Live from the riot

 Not particularly safe for work. It's a riot . . . uncensored.

It's amazing how a situation can go south in an instant. 

Rage is a seductive, untamable beast.

Charlie LeDuff of Fox 2, WJBK in Detroit, documents what's all the rage today in America from news of the non-indictment of the cop who shot Michael Brown to the descent into mayhem on the streets of Ferguson, Mo.


WHAT'S interesting is how LeDuff tries to tell the aggrieved and enraged that, as a Detroiter, he knows a thing or two about riots and how they kill cities dead. What's unsurprising is that rage is deaf . . . when it's not being blinded by tear gas.

Welcome to your future, America. It looks a lot like the 1960s, only with a harder edge and a lot less ingrained hope for the future. Really.

This won't play on the blog. But the video is here.

IT IS at this point that I turn the microphone over to Jeff Daniels, as seen in the opening scene of the HBO series, The Newsroom. Behold some of the most bare-knuckled truth ever in a TV series.

Has killing become Job No. 1 for cops?

NOTE: This video shows a man being shot to death. Discretion is strongly advised.

Over on Rod Dreher's American Conservative blog, it took exactly nine comments before someone started throwing around the L-word to denigrate anyone expressing any doubt that St. Louis cops may have been too quick to turn a disturbed, steak-knife wielding individual into Swiss cheese.

Could there be any more telling example of the dangerous ideological warfare this country is engaged in? Someone had just watched a cell-phone video of a man being shot to death, and the first instinct after someone says "Whoa! Wait a minute!" was to politicize the entire thing. To start, without any evidence of anyone's actual political leanings, hurling the word "liberal" as an epithet.

The video above isn't the only tragedy we are witnessing here. It's also tragic that, in a world gripped by spiritual, cultural and social crises, the only thing Western civilization (or what is left of it)  has left is ideology.

If that’s the way we’re going to roll these days, I suppose it would be equally “fair” to throw out the F-word — fascist — to describe anyone who’d be so damned quick to politicize a tragic death from the get-go, taking a knee-jerk position that police were absolutely, positively right to gun down a guy with a steak knife and dismissing any questioning of the officers’ actions, period.

HERE'S a thought: A world without doubt is a breeding ground for genocidal maniacs.

Here’s another thought, this one specifically dealing with the "officer-involved shooting" of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis: There were people reasonably close to the officers’ line of fire. There were storefronts behind the guy that appeared to be in the line of fire. What if the cops had missed with a few rounds?

What if they’d missed and there was a ricochet off of a brick wall?

Most hunters know better than to pull the trigger when there’s a possibility you might hit something else if you miss your target. Many cops, it would seem, not so much.


FURTHERMORE, why not slowly back away to keep separation between you and the mentally-ill guy with a knife and buy a little time for other options? Why not put the door of the police SUV between you and the disturbed man?

Buy time. Try to engage. Make an effort to calm the guy down.

Why is deadly force seemingly the first and only option in such situations? And note that the officers’ guns were out the second they got out of their vehicle.

I can’t say for certain whether or not the shooting was justified but, as others in the media have said, this just doesn’t look right.


I THINK the St. Louis shooting -- not to mention the egregious police misbehavior during the Ferguson, Mo.,  protests -- raises numerous legitimate questions that require answers and not being derided as a “liberal” — a veritable enemy of “truth, justice and the American Way.”

I wouldn’t think twice if the St. Louis incident was the response of two infantrymen on the battlefield. But police officers aren’t infantrymen — or at least they used not to be. I think it raises a legitimate question of whether cops now are being trained as such and, if so, why?

But there’s no room for questions in Ideological America, where the “other side” is always the Other, and we’re always spoiling for a fight. As God is my witness, this will not end well.

The Old Testament is a bitch

Stay classy, Israel.

This "protest" in Tel Aviv begins with the crowd chanting their hatred for Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab politician and physician . . . and member of the Knesset. In fact, he's deputy speaker of the Israeli legislative body.

"I wanted you to know the next child to get hit is yours. . . . I hate Tibi the Terrorist!" the protesters chant. "Tibi! Dead! Tibi! Dead!"

Then after calling for all Arab Israelis to be stripped of their citizenship, the crowd unveils another pithy chant about the military strike against Gaza:

"There's no school tomorrow. There are no children left there!"

AND THEN you have the ongoing vigilante attacks against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. . . .

