Media help boost felon’s presidential hopes

Posted on June 28, 2024 by oddmanout215

From Salon:

The presidential nominee of one party is a convicted felon, a business failure, an adjudicated rapist in civil court who paid off a porn star and advocated grabbing women by their pu**y if you’re a celebrity because you can get away with it and like it. Is there any condition under which such a candidate should be taken seriously for the office of president? That someone IS speaks volumes about the corruption inherent in our system.

Mainstream news outlets were in their glory this week as they prepped viewers for Thursday’s Biden-Trump debate. Weirdly, much of the advance coverage came in the form of “how-to” stories. CNN ran this online article: “How to watch Thursday’s CNN Presidential Debate.” USA Today served up a similar story. The ever-helpful New York Times offered this: “How Can Biden Win the Debate? Trump? Five Tips for Each Candidate.”

Is this the best they can do? One of the candidates, Donald Trump, has spent years falsely accusing Democrats of stealing the 2020 presidential election. He lied about his role in encouraging a mob to storm the Capitol in an attempt to prevent certification of the election results. He knows he lost the election but has tried to convince various courts to nullify the results.

And yet the mainstream media continue to pretend that Trump is a normal candidate. That he “should be taken seriously for the office of president,” as the Salon writer put it.

“Quit whining,” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said as I listed examples of negligence in media coverage of the presidential race. “The media ain’t the enemy. Their job is to cover debates the same way they cover ballgames — who won, who lost, who’s got momentum.”

He was making me angry. “We’re not talking about a ballgame. The media should be reminding voters that one of the candidates rejects the Constitution and would ignore it if he got back in power.”

The TV networks are the worst of the lot, I told him. During and directly after the debate CNN’s moderators should have called out Trump’s lies, as the Associated Press did today. Biden does not want to raise our taxes “by four times.” While president, Trump did not have “the best environmental numbers ever” — the opposite is true. Nancy Pelosi did not oppose the use of the National Guard during the Jan. 6 riot. Again, the opposite is true. Pro-choice advocates are not calling for abortions “after birth,” whatever that means. Trump did not preside over “the greatest economy in history.” When he left office, the economy was a wreck. Biden did not call African Americans “superpredators.” Immigrants are not causing a nationwide increase in crime. Violent crime in this country is actually decreasing. And that’s not even the half of it…

“Settle down,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Biden stretched the truth a couple times, too. Besides, the peeps don’t care about facts, they care about appearances. It ain’t the media’s fault that Biden sounded feeble and looked like he was gonna keel over. It ain’t their fault the stupid Democrats wanted an 81-year-old guy to be their nominee.”

Maybe not, I told him. But it is their fault that, once again, they’re helping legitimize the most villainous and dangerous presidential candidate in American history.

And that’s no lie.

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Climate-change glass is half-empty — and leaking

Posted on December 31, 2023 by oddmanout215

So what are we supposed to make of the end-of-year stories regarding the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28)? Mainstream media outlets, desperate to put a positive spin on the event, chose to call it a success even though the deal reached by the participating countries recommends “transitioning away from fossil fuels” but doesn’t directly call for a phaseout of those fuels. 

Washington Post put on its happy face and said the COP28 delivered “a historic deal” and “an unlikely breakthrough on fossil fuels.” A New York Times story announced that “the world agreed to move away from fossil fuels.”

But in another Times article, the science writer David Wallace-Wells noted that “The question isn’t about whether there will be a transition, but how fast, global and thorough it will be. The answer is: not fast or global or thorough enough yet, at least on the current trajectories, which COP28 effectively affirmed.” 

Wallace-Wells included this reminder:

Not very long ago, this was a future that terrified us — the world beyond the goals of the [2015] Paris agreement looking tremendously bleak. Now, we are not just coming to accept that future but, in some corners, applauding it as progress.

“Pretty damn nu-anced, ain’t he?” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said. “I think he’s saying this is one of them glass-half-full, glass-half-empty situations. Depends on how you look at it.”

