent, and then trains them over a period of several months of daily shooting with diverse ranges, angles and weather, especially winds. The critical talent is a willingness to look a man in the eyes, and shoot him between the eyes without flinching."

Typically, snipers are isolated because they give even soldiers on their side the willies. "It should also be realized that a psychopathic or sociopathic personality is often seen as necessary for an efficient sniper as, despite the image presented in books and films, most soldiers are not keen on killing (or being killed)," the encyclopedia said.

Muhammed the Elder: Name five famous persons or developments in sniper history.
Malvo the Younger: Major Patrick Ferguson, 71st Highlanders. In 1877, He stalked and nearly killed Washington at Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Muhammed the Elder: Excellent. Next?
Malvo the Younger: Colonel Hiram Berdan. During the Civil War, he deployed sharpshooters in key positions on battlefields to shoot opposition leaders and other important persons.
Muhammed the Elder: Continue.
Malvo the Younger: Major Koenig. During WWII, he was sent to Stalingrad to eliminate Sergeant Vasili Zaitsev who was demoralizing the German ground troops. A decade before the war, Zaitsev developed two-man sniper team tactics.
Muhammed the Elder: Very good.
Malvo the Younger: Marine Corps Sergeant Carlos Hathcock II. During Vietnam, he compiled 93 confirmed and several hundred unconfirmed kills.
Muhammed the Elder: Last shot.
Malvo the Younger: During Desert Storm, the military for the first time deploys .50-caliber Barrett rifles with Unertl Scopes.
Muhammed the Elder: Outstanding.

A chickenhawk Republican, Ashcroft prizes guns over butter.

In 2001, the National Rifle Association plastered his picture on the cover of its magazine, praising him as "a breath of fresh air to freedom-loving gun owners." In 1999, he lent his voice to radio ads endorsing an NRA-sponsored referendum to let people apply to Missouri county sheriffs for concealed gun permits.

As a Senator, he opposed the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Despite their support by most national law enforcement organizations, Ashcroft labeled the bans "wrong-headed." He also supported efforts to reduce the time allowed to conduct background checks of gun purchasers to 24 hours from three business days.

During his confirmation hearings, Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would defend the constitutionality of gun controls he had opposed as a senator, including a proposal to extend the racketeering laws to cover gun crimes. He also pledged to back the reauthorization in 2004 of an assault weapons ban he opposed while in the Senate. He said he would not impose his personal views on guns on government policy, the reports stated.

It's uncertain whether Ashcroft owns a Bushmaster XM-15, the .223 caliber semi-automatic rifle ballistics experts claim was used in most of the sniper shootings. The Bushmaster is a civilian version of the military M-16 assault rifle used by Army infantrymen.

Malvo the Younger: Do you think the gun shop owner will report us?
Muhammed the Elder: Not a possibility.
Malvo the Younger: Why not?
Muhammed the Elder: That clown shouldn't even be in business. If he weren't white, they would have yanked his license a long time ago.
Malvo the Younger: You think so?
Muhammed the Elder: No doubt about it. Probably doesn't even pay taxes.
Malvo the Younger: Really?
Muhammed the Elder: Your reconnaissance skills need some more work. Didn't you see all those background check forms stuffed beside the cash register? You think somebody like that is rushing to hand over his hard-earned money to the federal government?
Malvo the Younger: I guess not.
Muhammed the Elder: You guess correct.

Like Muhammed, Ashcroft sprang from fecund soil.

In 1818, the Missouri Territory had enough people to warrant admission into the Union. Because its "settlers" were primarily from the South, it was expected to be a slave state. However, a New York congressman proposed an amendment to a statehood bill that would have prohibited importing slaves. The proposal portended emancipation for all Territory-born slaves.

In February 1819, the amendment passed the House but not the Senate. The following January, the House passed a bill admitting Maine. The recent admission of Alabama brought the number of slave and free states to equal representation in the Senate. By pairing Maine and Missouri, representational balance would be maintained.

Ultimately, the two bills were joined as one in the Senate, with a clause forbidding slavery in Missouri replaced by a measure prohibiting slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36�30'N latitude, which served as Missouri's southern boundary. The geographical proviso held until 1854, when it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Not unexpectedly, the House rejected the compromise. After a conference committee was appointed, the House and Senate bills were treated separately. In March 1820, Maine was admitted while Missouri was authorized to adopt a constitution having no restrictions on slavery.

Still, Northern congressman objected the provision in the Missouri constitution barring the immigration of free blacks to the state. After Missouri's legislature pledged that nothing in its constitution would be interpreted to abridge the rights of U.S. citizens, the state was admitted in August 1821.

Twenty-five years later, a fine-boned man with a shock of woolly hair petitioned the St. Louis Circuit Court. Dred Scott won his freedom on the basis of his former residence in Illinois and Wisconsin territory. However, appeals to the Missouri Supreme Court by his owner Irene Emerson returned him to slavery in 1852. Scott's advocates, legal and otherwise, couldn't swallow the decision.

In 1854, another suit was filed in the United States Circuit Court in St. Louis. But a federal jury upheld the Missouri ruling. Scott appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States. By then, his case (one of a number of "freedom suits" that foreshadowed Civil Rights battles in the next century) had assumed political implications stemming from a national debate about the fate of slavery in Western territories previously controlled by Mexico.

In March 1857, after eleven years of litigation, the Supreme Court denied Scott his freedom. In a 7-2 opinion, Chief Justice Robert B. Taney ruled that as a slave, Scott was not a citizen of the United States, and therefore had no right to bring suit in the federal courts on any matter. He declared that Scott had never been free, due to the fact that slaves were personal property; thus the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional, and the Federal Government had no right to prohibit slavery in the new territories.

The decision -- which appeared to be sanctioning slavery under the terms of the Constitution -- became one of the Court's most infamous and hastened the Civil War. (We recently enjoyed another day of infamy when the Court, by a 5-4 vote, amputated Al Gore's legs and ensured George Dubya's coronation. As in the 1876 presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic nominee Samuel L. Tilden, Republican graybeards upheld a disputed election -- in the face of the wholesale disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of AfroAmerican voters -- in the sunny state of Florida.)

Before the Civil War, educating AfroAmerican children was illegal.

After the war, slaves and freemen toiled under "black codes." The statutes, adopted by ex-Confederate states, permitted newly-freed blacks to marry, own property and sue in court. They also provided for the segregation of public facilities and placed restrictions on freemen's status as laborers, their rights to own real estate and their rights in court. (The following century, Dutch Afrikaners used the codes as models for South African Apartheid.)

Some Northern states, despite having their own black codes, saw them as an attempt at re-enslavement. As a result, the Freedman's Bureau was created. Its duties included preventing enforcement of the codes, which were later repealed by radical Republican state governments. (The Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice is, in essence, an organizational descendent of the Bureau.)

After the War, Missouri's state constitution approved separate schools. St. Louis stayed segregated until 1955. In 1972, white flight alighted on the "Gateway to the West."

In a lawsuit, attorneys for Craton Liddell alleged AfroAmerican youngsters were trapped inside the St. Louis' under-funded, segregated schools while white children enjoyed bountiful suburban resources. Eight years later, a judge ordered city and suburban school districts to start discussing an inter-district solution. The federal order -- which included a busing provision -- followed an appeals court ruling finding Missouri responsible for educational apartheid.

In turn, Ashcroft -- the state's attorney general from 1977 to 1984 -- ordered his office to contest the court order. The move was viewed as an effort to elicit a protracted court battle. It just so happened he was running for governor and positioned himself -- like Alabama Governor George Corley Wallace before the doors of the University of Alabama in 1963 -- as the candidate best equipped to keep black folk in their place.

At the time, an Ashcroft deputy noted, "When the attorney general drafts a lawsuit on behalf of 10,000 people, because of the power given the attorney general, that is often also very good politics."

("Keepin' the niggers down," as the Randy Newman song "Rednecks" goes, used to be the Democrats' job. In a move to court AfroAmerican voters, however, the "moderate" President Harry S. Truman introduced a tentative civil rights program that included desegregation of the military. Disgruntled southern Democrats, nicknamed Dixiecrats, bolted and formed the States' Rights party, culminating in (now Republican Senator) Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential bid in 1948.

Predictably, the Dubya "administration has been a full partner in the effort to resurrect, legally and politically, the 'States' Rights' philosophy on which the segregationists grounded their opposition to federal civil rights measures. The administration has failed to enforce civil rights laws, reversed previous DOJ positions on some civil rights cases, and nominated judges with troubling civil rights records," charged People for the American Way.

"At the electoral level, Republican Party candidates and operatives around the country continue to engage in a wide range of activities designed to suppress African American voter participation....... The GOP's 'Southern strategy' to build power by encouraging and exploiting a backlash against the successes of the civil rights movement is unquestionably a part of this nation's recent political history," the People noted.

Meanwhile, Ashcroft tried to prevent the federal judge from appointing a state education official to help design an integration plan. Conversely, the judge accused Ashcroft of "extraordinary machinations" to prevent a settlement and charged him with filing "feckless appeals" to further himself politically.

Almost two decades later, Ashcroft told Judiciary Committee members that his opposition was not based on race. "I want to have the opportunity to say with clarity that I do not support segregation," he said. "I support integration." (Ashcroft's assertion serves as counterpoint to Wallace's inaugural speech when he stood in the state capitol and proclaimed: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!")

Instead, Ashcroft's opposition was based on Missouri's having to pay the cost of busing students while not having "been found really guilty of anything." When pressed, he admitted the court in 1980 had ruled the state a "primary constitutional wrongdoer."

Muhammed the Elder: The target is down. Stow the weapon. I'll get us out of here.
Malvo the Younger: Was it a head shot?
Muhammed the Elder: Affirmative.
Malvo the Younger: Another one?
Muhammed the Elder: A sniper doesn't show off, son. You did what you were trained to do.
Malvo the Younger: (mildly disappointed) Yes, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: We'll find a place to bivouac for the night, then prepare for the Operation Family Planning.
Malvo the Younger: Already?
Muhammed the Elder: This is what you've worked for, son. All those hours in the gym, on the range. It's time for my X to pay the piper.
Malvo the Younger: Outstanding.

I Likes It When You Call Me Cool Papa

2005-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

"I'm your mama, I'm your daddy, I'm that nigga in the alley. I'm your doctor when in need. Want some coke? Have some weed. You know me, I'm your friend, Your main boy, thick and thin. I'm your pusherman." -- "Pusher Man," Curtis Mayfield

Snipers John Muhammed and Lee Malvo don't know John Ashcroft is really their Ace Boon Coon. In truth, the United States Attorney General is the kind of who's-your-daddy lover Thomas Jefferson was to Sally Henning; the kind of this-is-going-to-hurt-me-more-than-it-does-you buddy Ward was to Beaver Cleaver; and the kind of I-have-a-dream date James Earl Ray was to Martin Luther King, Jr., all rolled into one.

He's the coolest papa they'll ever have.

Ashcroft has plenty to teach. He boasts religious beliefs beyond the pale. He touts family values and tough love. He cherishes the fatherland. He loves guns and song. And he knows death.

Lord knows, he's had a rough go. Before he became our Number One Gun, he lost a senate re-election bid to a dead man. Sad thing was, Ashcroft was the incumbent. I'll wager Gov. Mel Carnahan chuckled in his grave over that one.

