BUSH WATCH...WALT BRASCH

The Press And Michael Moore
by by Walter and Rosemary Brasch

Much of the establishment press has been especially critical of Michael Moore. In the past few days, it has questioned every word he has said, every line in his third documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. The film attacks President George W. Bush, the Bush Administration, corporate America, and the media. It has been called propaganda and manipulative; Moore has been called obnoxious, arrogant, and detestable.

Today Show co-anchors Katie Couric and Matt Lauer who, like most of the infotainment TV industry are usually deferential and gushing to innumerable celebrities and politicians, were especially caustic in their interviews and statements about Moore and his film. Perhaps thats because Moores scathing film includes images of a gushy Couric. Jonathan Foreman, the New York Posts film critic, wrote that the film is intended to look like and feel like journalism, except it would never be acceptable if you tried to publish it because its full of lies and half-truths. Apparently, Mr. Foreman believes everything in the Post and the other 1,650 daily newspapers is completely accurate, that not only are the facts they present completely accurate but no relevant fact is deliberately left out.

Fahrenheit 9/11 has a few factual discrepancies, for which the mainstream media have excoriated Moore, as if a couple of misinterpretations would denigrate the entire film. But, Moore also presents hundreds of undisputable facts and, ultimately, the truth, something most of the establishment media have been slow to publish or air.

In one of the scenes, he shows the President projecting a concerned look, telling the nation, I call upon all nations to stop these terrorist killings, then when he has delivered his presidential sound bite he picks up a golf club and tells the press, Now watch this drive. Was Moore the only one to have that footage? Or were the 50 or more reporters who body watch the President too much the sycophants to see the hypocrisy. Why didnt we see it before? Were the reporters more concerned about not getting choice seats on the presidential press plane to raise objections to his handling of critical issues?

The media constantly whine how hard it is to get news from the Bush Administration; apparently, they are forced to attend daily press briefings at the White House and the Department of Defense to get any kind of news. Somewhere between when the nations journalists took Newswriting in their sophomore year and when they got the choice Washington assignments they forgot a basic lessonits perfectly acceptable journalism to dig out the stories and not rely upon being hand-fed by corporate, governmental, and political spokesmen.

Matt Lauer and other millionaire TV journaliststhe ones who interview every movie star shortly after their movies opensuddenly became investigative reporters and demanded to know if Moore wasnt hyping the movie to make even more money from it, as if their own billion dollar conglomerates were pristine citadels of charity.

Among the questions Lauer and others asked Moore was how he got footage in Iraq. They were suspicious. The embedded press from the big-name networks and media outlets had official credentials to travel with the troops, and to listen to the generals and public affairs officers. The alternative press and hundreds of smaller publications, even if they had brilliant reporters with knowledge of the Middle East and the American military, were not embedded and, thus, were treated as yapping pests by the larger, more self-righteously important media. So, they figured unless Moore did something unethical, it was inconceivable that he actually got footage that the mainstream media didntor couldntor wouldntget.

The New York Times, about two years late, admitted it was probably too deferential to the Bush Administration and didnt challenge the Presidents reasons why he believed he had to lead the nation into a war in Iraq. Hundreds of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, most probably believing they were being patriotic by supporting the Presidents political agenda in the War on Terror, blindly accepted what they were told, seldom questioning now-proven lies and half-truths.

Walter Cronkite, who helped establish the now-dated concept that TV news should bewell, newsbelieves it is unpatriotic not to question the government. Other may agree with him, but they dont practice it. Few questioned the President or his cabinet and advisors as rigorously as they did Moore. The opening weekends box office take for Fahrenheit 9/11 should, at the very least, show journalists that the public not only wants, but demands, another view, something they dont get from the lap-dog press that drools over daily news briefings as if they were Texas-sized steaks.

If it shows nothing else, Fahrenheit 9/11shows one thingthe American media have abrogated their responsibility to be this nations watch-dog. Had they properly done their job the past few years and not been detracted by every taudry sex scandal they could dig up, Fahrenheit 911 would not have been necessaryit would have been old news. --posted 06.30.04

[Walter Brasch, an award-winning journalist for more than 30 years, is professor of mass communications at Bloomsburg University. Rosemary Brasch is a family services specialist for national disasters for the Red Cross and a worker rights advocate. You may contact them at brasch@bloomu.edu]

Bush War Policies: Running The Ship Of State Aground
by Walter Brasch

    Let’s pretend it’s wartime, and the nation’s largest aircraft carrier has just run aground.     (OK, so it’s not likely that a carrier will ever run aground, but in the past three years we’ve been asked to pretend a lot. Let’s pretend George W. Bush was not elected by a 5-4 vote . . . Let’s pretend that the Saudis had no culpability in the 9/11 murders . .  . Let’s pretend there’s a connection between Saddam and 9/11 . . .  Let’s pretend there really are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)

    Anyhow, for the sake of the argument, let’s pretend a carrier really did run aground. Capt. Horatio Hornswaggle says he’s really ticked off about it, has admonished his lesser officers, but he can’t be blamed since he had just come off a 16-hour work shift and was getting a much-needed sleep. Cdr. Lesley Lobridge says it’s not really his fault because he was in the officer’s mess at the time, grabbing a quick snack before getting back to work. Lt. Cdr. Mizzen Mast says he wasn’t on the bridge because he had to take a head break.

    By the time the investigation ends, Petty Officer Second Class Peachfuzz Pitfall, the helmsman, is found guilty of dereliction of duty, malfeasance, and running a red light. No one else is charged—they weren’t responsible.

    Is this scene really plausible? Of course not. The captain, even when asleep, has a responsibility for the proper discipline, education, and execution of his crew and the ship’s mission. And, it’s not likely that the Navy’s mission is to run billion-dollar carriers onto a reef. The captain, and all others in the chain of command, and maybe even a flag officer, might be brought before courts martial.

    In Iraq, several American soldiers abused, assaulted, manhandled, and humiliated Iraqi prisoners. A scathing 53-page report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, classified in late February 2004 and not meant for public release, but leaked to investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh, found that the Army in Iraq had committed numerous instances of “sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses.” “60 Minutes II” released some of the pictures showing gloating American soldiers. An Army investigation led to charges included aggravated assault, battery, maltreatment, and dereliction of duty for seven soldiers.

    President George W. Bush was quick to condemn the actions as “disgusting.” He and his national security advisor went on Arab television to apologize for American atrocities. He scolded Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not advising him of the problem until pictures appeared on television. Rumsfeld said the Defense Department was taking care of the problem of these “rogue” soldiers, although innumerable officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, had said that numerous attempts to have Defense take care of wide-ranging problems in Iraq had gone unanswered. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the problem was small, caused by “just a handful” of soldiers—but he hadn’t read the report several weeks after a draft was available. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, a Reserve officer in charge of all prisons in Iraq, rightly blamed military interrogators for establishing conditions that led to the abuse, but didn’t seem to want to take any blame.