For the life of me, I can't imagine why Palestinians would want to fire rockets at a country where this is just another "slice of life." Funded in large part, by the way, by American tax dollars.

What could go wrong?

IN A LAND where the bloodiest parts of the Old Testament are never forgotten -- and, indeed, are still as new as tomorrow's sunrise -- it's always Mississippi 1959. With Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets and Israeli bombs and missiles.

For all this country's faults and sins, at least the U.S. government never bankrolled the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Panthers. At least not in this country.

John Boehner is flying right down to see this

The people angry person has spoken.

Did you hear that, Congress?

This is what you call an old-school protest, just like disgruntled would-be activists did it before Al Gore invented the Internets. The scribbled sentiment is near the northwest corner of 72nd and Dodge streets in Omaha, right by the Mall With 7 Stores.

OF COURSE, to get your message out effectively, you might want to pick a location next to a Mall With 100 Stores. You know, one that people actually patronize and isn't scheduled to be torn down this fall.

And, for the record, the doomed Crossroads Mall  has more than seven open stores. It has at least 15 12 10 that are still in there.

Give or take.

Look away, look away, look away . . . PC Land

Oh, for peein' in a bucket!

The self-righteous forces of perpetual, politically correct outrage now are eating their own, being that rednecks are proving too feisty a target. Because that's what bullies do.

This today from The (Baton Rouge, La.) Advocate:

Online protests have led New Orleans-based singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco to cancel the songwriting and performing retreat she’d scheduled for June at Nottoway Plantation and Resort in White Castle.

The retreat’s plantation setting and its history of slavery drew a frenzy of angry Web posts over the weekend as well as condemnation from websites such as Jezebel and Change.org.

Jennifer Donald, guest services manager at Nottoway, said Monday that the resort’s general manager is out of the country but he will make a statement when he returns next week.

A performer long identified with social activism, DiFranco announced the cancellation Sunday via a lengthy statement posted on her website.

DiFranco’s response read in part: “I have heard you: all who have voiced opposition to my conducting a writing and performing seminar at the Nottoway Plantation. … My focus for the Righteous Retreat was on creating an enriching experience that celebrated a diversity of voice and spirit.”

LISTEN, I've toured Nottoway more than once. Sometimes, the "moonlight and magnolias" stuff can get a little thick. But. . . .

I. . . .

Umm. . . . 

Really?

This is what is consuming the sanctified minds of the correcter-than-thou? Really?

You know, folks, there aren't any slaves there now. The proceeds from conferences and tours aren't going to the local Klan. This is the best you can do? This is what you do with a limited number of hours in a day? With only so much attention to devote to stuff?

This is the stuff on which you waste your waste time and attention? Really?

ON THE other hand, I agree that Ani DeFranco ought to have canceled the Nottoway event. And she ought to have moved it to Duck Commander headquarters in West Monroe -- not because everyone should agree with Phil Robertson or turn him into some sort of pop-culture hero, but instead because that's the kind of extended middle finger that bullies of any stripe deserve.

'Tell them about the dream, Martin'

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Also participating was New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson, who played a key role in later inspiring King at the podium. 

With input from advisers, King’s speech had been composed the night before at Washington’s Willard Hotel. As King delivered the prepared text — the original copy of which belongs to former college basketball coach George Raveling, who was at King’s side during the speech — Jackson prompted King to veer into an unscripted passage she might’ve heard him deliver in earlier appearances. 

“He was just reading, and she just shouted to him, ‘Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream,’” said Clarence Jones, an attorney and adviser to King who had contributed to King’s text. “I was standing about 50 feet behind him, to the right and to the rear, and I watched him — this is all happening in real time — just take the text of his speech and move it to the left side of the lectern, grab the lectern and look out. 

“One of the world’s greatest gospel singers shouting out to one of he world’s greatest Baptist preachers. She may have ignored the fact that there were almost 300,000 other people there, and she just shouted out to Martin, ‘Tell them about the dream.’ Anybody else who would yell at him, he probably would’ve ignored it. He didn’t ignore Mahalia Jackson. 

“I said to somebody standing next to me, ‘These people don’t know it, but they’re about ready to go to church.’” The words “I have a dream” do not appear in the text Raveling owns.

AND THAT'S the way it was, Wednesday, Aug. 28, 1963 . . . 50 years ago today.

SMASH RUNNING-DOG VERBAL DIARRHEAOF DILETTANTE U.S. REVOLUTIONARIES!

Does anybody in his right mind take crap like this seriously?