Cadavers may prove troublesome for Muhammed and Malvo (a.k.a., "M & M"), too. If federal prosecutors have their way with them, the well-traveled pair will be convicted of a passel of criminal acts -- subject, of course, to jurisdictional clout and legally expediency -- and sentenced to fry. Lawmen from Washington to Louisiana are rushing to the picnic. Got a case you haven't been able to solve? Throw that log on this fire.

It's been a while since M & M graced newspaper front pages, after weeks of media saturation bombing. To summarize: the 41-year-old former Army infantryman and his 17-year-old "prot?g?" have been linked to 14 shootings in four states and Washington, D.C. Between Sept. 21 and Oct. 22, 2002, ten people were slain and four wounded. M & M have been charged with murder by Virginia and Maryland "authorities" in eight of 10 slayings, including that of Linda Franklin, an FBI analyst from Falls Church, Va.

Malvo the Younger: How about over there?
Muhammed the Elder: Excellent choice, son. Good cover. Multiple avenues of retreat. I'll position the vehicle. You check the supplies. Make sure we have adequate rations and ammunition. We don't want to arouse any suspicions with superfluous movements.
Malvo the Younger: One of the sniper's cardinal rules.
Muhammed the Elder: Very good. Is the weapon prepared?
Malvo the Younger: Cleaned and oiled, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: Outstanding. While we wait, let's review your lesson. Begin with the names of the cabinet members and a description of their duties. When appropriate, I'll supply supplemental biographical information. Attorney general.
Malvo the Younger: John Ashcroft. As attorney general, he has strong influence on presidential nominations for the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court. He sets law enforcement priorities for the Department of Justice and the enforcement of environmental, civil rights, anti-trust matters and oversees the FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, federal prisons, and federal prosecutors.

Baton Rouge, where Muhammed the Elder hails from, is fertile ground for the growing good boys. Its soil is thick with traumatized spirits and unredressed grievances.

In 1699, a French expeditionary team traveling the Mississippi River came across a "red stick" separating the hunting grounds of the Bayagoulas and Oumas Indians. The 30-foot-high maypole was topped with the heads of a bear and several fish. Eventually, the trading post became a regional governmental and industrial center, serving as state capital and ranking number four on the nation's list of major ports. Coincidentally, Louisiana ranks fourth on the top ten list of documented lynchings by state.

Muhammed grew up in the city's northwest corner within a low-income neighborhood known as The Avenues. In 1977, he graduated from Scotlandville High School and joined the Louisiana National Guard the next year. Three years later, he married his high school sweetheart with whom he had a son.

Life in the Guard was spotty. In 1982, he pleaded guilty to disobeying orders by failing to appear for duty and was fined $100. On another occasion, he hit a noncommissioned officer, leading to a conviction and a suspended sentence of seven days confinement. He lost a stripe and was demoted from sergeant.

In 1985, he converted to Islam, separated from his wife and son, and joined the Army. He trained as a metal worker, water-transport specialist and combat engineer. He served near Tacoma at Fort Lewis, in Germany and at Ford Ord, Calif. and the Gulf War. Although not trained as a sniper, he received his marksmanship badge with an expert rating, the highest of three categories, in the use of the M-16.

In 1988, while stationed at Fort Lewis, he married Mildred Green. They had a son and two daughters. He left the Army in 1994 and served a year in the Oregon National Guard. In March 1995, he started a home business, Express Car/Truck Mechanic Service Inc., an automotive repair operation. Customers described him as a good mechanic but an erratic businessman.

He also opened a martial arts school in Tacoma. His partner, Felix Strozier, said the business went well for a while, but that there was a falling out over money that Mr. Muhammad borrowed from the school and did not pay back. "He was manipulative and would do anything to get his way," Strozier said.

Yet Muhammad seemed a solid family man.

"You know, I'm sitting here watching all this stuff about him, and, really, during that time he was just the hardest working guy I ever met," said Leo Dudley, a former Marine. "He would work long hours. If I needed some help on something, if he had the time, he would always come and give me a quick hand. So as a neighbor, he was a really good neighbor." During the five years that they were neighbors in Tacoma, Dudley never saw Muhammad lose his cool.

Meanwhile, the Elder was battling with his first wife over the custody of their son. At the age of 12, the boy went to Muhammed for the summer, converted to Islam and refused to return home until his mother obtained a court order.

Muhammad attended a Seattle mosque but wasn't evangelical. His enthusiasm seemed limited to his attendance at the Million Man March in 1995, where he helped provide security for Nation of Islam leader and march organizer Louis Farrakhan. "When he came back, he told me that it was a great experience and he really enjoyed the camaraderie and the feeling and all that stuff," a friend noted.

His second marriage also began to unravel over what Mildred described as his abusive behavior toward their three children. In Sept. 1999, they separated. She was granted a permanent restraining order barring him from her home, workplace and the children's school or day care facility. In May 2000, she sought to further limit his contact, alleging "physical, sexual or a pattern of emotional abuse of a child."

Even after the restraining order was issued, Mildred said, she was afraid of him. "He was demolitions expert in military," she wrote in a court document. "He is behaving very irrational. Whenever he does talk with me he always says that is going to destroy my life and I hang up the phone."

In Jan. 2001, Mildred filed a court document seeking to waive the requirements that she notify her husband of their children's whereabouts. In a hand-written notation, she claimed Muhammad had abducted the children more than nine months earlier. "At the present time, my ex-husband, John, still has the children," Mildred wrote. "I've been awarded custody of the children. Their whereabouts are still unknown."

By May 2001, Mildred and the children had apparently moved to the Prince George's County (MD), where she worked as a temporary employee at the Department of Justice.

Muhammed the Elder: When we get out of here, I want you to check the oil and water levels. We've been running this hooptie pretty hard since we picked it up.
Malvo the Younger: It's old but cool. I like it.
Muhammed the Elder: I always have liked Chevies. Made in the USA certainly helped out at those three checkpoints.
Malvo the Younger: I can't believe we got such a good price. $250 isn't very much.
Muhammed the Elder: Don't forget the registration fee. That was another fifty-six bucks. And we've spent at least three times as much on gas since we left Camden.
Malvo the Younger: It was nice of Mr. Osbourne to help us out.
Muhammed the Elder: Little Jamaican punk will do anything for a joint. He wouldn't need drugs if he believed in Allah.
Malvo the Younger (hesitates): He seemed nice.
Muhammed the Elder. He'll sell us down the river the first chance he gets.

Ashcroft's father was a minister, as was his grandfather, in the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal church. The Assemblies preach tolerance but consider the Bible literal truth. As such, its members see themselves in opposition to mainstream culture. Ashcroft reportedly holds daily Bible study and prayer meetings in his office.

Do you remember Robert De Niro in the remake of "Cape Fear"? His character, Max Cady, was the son of snake-handling Pentecostals. After his release from prison, the convicted rapist and murderer tracks down his lawyer, Nick Nolte, for a little come to Jesus. Sporting a sweet Cross tatoo on his back, he drowns at the climax, slipping underwater speaking in tongues.

Ashcroft was raised in Springfield, Missouri, in the Ozarks. The city hosts 156,000 residents and is the world headquarters of the Assemblies, as well as of the Baptist Bible Fellowship, the denomination of the Reverend Jerry Falwell (an Ashcroft admirer).

Our Number One Gun captained his high school debate and football teams. He attended Yale University and University of Chicago Law School, met and married a lawschool classmate. After graduation, he returned to Springfield, where he bought the proverbial farm, taught law classes at Southwest Missouri State University and opened a legal practice.

Malvo the Younger: How do you know all this shit?
Muhammed the Elder: What did I tell you about cursing?
Malvo the Younger: It's a lazy man's excuse for not knowing the right word.
Muhammed the Elder: The correct word.
Malvo the Younger: The "correct" word. Where did you get your information from?
Muhammed the Elder: I read his book.
Malvo the Younger: His book?
Muhammed the Elder: It's called, "Lessons From a Father to His Son" but was re-issued as "On My Honor." In it, he describes himself as an upholder of American values. People say he changed some things because he was considering running for president. He doesn't mention that he received several student deferments from the Springfield draft board so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. The Boston Globe reported when he graduated from law school in '67, he sought an occupational deferment for people holding "critical" civilian jobs. Of 35 million men registered with the Selective Service that year, 264,000 received occupational deferments.
He taught business law to SMSU undergrads. He landed the gig through a family connection. His draft board had already earmarked him for induction, and he'd passed his pre-induction physical, but the board reversed itself and granted the deferment.
Malvo the Younger: He's a draft dodger.
Muhammed the Elder: Technically, no. He's like President Bush,Vice President Cheney and other Republicans who mouthed family teats while others worked the fields.
Malvo the Younger: Like us.
Muhammed the Elder: That's correct.
Malvo the Younger: Didn't you fight in the war, dad?
Muhammed the Elder: Served as a combat engineer in the Gulf. Got the Southwest Asia Service Medal, the Kuwait Liberation Medal and the Saudi Arabia Liberation Medal.
Malvo the Younger: Outstanding.
Muhammed the Elder: Can you name the first African-American recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor?
Malvo the Younger: No, sir.
Muhammed the Elder: William Carney, a 23-year-old enlistee in the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, Company C. The 54th was celebrated in the movie, "Glory." Carney, supposedly wounded in three places, saw the flagbearer fall. Still, he got up, ran through a hail of bullets and delivered the flag to his regiment. They keep it in Boston somewhere.
Malvo the Younger: Awesome.
Muhammed the Elder: Darn straight.

Feeling Kinda' Down

2005-05-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling kinda' down lately. Now that I think about it, maybe I'm a little depressed.

My life is filled with disappointments. My wife. My kids. My dog. My job.

Man, things were going so great! A couple of Stanford buddies recruited me into this venture capital firm in Palo Alto. With my grades, I was lucky to scrape through business school. So I thought, "What the hell?" Besides, it beat playing video games.

Anyway, I started making pretty good money, not as much as the other guys but it was alright. I had enough to buy a funky Victorian in San Francisco. And the Carrera made the commute a lot easier. The looks I got sitting on the freeway made me feel really good, you know?

In fact, that how I met my wife. The morning commute was getting nowhere so I thought I'd check my voicemail. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice this woman driving a cranberry Lexus who seemed to be doing the same thing. The first thing I noticed was her phone. It was one of those compact jobs that flips open at the bottom. It had this really cool plastic case that looked like wood.

She finishes her conversation, tosses the phone onto the seat and starts checking her make-up in the rear view mirror. What could I do? It took a couple of miles but I finally got her to roll down her window and give me her phone number. The rest, as they say, is history.

We had a pretty good life. Between the money she pulled in from her law firm, and the cash I was pulling in from the Internet firm my buddies started, we were able to move into a nice place in Woodside. I wasn't as big as my place in the City but we thought it'd be better for the kids. The schools were a lot more user friendly and we didn't have to worry so much about who they were running into.

Things turned sour last year.

It seemed like the right time to leverage my contacts. So I took the three-quarter-million I'd squirreled away and started day trading. I figured, if some 23-year-old, minimum wage schmuck in Missouri could do it, I could. We had a contractor set up a home office in the garage, which we never used. I filled it with some last generation computer equipment that my next door neighbor, Steve, had been playing around with.

The first day out of the blocks, I made ten thousand dollars. By the end of the week, I was up forty-five thousand. Four weeks later, I broke a hundred thousand. The best part was the wife and kids.