    Taguba’s report didn’t just stop with condemnation of enlisted soldiers. Seymour Hersh, in “The New Yorker,” said that report revealed “a much broader pattern of command failures than initially acknowledged by the Pentagon and the Bush administration in responding to outrage over the abuse.” Taguba blamed interrogators, military intelligence officers, and civilians hired by the Department of Defense for not only allowing but also encouraging the prison guards to “soften” up the prisoners.

    One of the soldiers who was charged with the crimes told “60 Minutes II” that the prison guards “had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things . . . like rules and regulations. And it just wasn’t happening.”

    Innumerable times, President Bush told the nation he was giving his military all the resources they needed to fight. Either this was political spin of the truth, or his subordinates didn’t take him seriously. Gen. Karpinski told Newsweek she didn’t have enough troops or resources, that her brigade wasn’t properly trained, and that when she complained to her superiors, they ignored her. “They just wanted it to go away,” she said.

    Almost a year earlier, the inspector general of the Department of Justice revealed the detention of individuals in the United States was “indiscriminate and haphazard,” and that there were “significant instances” of “a pattern of physical and verbal abuse,” including beatings of illegal immigrants, most of them Muslim or Arab, almost all imprisoned for minor offenses, by various employees and officials of the Department of Justice. Included were employees of the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Naturalization Service.

    In England, Lord Justice Johan Steyn, senior judge in the House of Lords, and one of the nation’s most respected judges, said that conditions imposed by the Department of Defense at Guantánamo Bay were of “utter lawlessness,” a “monstrous failure of justice,” and “not quite torture, but as close as you can get.” BBC diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason pointed out, “It is rare for British judges to speak on contentious political issues and almost unheard of for them to attack a foreign government.”

    President Bush may condemn the actions of a “few.” He, like the rest of the world, was be personally “disgusted.” He may rebuke his subordinates. His staff and cabinet secretaries may launch investigations. And, there will be courts martial, especially since the world now knows what happened in Iraq. But, the problem, as others are pointing out, goes far beyond the actions of “just a handful” to expose critical problems in how this country has undertaken its mission in the President’s self-proclaimed “War on Terror.”

    This president has defined himself as a commander-in-chief. As a war president. As the leader of this war, in which almost 800 American soldiers, and several thousand others, most of them civilians, have died. He is the one guiding this ship-of-state. The loss of civil rights of American citizens and human rights of all persons was, and is, his responsibility. It’s one from which he can’t deflect criticism or go AWOL. --posted 05.10.04

    [Walter Brasch’s latest book is Sex and the Single Beer Can, a witty and insightful look at the media and American politics. You may address him at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his web site, www.walterbrasch.com]

The Day I Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
by Walter Brasch

    On April 21, I finally became part of the establishment. At least the Republican National Committee believes I did.     I received a letter from Ed Gillespie. THE Ed Gillespie. Chairman of all the Republicans.

    Beneath a red and blue logo, from Ed Gillespie himself, was my name and address. All typed neatly and correct. Ed—I assume I can call him Ed since he addressed me as “friend”—just wanted to thank me for all the help I’ve given the Republicans. The only thing I can remember ever giving the Republicans, which can be printed in a family newspaper, is a few bucks now and then for campaign buttons for my political collection.

    “As a fellow citizen who believes in President Bush and his agenda for a strong, prosperous America,” Ed wrote, “I am honored to present you with the enclosed photograph.”

    My heart beating as fast as a company planning to outsource its labor, I checked it out. 8-1/4-by-10-1/2. Full color. Glossy photo paper. President Bush sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. Pen in his right hand. Phone receiver precariously perched against his left ear. He was reading some important papers. At least I thought they were important papers. After all, what else would a President be reading? My first thought was that the liberals were wrong. The President can do more than one thing at a time. Would a picture from the RNC lie?

     On the bottom of the picture, against a white border, was the President’s personal message. “To Walter Brasch,” it said in readable script type. “To Walter Brasch”!  How much more personal can you get? But that wasn’t all. The personalized script even thanked me for my support for the RNC, then zeroed in on my contribution: “Grassroots leaders like you are the key to building a better, stronger, more secure future for our nation and all Americans.” Below all that was a blue signature, which might have said "George Bush.” It could also have said “Mickey Mouse.” A busy President often can’t write legibly, especially if he has to sign a million or so photos.

    Ed said he hoped I “will display this personalized photograph of President Bush proudly as a symbol of your support for his positive vision of a better future for our country.” I was about to put a flag on my car and drive over to the nearby Wal-Mart and ask one of the $7 an hour part-time workers for a picture frame when my wife suggested it would be unpatriotic if I didn’t keep reading Ed’s message.

    He wanted me to confirm I received the picture in good condition and send the “confirmation receipt” back to him personally in the postage-paid envelope. ”It means a lot to me to know your picture arrived in good condition,” he stated. If the picture was damaged, all I had to do was check another box and I’d get another one! These Republicans really care about me and the quality of the postal service, I thought.

    They also suggested I could support the President with “a contribution of $25, $35, $50, $100 or whatever.” For a few more paragraphs, my good buddy Ed told me about what the compassionate conservative President was doing for the country.  With my support—MY support!—the President would be able to make the tax cuts permanent and give even more incentives to American business. He’d be able to “enact a comprehensive energy policy.” He’d even work “to strengthen homeland security.” Ed didn’t mention anything about Iraq or Afghanistan, the health crisis, environmental disasters, and the current state of free speech. But that’s probably because he only had a couple of pages to tell me that I needed to help the President. He said we needed to overcome “San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi.” San Francisco. Liberal. It almost seemed to be redundant.

      “We must counter the Democrats by getting our message out past the liberal media echo chamber,” he pleaded. Definitely, I thought! We need to counter the liberal Fox network. And those billion dollar media conglomerates that spew infotainment all day. And that left leaning cabal of talk show hosts. I’d be honored to get rid of those liberal media.     Ed needed my $25. Or more. He needed it for that $4.1 million he said the RNC was trying to raise during the next three months. He didn’t mention that the President’s re-election campaign had already raised more than $185 million, but I’m sure the campaign needs every cent to make sure that no TV commercial spot gets left behind.

    Three times he asked me to contribute. It’d be easy. I could return the “Confirmation Receipt Form,” the one that tells Ed I received the picture in good condition, and just send along a check or credit card information. I could even “have an immediate impact” by going on-line.

