Keeping Folks Occupied...

That they do, the representatives of the one percent.

They provide opportunities for camping out in a patriotic manner—

(NYT "Black Friday" coverage, via Bag News Notes.)

Meanwhile, they're also busy having the wrong kind of campers evicted... Nearly three hundred arrests after midnight yesterday, as LA police broke up the Occupy site at City Hall.

Bag News again—on the LAPD's bringing in "embedded media" to cover the action—while keeping out independent reporting.

Writer Tina Dupuy was on the scene. Talking today with Sam Seder (segment starting at 33:00), she had a lot to say about the media who were let in, and about the meme that the encampment was dangerous and unsanitary—the story line used by authorities around the country as the for-public-consumption reason to break up Occupy camps.

Touching on actual threats to public safety is Joshua Holland—on the connections among OWS, the gutting of social services, and militarized police forces.

In Britain today, public sector workers took to the streets, in protest against the austerity scam their government has created.

So much happening; now, if only we had a news media...

Though, after suing the Fed for access to its records, Bloomberg News reports how Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress.

It sure would be nice to see a bit of media (and prosecutorial) interest in an insider scam on a very grand scale—for the benefit of insiders so grand, they can only be a micro-percent, next to whom others of the One Percent are mere hoi polloi.

It would also be nice to see interest in the "sideshow created to distract everyone from what the Fed was up to."

Witnessing and Reporting

The death of Tom Wicker on November 25 is slightly old news, but a reminder of a (sometimes) better era of journalism.

The media being "professional" as it is, coverage focused on shop talk—along the lines of, "reporting the Kennedy assasination made his career."

Less prominent was the fact that Wicker's career at the NYT included taking stands on issues. Among those mentioned by Robert D. McFadden, in the Times' obituary—

He denounced President Richard M. Nixon for covertly bombing Cambodia, and in the Watergate scandal accused him of creating the "beginnings of a police state."

...

...Speaking at a 1971 "teach-in" at Harvard, he urged students to "engage in civil disobedience" in protesting the war in Vietnam. "We got one president out," he told the cheering crowd, "and perhaps we can do it again."

He was among the observers who tried to mediate during the Attica uprising, before New York governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the fatal storming of the prison.

His writings on civil rights reflected a topic of deep concern to the North Carolina native.

McFadden notes another subject among Wicker's books—

"On Press" (1978) enlarged on complaints he had made for years: the myth of objectivity, reliance on official and anonymous sources. Far from being robust and uninhibited, he wrote, the press was often a toady to government and business.

And Wicker noted the central Reagan scam; Thom Hartmann often cites this 1985 column—

... it now appears the deficit was deliberately created by Mr. Reagan in order to do away with Democratic social programs dating back to the New Deal.

Who says so? David Stockman, the departing Budget Director, at second hand, and Friedrich von Hayek directly. He's the Nobel Prize-winning economist who's been a guru of Reaganomics.

Wicker's warning still rings horribly true—"Congressional Democrats should realize the source of the pressure they're under to sell their political birthright."

Now, that could have been written yesterday—to fall again on predominately deaf ears.

Thanksgiving á Lá Ronnie

From Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor: for the season, two facets of Reagan's shtick.

One was to play what seemed his preferred role: America's avuncular (if forgetful) Master of Ceremonies—

11/18 [1981] President Reagan receives the annual White House turkey, which upstages him by squawking and flapping its wings madly. Not to be outdone, the President recalls a Thanksgiving
long ago: he was carving a turkey, noticed what seemed to be blood oozing from it, assumed the bird was undercooked, then realized he had sliced open this thumb. Everyone laughs

11/23 [1982] The annual White House turkey is presented to President Reagan. As it did last year, this reminds him of the time he gashed his thumb while carving a similar bird, and he does not hesitate to tell the story again.

The other pole of his "charm"—jibing at one of the Right's favorite scapegoat—

11/21 [1983] President Reagan receives the annual White House turkey. "You're looking at the press a lot like I do sometimes," he says to the bird,"with your mouth wide open and a total misunderstanding of everything they're asking."