It was like we were honeymooners again. She'd call from work and tell me what she was going to do when she got home. Our housekeeper, Trini, was cranking out my favorites. And they kids. Every day after school, they'd dash through the front door, throw their backpacks onto the kitchen table, barge into the office and ask, "How much have you made today, dad?"

It was sweet.

After about eight months, I hit a dry patch. Not too bad a first. Ten grand one week. Fifteen the next. Twenty. Fifty. Seventy-five. I didn't panic. After six months, I was ahead of where I'd started. It was a lesson I needed to learn. You've got to be able to take the bad with the good. The kids seemed okay with it. I can't say the same for the wife, though. It may be her parents more than anything.

Three months ago, I got a tip from another buddy and went for a margin play. He was really apologetic afterward. He told me some of his clients were really pissed off. I was stunned. Ten years of savings down the drain.

I don't feel like I have anyone to turn to.

I'm sure the guys at the firm would be glad to bring me back on board but I'm not sure I could handle the looks, especially after the big send-off they gave me. The wife's been talking about quitting the firm to start a consulting business. I just haven't had the heart to burst her bubble and I'm not sure the kids can handle public school.

Kinda' down lately, ya' know. Now that I've opened up about it, I'm sure it's just depression. Think I'll shoot me somebody.

###

Tom Delay: King of the Zombies

2005-05-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

When archeologists pick through the rubble of American Empire, they will no doubt find a score of silver coins embossed with the face of Tom Delay and inscribed "King of the Zombies." Indeed, the dishonorable Representative from the failed State of Texas will assuredly become an object of great intellectual curiosity as future scholars attempt to unravel his role in the rise and fall of the Cult of the Undead.

If fortune smiles upon them, these gravediggers will stumble upon the tomb of Terri Schiavo, who after enduring 15 years in a coma, was raised up by the High Priest of Extermination to become mute oracle to legions of unborn babies, brain-dead soldiers, infirm elderly and malnourished poor. In the manner of ancient Egypt, her crooked body will be encased in Knoxian gold, her organs preserved in sacramental jars.

Barring the discovery of a Rosetta-like stone, scavengers will be unable to decipher the religious texts accompanying the sarcophagus. Unread will be the biography of the Florida woman suffered extensive brain damage when her heart stopped briefly, afterward remaining in a "persistent vegetative state." Unappreciated will be the contention about removing a feeding tube that kept her alive, the estrangement between her husband and her parents, and subsequent court battles.

Similarly unintelligible will be the hieroglyphics of 21st-century American politics. Never read will be the accounts of Republican lawmakers who seized her inert body for their own ends. Senatorial compliance -- and Democratic cowardice -- will remain a mystery, lost forever to the ages. Invisible will be the divine inspirations of the born-again President who defended the wife who lived "at the mercy of others."

Lost among the canon will be sanitized history of House majority leader Delay, thereafter crowned "King of the Zombies," and his struggle to safeguard the sanctity of half-life. Hymnals recounting battles on behalf of vampiric financial giants, planet-killing oil companies and junkie defense contractors will go unsung. His stalwart guardianship of the death penalty will remain uncelebrated.

Unexplained will be the saga of a legislative cabal held in the dark hours of Easter Sunday -- while God-fearing folk celebrated the Resurrection -- during which a handful of bribed mouthpieces postured for television cameras and uttered platitudes about "heart-wrenching" decisions and "the rule of law." Never understood will be the rationale of these free market Cardinals to once again shackle the will of The People.

Sadly, the 20 silver coins will be unsullied by grasping hands of citizens transmogrified into consumers. There will be no record of their descent into madness, their march toward oblivion. There will only be the face of Tom Delay; bug-killer cum statesman cum warrior priest.

Long live the King.

###

Spawn of Mo-Hee-Kin

2005-05-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

"MILLIE AND JILL"

I can't remember whose idea it was, to get rid of her. I mean, it could have been Millie. Maybe Jill's. Neither one had been eating. Both of 'em had been in a bad way for quite a while. Quite a while. I did the best I could but couldn't shake 'em out of it. They just had a taste for blood, if you know what I mean.

I told 'em it was a bad idea. I really did. I mean, there were a hundred reasons why it wouldn't work. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Besides, homegirl was in New York and we was in California. How the hell were we going to get to New York? No way we could afford that. We were barely scrapin' by as it was. Shit, we could hardly afford coffee every mornin'. You know what I mean?

We were all goin' crazy in the van. It was fixed up pretty good. Had a nice twin mattress. Plenty of blankets and pillows. Lots of books and magazines. A little refrigerator. The stereo was workin' real good.

The girls love listenin' to Hendricks and Creedance, you know. The old shit. Love for me to crank it up real loud. Don't matter if it's early or late or whatever. The louder, the better. Just crank it up and kick back. The sound literally makes the van's metal shell vibrate. You can feel it in your bones. Sometimes, it rattles your teeth, it's so loud.

We'll be in there, me drinkin' my coffee, and they'll be dancin' and singin', hoppin' around like Indians around a fire, like some kinda war dance, all crazy and happy and delirious. Man, I love to watch 'em dance. Millie's not quite as good as Jill but she's close. Jill, she can really shake it.

One time, we were --

"Objection, your honor. Please direct the witness to answer the question."

"Objection sustained. Mr. Jefferson, please stick to the essentials. We needn't hear a recitation of the history of indigenous dance. We are interested only in how it was that you came to be a party to a conspiracy to commit murder."

I understand, your honor.

"Good. If you insist on representing yourself, you will have to conduct yourself as an officer of the court. That entails adhering to the facts as defined by the law. Am I making myself clear?"

Yes, your honor, clear as blue sky.

"Excellent. Proceed."

As I was sayin', your honor, I don't remember whose idea it was exactly. Just, it was obvious that somethin' had to be done. I mean, every time we saw homegirl on TV...We had one of those little Sony's in the van, you know the kind that operate on batteries?

Every time we saw her -- we watched damn near every day -- she was interviewing some big-time actor or big-time politician or big-time whatever. Grinnin' and shufflin' around the stage, makin' a fool of herself. And us. How the hell are we gonna get any respect with all that shuckin' and jivin' on national TV?

I know she's rich and everything but Jesus H. Christ. She spends half her time clownin for the white man, no disrespect, your honor, and the other half apologizin' for the governor or the president or some CEO or CFO or whatever "O" she's suckin' up to that day. It's a joke. Damn woman's got a book club that'll make or break a writer but acts like she doesn't read a newspaper, bad as they are.

To get back to the "essential facts," your honor, me and the girls decided she was really no different from Reagan. Another clown. I mean, this guy was nothin' but a face. A smilin' face that made people feel warm and fuzzy while they was gettin' fleeced. I don't care how many books or best-sellers or movies they write about him...the only people who had it good when he was in office were his friends and the campaign donors that paid to get him there. What do you call them? I can't remember the word...Contributors. That's it.

So the deal was this. If that dude Hinkler or Hinky or whatever his name was could get his shit together enough to drop Reagan, then poppin' homegirl couldn't be all that hard, even though, like I said, there were a hundred reasons why it was a bad idea. Just not difficult.

I don't mean to brag, your honor, but I was a master craftsman in the Nam. I mean, everybody said there were few cats as gifted as I was. And I got the hardware to prove it. Uncle Sam done patted my head on plenty of occasions, you know what I mean?

Yeah, people trip sometimes when they find out I'm livin in a van next to I-80 but what the fuck? I ain't humpin' no house note. I ain't drivin' two hours, one-way, to some dumb-ass job in Silicon Valley. I ain't radiatin' my nuts in some lab for some geek boy who spends his weekends racin' in some friggin' rih-gah-ta. I ain't got no numskull kids in some fancy french-speakin' school with their noses so high they can't smell the shit in the street.

Even those jerk-offs standin' outside of Peet's all morning, pontificatin' about current events, know I ain't no joke. They can yack all they want to about "freedom" and "democracy." But I'm the motherfucker -- excuse my language, your honor -- that gave it to them.

To make a long story short, we got lucky, although I guess it depends on how you look at it. One day we read in the paper that homegirl was comin' into San Francisco for a fund-raiser for abused children or somethin'. Ain't that a bitch? There was also some stuff about plans to attend some fancy-ass party for the new governor, that Hollywood motherfucker whose ass she so happily kissed a few months ago.

It was like the universe was talkin' to me, tellin' me This Is It. Fourth quarter. Game on the line. Last shot. Time to make somethin' happen. So I did. I stood up. I told the girls, "Gimme the friggin' ball." I was The Man.

The night before, I had this weird-ass dream. It musta' been that chicken burrito from Don Juan's over on Solano Avenue. I swear to God they drag their meat fresh from the alley in back. It's cheap but sometimes the price of gas is a bit high, you know what I mean?

Anyhow, I'm back in-country at this sidewalk cafe, chillin', smokin' a Camel, sippin' sweet chai and watchin' the world go by, or more precisely, the foxy ladies in their Ao Dais and Non Las. White parasols are spinnin' over their shoulders. The sun is shinin' and everythang is everythang.

I see this Suzuki comin' down the street. Sittin' on the back, if you can call it that, is none other than homegirl wearin' lime green flip-flops, Ho Chi Minh pajamas, slingin' an AK with two banana clips. Wrapped around her head is a red bandanna over mirrored sunglasses and shit-eatin' grin.

The 125's weavin' through traffic, dodgin' Howard Johnsons -- those pushcarts dudes selllin' iced fruit and chicken feet -- edgin' toward the cafe. Bein' no newbie, I respectfully decline the invitation to my own funeral, slide out of my seat and tip over the table. Bein' butt naked, the best I can hope for is a little luck and cover.

As she swings past, I can hear Rick James singin': Super freak, Super freak, she's really freaky. Dahn, nah, nah, nah...dahn, nah, dahn, nah. The music gets louder and louder and the sun turns into this sparkling disco ball and everybody's dancin' except me 'cause I'm on the floor lookin' like a complete asshole.

Needless to say, when I woke up, I was a bit out of it. To be honest, that wasn't the first time, so I told the girls we'd just have to suck it up and take care of business. It wasn't nothin' that a few minutes of Zazen couldn't take care of.

So I lay chilly for a while in the van. I was so deep into it I could hear fat raindrops rattlin' palms fronds and feel the jungle mist brushin' my cheeks. At oh-seven-hundred, we slid two clics north to Peet's. One of the sidewalk philosophers, I think his name's Jason, was goin' on and on about Haiti and Aristide and "It ain't right" and "What makes us think we know what's best" and all that other Berkeley bullshit.

I listened for a bit. Said nary a word. Just stood there, noddin' while he and another speed freak rattled their gums. The whole time, the girls are kickin' back in the van, listenin' to NPR, peekin' and grinnin' through the window. They knew it was just a matter of time.
When I'd had enough, I downed my Java and said, "AMF." As I slid onto the front seat, I heard some beer-belly who used to be a professor of Near Eastern studies -- whatever the hell that is -- say, "What'd he mean by that?" I admit my estimation of Jason went up a notch when he correctly interpreted my meanin' as "Adios, motherfuckers."

The girls got a good chuckle outta' that one.

At oh-seven-thirty, we headed down University and got on the freeway toward the The City, as those cell-phone blabbin', SUV-drivin' prisses call it. What the hell does "The City" mean? What about Tokyo or Hong Kong or friggin' Saigon?

"Excuse me, your honor, but is any of this leading anywhere?"