I found this hand-scrawled tract lying on the ground at Omaha's almost-dead, soon to be razed Crossroads Mall today, and I think there's a metaphor somewhere in that circumstance. I'm also thinking somebody watched "Reds" five times too many. Sheesh.

What's worse is that I agree with the general sentiment, hiding though it be in a steaming pile of outraged agitprop. Yes, the growing inequality of our society is a bad thing -- it's a very bad thing if you're the minimum-wage bug and not the overcompensated windshield. And what Wall Street bankers and bond traders have gotten away with the last decade (and more) is outrageous.

You can't even call it beating the rap. There's no rap to beat, and that is an affront to both social justice and civil society.

Furthermore, balancing a budget on the backs of those who most need "entitlements" like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid when the "1 percent" -- indeed, even the 10 percent -- are well capable of paying a fairer share of taxes would be fundamentally unjust. Cruel, even.

WE ARE our brother's keeper -- this comes from a Very High Authority, indeed -- and a society for which that is not an organizing principle is one that would be, in a word, brutish.

There's a lot you can say on this subject in support of reining in Wall Street and bestowing a little governmental mercy upon Main Street, not to mention Skid Row. It all would comport with what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature," and some of it might even persuade a few Fox News Channel viewers.

Hand-scrawled tracts parroting a bunch of Leon Trotsky's B-sides?  Not so much. 

It's a natural fact that anywhere you land on God's green earth, those who are quickest to lend a helping hand -- to share with you whatever they have -- tend to be those who can least afford their own generosity. It doesn't take much for these souls to "give until it hurts."

"The widow's mite" wasn't just something Jesus pulled out of thin air.

BUT the thing is, those in our society who have the most right to be damned angry at their plight generally aren't half as mad as America's outraged, tract-scrawling, fill-in-the-blank-occupying dilettante revolutionaries, whose sound and fury thus far has signified pretty much nothing. Kind of like John Reed back in the day.

Frankly, I think America's have-nots deserve better representation.

You know things are bad when. . . .

From The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La.:

A cavalcade of 28 black and white hearses rolled through Baton Rouge on Sunday as the mostly local group of funeral directors made a statement to residents about the pervasive violence in the city.

Charles Muse, president of the Baton Rouge Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, said he helped to organize the “Stop the Violence and Live” motorcade because he’s tired of the violence.

“There’s so much violence now and we are trying to show the public that we are concerned about the violence going on,” Muse said. “We’re looking down in the caskets on too many young people that are being gunned down.”

The hour-long motorcade, sponsored by Muse’s organization, began at Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church on Scenic Highway at 2 p.m.

Visitors to the church were greeted with a large sign in front that said, “Put down the gun and pick up a Bible” upon entering the parking lot.

The procession took a circuitous route through the northern part of the city as well as downtown before heading to Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church on Robinson Sr. Drive where the procession ended.

(snip)

Jonathan Rose Sr., owner and general manager of Desselle Funeral Home, said he would be happy to change jobs.

“If … the young people would find a way to stop killing one another, and I had to find a new job, I would be fine with that,” Rose said.

People of Walmart do that thing they do

Look at this.

It must be Black Friday, and this must be the People of Walmart.
 
Yet Walmart management has a problem with its employees who demand a living wage, decent treatment and decent benefits to deal with the kind of mindless, consumerist barbarism the retail giant encourages every Black Friday. No, the retail giant hasn't cornered the market for this kind of mob mayhem, but there's a reason why you see so much of it at Walmart and other stores aspiring to Walmartishness.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., bloody well knows every single thing about its clientele, and management knows everything there is to know about the "downmarket" they target. Plenty of people at corporate know their sociology in addition to their retailing.

And management damned well knows what's likely to happen at "X" number of random locations on Black Friday, and I'd also wager it knows which "doorbusters"  are most likely to provoke the kind of mayhem you see here . . . and where.


NEVERTHELESS, the Bosses of Walmart are perfectly happy to send the Associates of Walmart into the violent maw of the People of Walmart, who were set off by the Marketing Strategy of Walmart . . . and pay them the Crappy Wages of Walmart for the dubious privilege. 

Oh but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby
Ain't that America home of the free. . . .

Thank you, God!

Because the female breast is so unexceptional, tit libber Moira Johnston makes her living as a topless dancer at a topless bar, where cerebral gents pay good money to marvel at her sparkling personality and towering intellect.