11/25 [1985] "Go ahead! Atta boy, Wilfred. You tell 'em Wilfred. Yes, sir, Wilfred, you let 'em have it!"
—President Reagan, saved from having to answer reporters' questions by the screams of the annual White House turkey, this year named Wilfred

In the 1980s even St. Ronnie's "charm" failed at convincing the majority of people that his administration didn't hurt the poor.

Since then, the propaganda machine has made sure to include among its campaigns a war on empathy.

Holidays are the usual time to bring out those themes; a couple of Thanksgivings ago but typical is this column—published in a once upon a time respectable Washington Post—

If there is anything viler than a plump, well-fed, rosy-cheeked white guy getting all huffy about a USDA study on food insecurity because he sees poor people who are fat...

Charles Lane, who took refuge at Freddie Hiatt's House of Horrors after his unsuccessful stint at the New Republic as the editor for Stephen Glass, has decided that his effort to make the world a better place as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday is to argue that poor people need less food, not more.

The photo of Lane* accompanying Tintin's post is of a smug (and yes, very well-fed) face.

*Not to be confused with the great (and skinny) Charles Lane.

And thirty years after Reagan, there are so many poor people to be blamed for their condition.

The policies that got us here have been bi-partisan, to be sure. Ending Welfare As We Know It played its part; it was during the Clinton administration that Barbara Ehrenreich researched this.

Add eight years of Junior in the White House—by this year's tenth anniversary of Nickel and Dimed's original publication, Ehrenreich says—

In 2000, I had been able to walk into a number of jobs pretty much off the street. Less than a decade later, many of these jobs had disappeared and there was stiff competition for those that remained.
...

The most shocking thing I learned from my [2008-9] research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America.

Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.
...

So what is the solution to the poverty of so many of America's working people? Ten years ago, when Nickel and Dimed first came out, I often responded with the standard liberal wish list -- a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.

Today, the answer seems both more modest and more challenging: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets. Maybe, as so many Americans seem to believe today, we can’t afford the kinds of public programs that would genuinely alleviate poverty -- though I would argue otherwise. But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.

Golden Calf: My, How You've Grown

Water Tiger: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image..."

She also observes—

So nice to know that the safety of this statue is more important than the safety of First Amendment rights.

Note handed to Obama—just in case he might care that "Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."

The note math has Occupy arrests at 4000.

Which leaves out mention of the level of police reaction in scenes like this.

Or this...

Any sound from the fetus lovers will be to condemn a pregnant woman for being in a place where out of control authority could decide to assault her.

Setting Examples

Portland— Natalie Behring/Getty Images
caption: Police in riot gear work to remove remaining protesters from the streets around the Occupy Portland encampment November 13, 2011 in Portland, Oregon. Portland police have reclaimed the two parks in which occupiers have been camping after a night of brinksmanship with protesting crowds of several thousands.

Not Portland—another image from Bag News Notes, where Michael Shaw compares the two— Khalil Hamra/AP
caption: Egyptian riot police beat a protester during clashes in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2011. Thousands of police clashed with protesters for control of downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday after security forces tried to stop activists from staging a long-term sit-in there. The violence took place just nine days before Egypt's first elections since the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak in February.

Word is out today; here via David Atkins—

Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.

"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday...

And why would they not draw that conclusion? Stopping the lower orders by whatever means is the goal of the owners everywhere, so the message is dutifully promoted by their media servants.

Our superstar versions of the latter are so very well cared for: defaming activists is all in a day's fabulously overpaid work for them, as they ignore or excuse police brutality and use of "pain compliance" against peaceful protestors. Demonizing protest applies to US streets, at least; similar demonstrations abroad may get better PR, depending on a regime's current branding by the owners.

Yet world-wide austerity for the 99% is a sacred cow of the pundit class.

Again: why not? It's a mere abstraction, this drive to destroy what little is left of a safety net not needed by anyone they will ever have to know.

99% Reason For Thanks

Some reasons to be thankful, right now: Scott Olsen's continued improvement, since the October 25 police attack on Oakland occupiers.

And for the many committed and ingenious participants who have brought OWS this far.

That's in only two months, and in the face of stepped-up brutality around the country, as the owners and their "public servants" lose patience with the movement's continued growth.