"Sit back down and take, as the accused might say, a chill pill, Ms. Harris. Under the circumstances, I'll grant a bit of leeway. I doubt the people's case will be harmed by a full, if somewhat colorful, rendering of the events on the day in question. Please continue, Mr. Jefferson."

Thanks, judge.

Like I said, before being' so rudely interrupted, we spent thirty-five minutes bumper-to-bumper crossin' the bridge and at least another twenty crawlin' through downtown toward the Hotel Nikko. If I'd been thinkin', I woulda reconnoitered the week before when I visited Marty. He stays at the Rusty Arms up the street But we had a few hours before homegirl was scheduled to show and I figured there wouldn't be a whole lot of security.

Parking's a bitch down there. None of the meters last more than thirty minutes and there's no way I'm forkin' over twelve bucks-an-hour to some city-owned lot. I didn't want the girls to get bored so I took 'em with me to reconnoiter the area where the party, excuse me, ball, was supposed to happen.
We walked a four-block grid, checked out the traffic lights and streets -- most of em' run one-way in that part of downtown -- mapped out an escape route, with back-up, I might add. It was all strictly by the book. No clownin'. No joke. Straight business.

We didn't have much trouble except with this punk kid. He and a couple of his boys were comin' down the street, baggy pants droopin' 'round their narrow behinds, tank tops sproutin' skinny arms like bare branches.

The kid, he couldn't a been older than seventeen, is walkin' this puppy. Maybe eighty pounds. Black studded collar. Sweetest face you've ever seen. But the kid's goin' up and down the street scarin' folks, like he's got a dick on a leash.

When they came up on us, the puppy's jumpin' and barkin' and flashin' his teeth, makin' a big fuss. The kid's barely got a grip on the situation but he's standin' there grinnin' like he's a Bad Man. Folks on the sidewalk are too terrified to walk around and the girls aren't too happy either.

So I give him the death stare and, I swear, I can feel the pucker factor expand geometrically. You could almost hear the sucking sound as the air molecules rushed into that black hole inside those droopy drawers. Not wantin' to completely humiliate him, I kneel down and give the puppy a peck on the nose. Like I said, he was a sweet little guy.

After that, the girls had an attitude and didn't feel like helpin' out. So, I dropped 'em off at the van and went to Marty's. From there, I went up to the roof, then crossed over three buildings to the middle of the block opposite the hotel. The spot was a low so I set up a small blind. To anybody watchin', I was just another bum searchin' for a warm spot in the sun.
A couple of hours later, homegirl arrived and stepped her big butt out of a block-long limo. It was like a side of the barn wearing a dress. There was not way to miss. One shot. Very clean. Sarge woulda' been proud.

I broke down the gear and humped back to the van. Everything was stowed away and the girls started yappin' about bein' hungry. To be honest, I think it was the rush, if you ask me. They were so juiced. They didn't know any other way of handling it than to eat.

No way they were gettin' into the van and back across the bridge, as planned, until they got their munchies. So that's what we did. We musta' been five blocks from the hotel when we found a falafel stand. The girls love falafels so we stopped and got three. There was no place to sit down, no bench or anything, so we found an empty spot on the side of the building. I think it was a bank 'cause there was an ATM machine not far away.

I didn't see the heat walk up. I must' been talkin' to Millie. Jill saw him, though. Like I said, she had that taste of blood in her mouth. When I looked around, she was tearin' him a new asshole. He was yellin' and cryin'. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was pissin' in his pants.

Before I could get her off him, he'd pulled his weapon and fired. When I saw her layin' there, those big brown eyes lookin' all hurt and confused, that hole in her neck...I just lost it, I guess.

But I had no intention of shooting him, your honor, despite what the other officer said. I got too much training to lose my cool like that. A pistol-whipping was really all I had in mind. You can tell that by the bruises in the photograph, excuse me, 'People's Exhibit Eleven.'

The bottom line, your honor, is I have no problem doin' the time. In fact, I'm glad to do it. I did three tours in the Nam and I'll do my tour here at home. Shit, that cell can't be any smaller than the van, right?

I just wanna make sure Millie don't have to pay the bill for a meal she didn't eat, if you know what I mean. I'd really appreciate it if you could find it in your heart to make sure she finds a safe place to stay. She doesn't need to be locked up in some kennel somewhere starvin' before some asshole decides to put her to sleep.

She doesn't deserve that, your honor.

-- THE END --

Last of De' Mo-Hee-Kins (Part V)

2005-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

ASTA LA VISTA, BAY-BEE

''Well, I'd say there's peace even in war -- for war satisfies all needs, even those of peace; yes, they're provided for, or the war couldn't keep going -- war is like love, it always finds a way. Why should it end?''

The protagonist of Bertolt Brecht's play, "Mother Courage and Her Children," is a scrabbling profiteer riding the tidal wave of the Thirty Years' War. Moving from battlefield to battlefield, she peddles bullets and linen, famously earning her moniker after maniacally driving a supply wagon through the bombardment of Riga to keep the 50 loaves of bread from get moldy. Ultimately, she proved less adept at protecting her three children.

As barren icon, Oprah peddles a warm and fuzzy freedom designed to amuse and comfort trusting children while Machiavellan grown-ups attend to gay marriage, foreign occupation and the price of oil. Her lessons on civic responsibility focus on emotional obstacle and personal journeys. Her version of political life springs, fully-formed, from myth.

Prior to the wholesale, judicially-approved theft of Millennium presidency, she gave George Dubya Bush a chance to present his store-bought bona fides to American soccer moms in sore need of male solace and masculine reassurance. Guided by a "higher calling," this 21st Century Aunt Jemima presented to her audience of 22 million the smiling face of the New World Order.

Trailing badly in the polls, the teary-eyed, would-be Kingfish blathered about his hard-drinking twins, professed devotion to wife and God, and set straight a messy misconception that the perpetual glad-handing, chronic failure was "running on my daddy's name. That, you know, if my name were George Jones I'd be a country and western singer."

Oprah even gave Dubya a chance to show his smarts, or at least to cover his dumbs. Answering a question about what it was like to be considered a dunce at prep school, Yale and Harvard, he bravely replied: "Eventually, I realized smarts are not only whether or not you can write well or whether or not you can do calculus, but smarts also is instinct and judgment and competence."

"I've got a lot of experience," he continued. "I'm well educated. But I'm certainly not the kind of person who talks down to people because of my education. ... You can't inspire and unite by thinking that you're smarter than everyone else."

Comforting words for children trapped in dysfunctional schools -- You, too, can grow up to be president; all that's required is the price of a ticket. At least he could say Calee-fouhn-ya.

After candidate Bush appeared in her television studio, republican operatives were as happy as brothers in loose-fitting shoes. With the simple act of "celebrity-kissing" the black-faced totem, Dubya trumped the Democrats' homie' factor in one fell swoosh. Capitalizing on Gore's state media-manufactured "low Negro tolerance level," Dubya shucked and jived his way into Oprah's -- and America's -- cotton panties, rendering invisible tried-and-true Republican race-baiting a la Willie Horton and Wilma the Welfare Queen.

Among the worldly, cigar smoking contingent, the kiss proved less important than its placement on national television rather than inside a broom closet or motel room. Sitting in plush leather chairs, sipping Kentucky bourbon, red-cheeked plutocrats lolled back their heads and savored the latest lap-dance, every so often grunting in appreciation for Oprah's commendable deference.

As for Herr Gropen-Fuhrer, he is now an unquestioned member of the ruling elite. While he awaits a constitutional amendment sanctioning the ascent of a foreign-born president, he will assume certain responsibilities, not the least of which is to bloody his hands on state gallows, light incense (and contraband cigars), and offer up bundled tokens of appreciation to national deities.

Like Bush before bedtime, we expect the newly-minted governor to kneel before a altar, prominently displayed, atop which sits a carving made of the blackest ebony. This statue, surrounded by fragrant candles, flower petals and a modest glass of dark rum, is of a naked, seated African. In one arm she cradles a baby. With her opposite hand she squeezes out the miraculous milk from her breast, empowering the infant with the power to realize his personal version of the American Dream.

The words of this sacred ritual will be whispered in no more than 100,000 households across the country. Ever modest, the womenfolk will maintain respectful distance behind their pumped-up household lords. And, in the silence of midnight, America's golden cash register will contentedly chime as sacred payment wends its way toward HarpoLand.

###
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SOURCES

"Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," Marilyn Forn-Foxworth

ibid

"Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima," M. M. Manring, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998

The "real" Aunt Jemima distributed her life story as a pamphlet and through advertising vignettes in popular magazines. James Webb Young, an "adman" exploited the loves, hates, and aspirations of the target market: white female housewives eager to please their husbands and experiencing servant problems. During the early twentieth century through the 1920s, the advertising industry connected her image to the antebellum southern ideal of racial order and white leisure. (ibid)

ibid

Advertising Age places Aunt Jemima at number seven on its Top Ten list of trademarks, coming right after the Pillsbury Doughboy but before The Michelin Man (Rondald McDonald reigns supreme). The marketing bible notes that "beginning in the 1950s, the Aunt Jemima logo started coming under criticism that its image of a black 'Mammy' in a kerchief was an outdated and negative portrayal of African-American women. During the 1950s and '60s the trademark was gradually modernized, with the most recent changes being made in 1989. "Today, Aunt Jemima's face beams from beneath a full head of dark hair -- sans kerchief -- but her sparkling eyes and warm smile remain the same."
(http://www.adage.com/century/icon07.html) Another source says she "still kept the traditional attributes of warmth, quality, good taste, heritage and reliability but discarded the bandanna and kerchief for a simple attractive look including gray-streaked hair and pearl earrings. Her character now looked more like the white counter part of Betty Crocker." (http://www.tvacres.com/admascots_auntjemima.htm)

ibid ("Slave in a Box....")

Madame C.J. Walker speaking to the National Negro Business League's 1912 Convention (http://www.madamecjwalker.com)
First told in the Kansas City Star, the story was later recounted in Ms. Magazine. (http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.historychannel.com/cgi%2Dbin/frameit.cgi%3Fp=http%253A//www.historychannel.com/exhibits/womenhist/bios%5Fhtml/walkercj.html)

During her 52-year lifetime, Walker contributed substantial sums to promote black education (particularly for women), encouraged black businesses, supported homes for the aged, and aided anti- lynching legislation. Her favorite causes included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Colored YMCA of Indianapolis, and the National Conference on Lynching. She also befriended many famous black leaders of her era and generously supported their efforts, among them Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute, Mary McLeod Bethune's Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls, Lucy Laney's Haynes Institute, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown's Palmer Memorial Institute. Meanwhile, she built a school for girls in West Africa. When the National Association of Colored Women appealed to their membership for donations to pay off the mortgage of the late abolitionist Frederick Douglass's home, Walker made the largest contribution. At the group's 1918 convention, she proudly held the candle that burnt the mortgage papers. (ibid)

American History Illustrated

In a story reminiscent of Bill Gates' early appropriation of Windows technology, an employee of Madame CJ Walker?s empire, Majorie Joyner, invented a permanent wave machine. This device, patented in 1928, curled or "permed" women?s hair for a relatively lengthy period of time. The wave machine was popular among women white and black allowing for longer-lasting wavy hair styles. Joyner went on to become a prominent figure in the industry, though she never profited directly from her invention, for it was the assigned property of the Walker Company. (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blwalker.htm)

Theme from "The Jeffersons," a spin-off of Norman Lear's "All in the Family," the showappeared on CBS television from 1975 to 1985 and focused on the lives of a nouveau riche African-American couple, George and Louise Jefferson. George Jefferson was a successful businessman, millionaire and owner of seven dry cleaning stores. He lived with his wife in a ritzy penthouse apartment on Manhattan's fashionable and moneyed East Side. The Jeffersons lead lives that reflected the trappings of money and success. Their home was filled expensive furnishings; art lined the walls. They even had their own black housekeeper, a wise-cracking maid named Florence. The supporting cast consisted of a number of unique characters including neighbor Harry Bentley, an eccentric Englishman who often made a mess of things; the Willises, a mixed-race couple with two adult children--one black, one white; and, the ever-obsequious Ralph the Doorman, who knew no shame when it came to earning a tip.(http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/J/htmlJ/jeffersonst/jeffersonst.htm)

www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/win0bio-1

In 1987, its first year of eligibility, the show garnered three Daytime Emmy Awards in the categories of Outstanding Host, Outstanding Talk/Service Program and Outstanding Direction. The next year, it captured another Emmy for Outstanding Talk/Service Program with Oprah garnering "Broadcaster of the Year" Award. She was the youngest person and the fifth woman to receive the honor it the 25-year history of the International Radio and Television Society.

