April 2007 (II): Being "vs. the !&#*!@"- vs.- Being "the !&#*!@"

It's an April 11 good-bye to Kurt Vonnegut.
Edie Vonnegut/AP

Two months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, In These Times interviewed Vonnegut—"Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!..."— done :

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka "Christians," and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or "PPs."

...What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next... Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

Scott Horton revisits Vonnegut's 1972 Republican convention coverage for Harper's. He was prescient in reporting its transformation to a theocratic party promoting presidential authority as a substitute for the Constitution. Horton: "Vonnegut's portrait was derided as goofy, lacking in sobriety and earnestness. But it was actually more lasting and penetrating than that of the professional political commentators spouting the conventional wisdom from their newsroom armchairs."

Fox broadcasts a piece on the death of the "despondent leftist" and "failed suicide."

Among the sane, there are truer memories of someone whose voice will be greatly missed. One good obit is here.

This month, Charlie Savage receives a Pulitzer, for his series of reports that began last April—first here, then here—on Bush's use of signing statements to circumvent laws.

Glenn Greenwald writes on Savage's role as "one of the very few journalists in the country who understood, investigated and reported on the radical theories of executive power embraced by this President. And once he began reporting on those abuses, he was relentless in his efforts to draw public attention to the administration's conduct."

Four years after the events, the House holds hearings into the military's lies about Jessica Lynch's phony rescue, as well as into the earlier death of Pat Tillman. Glenn discusses the hearings, in light of what they reveal about the media's role in spreading these frauds.

And how could a month go by without a lurid story about a fundamentalist Bush appointee like Randall Tobias—as Digby says, the "abstinence makes the heart grow fonder" AIDS czar—who resigns after being found out:

...Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.

In its shameful April 18 abortion ruling, the Supeme Court bans a procedure in all states for all women. The majority opinion—with its grave implications for women's health—is written by the eminent physician, Anthony Kennedy.

A Brigham Young U magazine falls into my hands, and its article on this month's commencement is subtitled, "Amid cheers and protests..." And the caption says more—

That even a BYU writer feels moved to note the "captive audience" says something. Though the institution gives their commencement speaker an honorary doctorate.

Chaneling Cheney's thoughts on the matter is watertiger:

"At last, I found an educational institution that grants special honorary degrees in Death and Destruction."