New Orleans

Heck, I know I’m broken up about it all, too. I hope they sell “no sympathy” cards at the drugstore now.

Big props to Media Matters, the Color of Change, and scores of other groups though on this one! Finally, our team gets to count coup, because despite all of this touchy-feely baloney from both Beck and Fox, the real story is that when 400 advertisers tell Fox, here’s my check but don’t spend it with that dangerous clown, they even understand that in Australian dialect that Rupert Murdoch can follow no matter what spin they put on it.

Unfortunately, Glenn Beck as the Charlie Sheen of the “news” room, isn’t out of business by any stretch of the imagination, and instead will just be moving his wild parade and carnival show down the road to another channel. Beck is still a big timer, just not a Fox friend. With 1.5 million viewers he had a base, his radio show is still a hit, and his weirdo books sell like hotcakes. The hate train is still rolling across the country and the whistle is blowing loudly at every stop.

My bet is that Beck, if anything will only get worse, now that he’s driven (or jumped?) even more underground where there is no governor on his conspiracy accelerator or muzzle on his mouth. The blackboards were killing him on TV. School is boring! Whoever convinced Beck that play school would be more attractive than the horror we all remember.

Let’s celebrate this victory and remember, as the coaches always say, we still have to keep winning the games scheduled today and tomorrow. Glenn Beck is a player. We have be ready to go with our “A” game every day with this dangerous dude!

New Orleans

Thanks to Media Matters, which is really an excellent organization doing the hard and thankless job of trying to dial down some of the wildness out there and throw some facts at the fire, I was able to actually read what Beck was slinging out there. Below I’ll share for your own head nodding and reading pleasure:

Beck Strains To Tie ACORN To Egyptian Unrest. During the February 1 edition of his show, Beck stated:

BECK: It’s interesting to note a few other leftists who seem somewhat involved in what is happening in Egypt. Believe it or not, Wade Rathke – Wade Rathke, the ACORN guy, and Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation are both on the board of the Organizers Forum.

This is a forum that was planned to host their fall 2011 international dialogue in Egypt, where they will meet with labor and community organizers and other activists in Cairo.

I’m sure that they’re just there for social justice. That’s it. What a coincidence. Wade Rathke even put on his Web site — or this is actually not Wade’s Web site. This is the coalition’s — the forum’s Web site.

It says: “Exciting changes and developments are currently taking place in Egypt with elections coming soon to determine leadership transitions in what has been an autocratic regime now challenged by the Muslim Brotherhood and succession and democracy issues.”

Coincidence just doesn’t seem to stop. Why would Rathke and Pike plan a big get together in Egypt? Maybe the flights to Cairo are cheaper than the flights to Vegas. I don’t know.

Maybe they’ve always wanted to see the pyramids. Or maybe they’re sowing the seeds of unrest, because global revolution is what they’re looking for. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 2/1/11]

What can I say, but wow! And, my heart goes out to the Media Matters staff who actually watch all of this garbage and then mildly comment that it is a “strain.”

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show seem to have been on the job here just like Media Matters. At the end of his show the other day, he seems to have repeated the piece for the obvious humor involved in the “moment of zen” feature, where Wade Rathke , “the ACORN guy” gets to be a revolutionary moving the Islamic beat from the streets and across the globe.

Check this out:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-2-2011/moment-of-zen—glenn-beck-warns-of-the-world-imploding

It’s an honor to be mentioned on The Daily Show, but what a way to get a laugh!

For the most part the dominant prescription for the dealing with the grassroots movement of the Tea-People and others is not a grassroots movement but it seems money and moderation.  It turns out that when the right is storming the halls of Congress and the White House, it’s an organic apple a day, if you please.   The basic teams in the field still seem to be the Tea-people versus the Me-People, but let’s mark the scorecard.

Yesterday’s news of more players joining as free agents included the Liberals spearheaded by Rob MacKay, who was labeled as a Taco Bell guy, but is better known to many of us over the years as a supporter of serious reform in California on many fronts and more recently as a big whoop with the Democracy Alliance, a Democratic political club of a 100+ rich contributors, and David Brock of Media Matters and its allied organizations.  Brock’s main quotes seem to focus on the fact that he was really good a raising money and that he was confident that he could raise money for whatever the Liberals wanted to do.  Program will follow.

There was also news that Steve Rosenthal, another long time comrade and friend, was convening people in DC to look at moving something forward to save the day.  Given Steve’s long history with CWA, DOL, and then as political director for the AFL-CIO, and then as labor’s point man in a number of efforts around battlegrounds and voter mobilization, it’s fair to believe that Steve would be the point man for Labor.