Phil Donahue, when Oprah received an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement

The Georgetown University professor's article was part of a package celebrating Oprah's place as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century

ibid

Ah-nald to Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1996

So dubbed by Garry Trudeau, creator of the "Doonesbury" comic strip

"The Frame Around Arnold," by George Lakoff, AlterNet, October 13, 2003

"Pumping Iron," 1977, quoted in Esquire Magazine, March 1985

Ah-nald to Rolling Stone, June 3, 1976

Ah-nald to Rolling Stone, June 6, 1976

According to "Arnold Built Vast Financial Empire ," NewsMax.com Monday, Aug. 11, 2003, Ah-nald holds "a significant ownership stake" in Santa Monica-based Dimensional Fund Advisors, which manages $40 billion. Its clients are primarily corporate and public employee pension plans, including the California Public Employees Retirement System.

ibid

The former Democratic vice presidential candidate and head of Peace Corps, a quaint organization catering to idealistic 60's youth looking to help downtrodden natives in faraway lands. http://www.askmen.com/men/mar00/15c_arnold_schwarzenegger.html

James Sterngold, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct.. 13, 2003

"I hate pants. This is something I have inherited from my father. He despised pants, and my mother was never allowed to wear them at home. We're talking about a different time period now, when the man was much more the ruler of the house. But I still feel that way, and neither my mother nor Maria is allowed to go out with me in pants." Ah-nald to Playboy, January, 1988

"Sometimes (press freedom) gets carried away at the expense of the country...If there's a problem within a political system, I feel it should be solved in the same way as a problem within a marriage: In the privacy of you own four walls. You don't go out and tell your neighbors and the press and everybody." Ah-nald to Penthouse Magazine, December 1981
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/15/arnold/

"The Birth of the White Corporation," Jeffrey Kaplan, By What Authority, Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 2003

ibid (Reunion and Reactions: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction, C. Vann Woodward, Oxford University Press, pp. 208-09)

ibid (Reconstruction and Reunion 1864-88, Vol. 2, Charles Fairman, Macmillan, p. 584)

ibid (Everyman's Constitution: Historical Essays on the Fourteenth Amendment, The "Conspiracy Theory" and American Constitutionalism," Howard Graham, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, p. 417)

ibid (Graham, p. 423)

ibid

"Wal-Mart Actions Call for Increased Scrutiny," by Neal Peirce, Published on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 by the (MN)Twin Cities Pioneer Press

ibid

"Up Against the Wal-Mart," Jonathan Tasini

"Upstairs/Downstairs: Disturbing Disparities In Wealth And Privilege," by Arianna Huffington (http://www.inequality.org/upstairsdownstairs.html)

San Francisco Chronicle, Carla Marinucci, Oct. 9, 2003

ibid

Ah-nald to Playboy, January, 1988

San Francisco Chronicle, James Sterngold, Oct. 13, 2003

ibid, San Francisco Chronicle, Carla Marinucci, Oct. 9, 2003

Seth Sutel, Associated Press, Oct. 9, 2003

"Wal-Mart nixes 'Uncovered,' " http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/2004/03/001818.html

"CNN: Spinning PR Into News," Zachary Roth, March 22, 2004

"Costco staff collect signatures for workers' comp initiative," Kate Folmar, San Jose Mercury News, March 30, 2004

"Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush," by Jim Rutenberg, May 5, 2004

ibid

Lady With a Calling: Oprah Winfrey, Time, August 8, 1988

The autobiography "Dust Tracks on a Road" by Zora Neale Hurston, as referenced in the Howard Zinn essay, "Just and Unjust War" in the book entitled, "Declarations of Independence"
http://www.oprah.com/books/favorite/books_favorite_main.jhtml

"THE WOMAN WHO WAS MAMMY," by Dibri L. Beavers

ibid

ibid

ibid

ibid

ibid

Other actresses who maid their livings playing domestics included Hazel Scott,Ruby Dandridge, Theresa Harris, Lillian Randolph, and Ethel Waters. The contract also explicitly confined McDaniel to mammy roles profitable to Selznick, according to the documentary film entitled, "Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel "

ibid

ibid

The documentary "Beyond Tara..." notes that White "offered Hollywood a more acceptable alternative to Hattie as a star, the (light-skinned) Lena Horne." With the NAACP behind her, Horne was able to write it into her studio contract that she would not play a maid.

"Mother Courage," Bertolt Brecht

ibid Time

Associated Press, http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/94/22/01_6_m.html

ibid

In "George W. and Oprah," Timothy Rollins contrasts Gore's french-kissing his wife Tipper with Dubya's "celebrity style" peck on Oprah's cheek. The two acts alleged underscored the latter's greater comfort with women "who look for that in a candidate." Rollins goes on to "tip his hat to Oprah for showing the then-governor "the appropriate respect" and for not engaging in "any pit-bull tactics in her asking of questions" and for conducting "the interview with a certain dignity that seems to be totally absent in so many of the other talk shows." (http://www.american-partisan.com/cols/rollins/092100.htm)

Last of De' Mo-Hee-Kins (Part IV)

2005-05-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

For all its ghostly power, Aryan Enterprise cannot exist without a proscribed number of little people. Sadly, they sometimes forget themselves. When such tragic events occur, corporate fathers liberally apply the tips of steel-toed wingtip shoes.

Within the bantustan called Wal-Mart, restless natives not long ago were pounding drums of envy and hopping around a bonfire of self-pity. Nearly half of the 1.4 million member tribe earns less than $15,300 a year, the federal annual poverty income for a family of three. Newcomers make an estimated $6.25 to $8 an hour. Every year, half a million flee, screaming, into a Jobless Desert.

Heeding encouraging words from corporate overseers, Wal-Martians often seek food stamps, apply for the federal government's Earned Income Tax Credit and turn to state governments for child support payments. As for health insurance, art-time workers must wait two years; full-timers six months. Besides high premiums and deductibles, tribe members must swallow a plan that doesn't even cover child vaccinations. Nearly 700,000 get coverage from government or spouses' plans.

Meanwhile, the widow and four children of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton comprise -- so sayeth corporate scripture in Forbes Magazine -- the richest family on the planet. The bones of aborted labor unions, lavish tax holidays, sweatshop-made goods and supercharged public relations/lobbying campaigns have risen into a breadloaves worth $20.5 billion for each of the aforementioned family members. Simultaneously, the company (with sales of $259 billion) has remained perched atop the Fortune 500 list three years running.

America, it seems, loves low prices more than workers' rights (Wal-Mart employs more than 70 people full-time to break union organizing efforts) or gender equality (the company faces the largest sex discrimination case in history with perhaps 700,000 plaintiffs who could be owed billions of dollars). (In 2001, company CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. snatched more than $17 million in total compensation while employees in 30 states alleged managers forced them to punch out after eight hours, then keep working for free. )

During the early days of Ah-nald's gubernatorial campaign, Princess Shriver graced one hamlet (of 1,512 retail stores, 53 "neighborhood markets," 1,344 Supercenters and 528 Sam's Clubs) on the Wal-Mart bantustan. To her great shock, her garments were soiled when she wandered too close to the natives.

For several weeks, the Princess stumped across the Golden State, telling largely female audiences "ten things you don't know about Arnold." On this occasion, the natives were unimpressed. Their boos forced a hasty "rush through protesters." Later, chastened "campaign insiders said the lesson was learned, and never again was (the Princess) subjected to such treatment," in the future shielding herself from reporters' questions and calling sexual harassment allegations "gutter journalism."

A "secret weapon" with women and Democrats, the Princess played a leading role in hubbie's campaign. This emancipated was granted despite Ah-nald once opining: "I hate pants. This is something I have inherited from my father. He despised pants, and my mother was never allowed to wear them at home. We're talking about a different time period now, when the man was much more the ruler of the house. But I still feel that way, and neither my mother nor Maria is allowed to go out with me in pants."

Following the Leno appearance, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer stumbled while trying to answer the errant, if infrequent, substantive question. Standing by her man, Shriver "put her foot down" and demanded that campaign focus "less on celebrity and more on the hope" hubbie offered "in contrast to grim problems under (incumbent Governor Grey) Davis."

The Princess also "engineered another media coup," his appearance on Oprah. Acknowledging her media smarts, a campaign spokesman said of Shriver, "She understands this process both behind the camera and in front of it."

The day after Herr Gropen-Fuhrer's coronation, scribblers on newspaper business pages wondered whether his political ascension boded well for Bay Area capitalists. Heretofore mute campaign issues -- such as California's $10 billion budget deficit, its Third World credit rating, $27.5 billion of outstanding government obligation bonds, anemic unemployment insurance program and crippled workers' compensation protections --re-emerged from the mists of public unconscious as topics worthy of critical examination.

The born-again hand-wringing added little to the proceeds of divination. Uttered in Arabic and Japanese, leaves of tea and lines drawn in the sand stayed unintelligible. Easier to understand was a below-the-fold account of the wondrous powers granted to NBC as it merged with entertainment giant Vivendi Universal, the French conglomerate hell-bent cornering the world market in fresh water.

Henceforth, the reconstituted unit of General Electric Co. (masters of the universe and manufacturers of mushroom clouds) will be known as NBC Universal. With a paltry $13 billion in annual revenue, the conglomerate will still be considered puny compared to Time Warner Inc. ($41 billion) and Walt Disney Corp. ($25 billion and owner of ABC, the network on which Oprah's smile can be found). Still, clutched within its invisible hand are the Universal movie and television studios, 14 local TV stations, various cable networks including USA, CNBC, MSNBC (co-owned by Microsoft Corp., Bravo and Spanish-language Telemundo), and five theme parks (one for each of the titan's fingers).

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart flexes its constitutional rights, freely espousing censorship (by denying distribution of Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War"); CNN propagates the corporate theft of healthcare (by distributing Department of Health video news releases touting extortionist Medicare legislation); and Costco conscripts cowed cashiers (bolstered by a gubernatorial celebrity appearance) into gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to weaken already anemic workers' compensation benefits.