Matt Taibbi hits a few key points about the powerful motives for OWS, despite demonstrators' alleged lack of focus on issues—

... Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.

...

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

...

There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system.

But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it's at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned "democracy," tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.

Photo: Sarah Seltzer, Alternet

Taibbi's piece in the new Rolling Stone was online a week or two ago; it was before the heightened police violence of November 17 that Taibbi wrote—

And here's one more thing I was wrong about: I originally was very uncomfortable with the way the protesters were focusing on the NYPD as symbols of the system. After all, I thought, these are just working-class guys from the Bronx and Staten Island who have never seen the inside of a Wall Street investment firm, much less had anything to do with the corruption of our financial system.

But I was wrong. The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government "committed" to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off.

Photo: sirmitchell

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images, via Bag News Notes

Same as it ever was—

The Feast of Pure Reason (193?)
Jack Levine
NYT: November 2010 obit and slide show

The Day After

New York, yesterday:

Last night:
"99%" was among the slogans projected on the side of the Verizon building. Boing Boing has stunning pictures accompanying an interview on how it was pulled off; including this background—

Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully "there." But then I got a call from a person who sounded pretty sane. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

Alternet has reports and crowd estimates (Foley Square last night at over 30,000). Coverage of police actions includes this—

One protester, however, had a hard time getting the NYPD to take him into custody. Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, in full dress uniform, was almost begging to be arrested -- kneeling in front of a line of cops, with his hands behind his back at the southwest corner of Nassau and Pine --as he decried corporate exploitation. The police made feints at arresting him for a time, almost toying with the retired cop, but wouldn't actually do it -- at first. After he moved back through the crowd and up toward Broadway, they pounced, turning Lewis into a full-fledged OWS folk hero. Walking ramrod straight with his hands behind his back, the retired police captain was led by two NYPD officers through the intersection to the whoops, whistles and applause of the crowd.

Lewis definitely is a new hero of mine; along with Denise Vega, and thousands of people whose names I don't know.

Michael Shaw presents these juxtapositions: pretty Madison Avenue imagery versus the brutality of our militarized police forces.

In all the rush of events, we can't forget about the political shell game being played by the servants to the 1%.

As Digby offered in this morning's entry in her pretty much daily posts on the subject: "Super Committee"; Super Trouble

99%; Devotion, 100%

Via Digby—

"100% American," those Three Rs might sound.

But they inspire the kind of response the authorities never deem necessary for a crowd like those 2009 tea partiers who threatened Democratic congress members' town halls.

This posted by Michael Shaw yesterday—

photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images.
caption: Retired Philadelphia Police Department Captain Ray Lewis (L) stands outside Zuccotti Park after police removed the Occupy Wall Street protesters from the park early in the morning on November 15, 2011 in New York City. Hundreds of protesters, who rallied against inequality in America, have slept in tents and under tarps since September 17 in Zuccotti Park, which has since become the epicenter of the global Occupy movement. The raid in New York City follows recent similar moves in Oakland, California, and Portland, Oregon.

More on Ray Lewis' participation in OWS.

Today—Ray Lewis Arrested—

"All the cops are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they’re being exploited," Mr. Lewis said. "As soon as I’m let out of jail, I'll be right back here and they'll have to arrest me again."

Picture here.

Collective Actions

Even without the help of DHS or the FBI, a thorough 1932 job—

Soldiers guard leveled veterans' bonus march camp

David Atkins yesterday, on the NYPD clearance and media blackout—

Watching it unfold has had the same surreal feel as watching the early days of Tahrir Square. As big as the story of the clearing of the park is, one of the interesting side stories is also that all the major news networks, cable and otherwise, were silent...And as with Egypt, by far the best way to learn about events happening on the ground was via Twitter.

...

Media blackout? Check. Transportation shutdown? Check. Needless police brutality? Check. Mayor Mubarak is evidently in control of New York City, and pulled off this entire operation in early morning cover of darkness.

The reporting ban was eluded for a while by Josh Harkinson, who entered the park and reported for Mother Jones via twitter and video here and here.

