Hacking through the dog days of August.
The so-called dog days of August are often peddled to us as a time when wacky and superfluous stories surface because there is supposedly no hard news out there in the world. Pundits in the corporate media have often referred to this time as the "silly season."
That's actually self-serving pap, designed to get mainstream press reporters, editors and tv news producers off the hook for going on vacation, as many people do in the weeks leading up to Labor Day. With Congress out of session and the president goofing off at his ranch, the networks practically go on autopilot while newspapers become wafer thin. We're supposed to believe that nothing occurs on the entire planet during this time except for "silly" things. And we're easily seduced into this because most of us are humming along on low as well, traveling and not paying much attention.
Meanwhile, it was in the dog days of August last week when the Bush administration announced it would eviscerate the Clean Air Act, allowing all of those Bush/Cheney-backing companies that own power plants and refineries to belch out nasty pollutants into the air we breathe. Pretty damn "silly," huh? These days, the dog days are the dangerous days, a time when the Bush administration spins out its most harrowing schemes, hoping no one is watching while W. is in Crawford and Cheney is still underground.
It was also in the dog days on Friday night when another car bomb blew up in Iraq, killing as many as 120 people in city of Najaf, including one of Iraq's most important Shiite leaders. It was the most devastating and monumental attack to happen in Iraq since the invasion and occupation, and it will have huge repercussions. So, what was coverage like that night on television, as we headed into Labor Day weekend? Nightline?sans a vacationing Ted Koppel?did a show on the 25th anniversary of Animal House, which looked as if it had been in the can for a while. Charlie Rose put up a rerun from last May. And CNN, with the worst timing, ran a special on American military "heroes" in the war, which was made to look like a major success. I couldn't find much analysis on the tube about the bombing and the carnage, simply because there was nobody around. Even in Iraq itself, it appears we were off for Labor Day weekend, dawdling through the dog days.
"There were no speeches calling for calm and few public appearances by anyone in charge," Dexter Filkins reported in the Times of Najaf. "L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator, was on vacation. Nobody seemed to know when exactly he would return. The American military command here said nothing."
In California, news wasn't percolating any faster either. It was quite odd that Arnold Schwarzenegger's gangbangs and drug use of the past took weeks to make it into the media, and then sort of surfaced and fell dead last week, in the middle of those dog days. The movie star announced his decision to run for governor weeks ago, but that racy interview from 1977, in which he talked about how he and a bunch of his bodybuilding buddies took "a black woman" upstairs at a Gold's Gym and "all got together," took quite a while to bubble up.
Compare that to the sex smear against the openly gay Rev. Gene Robinson a couple of weeks ago. It was only a matter of hours after Robinson looked like he would be named a bishop by the rest of the bishops of the Episcopal Church when a couple of non-stories about his connection to sex sites and "touching" a parishioner inappropriately?both of which were later disproved?were hurled into the mainstream press. They led the television news and topped the front pages of most papers, courtesy of conservative pundit Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard and Fox News (both Murdoch owned), which broke and disseminated the story. More proof that the people who professionally drive sex smears are mostly on one side of the political spectrum.
And don't you absolutely love how conservatives are now sloughing off Arnie's lurid lovefest, as if they were normal, mature adults rather than the rabid, finger-pointing freaks they have always previously proven to be? I watched Schwarzenegger campaign co-chair, Congressman David Dreier?a conservative Republican and sexual moralist who has opposed anything in favor of gay rights?suddenly defending a gangbanging, pot-smoking Hollywood elitist, telling Chris Matthews that it was all in Arnie's past.
Dreier didn't, however, mention Arnie's flip-flop on the interview: At first, Schwarzenegger mildly defended his past, while in later statements he bizarrely said he couldn't remember whether any of it (or the interview) actually happened. Nor did Dreier say anything about Arnie's referring to gay men in the interview as "fags," in addition to boasting about his hash-smoking and gangbanging.
While the fag line irked me, I personally have no problem with a potential governor?or president, for that matter?having smoked pot or participated in group sex romps. But you better believe that if this were Al Gore or any other Democrat exposed as having jumped the bones of a black woman along with a bunch of his buddies in a gang bang, the media would have crucified him by now.
Speaking of crucifixion, Attorney General John Ashcroft does truly seem to think he is Jesus as he travels the country on an outlandish, tax-payer funded tour, which also has been mostly under the media radar in the dog days. His 18-city trip across America to sell the Patriot Act has Ashcroft preaching that he must "help people understand the truth." The truth, of course, is all about how he knows the best way to shield us all from evil, even if it means locking people up without any evidence and gathering all kinds of personal information on Americans. The Supreme Court may have thrown out sodomy laws, but Ashcroft is doing his best to get back into our bedrooms?into all our rooms, actually?with his "sneak and peek" provisions, allowing the feds to enter your home and only tell you about it afterward.
The scariest thing I've read about the guy in recent days?scarier than his supposed belief that calico cats are a sign of the devil and his penchant for covering up naked statues?was in the Washington Post last week, which quoted Ashcroft's own autobiography. Discussing the ups and downs of his political career?and the attorney general certainly is under attack at the moment, as even conservatives are bailing on the Patriot Act?Ashcroft noted that, "for every crucifixion, a resurrection is waiting to follow."
I say we call his bluff and see if he does indeed rise from the dead. Who's got the nails?