“Give me a break. The glass is half-empty, and it’s leaking.”

I pointed to concluding remarks by the president of COP28, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, who congratulated himself and other participants “who came and made the COP a success.” Meanwhile, the United States continues to be the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, and China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, continue expanding their coal industries.

And Al Jaber, the head of the UAE’s state oil company, continues to make oil and gas deals with any and all countries that want to jump on the oil barge with him.

It’s probably not on his list of favorite words, but you have to admire the Al Jaber’s chutzpah.

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Jingle this: the 2023 alt-Xmas playlist

Posted on December 26, 2023 by oddmanout215

My neighbor Swamp Rabbit looked puzzled when he checked out my Christmas playlist. “What’s up, Odd Man? I ain’t never heard most of them tunes.”

“That’s because you only get to hear the standards, and most of them suck, ” I said.

I told him I just got back from working an outdoor event where a dozen-or-so Christmas standards were wafting through the sound system, over and over. “Little Saint Nick” followed by “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” followed by “All I Want for Christmas Is You” followed by “Holly Jolly Christmas,” and so on. Stick a fork in them, they’re done. I left as early as I could.

“What you got against “Holly Jolly Christmas?” Swamp Rabbit said. “Burl Ives sounds like Santa Claus.”

I made a face. “He sounds like a serial killer. Mariah Carey and Andy Williams are worse, I’ll grant you that, but my point is why play the same crap every year when there are thousands of Christmas songs. Why can’t we just toss out the corny ones?”

He looked at me funny. “You should have that Mr. Grinch song on your list. You remind me of him sometimes.”

Footnote: Two favorites on my 2021 playlist — “Christmas in the Ghetto” by James Brown and “Run Rudolph Run” by Chuck Berry — were left off this list to make room for other oddities. Merry Christmas Week, and may peace be upon your head!

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Climate deniers, lobbyists pollute COP28

Posted on December 8, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit and I were reading news stories about the COP28 summit, where some attendees from around the world are seeking solutions to global warming but many others are just spreading misinformation.

I clicked on a NY Times article and said, “Here you go, this pretty much sums it up.”

Climate activists like Greta Thunberg were targeted by Chinese state media, which accused Thunberg of calling for an end to the use of chopsticks and denounced her as a “Swedish princess” after she pushed for more emissions reductions from China. 

Back in January, Thunberg had looked at the setting for this year’s COP — Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, a major oil exporter — and decided to skip it. She figured the fix was in.

Good call.

Before the politicians and diplomats even got to Dubai, they were fighting over whether to “phase out” or merely “phase down” fossil fuel usage. Many of them say they’re committed to stopping “unabated” fossil fuel usage, but that essentially means they won’t oppose fossil fuel companies that vaguely commit to using carbon capture and storage techniques to offset the pollution they cause. The fact that capture and storage technology is outrageously expensive and far from being perfected doesn’t seem to bother them.

COP28 is a huge event — 84,000 attendees — infested with lobbyists set on protecting the interests of fossil fuel companies and the countries that sponsor them. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and other sincere advocates of wind and solar energy are caught in a bind. They must either play ball with the countries that will use loopholes to avoid full commitment to fossil fuel alternatives — the United States is one of them — or give up on the idea that the world can reach the goal of net zero fossil fuel emissions by 2050.

Kerry was recently put in the awkward position of having to make excuses for Sultan Ahmed al Jaber, the COP28 president, who also heads the UAE’s national oil company. The sultan said there is “no science” supporting those demanding a phaseout of fossil fuels. (This from a guy who’s hosting a summit on global warming!) Kerry said that the sultan’s remarks need “clarification.”

“Okay, I get it, we’re all doomed,” said Swamp Rabbit, who had been listening to me complain that the 28th annual conference of the parties was little more than an exercise in greenwashing. “Why don’t you just admit there ain’t no way clean energy fans are gonna win the war against them moneygrubbers who won’t give up on fossil fuels till all the oil and gas and coal is burned up?”