With evictions going on in cities around the country, Digby quotes this, on Oakland mayor Jean Quan's apparent spilling the beans that city governments and federal authorities coordinated the bust-ups—

...Quan, speaking in an interview with the BBC ...casually mentioned that she was on a conference call with leaders of 18 US cities shortly before a wave of raids broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country.

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict "Occupy" protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night's move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

Digby notes—

I don't have the answers. But I do know that the Federal, state and local police agencies have a tremendous amount of capability and I have no doubt they have been clamoring for the chance to use it.

Later updates from Digby: more on apparent DHS and FBI involvement.

Lynn Parramore lays out six questions about that involvement.

Michael Shaw at Bag News Notes posts this—

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Shaw writes of this photo versus images from CNN—

Leading off this rough edit is last night's iconic photo of the White Shirts manhandling Occupier youth as Zuccotti was taken, along with eviction stills from CNN...

What we have here is a massive PR war — the battle for hearts and minds (and noses) —playing out between the protesters and the city in front of the media. So the question, when we get to the end of this 24-hour media cycle, will the Reuters photo win the action for Occupy? or, will the Mayor's gambit pay off? In other words, will more people sympathize with Bloomberg and the police action based on floods of grimy shots of NYC's sanitation force cleaning up the remains?

More Digby, about the role of the "culture war" media setup in deflating public approval of OWS—

...the "controversy" is a direct result of right wing lizard brain propaganda about Occupiers being sub-human beasts. The drumbeat has been loud and constant, particularly on local news, and it was almost inevitable that the notion would take hold among some people. Add to that the sight of heavily armed Robo Cops swarming all over our cities as if they were staging an assault on Falluja and people get nervous. That's not an accident either.

...this thing was bound to run along America's cultural fault line whether it set out to or not and in the end it will likely fall on one side of it... That doesn't mean it won't have the impact everyone seeks. It's just that the idea of the 99% vs the 1% is a great slogan and its certainly valid. But in our culture, we just don't divide that way. ...

Ronald Reagan: The Buck Stops... Anywhere Else

In the index to Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor,
sub-entries below the heading "Reagan, Ronald Wilson" include—

blames Carter
blames Congress
blames the media
blames miscellaneous others

Republican acceptance of "personal responsibility" being what it is, Slansky has the quotes to fit those sub-heads.

After the Tower Report is issued by the administration's hand-picked Iran-Contra investigative committee, Reagan's March 4, 1987 public response includes this rhetorical construction—

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

Slansky summarizes 12-minute speech and its use of the passive voice, whereby Reagan—

• Acknowledges that the Iran-Contra affair "happened on my watch"
• Says nobler aims of long-term peace "deteriorated…into trading arms for hostages"
• Calls the deal "a mistake" (though one that resulted from his excessive concern for the hostages).

As for his "management style," the problem was that "no one kept proper records of meetings or decisions," which led to his inability to recall approving the arms shipment. "I did approve it," says the President. "I just can't say specifically when." Lest anyone remain unnerved, he dads, "Rest assured, there's plenty of record-keeping now going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

The White House mode of damage control was to distance Reagan from events—which only made him sound as disengaged as he was.

And the Iran-Contra speech seems like an odd foreshadowing of Reagan's "I've been told I have Alzheimer's" letter, of November 1994.

[Don't] Watch My Lips

Men With No Lips (Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan, James Baker)
Robbie Conal

November 1986: the first reports reach US news media—and the White House makes its first public statements. From Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

11/3 In Lebanon, the pro-Syrian magazine Al Shiraa reports that the US has secretly been pplying arms to Iran.

11/4 Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaker of the Iranian Parliament, says that former NSC adviser Robert McFarlane and four other Americans, carrying Irish passports and posing as members of a flight crew, recently tyraveled to Iran on a secret diplomatic mission to trade military equipment for Iran's help in curbing terrorism. Rafsanjani says the men brought a Bible signed by President Reagan and a cake in the shape a key, which was said to be "a key to open US-Iran relations."