It’s hard to call the Liberals and Labor parties, because these seem more like party caucuses trying to win the hearts and minds of the Democratic Party.  These are fly traps for money.  If they can get the commitments and dollars, then maybe there is capacity and a program based on a social network model:  come where the big money and big players are and be with us!  The one sure guarantee is that all of this will give the White House heart burn.  Other than that, start marking your scorecard and see who you want for the fantasy team of big donors and operators.

And, then there’s my favorite:  a real party of NO – the No Label Party.  The Wall Street Journal dutifully reported a story on its entry into the field to galvanize moderates.  All of this seems to be a contribution in terms.  What passion would motivate moderates?  I guess it would be who could say “excuse me” louder or something.   It’s hard not to immediately think of Jim Hightower’s famous quote that the only thing in the middle is a yellow line and dead armadillos.

But this is serious and not because from the article’s quotes it seems to be uniting defeated and disgruntled candidates who lost election because they “were too moderate,” but because the Big Bucks of Bloomberg are lurking behind this.   How do we know?  Kevin Skeekey, Bloomberg’s long time deputy mayor and constant political wizard allowed his hand to be seen clearly as putting the organizers together from the Dems and Republicans to organize a big moderate confab in December.  For Kevin to allow his role to be seen so clearly means that this is a neon signal that this is SERIOUS and that the Mayor is making his move, whatever that move might be.

Now why someone as smart and skilled is allowing any nascent effort in the political lists to be called the No Label Party even inadvertently is beyond me.  Sometime it’s just really important when you are trying to actually fire up a grassroots movement or a political prairie fire to actually leave Manhattan and think about how it might all look and sound.  Whatever?  At least they are pretending to be a party caucus and lobby but willing to dive in and swim at the deep end of the pool.

There’s still a lot of room for real people to organize something that’s ours, but the early message being sent and received seems clear.  It’s about the money, honey.  Eventually, people will vote with their feet and we’ll see if we have a real response that resonates with the American people.

New Orleans

Speaking of calls, flipping the channels before passing out last night, I saw the Media Matters guy talking head with an interviewer.  He first caught my ears with a phrase about the “innocent staffers at the Tides Foundation” being “targeted for assassination,” and knowing so many of them, I could easily visualize them reaching for their cell phones to call Mom back home and explain why this was really a good job! He was threatening to call Sarah Palin, if she didn’t respond to their request for her to denounce Glenn Beck and all of the right wing hate speech.  Yeah, right!  Grizzly mom sets the scene for slaughter in speech after speech.  This call won’t be answered, unfortunately.

Julian Assange of Wikileaks likes to speak for his program but he’s not getting much Media 101 advice from his volunteer team, and this may be why his German spokesperson got in a huff and resigned.  He seems to have somehow believed that he could walk off the set on news interviews when he doesn’t like the questions and did so on the other day on CNN.  Even with Mr. Softball Larry King and Daniel Ellsberg they had a minute where they thought he had buzzed off.  He seems to be offended that folks are going to ask him about the rape and molestation accusations in Sweden.  Well, hello, Julian?  Until it’s resolved, of course they’re going to ask, and you just answer, and then move on, don’t be an ass about it and think somehow that this is something diva antics can handle.  Come on, this is bush league.  Man up!

On the rabid right because an election is nigh upon us, there’s a spate of ACORN’s BACK articles on the whack-and-blog front proving once again that the right is now so atavistic that it has become necromantic.   Please friends and neighbors, keep away from cemeteries until after November 2^nd.  ACORN is dead as a doornail and no amount of blowhard air is going to resuscitate it.  I got a couple of emails yesterday and forwarded links where someone was trying to conflate poor Project Vote’s meager efforts this round and argue Project Vote and ACORN were one and the same so let’s go to town.  I wouldn’t want to confuse anyone with the facts, but Project Vote is simply not the same as ACORN.  The facts are simple.  If ACORN were still alive and well, there would be a different calculus right now on the eve of the mid-term elections.  The outcome might not be that much different, but the contest would be closer and fairer if lower income and working people were registered and going out to vote in the numbers we have seen in the past.

Which also makes me think about Toronto, one of the shining progressive city lights of North America and has me head scratching to figure out the Mayor’s election this week?  How is it possible that a hard right conservative could win by over a 100,000 votes?   There’s no job in Mudville today.

So off to Phoenix!