    In one package from the RNC I received a two-page letter, a one-page confirmation, a picture suitable for framing, and a postage-paid envelope. The information the RNC sent me REALLY must have been important. That was three pieces of information more than the Presidential Daily Briefing in August 2001 that a strike by al-Qaeda against the United States was imminent.

     [Walter Brasch’s latest book is the witty Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture. You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu. Contributing to this column was Rosemary Brasch.]

There Are No Half-Time Shows in War
by Walter Brasch

On the day that Justin Timberlake ripped open Janet Jackson’s blouse during the half-time of the Super Bowl to reveal a bejeweled breast and create a national firestorm of protest, American Soldiers 523 and 524 died in Iraq. Along with the two American soldiers, 14 were wounded. Also that day, two suicide bombers killed more than 100 Kurds and wounded more than 200.

Back in the United States, CBS, which broadcast the game, MTV which produced the half-time show, and Viacom, which owns both CBS and MTV, said they were shocked and outraged that Timberlake and Jackson would do such a despicable act. The NFL said it was “embarrassed.” The two singers claim the blouse-ripping was the result of a “wardrobe malfunction.” The network, of course, said little about the crotch-grabbing rump-slapping other parts of the show.

During the week after the Super Bowl, Americans sent more than 200,000 complaints to the FCC; it was almost as many as all the complaints for all alleged violations the previous year. FCC Chair Michael Powell, calling the half-time spectacle “deplorable,” quickly launched the full resources of the FCC to investigate Jackson’s breast. Congressmen and senators groped prime time audiences to express their outrage against indecency on television, and demanded higher fines for flashing. The nation’s newspapers gave the story its front page, ran sidebars inside, and continued the story for days. TV news, talk, and entertainment shows constantly rebroadcast the offending one-second breast-baring, the flesh now pixilated or blurred. The half-time story became the most popular search topic on the internet; the clip, often bootlegged, became the most downloaded one in the internet’s history.

On TV network news and in fictionalized prime-time series, we see violence and body parts on the street. On the afternoon soaps, we have seen every violation of the Ten Commandments, and a few violations that not even the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah knew about. But, this didn’t draw the ire of the sanctimonious “family values” administration. A bare breast did.

Ratings draw advertising, which is what runs the nation’s media. With 90 million Super Bowl viewers, CBS could command $2.3 million per 30-second commercial, many of which pre-pubescent teens would say was a combination of “cool” and “gross.” But, there isn’t much return on investment for stories of substance. Let’s take a look at some other stories that don’t cause much public outrage or get even a fraction of the coverage.

When President Bush announced he wanted to give legal status to illegal immigrants to be able to work in America, there weren’t 200,000 written complaints that this was a political maneuver to meet the bottom-line mentality of corporations pining for low-wage employment. The nation’s unemployment rate is now 5.6 percent, with most of the 8.3 million unemployed having been laid off or outsourced. Even the 8.3 million figure presented by the Department of Labor is much lower than the reality. By government standards, anyone working at least one hour a week is considered to be employed. The statistics also don’t consider that thousands of companies hire workers for only 30-35 hours a week in order to avoid having to pay benefits, or that hundreds of thousands of jobs are filled by persons who once worked at other companies for better benefits and higher pay before being laid off, or that about 300,000 Americans, after months of unemployment, have just given up and, thus, aren’t counted. One thing the statistics and projections do state—for the first time since the Great Depression, under Bush’s administration there will be a net loss of jobs. Where is the massive national outrage?

More than 40 million Americans don’t have health coverage, and the huge Bush deficit may force a cut-back in social security benefits. Those stories never received the news coverage that Janet Jackson’s bare breast received. Per-pupil spending in the public schools has declined by more than four percent in the past two years, and the President’s educational budget is about $30 billion less than what he called for to provide less than one year’s support for his adventure in Iraq. The news media didn’t focus on that, and 200,000 people didn’t write the government to protest.

In his 2004 budget, Bush lopped off seven percent from the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently the only ones who seem to care might be spotted owls, people whom the neoconservatives derisively call “tree huggers,” and some “alarmists” who think hazardous materials in the water and air may not be the latest fad diet. Bush has also slashed $1.4 billion from human services budget, terminating about three dozen programs, including those for alcohol abuse reduction, arts in education, and several which target low-income youth. But, the media, if they even noticed, ran only small stories in their “B” sections.

Only in the past year has there been any kind of public outcry about the Patriot Act, a heavy-handed administration attempt to make Americans think it’s doing something about terrorism while doing little more than shredding the Constitution. But, ask the average American about what the Patriot Act does to his or her civil liberties, and you’ll get mumbling silence. Perhaps the million signatures the librarians and booksellers are soliciting might stimulate some news reporter’s sense of what’s important.

The President has taken some of the best National Guard troops to go to Iraq, leaving the states with fewer resources to help victims of natural disasters. But, floods in the Midwest and hurricanes along the Atlantic coast may not be as important to this president as his macho bravado photo-ops on aircraft carriers. After all, who’s going to protest sending military into a war zone—until their own safety is threatened, their homes are destroyed, or there is civil unrest and the local sheriff can’t handle it?

No government officials protested the loss of lives from a war that may have been started by a president who had a historical vendetta against another nation’s dictator. No administration officials complained about war-profiteering by Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s former company, which still pays him a six-figure annual income. Not many are irate enough to protest the administration’s stonewalling of an independent committee with a Presidential mandate to investigate the truth behind the Iraq War. The deaths of the Americans and Kurds were blocked from the front page banner headlines by the scandal of a semi-naked nipple. Because of the media exploitation, because politicians saw a chance to rant against indecency while mounting adulterous affairs, and because 200,000 Americans protested one second on network television, we have a crisis, and the full resources of this administration has been mobilized to handle it.

Almost every American knows who Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson are. Because of the media, and a vast ubiquitous publicity machine, we know the names and lives of dozens of celebrities, wanna-be’s, and even the “stars” of 20 hours of “reality TV” each week. Only a few know the names of the two Americans killed in Iraq the same afternoon as a half-time show. --posted 02.27.04

[Assisting on this column were Rosemary Brasch and Christine Varner. Dr. Brasch’s latest book is Sex and the Single Beer Can (Feb. 2004), a witty and probing look at the nation’s media and entertainment industries. You may contact him through www.walterbrasch.com or at brasch@bloomu.edu.]

Gigolos on the Campaign Trail
by Walter Brasch

The presidential candidates, once promising eternal love to Iowa and New Hampshire voters, deserted their betrothed faster than a gigolo ditching a plain rich girl for a plain richer one.

Together, Iowa and New Hampshire have less than 1.5 percent of the American population, but because the states figured out how to be the first in the race for delegates, and because there isn’t a lot to do in January, the candidates and the bus-bound media hordes saturated the two states with their personality-drenched presence.