11/13 "For 18 months now, we have had under way a secret diplomatic initiative to Iran. That initiative was undertaken for the simplest and best of reasons: to renew a relationship with tlle nation of Iran; to bring an honorable end to the bloody six-year war between Iran and Iraq; to eliminate state-sponsored terrorism and subversion, and to effect the safe return of all hostages."
—President Reagan addressing the nation on the Iran arms deal, hoping that if he mentions he hostages last, people won't think their release was the prime motivation for the deal

"Now, my fellow Americans, there is an old saying that nothing spreads so quickly as a rumor. So I thought it was time to speak with you directly-to tell you first-hand about our dealings with Iran. As Will Rogers once said, 'Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.' So let's get to the facts."
—President Reagan preparing to embellish the truth

"During the course of our secret discussions, I authorized the transfer of small amounts of defensive weapons and spare parts for defensive systems to Iran.... These modest deliveries, taken together, could easily fit into a single cargo plane.... We did not—repeat—did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we."
—President Reagan claiming that the arms for hostages swap wasn't really a swap because we didn't give them too much stuff, and besides, the stuff we did give them hardly counts as weapons

11/21 The shredding machine in White House aide Oliver North's office jams.

11/25 A grim President Reagan appears in the White House briefing room to say he "was not fully informed on the nature of one of the activities" undertaken as an off-shoot of the Iran arms deal. He announces that National Security Adviser John Poindexter has resigned and NSC staffer Oliver North has been fired, then introduces Ed Meese to explain why.

"Certain monies which were received in the transaction between representatives of Israel and representatives of Iran were taken and made available to the forces in Central America which are opposing the Sandinista government there," says Meese. "We don't know the exact amount yet. Our estimate is that it is somewhere between $10 and $30 million.... The President knew nothing about it."

As Meese talks, his head is positioned in front of the White House logo (THE WHITE HOUSE/ WASHINGTON) in such a way that the only letters that can be seen on TV spell out WHITE WASHING.

Later, Reagan calls North and tells him, "This is going to make a great movie one day."

11/26 "Does the bank president know whether a teller in the bank is fiddling around with the books? No."
—Donald Regan explaining why his total ignorance of the diversion of funds to the contras is completely justified

Then in 1987:

1/26 The Tower Commission interviews President Reagan... Though he is said by a source to lack a "highly detailed recollection," he acknowledges having authorized the sale of arms to Iran in August 1985. This corroborates Robert McFarlane's testimony and directly contradicts Donald Regan's.

2/11 President Reagan tells the Tower Commission that after discussing it with Donald Regan, he now remembers that he did not authorize the arms sale in advance. Commission members are disheartened when, while reciting his recollection from a staff-supplied memo, he mistakenly reads his stage directions aloud.

2/24 "I'd like to ask one question of everybody. Everybody that can remember what they were doing on August 8 of 1985, raise your hand. I think it's possible to forget. Nobody's raised any hands."
—President Reagan, who would have gotten a different response from reporters had he asked, more pertinently, "Everybody that would remember approving the sale of arms to an enemy nation, raise your hand"

3/10 Asked about the Iran-contra scandal at a photo opportunity, President Reagan feigns laryngitis. "I lost my voice," he says, grinning. "I can't talk."

3/11 Asked again about Iran-contra, President Reagan again feigns laryngitis. "I've lost my voice," he says. Explains [press secretary] Marlin Fitzwater, "This is a new tactic of his."

The Post-Abdominal Surgery Comedy Rating Scale

"Ow! Don't make me laugh!"New York Federal Art Project, 1939
Library of Congress WPA poster archive

Yes, I do relate to the mask on the right, at the moment...

Post-op laughing is to be avoided: it causes awful stomach pain, as I knew from Clever Sister's previous multiple surgeries. Those started when she was in her teens; the technology then made hers more ghastly experiences than what I'm having, since laparoscopic procedures a few days ago.

I spent the first couple nights at CS' place, where she went all out to nurse me. Her effort to keep me distracted included some comedy DVDs—fortunately, not all that hilarious.

As I realized I do need to avoid laughing, I remembered one of CS' previous gruesome surgeries. She was on her way home from some days in a California hospital on November 5, 1994. A big part of the history was that CS had been forced to live through many years of severe pain, with no medical acknowledgement of the problem—until the first dire emergency had landed her in an operating room.