“Because I’m not quite ready to believe it’s true,” I replied. “And because I don’t want to make you happy by admitting you might be right.”

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Kissinger, Zsa Zsa and ‘all them dead peeps’

Posted on December 4, 2023 by oddmanout215

I was on the porch of my swamp shack, reading the online Washington Post. Swamp Rabbit dropped by to hit me up for beer money. He was two dollars short of a six-pack.

“Check this out,” I said, pointing to a detail in Kissinger’s obit that amused me. “He went to dinner with Zsa Zsa Gabor, drove her home and was making a move on her when his beeper went off. It was Richard Nixon. Before Kissinger could get ‘to first base’ with Zsa Zsa, Nixon ordered him to ‘come back immediately’ to the Western White House.”

I scrolled through the story. “And how about this,” I said. “According to the Post writer, Kissinger ‘made tabloid headlines’ with Jill St. John when the two of them ‘inadvertently’ tripped an alarm one night at St. John’s Hollywood mansion.”

Swamp Rabbit looked unimpressed. “Who’s Jill St. John? And Zsa Zsa what’s-her-name — ain’t she the one starred in that TV series with Arnold the pig?”

“I think that was Zsa Zsa’s sister,” I said. “The point is that Henry the K had an active social life. He was dating stars and ‘stunning starlets’ when he wasn’t working as secretary of state and national security adviser.”

“You mean when he wasn’t ordering U.S. planes to carpet-bomb Cambodia, or backing Pakistan’s slaughter of them Bengalis, or stirring up dirty wars in Central America, or helping overthrow democracy in Chile, or ‘greenlighting’ Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor that killed more than 200,000 peeps. And that ain’t even the half of it.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The pudgy little shmuck invented a playboy persona for himself, which helped avert attention from the fact that he was a war criminal, indirectly responsible for something like two million deaths. The New York Times said he ‘proved mesmerizing as a media figure.’ I’m agreeing with you, dummy.”

I explained to him that the world is a big chessboard and Kissinger was a chess master and the rest of us just pawns in his game, to paraphrase Bob Dylan.

“It ain’t right, Odd Man. All them dead peeps, but that evil furball lived to be a hundred years old.”

I’d put Swamp Rabbit in a dark mood, it seemed. “Here,” I said, handing him two twenties. “Buy yourself a whole case of beer if you feel that bad.”

Footnote: Evidence exists that Kissinger realized early on that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. But he played a big role in sabotaging peace talks in order to help get Nixon elected president in 1968 and re-elected in 1972. One can only wonder how many lives were sacrificed to ensure Nixon’s victories and Kissinger’s continued presence in government and the gossip columns. You won’t see any estimates in the mainstream media.

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Halloween songs (I DO believe in spooks!)

Posted on October 31, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit wasn’t happy with my new playlist. “You’re a sick pup, Odd Man. Most of these songs ain’t got nothin’ to do with Halloween.”

I shook my head and pressed the “Play” button on my phone. “Au contraire, my mangy friend. Halloween is about being truly spooked by forces beyond your control. These songs are spooky.”

Swamp Rabbit’s favorite Halloween songs are those campy standards that aren’t really spooky and weren’t even meant to be. Songs that are good for a laugh, like “Monster Mash” or “Thriller,” with that over-the-top guest vocal by Vincent Price.

I put some funny numbers on my list — “Werewolves of London” and “I Put a Spell on You” are too good to leave off — but the others are here because they chill the blood and bring on the night. Because they sound spooky.

Swamp Rabbit’s opinion didn’t change. “Halloween’s about having fun. I hear that Nirvana song and I just wanna hide under my bed.”

“Have fun under there,” I said. “Happy Halloween.”

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Media soft-pedals speaker’s role in coup attempt

Posted on October 30, 2023 by oddmanout215

I was complaining that the mainstream media’s peculiar notion of “fair and balanced” news was on display last week in some Washington Post stories about newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson.