For three months—as happened four years before that and will undoubtedly happen four years after that—the candidates walked around the non-voting homeless to infiltrate every bar, restaurant, and fire hall, kissing babies, pumping the flesh, and dribbling campaign trinkets of every price category.

In Iowa, the candidates ate corn and pork chops, and talked about the need to help farmers. If pigs could vote—the state has five times as many pigs as people—the candidates would have preached a doctrine of forced vegetarianism. In New Hampshire, they praised granite and talked about why government should stay out of people’s lives. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the candidates moved into 17 states for primaries and caucuses in February, then into 19 states, 11 of them entangled in the “Super Tuesday” primaries in early March. Like they did to their jilted lovers in Iowa and New Hampshire, the candidates are whispering sweet-nothings that are overheard and published by the media which, in the movie-script scenarios that have become politics, are cast as lovable klutzes who never get the girl. By the time they waddle into Pennsylvania in April, they will be proclaiming that cheese steak hoagies are the perfect food. By June, with the decisions generally made three months earlier, the Alabama, New Jersey, and South Dakota primaries will be about as useless as pork rinds at a bar mitzvah.

CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC cleared their schedules to give extended coverage to the Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns, significantly more air time than any of the news media gave to the problems of health care, poverty, or unemployment. Both states could be devastated by fires, submerged by floods, or find out that they are now bankrupt, and the media may send one “pool” camera crew; everyone else will be working on more important stories—like what Michael Jackson wore to his trial and what Martha Stewart will do to improve prison food.

Unable to focus upon issues, probably because the Iowa and New Hampshire winters freeze brain cells, the media threw six-column headlines above gossip and conjecture. During the 2000 primaries, the media had focused upon accusations the George W. Bush campaign made against the mental stability of Sen. John McCain who had spent several years in a Vietnamese POW camp, and upon Democrat Bill Bradley’s irregular heart beat. Instead of detailed coverage of Bradley’s chest, the media should have cut into the heart of politics by dissecting the who, how, and why of campaign financing, perhaps looking at the Bush campaign contributions to see if the Republican governor had anything left of his soul left that he hadn’t sold.

Four years later, the media gleefully pranced among the Democratic candidates who are seeking the Democratic nomination, trying but unable to find much scandal since none of them raised the level of vindictiveness seen in the Republican primaries four years earlier.

The TV media, with journalists an almost extinct minority among what passes as their news staffs, think the best way to cover the primaries is to display 10 seconds of a candidate’s visit to the Rotary Club luncheon, then shove in another 45 seconds of public comments about the candidate who probably didn’t say anything of substance to begin with. The Iowa and New Hampshire voters are so media-savvy that they no longer had to ask what slant the reporters wanted for their stories.

Print media reporters spend as much as three minutes with a potential voter, condensing the comments to about 30 words. For variety, the reporters quote each other and the swarm of pollsters who hover like trash-dump flies around political campaigns and the media circus. They eruditely declare that if Candidate X doesn’t do at least so much percent in the vote, then he’s finished, and if Candidate Y wins the election but doesn’t score at least so many points ahead of the next candidate, he’s also toast. But, if Candidate Z does “better than expected,” he’s “in the race” and “ready for the long haul.”

Each of the major Democratic candidates are campaigning furiously on a two front campaign—against the policies of incumbent Republican President George W. (“Every-blunder-I-Make-and-Every-Lie-I-Tell-is-for-National-Security”) Bush and against each other, hoping to convince the Democratic voters that only he could defeat the sitting President. Campaigning just as furiously, and drawing most of the media attention because he carries the presidential seal with him, is the President who is running unopposed for the Republican nomination, and who is parlaying $1,000 a plate campaign dinners into more than a $400 million campaign war chest.

By the November general election, the two remaining overfed major party candidates will have spent more than the human resources and education budgets of a small country, or enough to significantly reduce hunger and poverty in America. Most presidential candidates are good people caught up in the show that has become politics. On stage, bathed by the media glow, they have become “warm and fuzzy,” having already compromised their integrity for political expedience. Perhaps, it’s time for Martin Sheen, who plays the president on “The West Wing,” and Aaron Sorkin who wrote and produced the first four seasons of one of TV’s best dramas in years, to run our country. At least we’ll have more intelligence and honesty in fiction than we now do in the political process. --posted 02.17.04

[Dr. Brasch’s latest book, published this month, is Sex and the Single Beer Can; Probing the Media and American Culture. You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu]

Dubya: A Good Ole Sport
by Walter Brasch

You can tell a lot about a person from whom he chooses to have dinner with.

The day after he delivered the State of the Union, George W. Bush was in Mesa, Ariz., to push one of his programs and to campaign for re-election—although the White House was firm in stating the trip was presidential not political. Had it been political, the Republicans, not the taxpayers, would have had to pay for it.

Nevertheless, after eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in mid-day, the President decided to dine in nearby Phoenix with millionaire Anaheim Angels owner Arturo Moreno; Jerry Colangelo, managing general partner of the Arizona Diamondbacks; general manager Joe Garagiola Jr.; and manager Bob Brently.

Earlier in the day, he exchanged handshakes, but didn’t discuss anything with Gov. Jane Napolitano, who had wanted to talk about federal assistance to fight forest fires. Apparently, since she wasn’t a baseball player or a Republican lobbyist, the governor wasn’t worthy of his time.

Also not worthy of his time were innumerable Arizona residents who were not props in his slap-hands photo-ops. He could have had dinner with Hugh Downs, former “Today Show” and “20/20” anchor, now a lecturer at Arizona State. But he didn’t. He could have had dinner with Marshall Trimble, a best-selling author and the state’s official historian. But he didn’t. He might have asked actors Barbara Eden or Debbie Reynolds to dinner. But he didn’t. If he was worried about what to say to someone more creative or intelligent than he, the President could have had dinner with mime Robert Shields, of Shields & Yarnell comedy fame, but he didn’t even think about asking him to dinner. There was also no way he would have asked Arizona residents Lynda Carter, Linda Ronstadt, Stephen Baldwin, or Alice Cooper to dinner.

If he was worried about dining with liberals, he could have asked Paul Harvey or former vice-president Dan Quayle to dinner. He probably should have tried to have dinner with straight-talking Sen. John McCain, if only for the appearance of party unity. But he didn’t. He might even have given a call to former Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy, currently a talk show host. But he didn’t. There were thousands of writers, artists, musicians, scientists, firefighters, social workers, and human rights activists he could have asked to his intimate dinner. But he didn’t. Nor did he ask any Native Americans, who compose more than five percent of the state’s population, to dinner.