Not to be outdone, Disney bolsters its brand as protector of family valuables, sweeping under a flying carpet importunate observations of the dynasties Bush, Saud and bin Laden. Currying favor and protecting tax breaks (in sunny Florida where presidential brother Jeb Bush plays "Bull" Conner and governor), Mousekexecutives have determined shareholder interests are best served by hamstringing distribution of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" rather than being "dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle."

HEAD HANKY IN CHARGE

As Head Hanky In Charge, Oprah's market appeal looms as massive as her backside. Each day, silver pieces in hand, advertisers and pitchmen journey to her dimly lit temple to loiter in shadows and await their turn to make offerings. In bowels of communion, sitting or kneeling on woven carpets and marble floors, the Blessed bathe in incense, candlelight and muskrat love.

In the heat of the afternoon, the dusky Delphi of the New World Order comforts the materially afflicted with tales of palsied children, idiot savants and elephantine chocoholics, all the while eliciting thankful wails and crocodile tears. For the length of the sermon, base considerations are swept under the rug of "we're all in this together." During the inevitable encore, a barefooted Oprah fields post-production questions about divine celebrities of the day.

Back home, safely ensconced within millionaire mansions and white houses, governors and would-be presidents rest assured in the certainty that on the frontiers of television there exists neither danger of ruffled consciences nor semblances of political awareness.

As it is written, Oprah harbors no illusions about her deepest, darkest obligations. "If other people perceive me to be representative of black people in this country, it is a false perception," she has claimed. "The fact that I sit where I sit today, you can't deny there have been some major advances. But I'm still just one black woman."

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

Another media star, Hattie McDaniel, exercised a fraction of the freedom Oprah enjoys. The youngest of thirteen children, she endured an era bereft of social pretense, one where black- and poor-folk knew their place. And those who forgot were quickly, and violently, reminded.

How unlikely that Hattie, like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," would ride a twister of her own making, fly far from her native Kansas and ultimately land in Hollywood where, in 1939, she became the first AfroAmerican to win an Academy Award. Even Hattie, the face of "Mammy" in "Gone With the Wind" and countless other film classics, tried to kick up more dust than Oprah.

But, then, controversy isn't good for a homegirl's career.

One doubts, for example, that Oprah's favorite love story of all time, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," would be listed on her steroid-laced book site if the author were not already dead. It is impossible to imagine her calling a U.S. president a "monster" and "Butcher of Asia," recalling Harry Truman's "grin of triumph on giving the order to drop the Atom bombs on Japan. Of his maintaining troops in China who are shooting the starving Chinese for stealing a handful of food." More predictably, Oprah touts a protagonist who plows through two decades of abusive relationships before finding true love with a man who "teaches her to open her heart to the world."

Yet Hurston's era, especially the decade of the 1930s was "the golden age of the black servant." Indeed, "no other period in motion picture history would see as many black actors cooking, cleaning, carrying, kowtowing, and cutting up -or getting steady work. There was little long-term success to be had playing a role beyond the stock servant."

Schooled in minstrel shows, Hattie McDaniel tramped around Colorado, alternately performing and working as a domestic before getting her "big break." In 1920, one of Denver's most popular AfroAmerican musicians, "Professor" George Morrison, hired her as a featured performer with his traveling "Melody Hounds." During that same decade -- and foreshadowing Oprah's experience -- McDaniel became the first black person to sing on Denver's KOA radio station.

She kept working with black vaudeville troupes.

In 1929, after a touring production of Show Boat went belly up in Chicago, she landed a gig at Milwaukee's Club Madrid. Despite auditioning as a singer, she was hired as the ladies' washroom attendant. Her lavatory arts spurred patrons to lobby for a promotion.

"Legend has it that she got her chance on a particularly slow night. McDaniel took the stage and belted out a rousing "St. Louis Blues" that got a standing ovation from the sparse crowd. People started coming to the club just to hear her sing, and what began as a lucky shot stretched into a successful two-year run." In 1931, she followed her siblings to California, arriving with a cheap purse, $20 in cash and a lucky rabbit's foot.

The foot didn't help McDaniel much either. After visiting several studios, and running short on cash, she took a job as a domestic. Finally, she landed a radio gig, playing the cook in a sketch entitled "Miss Ann's Kitchen."

McDaniel soon had her own show. On Friday mornings, listeners tuned in to The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour "starring Hi-Hat Hattie McDaniel." (Her popular on-air nickname was earned after she showed up for her first broadcast dressed in a formal gown. The other cast members teased her about trying to act high-hat, and the name stuck.)

Still, the five dollars she got for her weekly performance weren't enough to live on, so she had to continue working as a domestic. In 1932 and 1933, she won several bit parts. Receiving no screen credits, she always played a maid, house servant or cook. In 1934, she got her first credited role playing Aunt Dilsey in "Judge Priest" with Will Rogers.

As the decade progressed, she became a regular screen presence.

She appeared with Hollywood's biggest stars: Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (The Little Colonel ,1935), Katharine Hepburn and Fred MacMurray (Alice Adams ,1935), and Irene Dunne and Paul Robeson (Show Boat ,1936).

"Although she was cast as subservient, she did not present herself that way. Her sassy, offhand delivery, rolling eyes, and exasperated expressions often made it seem that she, instead of her white mistress or master, was in charge.....Hattie's brashness caused some white moviegoers to complain to the studios that the actress was too uppity."

Her attitude -- as seems always the case -- served as focal point for a larger debate.

As president of the NAACP, Walter White during the 1930s continued a practice -- one that started with protests of racist stereotypes in "Birth of a Nation," D.W. Griffith's 1915 "film classic -- of calling upon the major studios to replace grinning, darky stereotypes with more positive images of black folk on the screen. White's harshest criticism fell on those who played demeaning roles. Sadly, McDaniel was a frequent target (In words echoing delineating class and skin-tone lines, she called White a spiteful, meddling hypocrite and a "one-eighth Negro" who resented dark-skinned AfroAmericans.

Not surprisingly, the filming of "Gone With the Wind" garnered a lot of attention in segregated communities that in the previous decade debated Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement and the merits black nationalism. Many organizations sent letters to Selznick International, calling Margaret Mitchell's novel, upon which the screenplay was based, "anti-Negro." Some community leaders opposed making any film version. Others appreciated the economic and cultural benefits available to those who would participate in such an important production.

"As the controversy raged, the film's producer, David O. Selznick, auditioned more than a hundred black performers for the five major servant roles.

Among the several actresses trying out for the role of Mammy, Louise Beavers was the front-runner, with Hattie McDaniel, who was favored by Clark Gable, a close second. Beavers, who had given a moving performance as the long-suffering Aunt Delilah in Imitation of Life, was the best-known black actress of the day, and industry insiders were certain she'd win the role of Mammy. She showed up for her audition decked out in her finest furs, but the flashy display put Selznick off. McDaniel, on the other hand, arrived in period costume, looking every inch the antebellum Southern mammy. After hearing her read a few lines in the thick Georgia accent she had acquired for the audition, Selznick canceled the rest of the tryouts and signed McDaniel to a $450-a-week contract.

Selznick wanted to remain as faithful to Mitchell's book as possible, but he had to deal with the author's liberal use of the words nigger and darky, which had also been written into Sidney Howard's original script. The NAACP, an unofficial "adviser" on the film, and the principal black actors -Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen, and McDaniel -pressured Selznick to remove the language. He compromised by deleting nigger but leaving in darkies and inferior.

Gone With the Wind was a box-office sensation. The critics praised not only Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, but also Hattie McDaniel for her stellar performance as the feisty, loyal Mammy. As Oscar time approached, Selznick became sure she would receive an Academy Award nomination. Even though most black newspapers had panned the film for its suggestion that blacks had actually enjoyed slavery, and some had even called for a boycott, the Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier ,and Baltimore Afro-American all ran stories promoting McDaniel's Oscar nomination. The Academy's voting members obviously agreed and made her a candidate for Best Supporting Actress."

Before McDaniel, no AfroAmerican had ever attended the Hollywood ceremony. Seated at a table in the far rear, she was the first who wasn't a cook or a waiter to be granted entrance into the Ambassador Hotel's Coconut Grove ballroom. When her victory was announced, to cheers and a standing ovation, she mounted the stage and, in a speech written by the studio, told the Academy: "I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything I may do in the future," she said tearfully. "I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion-picture industry."

After winning the Oscar, McDaniel rode a wave of approval that resulted in her appearing in more than 20 movies during the next decade. At the height of her success, she had earned enough money to buy a 30-room mansion in an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood known as Sugar Hill. Unfortunately, she was forced to file a lawsuit (which ultimately went to the Supreme Court) when a group of white neighbors tried to enforce a restrictive covenant.

During the WWII era, with AfroAmericans debating how to express patriotism while living under American apartheid, Walter White's crusade against "mammyism" reached its apex. As a correspondent in the Far East, he reportedly encouraged segregated troops to write letters of protest against Hattie. For an active USO entertainer, a member of the Hollywood Canteen and supporter of the war-bond effort, the letters cut deep.

Moist fingers to the wind, post-war Hollywood began realizing if it wanted AfroAmerican dollars, plantation films would have to go. Wary of race-based controversy, studios dumped scripts and black parts wholesale. Casting directors balked at hiring proven moneymakers, even the beloved Hattie.

Last of De' Mo-Hee-Kins (Part III)

2005-05-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

WHO'S YOUR DAH-DY

"If I'm not controlling my image, then who is? People always push things in the press; they want to be seen as a serious studio executive, as a smart businessman or as a sensitive artist. Politicians do it all the time; everyone tries to create an image of themselves."

Compared to flapjacks and hotcombs, selling Schwarzenegger (a.k.a. Black Plowman) was a breeze.

Hailed as the latest exemplar of the American Wet Dream, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer and his blitzkrieg on castle of Oz was a marketing campaign worthy of William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Goebbels or Ruport Murdoch. Hucksters, propagandists and spinmeisters framed the would-be governor gilded rectangles highlighting an "up by his bootstraps" sort of Regular Joe ("just a celebrity") grudgingly willing to lead a "voter revolt" of "kooky Californians" to "beat the politicians."

The second son of a Nazi -- and an ardent admirer of Adolph Hitler -- he was birthed in an Austrian log cabin. A sickly child, he was often the brunt of cruel jokes, even enduring muscular bullies kicking sand in his face. Yet he always dreamed "of very powerful people, dictators and things like that...I was just always impressed by people who could be remembered for hundreds of years, or even, like Jesus, for thousands of years."

While in grammar school, Herr Gr?pen-Fuhrer "had this incredible desire to be recognized. Whenever I watched television or film I always put myself up there on the screen and said, 'How would it be if people looked at me?' "

One has to admire a Terminator who knows his limits.

Like Steve Reeves, the 1950s television star who played Superman, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer slammed a few steroids and pressed himself up against the weightroom in an epic effort at supersizing. With messianic zeal, he cleaned and jerked fistfuls of Mr. Universe, Mr. World and Mr. Olympia titles before mounting a now-forgotten steed and heading for Paradise. Making short work of barbarians, aliens and androids, he turned to charitable causes, despite a distaste for the untermensch, "you know, the low class."

Meanwhile, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer slashed and burned his way to a capitalist empire conservatively estimated at $200 million. His battled tactics included taking evening business courses at UCLA and acquiring a correspondence course bachelor's degree, leasing jets, buying into a mutual fund investment company , and gobbling up shopping malls and other Santa Monica real estate. "He's not a Terminator when it comes to how he handles complex situations. He's more an analyzer than a Terminator," noted one Los Angeles real estate attorney.