It was 6 PM that November day. I waited to speak to my brother-in-law and, unable to focus on anything, I switched on the tube; it happened, just as evening news began. Lead story: the public announcement that Reagan had Alzheimer's.

Despite CS' having to suffer the ride over potholed roads of already decaying infrastructure—just as I did, almost twenty years of public disinvestment later—they got home safely, and the call came.

I had to tell brother-in-law, "I don't want to make CS laugh, but: I just had the news on, the big story was Reagan has Alzheimer's—and CS thinks it took her a long time to be diagnosed!"

He laughed and repeated it to CS. I could hear her in the background: "Ha, ha! Ouch! Don't make me laugh! Ha,ha! Ouch!..."

Brother-in-law added: having lived in CA when Reagan was governor, he saw plenty of signs then.

For me, in November 2011: post-surgery smiling, unlike laughing, does no harm. When I could manage to check, there was at least some news to smile about—election results from Ohio and elsewhere; from Mississippi, somewhat.

Trying to keep the patient distracted, CS picked up a copy of The Onion, which had been very funny the last couple of weeks. The pre-Halloween issue's Record Year For Abortion Restrictions, and terrifying tales of the economy, told by dead-itorial writer, Paul "Bearer" Krugman, had me laughing out loud. As did the following week's Remains Of Ancient Race Of Job Creators Found In Rust Belt.

Mercifully, under my circumstances, this week's material wasn't that good.

Though, just as I was about to put the thing down, I spotted this, to bring on the post-op pain.

And this.

N(ice) P(olite) R(epublicans)

The revolution will not be, etc.—NPR, home of Cokie and the like, axes this host, for the wrong kind of political activity—

The problem, says Simeone, is, "I'm not an NPR journalist. I am not paid by NPR. I don't do news. I don't do analysis. And I have never talked about the occupation movement on the air. I do this entirely in my free time."

...

"I've never hid my views and my opinions have never leeched into what I do on NPR. People can listen to all my shows. When I was talking about 'Tosca,' I could have talked about the relevance today of Cavaradossi, the tenor who is a political prisoner and who is tortured. I didn't mention it. It's a show about opera, for God's sake."

And a freelance web producer of a WNYC show gets the same treatment.

Yes, NPR's coverage continues to comfort the comfortable.

And there are credulous fans who fall for the branding.

Nevertheless, I caught a couple of Morning Edition segments this week where I almost enjoyed the lameness of pandering, considering the way reality is being leaked by other means, these days.

One was from the always irritating Eleanor Beardsley. I've heard her in the past when, her voice full of disdain, she "reports" on stories like a French transit workers' strike that not only shut down Paris—the déclassé unionists temporarily deprived her of her nanny's services!

This week, it was a Wednesday segment about Sarkozy's reaction to the Greek referendum. In her patrician, looking down the nose manner—

...opposition figures in France seemed delighted by news of the referendum, calling it a victory for the people. Desperate to beat Sarkozy in the presidential election next May, they hailed Greek resistance to its European managers.

"They've only been thinking about taking care of the euro and not the Greek people — so they're getting what they paid for," said Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of a coalition of far-left parties.

The far right also spun the news to fit its views.

I don't know the background of the "coalition of far-left parties," but it's is the usual hack punditry that attributes any position to "just politics," while presenting left and right as equally cynical.

On Thursday, there was this: "Harvard Economics Students Protest Perceived Bias." Students walked out on poor Greg Mankiw, former Bush advisor, now advising Romney...

I don't think I imagined an ill-concealed panic in Mankiw's voice, as he raced through his academic name-dropping and his talking points. The latter included the usual "we haven't been producing enough educated people to keep up with the increasing demand for high skilled workers."

So, what are all those unemployed indebted advanced degree holders posting "I am the 99 percent" photos, and camping around the country—chopped liver?

Mankiw claims, amusingly, that "some of the evidence that we've seen suggest that incomes at the top have fallen disproportionately relative to the middle."

Also, that "rising inequality is really a long-term...like a 40-year trend since the 1970s." [Trans: Jimmy Carter's to blame.]

If victories are possible over those who fund the blathering mouthpieces of academia and media, those will be hard-won.