He chose as his dinner companions millionaires and sports figures. That alone says far more about the man than any of his policies.

Walt Brasch’s latest book is the witty and insightful, Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture, available on-line, at most bookstores, or through www.walterbrasch.com. You may contact Dr. Brasch at brasch@bloomu

Dissolving Journalistic Integrity: Lies and Profits in the Media
by Walter Brasch

The relationship between the TV networks, both the news and entertainment divisions, and nation's publicists is incestuous. Most guests on the morning news shows and the late evening talk shows are actors and musicians plugging their latest releases. Some of the guests, however, are writers and editors for mass-market magazines. NBC's "Today Show" broadcasts stories that first appeared in People magazine.

At WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Tampa, Florida, it's possible to buy interview time. For $2,500, "Daytime," which follows the network's "Today Show," will allow almost anyone hawking just about anything to be interviewed for four to six minutes in a journalistic-like format. The station management says that charging guests is acceptable because the entertainment division not the news division produces the show. However, the station places its "News Channel 8" logo at the bottom of the screen.

The most serious cross-over between news, entertainment, and advertising may have occurred when the media began a bidding war to get the "exclusive" Jessica Lynch story. The Washington Post first broke the story shortly after Lynch was rescued after nine days in a six-story Iraqi hospital in April 2003. Using unnamed sources, the Post reported that Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk who was driving a water tanker, "fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi forces ambushed [a convoy of the] the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition." The unnamed sources also told the Post that Lynch "continued firing at the Iraqis even after she sustained multiple gunshot wounds and watched several other soldiers in her unit die around her in fighting. . . . She was fighting to the death . . . She did not want to be taken alive." The Post also reported that Lynch "was also stabbed when Iraqi forces closed in on her position."

Other media quickly jumped onto the story and reported not only was she was shot several times by her Iraqi attackers but was also tortured while in the hospital. A daring Navy SEAL/Army Ranger/Air Force rescue effort, against possible hostile fire, freed her after nine days in the Iraqi hospital. The Post, quickly followed by other media, reported, based upon the words of an Iraqi, that "four guards in civilian clothes stood watch at Lynch's first-floor room armed with Kalashnikov rifles and radios." The rescue came, according to CBS, when special forces "ran through a hail of gunfire." The media gave the story front-page play and top-of-the-news broadcasts for several days.

There was only one problem-most of the story, piped to the media by unnamed sources, some in the Defense Department, and never verified by the media-was wrong. Lynch wasn't driving a water tanker but was a passenger in a Humvee; she never fired a shot, nor was she shot; her injuries were caused by being trapped by the overturned Humvee; the convoy wasn't ambushed-it had gotten lost, then was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade from a small group of Iraqi irregulars; she was treated well by Iraqi physicians; she wasn't beaten while held as a prisoner; there was no military opposition to the Americans' rescue attempt; the Iraqis even offered to give the Americans a master key to the hospital.

Lynch herself later said the military exaggerated what happened in the desert. In an interview on ABC-TV, she said the lies and use of unnamed sources by the media "hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about." Before the war, the American public "were told lie after lie" by the Bush administration, said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Rep. Henry Waxman was more specific-"They lied to promote public relations, from the Jessica Lynch ordeal to the president's campaign landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln--and about what war would cost our country."

Lynch was quick to praise others who had died in the crash or who fought; one, a young soldier, would eventually receive the silver star for heroism-and almost no media coverage. But, the blonde-girl-fights-off-soldiers-and-survives-torture made a good story. So good that a CBS News senior vice-president, trying to get exclusive rights, wrote a letter to the Army that blurred the distinction between news and entertainment. In that letter, Betsy West wrote: "Attached you will find the outlines of a proposal that includes ideas from CBS News, CBS Entertainment, MTV networks and Simon & Schuster publishers. From the distinguished reporting of CBS News to the youthful reach of MTV, we believe this is a unique combination of projects that will do justice to Jessica's inspiring story."

Writing in the November 2003 issue of Quill, the official publication of the Society of Professional Journalists, Peter Y. Sussman pointed out "it would be exceedingly difficult for any of CBS's 'distinguished' journalists to question dispassionately an interviewee whom their boss had wooed with intimations of lucrative deals and the assurance that the network found her story 'inspiring'."

Nevertheless, it was NBC, ABC, and A. A. Knopf publisher that won the first rights. NBC ran a two-hour semi-fictionalized docudrama during Fall 2003, and ABC aired the first "exclusive" interview with her on Nov. 11-the same day a book, based upon interviews with her, was published. "That interview, to be followed in quick order by interviews on other major networks, thus completes the transition from news story to promotional sales campaign, with the 'news media' playing the role of compliant handmaiden," Sussman wrote, pointing out , "It is . . . hard to imagine how any true journalism can emerge from the blizzard of Lynch interviews on news shows that networks fought so hard to secure during the . . . promotional campaign for her book."

Ethical issues have continually clouded the information, entertainment, and persuasion areas of mass communications, dissolving any pretense that there are walls between journalism and advertising. Perhaps, we should just classify the mass media as entertainment and disregard the belief that journalistic integrity is important in the media's quest for circulation, ratings, and higher profits. --posted 12.28.03

[Walter Brasch is professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, and the author of Sex and the Single Beer Can; Probing the Media and American Culture.

Faux Hunting In Pennsylvania
by Walter Brasch

    Tally, Ho!

    As if Pennsylvanians don’t have enough things to trap, chase, maim, and kill, add foxes to the list.     Rep. Ed Staback (D-Lackawanna/Wayne counties) has introduced a bill into the Legislature to permit fox hunting on preserves. Rep. Staback is minority chair of the Game and Fisheries Committee; the Pennsylvania Game Commission helped write the bill. (“Our motto: If it moves, shoot it; if it stands still, shoot it twice.”)

    This isn’t your ordinary fox hunt conducted by the snobby Main Line set. The horses and dogs won’t cost several thousand dollars. There won’t be riding crops to beat against the horses’ flanks and neck. No one will be wearing black leather boots, silken shirts, or red coats. And no one will be shouting out not to fire until they see the scared whites of the fox’s eyes.

    This, if we are to believe the bill’s language, is a kinder, gentler fox hunt, one that doesn’t permit the hunters or their dogs to kill the fox. HB1448 will allow the Game Commission to issue permits for fox hunting preserves. This isn’t canned preserves, since no one plans to make fox jelly and sell it at the local flea market. And, no one plans to skin a fox so Aunt Matilda can have that luxurious dead animal strung around her neck like she always wanted.

    Canned preserves for hunters are fenced-in areas in which people pay hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars for the right to pursue a wild animal, then kill, stuff, and mount the trophy of man’s inhumanity against nature. It’s slam-dunk hunting—minimal risk with maximum kill.