I asked my neighbor Swamp Rabbit if he knew that the House had taken the speaker’s job away from Kevin McCarthy and then rejected a bid for the job by Jim Jordan, the ex-wrestling coach who legislates with all the wisdom and charm of a rabid dog. Republicans, who hold a slim majority in the House, settled on Johnson, an obscure Louisiana Bible beater.

Johnson is opposed to abortion rights, same-sex marriage, gun control and clean energy. He’s an unrepentant election denier who was close to planners of the Jan. 6 insurrection. He has yet to answer reporters’ questions about his involvement in efforts to block certification of the 2020 election results.

You might say Johnson is Jim Jordan without the rabies. Ruth Marcus in Washington Post put it more politely: Johnson “is Jordon in a more palatable package.”

But here’s where the coverage gets weird. A few days after Marcus’s opinion piece appeared, the Post ran a profile of Johnson by a staffer who cited Johnson’s “heavy reliance” on “family and faith.” The staffer included testimonials from Johnson’s hometown friends and Republican colleagues, and quoted his mother on what a swell guy he is.

The staffer should have addressed why Johnson was allowed to remain in office after trying to bring down the government. Maybe Johnson would have answered like Chuck Berry: Must have been some other body/It wasn’t me.

“I thought the article was fair and balanced,” Swamp Rabbit said, just to piss me off. “The reporter was nice to Johnson’s mom and didn’t mention that he don’t believe in honest elections. What you got against fair and balanced?”

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Holy moly! Climate deniers ignore the pope.

Posted on October 26, 2023 by oddmanout215

I was telling my neighbor Swamp Rabbit that scientists just sounded a new alarm about ice shelves in the Antarctic. “They’re melting a lot faster than the experts used to think, but nobody seems to care,” I said.

“Ice shelves ain’t news,” he replied. “Not until all the ice melts and the seacoasts go underwater.”

I couldn’t argue with his logic. The world is a hot mess and wars are everywhere. It should surprise no one that news about the environment takes a back seat to stories about warmongers who’d rather foul up the planet further than save it from climate change. People like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu and whatever sicko who happens to be the boss of Hamas this week.

“All them world leaders are bullshit,” Swamp Rabbit declared. “Pope Francis is the only one tells it like it is. The Catholic Church ain’t cool, but the pope is.”

I did some reading to find out what the pope is saying these days. Eight years ago he issued an encyclical — an official papal letter — calling for “a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.”

This time around, in another communique, he shared some of the same thoughts but with more urgency and pointed criticism of the climate deniers who are inching the world closer to disaster:

They bring up allegedly solid scientific data, like the fact that the planet has always had, and will have, periods of cooling and warming. They forget to mention another relevant datum: that what we are presently experiencing is an unusual acceleration of warming, at such a speed that it will take only one generation – not centuries or millennia – in order to verify it. The rise in the sea level and the melting of glaciers can be easily perceived by an individual in his or her lifetime, and probably in a few years many populations will have to move their homes because of these facts.

Francis also had harsh words for the ineffective UN climate change conferences (COP28 is the next one, in December); for oil and gas companies; and for lifestyle choices in the United States, where individuals, on the average, generate about seven times more carbon emissions that people in the poorest countries.

Swamp Rabbit criticized the pope for singling out the United States. “Them poor countries would pollute just as much as us if they had more money.”

“You’re probably right,” I said, “but that’s no reason to ignore climate change and spend all our time and energy on bread and circuses.”

Swamp Rabbit’s eyes lit up. “Speaking of which, how about them Phillies? A bunch of million-dollar bums. Worst collapse I ever seen. Think I’ll find a new team to root for next year.”

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The media gets lost in the fog of war again

Posted on October 21, 2023 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit and I were re-reading a New York Times story posted shortly after the October 17 Gaza hospital explosion that killed scores, or perhaps hundreds, of civilians. The question of who’s responsible for the explosion is still up in the air, but that didn’t stop NYT from using this presumptuous headline: “Israeli strike kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say.”

“This story reminds a lot of people of that quote attributed to Mark Twain,” I said in regard to the headline. “‘A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets a chance to get its pants on.'”