Along the way, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer married into America's plausibly deniable aristocracy, sweeping off her feet princess Maria Shriver, progeny of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargeant Shriver, blood kin to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, short-lived president, ghostly lord and master of Continental Camelot. With social and corporate pedigrees complete, he turned his attention to righting the listing cruise-ship of state, sacrificing short-term personal profit for long-term community benefit, explaining, "I would rather be Governor of California than own Austria."

Initially billed as immaculate misconception, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer's used late-night television to pry apart the legs of the governor's mansion. As Jay Leno rubbed his crotch and waited for sloppy seconds, Ah-nald mounted a punchdrunk Calee-fouhnee-ya aching for anybody but Grey Davis. Completing the circle-jerk, Republican aparatchiks hooted and howled, ultimately acknowledging a political campaign designed to never meet the press, but instead to pander to entertainment media "with vague messages and movie style- sound bites" tailored to focus group concerns."

Vacuum-pumped by talk-radio, Ah-nald's virility swelled to mythical dimensions as he manned the walls of freedom to beat back the undeserving hordes. From Sacramento to San Diego, grid-locked SUV pilots cheered on cries for equal protection against the shadowy vagaries of modern civilization. Swinging the rhetoric of bruised populism like Excalibur, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer severed the grasping limbs of union bullies, welfare cheats, Indian gamblers and ungrateful immigrants.

Rejuvenated by his Herculean struggle, Ah-hald then strode like Colossus into the boudoir of girl-talk television. As his loving spouse (golden cross fixed conspicuously beneath her thin neck) languished at his side, talk-show's Grandest Madame offered up her supplicant audience to Herr Gropen-Fuhrer's favor. Never one to shrink from an occasion, he plunged into an oh-so-willing ocean of flabby hearts and minds.

Sure as shootin', Ah-nald gave the ladies what they wanted. Edging them away from the feckless ideal of an free and open press , he kissed away decades of misogynist braggadocio about drugs and group sex, whispering comforts about the bombastic blathering of youth.

Yes...yes...here was a time when he considered working out better than sex, but that was no longer true. As for those nasty rumors about sexual assaults....well, the subject was simply not worthy of discussion. What mattered was how he felt. What mattered was that he cared. What mattered was that it was them -- those giggling, adoring enablers that Oprah enthusiastically proffered -- whom he truly loved.

As Herr Gropen-Fuhrer stroked his way through his electronic harem, Shriver occasionally lifted an Armani scarf to dab the sweat from his brow. If, in the throes of passion, his manly roars became to loud, she reached over and covered his mouth, saying, "My mother is watching this show. My mother is watching this show. My God." Dutifully taking note, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer paused in mid-stroke to leer into the camera lens and address his absent mother-in-law: "I understand. Wherever Eunice is, don't pay any attention."

The morning after, help-mate and spent platitudes in hand, Herr Gropen-Fuhrer tip-toed over the strewn garments of democratic conceit, punctiliously avoiding unseemly issues of crumbling schoolhouses, deregulated energy, state-of-the art prisons, "off-shored" jobs, and invisible healthcare. Such untidiness was best left to the help.

Lord knows, if Oprah's anything, she's helpful.

IN THE BIG HOUSE

To work the Big House of Corporate Capitalism, servants must have impeccable manners and unrivaled discretion. Besides knowing the proper placement of forks, knives and spoons, an intimate understanding of the tastes and predilections of masters and mistresses must also be cultivated.

Meanwhile, a slavish appreciation of the perquisites of power -- and the ranks of privilege -- is also required. All people, it is understood -- the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding -- are not created equal. Mortals must never be confused with corporations.

Dutiful help recognizes the corporation's face, like that of Jesus, as blue-eyed, white and male. As historical construct, this anthropomorphitization of Enterprise as Aryan Godhead is recent. Not surprisingly, it has been squeezed, like lemonade, from the sour gains of the less-endowed.

In the wake of the Civil War, triumphant northern capitalists used newly-enfranchised slaves to, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, "guard property and industry" until southern resources could be secured with white capital. "The capture was complete by 1877 when the capitalists brokered a deal over a contested presidential election whereby federal troops were withdrawn from the South in return for a promise by the Southerners to become junior partners to the Northern capitalists."

This end to Reconstruction paved the way for the wholesale transference of political rights from the lowest to the highest class.

"The Supreme Court gave its approval to the new social order in 1883 when it declared the Reconstruction-ear Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. Frederick Douglass declared that this decision by the Court 'inflicted a heavy calamity upon seven millions of the people of this country, and left then naked and defenseless against the action of a malignant, vulgar, and pitiless prejudice.' He yearned for 'a Supreme Court of the United States which shall be as true to the claims of humanity as the Supreme Court formerly was to the demands of slavery!' "

After consolidating political power, Northern Enterprise overcame a legal system oriented toward individual rights by personifying an organization necessary to consolidate control over an evolving industrial system. Arguing before the Supreme Court, Roscoe Conkling (a former U.S. Senator who had served on the congressional committee that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment protecting the rights of former slaves) claimed that, according to his copy of the committee journal, the original intention was that the amendment should apply to corporations and human beings.

The journal had not been published at the time the case (San Mateo v. Southern Pacific Railroad) was being heard and the justices did not question his account. Decades later, the journal was published and showed Conkling's claim was, as a modern authority on the history of the Fourteenth Amendment put it, 'a deliberate, brazen forgery.' "

In time-honored fashion, Conkling and other lawyers representing railroad robber barons lied and appealed to white racial solidarity. In 1883, Silas W. Sanderson argued, "It is very clear, if we look back over the history of the past twenty years, that this country has done a great deal for [members of] the negro race...It has made them free men...it has placed them on par and equality with the white man....we do not complain of that.

"We only say that something should now be done for the poor white man. We ask that he...be lifted up with the level of the negro...that this fourteenth amendment be so construed as to concede to the white man equal rights ...with the black man. Our claim is for universal equality under the law."

As this corporate lineage demonstrates, "...the modern corporation was not to be just any kind of person; it was to be -- it had to be -- a white person, a white person created by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations in direct opposition to the aspirations of African Americans to live their lives as human beings."

Last of De' Mo-Hee-Kins (Part II)

2005-05-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

GRANNY

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground"

Before Oprah, as Aunt Jemima reincarnate, planted the grinning Harpo flag atop the icy summit of Mount Kapital, Madame C.J. Walker straightened her kinky self into a social force of a less accommodating nature.

The legend of Sarah Breedlove, a.k.a. Madame Walker, begins in 1867. The daughter of emancipated slaves, she was orphaned at seven years of age, scrabbled in the cotton fields of Delta, Louisiana and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and married at fourteen to escape her older sister's abusive husband.

When her own husband died (from unexplained causes common to black men of the era), the young widow two years later ventured to St. Louis, joining four barber brothers. Working as a laundrymaid, she pinched pennies and shepherded her daughter, Lelia, through segregated public schools. She got mixed up with a local radical group called the National Association of Colored Women.

Breedlove also started losing her hair.

Like many black women of the era, she went to great lengths to straighten her hair in an attempt to ape white folk. Typically, she'd parse her hair into sections, wrap string tightly around them, twist the bundles, then vigorously comb out the flattened curls. Not surprisingly, the procedure put undo strain on the scalp.

Turning lemons into lemonade, she started tinkering with home remedies. An adept marketer, she told one newspaper, "One night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it."

In 1905, she became a sales agent for Annie Malone (another AfroAmerican entrepreneur who stumbled into history's dust bin) before moving to Denver to join her recently widowed sister-in-law (another mysterious death). Meanwhile, she perfected her "Wonderful Hair Grower." Other products later included "Glossine," "Temple Grower" and "Tetter Salve."

The next year, she married Charles Joseph Walker. A newspaperman, he created advertising, promotional and mail-order campaigns for her products, marketing them through AfroAmerican publications. The short-lived marriage also resulted in a brand name -- the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Walker's business philosophy was unashamed --- the best way for black women to gain access to the transformed marketplace was to look "acceptable." Slaves could be slobs; freemen could not. Anticipating the transformative powers of modern consumer products, Walker's mix of potions and polstices hoisted rural women from dusty cotton fields into tidy enclaves of burgeoning bourgeoisie.

Living in a dark, pre-radio, -television and -Internet age, she hawked her wares one neighborhood at a time. Targeting segregated communities in the South and Southeast, she sold door to door, gave demonstrations, and developed a successfully body of sales strategies.

The foundation of her marketing plan was a comprehensive product line. Its structure was comprised of a disciplined, motivated sales force known as Walker Agents -- always dressed in uniforms of white blouses and long black skirts -- trained in Walker Schools. Like Avon Ladies and Mary Kay Associates of later generations, these women grabbed the brass ring of financial opportunity.

Once they were making money, Walker pressed them to give back to the community. She organized them into clubs for business, social, and philanthropic purposes, stimulating their activities and fostering prestige by offering cash prizes to the most generous clubs. Delegates from local clubs attended national conventions at regular intervals to learn new techniques and share business experiences.

"I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation...The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business enterprise," Madame Walker told National Negro Business League delegates in 1913.

At a stop in Pittsburgh in 1908, she opened a branch office and Lelia College to train her "hair culturists." Two years later in Indianapolis, she established a national headquarters to take advantage of the city's central location and transportation facilities for her new factory. Eventually, her products formed the basis of a thriving national corporation employing more than 3,000 people (the largest black-owned business in the country) with nearly $500,000 in annual revenues.

In 1919, after suffering from high blood pressure and hypertension, and, ultimately succumbing to kidney failure, Walker bequeathed two-thirds of her estate to charitable and educational institutions. Her daughter, Lelia, received the remainder, along with the company presidency.

TAR BABY

Well, we're movin' on up (Movin' on up)
To the East side... (Movin' on up)
To a deluxe apartment in the sky...
Movin' on up (Movin' on up)
To the East side... (Movin' on up)
We finally got a piece of the pie
-- "Movin' On Up"

Oprah's scramble up America's social ladder is pixel legend

Sired in Mississippi backwoods, reared on a farm by her grandmother, this billionaire bastard began her "broadcasting career" reading to aged, more than likely female, church-goers. At six years of age, she fled, Harriet Tubman-style, north to her mother's Milwaukee household. After masculine abuse, she escaped, only to be sent to a juvenile home.

Alas, there was no room at the Innsbruck.

The thirteen-year-old was sent down the river to Nashville. Forced to live with a disciplinarian father, Oprah suffered midnight curfews and demands to read and write a weekly book report. "As strict as he was," she later said, Vernon Winfrey "had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best."

A lonely child, Oprah found solace in books. While in seventh grade, she was spied reading during a lunch-break. Touched, the observant teacher landed her a scholarship to a "better" school. With a flair for performance and an ability to respond in complete sentences, she began winning local beauty contests.

Crowned Miss Fire Prevention, she marched into WVOL radio. The good-old-boys, no doubt tickled by the sight of the sassy 17-year-old, thought it would be a hoot to have her read something. Miraculously, she was hired. Two years later, the historically-black Tennessee State University sophomore became Nashville's first female and first AfroAmerican news anchor.