And if a patron might get overenthusiastic about her towering intellect and sparkling personality, then grab hold of her unexceptional tatas, it of course would be no big deal. Obviously, that would be just one more way of saying "Atta girl!"

I'm sure that's how Johnston would see it, too. Because there's nothing exceptional -- or sexual -- about a woman's boobs.

But do you think she ever wonders why the most enthusiastic supporters of her tit-liberation movement are 13-year-old males?

Tomatoes and shoes be with you

Some loonies on the right-hand side of America's great divide think Barack Obama is a Muslim. Or a "Muslin," as the case may be.

They miss the point.

It doesn't matter whether the president of the United States is a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew or a Druid, the bottom line is that U.S. policy -- just as under the evangelical George W. Bush -- is to be very, very upset when Arab despots murder their fellow Muslims but not so upset when Christians get slaughtered by Islamists under "democratic" regimes in the region. In this respect, President Obama is no better than Bush 43 . . . and probably even worse.

The mainstream American press generally won't point this out. Americans by and large will not call "bullshit" where bullshit needs to be called.

Egyptian Christians will, though. It is their lives on the line and -- Boy, howdy! -- did they give Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the business Sunday. Good on them. The tomato-and-shoe toss rather made the point, methinks.


CHANTING "Monica!" was a little 1998, however. From the newly rebranded NBCNews.com (formerly MSNBC):

Prominent Christian Egyptians snubbed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday because they feel the U.S. administration favors Islamist parties over secular and liberal forces in society at the expense of Egypt's 8 million Christians.

The critical theme was repeated by others Sunday in Cairo and Alexandria despite Clinton denying U.S. interference in Egyptian elections.

The politicians, businessmen and clerics who snubbed Clinton were supposed to take part in meetings between Clinton and influential members of civil society.

Coptic Christian businessman and politician Naguib Sawiris and three other Coptic politicians said in a statement they were objecting to Clinton's policies in solidarity with the mainstream Egyptian.

They also said that since the revolution, the U.S. administration and Clinton have paid many visits in support of Islamic political currents in society while ignoring other civil movements.

The four prominent Copts consider the meeting with the Islamist parties a form of external pressure to push the Islamists to power and ignore other civil movements. They blamed the U.S. for even showing a preference for an Islamist presidential candidate.

Egypt, a nation of nearly 84 million, is 90 percent Muslim, 9 percent Coptic and 1 percent other Christian denominations.

Two church leaders also turned their back on Clinton.

Coptic Bishop Morcos and Evangelical church leader Safwat al Bayadi refused to meet with Clinton because of what they characterized as interference in Egyptian internal affairs and U.S. support for Islamists while ignoring the majority of Egyptians.

A few hundred protesters chanted the same message in front of the Garden City Four Seasons hotel where Clinton overnighted.

I WONDER whether Obama will offer aggrieved Middle Eastern Christians the same kind of "compromise" he's offered Catholics and others over contraception coverage in the health-insurance mandate? In other words, not much of one at all.

For the sort of people who populate the Obama Administration, some lives are more important than others. At home, it's anybody's over A) the unborn or B) Christians with principles differing from those of secularist, "progressive" Democrats.

Everywhere else, it's anybody's over Christians who stand to be A) slaughtered by the winners of "democratic" elections or B) driven by the same from lands where they have lived since the dawn of Christianity itself.

Of course, thanks to the constitutional separation of church and state, the United States has no state religion. That is right and good.

But this is ridiculous.

Justice for Walgreens!

I just love how principled and socially conscious today's young people are, don't you?

When faced with the senseless shooting death of a Miami teenager amid questionable circumstances, these south Florida high-school youth responded by giving the rest of us a much-needed lesson in civics. A lesson in responsibly seeking redress of societal grievances.

They peacefully and respectfully demonstrated in favor of a full and fair investigation of the death of Trayvon Martin, calling for racial harmony and enforcement of the law free of favor or prejudice. Bless their little hearts.

The youth remained orderly, looking straight ahead as they sang hymns while an angry white mob ransacked North Miami Beach Senior High School, pummeling and spitting upon many of the nonviolent teens.

OOPS. My bad. I was watching a web video of Eyes on the Prize while I was checking out the national news, and I got kind of confused.

Note to self: Contemporary TV news reports are never on 16-millimeter back-and-white film. It's all videotape or digital video now . . . and in living color.


THE FOOTAGE from Friday's teenage protest in North Miami Beach is immediately above. Again, my apologies for the mix-up.