    If the bill becomes law, Pennsylvanians will be allowed to buy a permit that allows them to create a preserve. In that preserve, hunters with dogs, provided at least one of them pays an admissions fee, will be able to chase all the foxes they want. The bill doesn’t allow the killing of foxes. But, there’s every evidence that foxes pursued by a pack of dogs and Ride-’em Bob on his palomino charger will be stressed merely by the hunt. Some will be injured; others may collapse from exhaustion; others may die from the pursuit. Of course, if the dogs “accidentally” hunt down and surround the fox, and “accidentally” go into a killing frenzy—why, that’s certainly permissible. After all, just as hunters can’t control their prey, neither can they control their dogs. After all, people don’t kill foxes, dogs kill foxes.

    “Even if the hounds cause no obvious injury,” says Heidi Prescott, a wildlife rehabilitator and national director of the Fund for Animals, “foxes chased by hounds even once for five minutes have been found to exhibit a physiological stress response.” Exposure to repeated pursuits, says Prescott, “could result in chronic physiological stress and death.” But the Game Commission has a proposal—escape shelters. It proposes places on the preserve where 15-pound foxes will be able to escape from 70-pound foxhounds—assuming that in the confusion of the hunt the foxes don’t first collapse or run in circles trying to find the escape hatches.

     Since the average fox is a lot brighter than the average hunter, and light years more intelligent than the average Game commissioner, the Legislature is being asked to level the playing field. Foxes on the preserves will be raised domestically. They are likely to be more docile, more trusting of humans, and not as wily as those which breed in the wild. And, there is nothing that says Cowboy Bob can’t unleash his hounds upon fox kits as young as three months.     Most states don’t permit fox hunting; those that do are primarily in the South and in the Midwest. But, this is Pennsylvania, a northern state that earned national scorn not only for allowing the Hegins pigeon hunt, but also for allowing the trapping and killing of bobcats, which certainly pose no danger to the public, aren’t overpopulating urban areas, and don’t have meat that is edible. The legislature just rolled over and played dead to the voices of Trapper John and his few hundred fellows who thought it’d be a jolly ole time to “bag a bobcat.”

    This is the same Legislature that has blocked almost every animal rights bill it’s been presented, but unanimously passed a resolution not long before the elections to honor dogs, apparently in a lame attempt to convince the public that warm and fuzzy politicians need to be re-elected.

    And now the Legislature has yet another bill because some of Rep. Staback’s constituents in a rural part of Pennsylvania thought it’d be a good way to “train” hounds and have some fun while doing it. This isn’t hunting. It is just sport cruelty disguised as hunting.

    Tally, Ho, y’all! 11.04.03

    [Walter Brasch’s latest book is “Sex and the Single Beer Can,” a witty and probing look at the American mass media. You may contact Dr. Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu]

Bush Faces Up To A McBlimp Attack (satire)
by Walter Brasch

    Beneath a clear blue Fall afternoon, I was lying face down on the parkway outside city hall. On top of me, cursing and screaming they’ll never take us alive, was Marshbaum. The last thing I had remembered before being hit with a flying tackle was looking up. So, I looked up again.

    “Stay down!” Marshbaum barked.

    “Snipers?” I fearfully asked. When you’re a political satirist, you never know who you may have offended.     “Blimp,” whispered Marshbaum ominously.

    “The Goodyear blimp is after me? It’s as docile as the Washington press corps.”

    “That’s what they want you to believe. Didn’t you ever wonder what they really do over all those football games? They’re gathering intelligence.”

    “What can they learn at a football game?”

    “Enough to know that 50,000 drunks wearing hog noses to cheer for the Redskins aren’t going to be able to provide much resistance to an all-out invasion.”

    “Goodyear is going to invade the FedEx Field?”

    “Goodyear is on our side,” he said. The problem is the other blimps. The Fugi blimp is probably in luke-warm pursuit right now.”

    “We’re going to war with a company that makes film?”

    “A Japanese company,” said Marshbaum smugly. “When we defeated the Germans and had the only combat blimps, we had air superiority. The Japanese take our technology, improve it, and build their own blimp. Probably have a dozen quality work circles right now just on how to better vulcanize rubber. It’s a worldwide conspiracy, Even the Scots are involved.”

    “Yeah, the last thing an enemy wants to see is a tartan-design blimp floating into battle, staffed by Highlanders leaning out the windows, with their bagpipes blaring “Comin’ Through the Rye.”

    “McDonald’s,” said a smirking Marshbaum. “The Scots achieved parity with Japan when they convinced us that two-ounce McGreaseburgers were healthier than tofu. Blimps are the future of warfare.”

    During World War I, blimps had been used as scouts. French and German blimps passed each other, each crew waving politely at the enemy. But then someone, probably loaded on dark beer or burgundy, threw an incendiary device at the other blimp, and soon blimps were in the war. Except for some coastal surveillance for subs during World War II and an occasional rescue operation, blimps weren’t the attack craft military leaders once envisioned, mostly because even a blind squirrel with a nut could hit something that large and that slow. The last of the 140 Navy blimps was retired in 1962. But this was 2003. I demanded evidence that the government was going retro-air.

     Marshbaum looked around, saw that no one was watching us, then took a crumpled news article from his back pocket. “See!” he said, thrusting it at me. According to the article, the Navy has begun testing a blimp, first in Virginia, now in San Diego, as surveillance in the war against terror. Floating at 40 miles per hour, about 2,000 feet above the earth, the white airships would be used to locate enemy divers, submerged mines and, maybe, drug smugglers, illegal immigrants crossing America’s borders, and seedy lawyers having sex with the spouses of jailed clients. The Navy projects three 200-foot helium-filled airships, each at a cost of about $12 million, for every major American city.

    But that’s not all the Navy plans. In addition to the four-person low-level surveillance blimps, it’s allocating about $40 million for a remote-controlled prototype that can cruise at 65,000 feet. This 500-foot long space carrier will have a volume of more than five million cubic feet of helium, about 20 times that of current blimps.

    It will take a lot of helium to float these airships. We need to look no further than the Bush Dome Reservoir near Amarillo, Texas. Beneath its 20 square miles, the government has stockpiled about 30 billion cubic feet of helium, which it has been selling to private enterprise.

    “The conspiracy isn’t even hidden,” said Marshbaum. “After the government sells helium to private industry, it then buys blimps from private companies with White House ties. Then since blimps need helium, the government buys it from private sources.” The only thing to be determined, said Marshbaum, “is how much profit Halliburton will receive.”