“So the media ain’t to be trusted, everything they report is lies,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Most reporters don’t set out to lie, I told him, but the idea that their stories will be processed and published without being altered to fit someone’s agenda is naive, to say the least. Editors at a powerful entity like NYT don’t make final content decisions in a vacuum, free from the influences of competing interest groups fighting for coverage that will cast their views in a favorable light.

I told him that the big media outlets often tweak news stories to fit what they think is the prevailing public mood regarding important issues. For instance, the prevailing public mood after 9/11 was overwhelmingly hawkish, so the mainstream media more or less ignored war foes and fell into lockstep with government liars who said Iraq had WMDs and must therefore be vanquished.

In the case of the hospital explosion, NYT editors surely realized that much of the world was appalled by video showing high casualties in Gaza caused by Israeli forces reacting to the October 7 massacre of 1,300 Israelis by Hamas. Responding to what seemed to be the prevailing public mood, the editors apparently jumped to the conclusion that the Israelis were responsible for the hospital bombing. In order not to be accused of bias, they added the weasel words, “Palestinians say.”

“They assumed an ‘Israeli strike’ caused the explosion,” I said. “They assumed hundreds were killed in the explosion, even though the death count hadn’t been independently verified. They ignored the possibility that Hamas may have been responsible for the explosion. They unwittingly turned the hospital story into a big victory for anti-Israel propagandists.”

“You’re saying the NYT screwed up but they didn’t lie?” Swamp Rabbit asked.

“I’m saying the Times and a lot of other big media outlets obscured the truth in response to a strong public outcry by supporters of the Palestinians,” I replied. “That’s not the same as lying but it might be just as bad.”

Footnote: The Times ran an updated version of the hospital explosion story that includes some unacknowledged corrections. The headline is “Hundreds reported killed in blast at a Gaza hospital.”

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‘Bibi’ remains bad news for Mideast peace seekers

Posted on October 14, 2023 by oddmanout215

From an op-ed in Washington Post, a few days after Hamas fighters massacred more than 1,300 people in a surprise attack on Israel by land, sea and air:

For many years, Israel has been governed by a populist strongman, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a public-relations genius but an incompetent prime minister. He has repeatedly preferred his personal interests over the national interest and has built his career on dividing the nation against itself. He has appointed people to key positions based on loyalty more than qualifications, took credit for every success while never taking responsibility for failures, and seemed to give little importance to either telling or hearing the truth.

“Substitute ‘president’ for ‘prime minister’ and who we talkin’ about?” said my neighbor Swamp Rabbit, who was reading over my shoulder.

“The orange hog monster,” I replied, noting that Netanyahu — “Bibi” to his admirers — and Donald Trump were good buddies when Trump was president. Both men are cruel blowhards who spend most of their time trying to undermine those who might threaten their power. Both depend on the support of religious fanatics and other rightwing kooks, and both use fear and loathing to divide and conquer.

Netanyahu seemed to become more pompous and arrogant as he aged. He was indicted on bribery and fraud charges in 2019, while serving as prime minister. He was turned out of office in 2021, but last year weaseled his way into another term, heading what is widely considered the most rightwing government in Israel’s history. He spent most of 2023 trying to weaken the Israeli judiciary, a move that threw the country into turmoil and arguably helped spark the attack last week by Hamas militants.

“I don’t get it,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Netanyahu graduated from Cheltenham High School, a good school just outside Philly, when his family lived in America. Didn’t he learn civics? Didn’t they teach him that dictators are bad news?”

I stared at him. “You’re putting me on, right? Trump went to the U. of P. and look how he turned out.”

Footnote: Now Netanyahu is back in his element, calling for an all-out attack on Gaza to distract constituents from his woeful failings as a leader. And apologists for Hamas are refusing to condemn the massacre of Israelis. I can’t help but think of a question posed this week by the writer Fintan O’Toole: What lessons do people actually learn from the cruelties they applaud and the ones they suffer in return? Forget it, the answer is too depressing.

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