After graduating -- and capturing the Miss Black Tennessee title -- she followed the Drinkin' Gourd north to Baltimore. Like other black folk, she was deemed ill-equipped for the WJZ-TV information society. She cried when stories were sad; laughed when they were funny, and, generally, mangled the mother tongue. After two years -- and hair loss resulting from a botched permanent by TV makeover experts -- the failed journalist was cast out into the cold and sleet of "People are Talking."

Naturally, Oprah found the pony in the shit-pile.

After eight years, she took her early-morning magic to WLS-TV. In the time it took to whup Phil Donahue upside the head with a curling iron, she turned "AM Chicago" into a television phenomenon. In 1985, the expanded, one-hour therapy session was renamed the "Oprah Winfrey Show." A year later, it went national and became the number one talk show in syndication.

A gracious competitor, Donahue later told her, "More than a great star, you are a 20th century political figure. Your good works have touched all of us." He does not sing alone. Another fervent member of the chorus of praise is Deborah Tannen. In an article celebrating the century's brightest lights, she praised Oprah as "a beacon, not only in the worlds of media and entertainment but also in the larger realm of public discourse."

The secret, Tannen wrote, was the electronic return (reminiscent of the George Clinton and the Funkadelic's "Mothership Connection") to African-inspired matriarchy. The cultural movement was best exemplified in the transmorgrification of the talk-show format from male "report-talk" to female "rapport-talk," a "back-and-forth conversation that is the basis of female friendship, with its emphasis on self-revealing intimacies." In essence, America's afternoon Big Mama "turned the focus from experts to ordinary people talking about personal issues."

"Girls' and women's friendships are often built on trading secrets," she explained. "Winfrey's power is that she tells her own, divulging that she once ate a package of hot-dog buns drenched in maple syrup, that she had smoked cocaine, even that she had been raped as a child. With Winfrey, the talk show became more immediate, more confessional, more personal. When a guest's story moves her, she cries and spreads her arms for a hug."

Oprah also makes a mean fist.

In Speilberg's "The Color Purple," she championed oppressed (read white) womanhood. Surrounded by misogynists, rapists, playboys and buffoons, she battled the tyranny of (read black) men and triumphed over hearth and home. Her strutting, grammatically-challenged Sofia captured the imaginations of conservative and feminist alike as they rushed into the flabby arms of comforting misogynist stereotype.

Later, Oprah recounted the wonder of landing the part and making the movie, noting, "It was a spiritual evolvement for me," she said. "I learned to love people doing that film." America loved her back with an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award.

Like a bottle of Dom Perignon, the movie launched her voyage of discovery. By the time Oprah arrived in the New World several years later, she'd become queen of the HARPO Entertainment Group (which includes HARPO Productions, Inc., HARPO Films and HARPO Video, Inc.), owner of her talk show, a television and movie producer, and logo for what former President Bill Clinton dubbed the "Oprah Bill," establishing a national database of convicted child abusers.

Meanwhile, the Black Madonna stumbled upon the continent of publishing.

She started an on-air book club that created instant best-sellers and earned her the National Book Foundations 50th anniversary gold medal for service to books and authors. She also became a partner in Oxygen Media, Inc., a cable channel and interactive network marketed to women. Her accumulated treasure -- which included a $50 million "bag lady fund" in ready cash -- assured a place in the aristocracy of Forbes' Magazine 2003 billionaire list.

Still, like Aunt Jemima, Oprah remains a solo act.

Despite adoring fans, the convertible Jaguar, designer clothes, high-style hairdos and a three-bedroom condo on Lake Michigan, pale-faced minions remain her closest friends. Comprising this "tight-knit" group are a handful of primarily 20-something producers and assistants, mostly white, who revere Oprah "as a combination sorority sister and guru." Debra DeMaio, executive producer, considers herself "very destined to have met" Oprah, adding, "I have pretty much unconditional love for her."

Last of De' Mo-Hee-Kins

2005-05-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

"As American as apple pie, baseball and Aunt Jemima."

LAST OF DE' MO-HEE-KINS

Contrary to modern mythology, nothing so nourishes as milk from a black woman's breast. Andro, sterroids, human growth hormones and Up Your Gas (ephedra) are for pumped-up pussies. Winners -- smile for the camera -- choose Oprah.

Unfortunately, there just ain't enough to go around.

The result is most of America's well-heeled must make do with flaxen-haired Scandinavians and ruddy-faced Guatemalans. The handkerchief-headed mammy -- vacuum-sealed inside a glass case and opened only in cases of dire emergency -- is reserved for the ruling elite, that one percent of our classless society fingering forty percent of its wealth.

From it government-licensed perch, the television priesthood instructs MezoAmerica that demonic welfare queens are no longer fit to birth or raise children. Instead, herds of crack babies wander through dusty plains of foster care. Simultaneously, pagan juveniles and promiscuous n'er-do-wells provide fodder for the erstwhile justice system and privatized prison industry. A handful of genetic freaks do time in the NBA, NFL and MTV Raps.

Yet the outlook stays bright for the Bushes and Schwarzeneggers.

Looking for an edge against slanty-eyed competitors? Need a dose of kryptonite in the fight against evil regulators? Workers grumbling about subsistence wages and diminished purchasing power? Emancipated wife too busy, too tired, too whatever?

Get thee to Oprah.

She's sassy, brassy, saucy and soulful. Got bosoms, booty and mouth by the bowlful. A pat on the back or a kick in the butt, she's the onliest gal that can bust that nut. A marvel, a wonder, a spiritual force. She's magical dust for The Man on White Horse (and the old lady 'll love her).

Born and bred in the old/new south, she's got good home trainin'. She has the right character and the correct disposition. She possesses good, old-fashioned, anybody's-but-her-own family values. And she needn't be told her virtual place is in the home.

She knows her job is to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. She'll make everything O-K. Overweight? Bunions? Bad hair? No account man? Her, too!

Just pick up the package, follow directions -- read a book; thumb O magazine; do some yoga; watch pederasts cry; fondle Freedom's broad chest; be transported to a land of milk, honey and virgins where children never whine, menfolk don't cheat and ladies are willingly assaulted.

An old adage says, "The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice." America been berry, berry good to Oprah.

BIG MAMA

For a coon's age, ad men have spun the bugaboos of sex and race into gold. In the late-nineteenth century, the big-lipped face on the coin of the realm belonged to Nancy Green, a 59-year-old household domestic and former Kentucky slave. By the time she died, Green had become the country's first living trademark and made fortunes for her supposed corporate benefactors.

In 1889, newspaperman Chris L. Rutt happened to hear a minstrel sing a ditty called "Aunt Jemima." Like all things Black-faced in America, the jingle proved quite popular. Rutt and a partner had recently purchased the Pearl Milling Company. With great enterprise, they pilfered the song title for a newfangled, ready-mixed pancake flour. Sadly, they went belly up before they could cash in. Another opportunist, R.T. Davis, scavenged their effort, ultimately finding a spokesperson for the product toiling in the home of a Chicago judge.

By all accounts, Green was attractive, friendly, and a great cook. A good storyteller, her ability to project a warm, appealing personality made her the ideal Aunt Jemima. (Dressed in a billowing dress, rumpled apron and broad bandanna, the image of the fat, hardy and asexual black woman served for more than a century as one of several cultural counterbalances the "delicate, pure, ultrafeminine southern woman of the Old South." )

In 1893, the handkerchief-headed debutante sidled into the American Parlor at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Standing beside the world's largest flour barrel, Green demonstrated the wonders of self-rising pancake mix, keeping up lively conversation while making and serving thousands of pancakes. She was so popular that baton-wielding policemen were assigned to keep enraptured crowds moving past the exhibition booth.

Straddling his wondrous black war elephant, R.T. Davis captured more than 50,000 orders for his here-to-for unknown product. Fair officials proclaimed Green "Pancake Queen," magnanimously awarding her a medal and certificate for showmanship. No fool, Davis signed Green to a lifetime contract and initiated a series of cross-country sales tours. In all likelihood, Davis rode first class while Green (a la Plessy v. Ferguson's "separate but equal" doctrine) languished in Jim Crow.

Foreshadowing Oprah's marketplace clout, Aunt Jemima's fame guaranteed giant arrival billboards at every promotional stop. Riding a theurgical wave of industrialized manufacture and state-of-the art advertising, her face was a widespread as that on national currency. When bag containers yielded to cardboard boxes, she remained on the label. (Before the invention of Aunt Jemima, most Americans bought flour only during lean winter months. With the pitches that pancakes were no longer exclusively for breakfast, Davis' cutting-edge promotional campaign encouraged year-round sales.)

By 1910, Aunt Jemima was recognized in all 48 states, more famous than robber barons and presidents, garnering enough popularity to attract trademark infringements. The Model T equivalent of the Name Brand, she appeared in movies, on product labels, was molded into magnets and figurines, and internalized by legions of cartoon-watching children.

(Another adman, James Webb Young, exploited the anxieties of white female housewives experiencing servant problems yet eager to please their husbands. During the early twentieth century through the 1920s, the advertising industry connected Aunt Jemima's image to the antebellum southern ideal of racial order and white leisure. This image was spread throughout the south and north. Whites who had never seen an AfroAmerican got indoctrinated through Mammy.)

Eventually, a cash-strapped Davis passed on the Aunt Jemima Mills -- and its valuable brand name -- to the larger Quaker Oats Company of Chicago. Green, meanwhile, worked as spokesperson until the day she died, ultimately struck by a car speeding through Chicago's Southside in 1923.

Cheerful celebrants at Adweek and Advertising Age neglect to note who, if anyone, stood crying as Aunt Jemima was lowered into an open grave. More important than the prospect of her economically stillborn progeny is the template of Black Woman as corporate chattel. Devoted. Obedient. Able. Willing to set aside selfish concern for principles larger than self to the benefit of boards of directors, shareholders and the greater corporate good.

Statement of Purpose

2005-05-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

In the new millennium, African bodies no longer contain the wealth of a nation. Still, their essence, their souls, remain a staple in the economy of ideas. Their value as symbol retains historical and cultural currency. These essays weigh that value in the American marketplace.

Sitting cross-legged like an ancient trader of Persian rugs, I attempt to balance current events and politics against dusky figures serving as points of collective reference. Currently, these conceptual weights include snipers John Muhammed and John Malvo; media maven and political huckster Oprah Winfrey.

Coming soon to a theater near you -- shadow statesmen Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice; ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand-Aristide; and the eunuchized Wayans Brothers as cross-dressing FBI agents.

As the door closed on the 20th Century, devotees of the digital age crowed technology had rendered moot the material world. Bricks and mortar had given way to a virtual reality unfettered by rhyme or reason, proscribed rules or out-dated definitions. While this kingdom has yet to come, the analogy is a useful one.

In modern America, mind overcomes matter while style trumps substance. With a handful of exceptions, the bulk of Afro-America has similarly devolved into symbols. Names and faces change to protect the innocent yet the outcome is inevitable.

On the evening news, MTV Raps, pealing billboards or Martin Scorcese's "Blues," we are Rorschach's fashioned by psychologists, wielded by pitchmen, flashed before focus groups, carefully calibrated to maximum effect.

As in the good old days, we exercise scant control over our collective and aesthetic fates. Nature or nurture becomes, to paraphrase Duke Ellington, a question without a future. Instead, our destinies are left to others as they wage cultural war.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch aptly demonstrate what one is in America remains less important than what one is not. What better method of self-determination than to stay seated, bowed and fixed on one's shadow?