    “It’s business as usual in the Bush White House,” I said. “It’d be a real stretch for them to claim that there was an imminent threat to national security from blimps. It’s not as if Fugi possessed weapons of mass destruction.” But, at that moment, chugging along at sub-snail speed, floated the sinister Shamu killer whale blimp, apparently on a search-and-destroy mission to take over the nation’s football fields and amusement parks.

    “It’s only the beginning,” said Marshbaum. “Only the beginning.” ----10.13.03

    (Walt Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, says he sees a lot of hot air on campus, but has yet to see a blimp hover over the college’s football field. His latest book is “Sex and the Single Beer Can: Probing the Media and American Culture.” You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu)

AN ILL WIND AND AMERICAN POLICY
by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

America has already spent more than $80 billion in the past year on its “war on terrorism,” and the president has asked Congress for another $87 billion, most of it to rebuild Iraq. The appropriated budget for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), dwindling each year, is $1.8 billion.

Within hours, the 400-mile wide Isabel, a Category 3/4 hurricane packing winds of 100-140 miles per hour, will hit between North Carolina and New Jersey. Its victims will have to be content with leftovers. Our nation’s disaster preparedness doesn’t meet the needs that any sizeable disaster might bring. FEMA is severely underfunded. Red Cross disaster funds are negligible. With thousands of National Guard companies deployed--now up to a year each -most east coast states don’t have the manpower or resources it needs for a sustained recovery program.

Because of limited access and egress from the coastal areas, and stick construction of thousands of houses valued at $300,000 and more, the physical damage can be significant, says Frank Lepore of the National Hurricane Center. Heavy rains are expected into Pennsylvania and the northeast corridor, with probable flooding. The hurricane has the potential to cause a large loss of life, says Lepore.

Residents along the coastal areas hoping to cover their doors and windows in preparation for the storm are paying as much as 30-35 percent more for plywood than six months ago. It’s not greed by the lumber yards, but supply. The federal government “bought most of our plywood to send to Iraq for rebuilding there,” says Aaron Johnson of 84 Lumber, Raleigh, N.C. The scarcity of plywood is felt throughout the east coast. Complicating the problem, because of heavy rainfall in the summer, “most mills aren’t open,” says Mark Schneider, of Hugh’s Lumber Co., Charleston, S.C.

FEMA’s disaster relief fund, prior to an emergency allocation this past summer, was “at a dangerously low level,” resulting in significant cut-backs on service, according to the National Emergency Management Association. The hurricane season isn’t over until December.

Hurricane Andrew, a Category 4 storm, hit the Florida coast in 1992 with the fury of what might be best described as a massive air attack. Neighborhoods were leveled; schools, churches, stores, and factories were destroyed; the people were left without shelter, food, water, gas, electricity--and jobs. It wasn’t just for hours or days, but weeks, months, and in some cases, years.

The cost for Andrew is estimated at $25 billion, according to the Red Cross; insurance payouts were about $15 billion of that; several companies went into bankruptcy. The Red Cross, at the scene before the hurricane hit, was still working with its victims 10 years later.

Following Andrew in 1992, social service agencies--along with FEMA and the National Guard--fed, clothed, and sheltered the victims. The Guard from several states evacuated victims and policed against looters; it provided tents, water, and food; military trucks hauled debris, cleared by Guardsmen. They carried workers and materials to rebuild Florida.

Social service agencies provided emergency food, clothing, and shelter--often as far as 100 miles away from the destruction, since utilities were non-existent in the hurricane areas. Although FEMA was slow to react under the Bush I administration, it eventually provided significant assistance, then was reorganized under the Clinton administration to provide a more efficient response.

The Pennsylvania National Guard has adequate manpower, according to Lt. Col. Chris Cleaver, with only 3,000 of its 20,000 member force currently deployed. However, most Guard units in other states have manpower and equipment shortages because of overseas deployment. Most state Guard units should be able to handle the immediate evacuation and recovery. However, long term recovery will probably be a problem.

Because of current overseas deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Guantanamo Bay,, with others on active alert, the North Carolina National Guard is at half-strength, according to Senior Airman Lyndsey Leffel, the Guard’s public affairs specialist. The South Carolina National Guard is “short-handed,” according to Lt. Col. Pete Brooks. That state’s Guard is operating with less than 75 percent strength. Most of the Guard’s trucks, bulldozers, and heavy equipment are in Iraq, according to Brooks. Senior Guard officers in New Jersey and Virginia agree their manpower and equipment can handle the initial problems. It’s long-term recovery that may drain their states’ resources.

Governors can request assistance from other states’ Guard units. But, with a wide-spread destruction expected, states will have to hire private companies. The cost to to do the work the National Guard could do could be several hundred million dollars.

The Red Cross disaster relief fund is in “a very precarious situation,” according to Kelly Donaghy, Red Cross spokesman. “We like to have at least $56 million on hand,” she says. “We have almost nothing.” The Red Cross estimates it would need “at least $100 million” for recovery from Isabel. Funds donated to the Red Cross for the 9/11 Fund may not be spent on anything but 9/11 victims. All social service agencies which normally would be involved with disaster relief have had to do with less as unemployment and a declining economy under the current administration, combined with the largest national deficit in more than a decade, has affected charitable contributions.

When a substantial minority of Americans opposed sending several hundred thousand soldiers to Iraq, and argued that the costs of war would haunt us for decades, they were branded unpatriotic. When they argued that the Department of Homeland Security was more of a public relations ploy than any serious attempt to coordinate homeland security, they were branded traitors.

Iraq, as we now know, even under a ruthless thug, didn’t harbor the terrorists the President claimed, it had no weapons of mass destruction, and it posed no imminent threat to the security of the American people.

But, a Category 3 hurricane does pose an imminent threat, as do forest fires, blizzards, and floods. The Department of Homeland Security, instead of concentrating its resources upon a disaster that can kill several thousand Americans and leave several hundred thousand injured and homeless, is still trying to figure out why it can’t stop people with box cutters from boarding airplanes in America.

While we can’t put natural disasters into the same category as an al-Qaeda attack, they both encompass a fear of imminent danger. Death and destruction by a Category 3/4 hurricane is more imminent than an attack by Iraq ever was--and could leave more death and destruction than 9/11. Neither our home nor our land is secure.

[Rosemary R. Brasch, a Red Cross family services specialist for national disasters, has worked several hurricanes along the East Coast. Walter M. Brasch, an author and professor of journalism, is active in emergency management.]

A Slice of Life in a Mini-Mart
by Walter Brasch

It was just a chance meeting in a 24-hour convenience mart at a truck stop on a Sunday evening outside Bloomsburg, Pa.

One cashier. About eight people in line. "Well, at least we're not in any hurry," she said. She was in her late 50s, about 5-foot-6. Short blonde hair. Wearing a multi-colored blouse, green shorts, and flip-flops on the warm Summer evening.