No, it seems that during last week's protest, a mob of little barbarian hooligans decided that "justice for Trayvon" entailed ransacking a local Walgreens.

This is because, for one thing, being angry justifies anything in today's culture and, for another, rumor has it that George Zimmerman, the Sanford, Fla., neighborhood-watch guy who shot the youth last month, "liked" the drugstore chain on Facebook once. I think.

Local 10 television news got it straight from the junior lynch mob's mouths:

"I don't think they were doing it, like, to be malicious or whatever. They were just in the moment where they weren't really thinking right because they were so angry," said student Jenny Sincere.

"It showed bad character because that's not what we were out there for," student Eric On-Sang said. "A few just made us look really bad."

Some students admitted Tuesday to being part of the rampage.

"I'm not going to lie. I was one of the people that was pushing in there because I was mad," one student said.

When asked whether the incident may have hurt their cause, student Christopher Paul said, "Yeah, it kind of did, yeah. I was just angry. I don't know what the rest of them were doing. I was just trying to make a point for Trayvon. That's it."

WELL, so long as they were trying to make a point.

Consider it made.

WWFD (What would Freud do?)

Dear Sigmund,

I hope you will forgive me for going all Jung on you here, but I think these Black Friday ads for the Target discount chain somehow are an expression of one facet of Western civilization's collective unconscious, which, I am happy to report to you, seems to be linked somehow to your observation of our death drive -- our Thanatos syndrome, as it were.

I say these are an expression of our collective unconscious -- again, apologies for the Jungian theorizing -- because they seemingly are presented quite unwittingly by Madison Avenue as an inducement to self-annihilation. Ironically, they urge us into mortal consumerist combat with one another by exposing to us our unified (violent?) subconscious (a super Id, perhaps?) under the guise of humor. Look at what I mean here.


THE ACTRESS in these television commercials urges us on toward consumerist combat -- literal combat, given the statistical probability based upon years of observational data -- thus bringing us closer psychically and physically to the obliteration we unconsciously crave, in the service of wholly materialist objectives which at best serve only as a temporary distraction to our collective sense of alienation and despair.

I sense this may somehow be related to the Oedipus complex, though I am unsure of this.


FINALLY, as the Target advertisements urge us on toward unfulfilling aggression and, re: Durkheim, anomie, the TV spots simultaneously transcend the primary function and become pure metaphor for what we are as a society and what the consumerist imperative demands even more intently of us.

What I am wondering, Sigmund, is this: Do you suppose it may be that Thanatos, as it were, is one and the same as Jung's collective unconscious? Has it always been thus, or is this a new evolutionary stage that inevitably leads to extinction -- one quite random and pointless as the dinosaurs' by asteroid impact?

Can this be true, Sigmund? Alternatively, could the apparent self-destructive goal of evolution be a means of making room for the emergence of yet-higher life forms?


Yours in inquiry,

M. Favog

It's the most wonderful time of the year

OK, America. Find the crazy people in these videos shot on Black Friday at various Wal-Marts across the country.


Who in these videos presents the real threat to public order?


Which videos show dangerous and disorderly mobs requiring robust police action in defense of life and property?


Who does get forcibly stopped by police in these videos?

Well played, America. We've made our country. Now we have to live in it.

It's like Tabasco, right? Everybody likes Tabasco

When fascists get their own cable network, hilarity is sure to follow.

And what's funnier than Bill O'Reilly and some Fox News Channel legal analyst looking for ways to justify spraying peaceful protesters -- college kids who were just sitting there -- point-blank in the face with pepper spray, sending two to the hospital?

OK, I lied. It's not funny at all. It makes me want to throw up for one important reason . . . or rather one frightening thought that occurred to me. What if Bill O'Reilly had been a prominent national TV commentator in 1963?

What if O'Reilly had been on television every night convincing just enough Americans that they couldn't believe their eyes, not when it came to what they just plainly saw on the TV news. That the horrors being inflicted on blacks in the segregated South weren't nearly so bad as they appeared.

Move along. No injustice to see here. No need to do anything about it.

Can you hear him in your mind's ear, telling a nightly audience of about 4.5 million that it was just water coming out of the fire hoses blasting young civil-rights protesters in Birmingham, Ala.?

C'mon, everybody drinks water. You need water to live, right? It's the stuff of life -- listen, your body is, what, 80 percent water anyway.

And the police dogs being turned loose on those black kids? Who doesn't love dogs? C'mon, it's Fido, for God's sake! If you make nice with the doggie, he'll be nice to you.