But I think this from Thomas Ferguson, speaking at Occupy Boston, is on the mark—

You are powerfully influencing American politics just by directing attention to the 1% and big money's hold on American politics. It is a message that makes the establishments of both political parties and the mass media tremble, lest it transmit to the rest the citizenry, which is well aware that something is rotten, but not always sure exactly what is causing it.

...in its short existence, Occupy Wall Street has highlighted the problems of money and politics in a way no other force in American society has. You have put your finger on the pivotal issue of our time, which is whether democracy in America can survive.

The Reagan Movie: Leading Lady

That Reagan Girl; quotes from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

3/19 [1983] "Let me tell you a true story about a boy we'll call Charlie. He was only 14 and he was burned out on marijuana.... One day, when his little sister wouldn't steal some money for him to go and buy some more drugs, he brutally beat her. The real truth is there's no such thing as soft drugs or hard drugs. All drugs are dumb.... Don't end up another Charlie."
—Nancy Reagan—image fully transformed from vapid society dame to caring anti-drug crusader—appearing as herself on NBC's Diff'rent Strokes

9/9 [1985] Nancy Reagan tapes her first rock video, singing a chorus of an anti-drug song called "Stop the Madness."

8/9 [1986] President Reagan sets a statesman-like example by submitting a sample of his urine for drug testing. George Bush, oddly enough, does the same.

8/13 The parents of 13-year-old Deanna Young of Orange County, California, are arrested after the girl shows up at the police station with a bag of marijuana, pills and cocaine from their home. Says Nancy Reagan, must have loved her parents a great deal. I hope they realize just how much she loves them."
The story becomes the subject of a bidding war in Hollywood.
•
Nancy Reagan's friend Mary Martin suggests that perhaps the First Lady should avoid seeing her current play, Legends, since it contains a hash brownie scene. Sure enough, it is announced the next day that a "scheduling conflict" will prevent the Reagans from attending the show.

9/4 "When the chapter on how America won the war on drugs is written, the Reagans' speech is sure to be viewed as a turning point."
—White House announcement of an upcoming anti-drug speech amusingly billed as the Reagans' first "joint address"

9/14 Sitting on a couch in the White House living quarters, the Reagans urge a "national crusade" against the "cancer of drugs." Afterward, the President—who will cut funding for drug programs as soon as the election is over—squeezes his wife's hand reassuringly.

1/13 [1987] "It wasn't a sustaining issue. It was the epitome of the fad issue, a classic really. It came and went in three weeks, max."
—GOP consultant Lee Atwater on the Reagans' anti-drug campaign

November 1981: Cats Out Of Bags

A few bits of business during one month in the first Reagan administration, from Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor—

11/10 President Reagan elicits hoots of laughter at his fifth press conference when he says of his constantly feuding aides, "There is no bickering or backstabbing going on. We're a very happy group."

As he leaves, Lesley Stahl holds up a copy of the just-out Atlantic Monthly featuring William Greider's article "The Education of David Stockman," in which the chatty Budget Director:

• Admits, "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers"
• Acknowledges that supply-side economics "was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate"
• Says of the Reagan tax bill, "Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront? The hogs were really feeding."

Is the President aware of this article? He is not.

11/12 "My visit to the Oval Office for lunch with the President was more in the nature of a visit to the woodshed after supper.... He was not happy about the way this has developed—and properly so."
—David Stockman describing his crow-eating lunch with President Reagan, who blames the whole flap on the media

11/13 "This house belongs to all Americans, and I want it to be something of which they can be proud."
—Nancy Reagan showing off her $1 million White House redecoration—funded by tax-deductible donations—to Architectural Digest, which is then forbidden to release any of its photos to the general news media

11/18 President Reagan receives the annual White House turkey, which upstages him by squawking and flapping its wings madly. Not to be outdone , the President recalls a Thanksgiving long ago: he was carving a turkey, noticed what seemed to be blood oozing from it, assumed the bird was undercooked then realized he had sliced open his thumb. Everyone laughs.

11/23 President Reagan vetoes a stopgap spending bill, thus forcing the federal government—for the first time in history—to temporarily shut down. Says House Speaker Tip O'Neill, "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."