Besides, "I don't think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police." Especially a longtime public servant like Bull Conner.

Right, Bill?

Questions for a nation past its sell-by date

University of California, Berkeley
Nov. 9, 2011

Earlier that day a colleague had written to say that the campus police had moved in to take down the Occupy tents and that students had been “beaten viciously.” I didn’t believe it. In broad daylight? And without provocation? So when we heard that the police had returned, my wife, Brenda Hillman, and I hurried to the campus. I wanted to see what was going to happen and how the police behaved, and how the students behaved. If there was trouble, we wanted to be there to do what we could to protect the students.

Once the cordon formed, the deputy sheriffs pointed their truncheons toward the crowd. It looked like the oldest of military maneuvers, a phalanx out of the Trojan War, but with billy clubs instead of spears. The students were wearing scarves for the first time that year, their cheeks rosy with the first bite of real cold after the long Californian Indian summer. The billy clubs were about the size of a boy’s Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down. . . .

My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines.

None of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn’t have dispersed if we’d wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on. The descriptor for what I tried to do is “remonstrate.” I screamed at the deputy who had knocked down my wife, “You just knocked down my wife, for Christ’s sake!” A couple of students had pushed forward in the excitement and the deputies grabbed them, pulled them to the ground and cudgeled them, raising the clubs above their heads and swinging. The line surged. I got whacked hard in the ribs twice and once across the forearm. Some of the deputies used their truncheons as bars and seemed to be trying to use minimum force to get people to move. And then, suddenly, they stopped, on some signal, and reformed their line. Apparently a group of deputies had beaten their way to the Occupy tents and taken them down. They stood, again immobile, clubs held across their chests, eyes carefully meeting no one’s eyes, faces impassive. I imagined that their adrenaline was surging as much as mine.

My ribs didn’t hurt very badly until the next day and then it hurt to laugh, so I skipped the gym for a couple of mornings, and I was a little disappointed that the bruises weren’t slightly more dramatic. It argued either for a kind of restraint or a kind of low cunning in the training of the police. They had hit me hard enough so that I was sore for days, but not hard enough to leave much of a mark. I wasn’t so badly off. One of my colleagues, also a poet, Geoffrey O’Brien, had a broken rib. Another colleague, Celeste Langan, a Wordsworth scholar, got dragged across the grass by her hair when she presented herself for arrest.

-- Robert Haas,
UC poetry professor,
former poet laureate
of the United States

From a New York Times essay published Sunday

'Paternoville,' Penn State
September 2009


Some ad hoc tent encampments on public property are more equal than other ad hoc tent encampments on public property in these United States.

If you're, say, a student at the Pennsylvania State University and you're one of, say, 700 students and their tents crammed into a lot outside Beaver Stadium, and you're there because you want choice seats in the student section for this week's home game, that's a good thing.

That's a beloved tradition.

Media types will write whimsical stories about those wacky campers in State College braving the rain and the cold in a tent -- and doing it all week -- for the sake of college football. The school's football coach will drop by to pose for pictures with his worshiping flock. ESPN personalities will drop by to press the flesh. The 60-something university president will go slumming amid the teen and 20-something campers for kicks and giggles.

You'll get your own university website, a "mayor," a plaque and a write-up in the alumni magazine.

You are what America's all about. You are Paternoville.


PERHAPS you just fancy Apple products. If the gadget's name starts with an "i," you have to have it. Now. Before anyone else does. So help you Jobs.

There's a way to achieve that. You camp out to stake your place in line. Scores of you camp out for the love of "i." Hundreds of you, even.

It's all good. Apple is happy to let you do it in exchange for your iMoney.

Media types will write whimsical stories about those wacky campers in (fill in the blank) braving the rain and the cold in a tent or a lawn chair -- and doing it all week -- for the sake of the brand new iWhatever. The store's manager will drop by with coffee for his worshiping flock. Noted tech bloggers will drop by to press the flesh or -- hell -- join you in your campout. The 60-something mayor will go slumming amid the 20- and 30-something campers for kicks and giggles.

You are an American patriot. You are buying s***.


BUT IF YOU'RE a student at the University of California-Davis or Cal-Berkeley, and you're one of, say, 100 students and their tents crammed into the quad, and you're there because you're alarmed at how tuition is skyrocketing, how a college education is becoming more and more unattainable for those of modest means and how American society is becoming more and more unequal, you are a dangerous thug and an anarchist. Your tent encampment is a threat to public health, public safety and public access to public property.

That's an unacceptable situation.

Media types will write serious stories about brewing unrest. Pundits will warn of the sheer unsustainability of your unruly protest -- random tents and shelters mired there in the rain and the cold -- for the sake of an amorphous agenda you cannot articulate.

Riot police will drop by to beat the s*** out of the "criminals," fog the dirty hippies in the face with pepper spray and tear down the troublemakers' tents. Fox News Channel personalities will make fun of the liberal wackos on the air. The 60-something mayor will denounce the "mob" of 20- and 30-something "occupiers" for political advantage.

You'll get thrown in jail, receive a court date, and your wrists will have nasty bruises from the handcuffs for quite some time.

You are what's wrong with America. Get a g**damn job, you filthy commie freak.

* * *

PAY NO ATTENTION to that question behind the headlines and official concerns for public health and safety.

Ask not why you're no threat to public health and civic order if you squat on public property for superfluous reasons. Or why doing so in a peaceful political protest is a transgression requiring raids by riot police employing chemical agents, truncheons and excessive force.

Ask not what kind of a country celebrates the unserious as its riot police beat professors, pupils and poets driven to civil disobedience as a last resort for asking serious questions and demanding serious answers.

Ask not these things. Your betters have decided you don't need to know the answer.

Bull Conner lives

Plus ça change . . .



. . . plus c'est la même chose . . .



. . . et plus c'est la même chose.

He didn't see that one coming

Noted trends forecaster Gerald Celente, a favorite of Russia Today and American conspiracy theorists, thought he was being prudent by investing in gold futures.

After getting waylaid by a trend called Jon Corzine and MF Global, Celente tells the RT anchorette exactly what he thinks the "MF" now stands for. I wonder what that is in Russian.

Hang on. . . .

мать ублюдок. Thanks, Google.


HERE'S a trends forecast that I think Celente might sign off on -- and, I think, already has. Occupy Wall Street is just the first wave, the rash bunch of weirdos, freakazoids, hippies, eccentrics, commies, anarchists . . . and a few normal people.

They're being dealt with by the state security forces -- something the Russia Today producers might know a little bit about.

But if and when the next big economic shock hits -- maybe a financial tsunami of sovereign defaults rolling across the Atlantic from the Eurozone -- people just might be back in the streets. And it won't be the hippies and freaks and weirdos and other unserious folk.

Goodnight America, wherever you've gone.

The truth-telling properties of agitprop

When pro-life propagandists seek to condemn Planned Parenthood by tying it to Occupy Wall Street, it says nothing about America's biggest abortion enthusiast and everything about how unserious advocates for "life" have become.

It says everything about how utterly fatuous my side of "the culture war" has become.

For God's sake, you can make a million reasoned, devastating critiques of the philosophy and shady history behind Planned Parenthood, a group founded upon the same principles that gave us Adolf Hitler's "master race" lunacy. Of course, LifeNews.com did none of that.

Why focus on eugenics, profiting from the misery of disadvantaged women and horny teen-agers and serving as the chief logisticians of America's long march toward Gomorrah when you can slam them for tangentially associating with hippies who allegedly shit in the park.

That's right, Planned Parenthood deserves your opprobrium and outrage because it is trying to latch onto the meme of the moment, Occupy Wall Street. It, in turn, is to be judged by reports that some of its more eccentric enthusiasts . . . are shitting in the park. And by reports that some of its more lewd enthusiasts pleasure themselves.

In the park.

OK, I can see why Planned Parenthood might be all over that last one, but still. . . .

LISTEN, I am a Catholic. Despite the best efforts of some who lead my church, I still believe what it has proclaimed for 2,000 years. Among those sacred proclamations is this one -- all human life is sacred.

All human life must be defended, particularly that of the weakest members of society, and you don't get any more defenseless than a fetus.

Basic biology tells us that life begins at conception. If not then, when?

Common sense tells us that a Homo sapiens fetus is a human being. And if you don't think a human being is the same thing as a person, you have just entered the philosophical bizarro world of those who would enslave Africans and murder Jews.

So there's that argument to be made against the United States' leading abortion provider -- Planned Parenthood. It's sound, it's simple and it's politically agnostic. It's hard to go wrong condemning an organization for methodically cheapening human life . . . via multiple methods . . . for money. Including a nice chunk of your tax dollars.

LifeNews.com could have done that Wednesday. Instead, it blogged this:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has become the subject of public skepticism after numerous well-documented cases of anti-Semitism, sexual assault, drug abuse, public masturbation, public defecation, vandalism and violence. Among the movement’s supporters and sponsors are the Communist Party USA, the American Nazi Party, Socialist Party USA, Industrial Workers of the World, International Bolshevik Tendency, Marxist Student Union, 9/11 Truth groups and more.

The fact that Planned Parenthood would encourage its supporters to attend a rally “in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the larger Occupy movement” despite the widely known abuses taking place at Occupy sites and ties to such disreputable organizations, just further calls into question Planned Parenthood’s credibility. It’s unconscionable that an organization, which receives millions of American tax dollars each year, would encourage supporters to rally alongside groups like the American Nazi Party.

Additionally alarming is that by participating in a rally in solidarity with the nationwide Occupy movement, Planned Parenthood, which purports to be pro-woman, has turned a blind eye to widespread cases of sexual assault at Occupy sites. On Sunday, a 24-year old Occupy Dallas protester was arrested after sexually assaulting a 14-year old girl.

ADDITIONALLY ALARMING is that some vocal pro-life supporters have been clergymen accused of molesting minors. We always knew those damned pro-lifers were up to no damned good, right?

And commies and Nazis are trying to latch onto something that's much more an abused public's primal scream than it is a political movement? Who'd have thought such a thing? Let's immediately demand that Occupy Wall Street form a coherent national leadership council for the express purpose of formally disavowing itself from every nut drawn to a protest like a moth is to a light bulb.

Or not.

You see, a pro-life movement far more devoted to Republican politics than redeeming a lost culture -- or saving babies . . . and their mothers -- needs some useful idiots with which to tar Occupy Wall Street. So it then can tar Planned Parenthood for being a moth. Really?

I mean, really?

Actually, as I read the LifeNews.com screed, I couldn't quite figure out what the main target was -- Planned Parenthood or Occupy Wall Street itself. That I could ask that question gives me its answer.

Are some pro-lifers a lot more worried about Occupy Wall Street than Planned Parenthood? Is much of the American pro-life movement just whoring itself out to principalities and powers . . . and the GOP?

Does a hippie shit in the park?

Getting tough on (insert trumped-up charge here)

Hippies back in the day had a name for cops like the Tennessee highway patrolmen captured in action by an arrested reporter's still-running video camera.

That would be "fascist pigs."

You know, the kind who body-slam a working member of the media to the ground as he tries to get out of their way. The kind heard trumping up phony charges against him on the spot.

If Nashville Scene reporter Jonathan Meador was publicly intoxicated Friday night, sobriety in Tennessee must be a state so grim as to provoke unending suicidal musings.

AS REPORTED by the Scene at the time:

Another round of arrests is under way at Legislative Plaza, where just after midnight some 20 Occupy Nashville protesters linked arms, awaiting arrest in violation of the Capitol's newly enacted curfew. A 10-minute warning was issued at approximately midnight, and some 60 to 75 Tennessee state troopers stood ready to enforce it.

Among those under arrest is evidently Scene reporter Jonathan Meador, who has been covering the protests. A fellow reporter asked the trooper arresting Meador if he really intended to lock up a journalist there to cover the events. According to the reporter, the trooper replied, "You want to be next?"

BENITO MUSSOLINI'S Blackshirts, no doubt, were scarcely less professional than this.

You have the law, and then you have a lawful society. Some of the most thuggish and lawless regimes on earth are exceedingly scrupulous in their application of "the law." I'm thinking of the Chinese troops at Tienanmen Square, for one.


ALL ACROSS America, we see the kind of law that's scrupulously enforced when it comes to a bunch of people engaging in civil disobedience to make the point -- one obvious to 99 percent of Americans -- that "s***'s f***ed up." That, by the way, was the text of my favorite protest sign ever, seen during an Occupy New Orleans march through the French Quarter week before last.

Then we have the law that's scrupulously ignored when Wall Street investment bankers blow up a nation's economy while enriching themselves to a degree far surpassing any measure of "obscene." An official wink and Gallic shrug, of course, comes only if lawmakers haven't been scrupulously bought in the service of scrupulously deregulating all manner of financial shenanigans that once were scrupulously forbidden.

But if one points that out, we have laws today (and "fascist-pig" enforcers) to deal with inconvenient truth-tellers . . . and the ones who document what they're saying.

Like "resisting arrest" and "public intoxication."