He was about 20. 5-foot-8, maybe 5-9. Short brown hair, slightly bleached by the sun. Wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a pair of sneaks. Wrapped around two inches of his upper left arm was a multi-colored tattoo band of a vine, topped by some Chinese characters. He smiled, sighed, and stretched.

"I'm tired. It's been a long weekend," he replied to her off-hand comment.

"Maybe you can rest up tomorrow," she suggested. It's a college town; she probably figured he might have been a student who had just been partying too hard the past three days. She, like the rest of us in the store, figured wrong.

He chuckled, giving one of those, "I wish" laughs. "I have a five-mile run first thing in the morning." She asked where, thinking it could be one of those myriad charity runs.

"New York," he said, adding, "I'm military. Army."

With several people ahead of them, she flipped off a comment. "Better to be running in New York than in the desert."

"I'm leaving for there at the end of the month."

She told him that her son, a Marine, had been in the Gulf during Desert Storm and that it's not a place he ever wants to go back to visit. She also said something about the military putting such emphasis on running when their mission now seemed to be just to stand and be targets. She said it would only seem important if they were running away. He laughed and shook his head in agreement.

They chatted a bit more in a line that seemed to take forever to reach the counter. He was a cheerful, unassuming, friendly kid, so she told him to take his humor and personality along with him. Said he would need it, that the guys already there would need it too since they were really getting tired and disgusted.

"Not just disgusted," he said. "They're getting really mad." A few months before this war began, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had promised Marines at Camp Pendleton, "You can be darn sure that you folks will not be asked to do anything that we won't be able to do." The lady in the mini-mart knew better. In innumerable campaign speeches, George W. Bush had said that he opposed nation building. But, now more than 150,000 American soldiers and marines are in Iraq trying to act as civil engineers, urban planners, and policemen in a country whose infrastructure, once one of the world's strongest, has now been reduced to third world status, a country that no longer has adequate water, electricity, or even gas; a nation whose roads, buildings, and sewer systems have been destroyed; a nation that lost more than 7,500 of its civilians in a war that now looks as if it may have been created for political reasons rather than military necessity. A war that cost more than 450 Americans their lives, that has left more than 1,500 wounded, more than in Desert Storm, a U.N.-sanctioned military action.

Dressed in a flight suit in a photo-op on an aircraft carrier, the President told the nation, "The U.S. and our allies have prevailed." More than half the American dead were killed after the President's announcement.

Thousands of reservists had been promised that their tours of duty would be short, but now each of them were told their tours would be at least a year. Most had given up better paying jobs and now their families were struggling to survive at home. Wives, with pre-teen children, were now forced to go to work or to work another job just to be able to pay the mortgage and other fixed expenses.

For the American people, the cost will be billions of dollars more than they had been led to believe. Two weeks after the lady and the solider met in the store, America would learn the cost was a billion dollars a week just for the military presence; at least another $87 billion if Congress approves the President's request. Billions that could be used to help this nation's sinking economy, its environment; to help more than 33 million Americans, about 11.7 percent of the population, who are living in poverty, the highest percent since 1993, according to the Census Bureau. Much of the money for Iraq, said the President, would be used to build schools and roads; he said nothing about doing the same for America. The $87 billion request for the coming year is about $35 billion more than the budget for the U.S. Department of Education. And, the president said nothing about the billions that would go to Halliburton, the oil conglomerate that Vice-President Dick Cheney had once been CEO.

The President kept telling the nation the money was for the War on Terrorism. But, in reality it's billions to occupy a nation that didn't have weapons of mass destruction, never posed an imminent threat to America, nor had it harbored terrorists--at least not until after its infrastructure collapsed under America's shock and awe supremacy.

The lady didn't have time to tell the young soldier all this. But, he knew. Long before the President told the nation, he knew. Twenty-year-old soldiers aren't dumb.

The 20-year-old, like most retired 4-star generals, said the lady was right. Not just right, but damned right. But, he also said he was infantry, so he'd be doing what he was told.

By then they were at the cashier. He paid for his drink and bought a lottery ticket. Scratched it right there. It was a loser. They joked about it, and she told the young man in the convenience mart to stay safe and to "come back exactly as you are now."

"I will," he promised, walking out the door.

None of us knew much about him. Why he was in Bloomsburg. Why he was at the mini-mart. What he did before he joined the Army. What he planned to do after he was discharged. What his hobbies and hopes were. But, we knew he wouldn't come back the same as he is now. He's just too young to know that. -- 09.10.03

[Assisting on this story was Rosemary R. Brasch. The Brasches are co-editors of The Oasis 2 (www.theoasis2.com), a newsletter for families of troops deployed in combat zones.]

Among Walt Brasch's 13 books is "With Just Cause," a look at the historical and social issues in American labor. His latest book, to be published Sept. 15, is "The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era." He is a member of four unions.

Labor Day For The Nation's Unemployed
by Walter Brasch

Once a year, I and several hundred other reporters and columnists, write a Labor Day story.

A few of us may write about the personalities of the labor movement. About Mother Jones (1830-1930), the militant "angel of the coal fields" for more than six decades. Or, perhaps, we'll write about "Big Bill" Haywood (1869-1928) who organized the Industrial Workers of the World, a universal coalition, to fight for the rights of all labor. Or, maybe, we'll write about Sidney Hillman (1887-1946) who led strikes in 1916 to reduce the work week to 48 hours, from the standard 54-60 hours, then helped found the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) before becoming a major political force for workers during the labor-friendly Roosevelt administration. There may be stories about cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), the first president of the American Federation of Labor, a job he held for 38 years. We might write about Eugene Debs (1855-1926), Joe Hill (1879-1915), and thousands of others who went to prison defending the rights of the workers not only to organize, but to demand better working conditions. But we won't become involved in the struggle, risk our jobs and futures. That's someone else's responsibility. We'll just follow inane rules and complain privately.

Hardly any of us remember Heywood Broun (1888-1939), one of the nation's best-paid columnists who risked his own financial stability to found The Newspaper Guild in 1935 to help those reporters making one-hundredth of his salary. We don't know about him or the history of the Guild. After all, we may believe that unions are acceptable for factory line workers, but we're "professionals," and mistakenly believe we don't need unions; we'll just continue to work unpaid overtime, split shifts, with minimal benefits and without a minimally-acceptable recourse for our grievances. Some of us may interview current labor leaders, all of whom will say organized labor is having a tough time, but is still strong and vital, the only recourse against poor working conditions and unfair labor practices. But, we'll coldly report that fewer than 14 percent of all workers are now in unions, down from a peak of 35 percent in 1954.

We may interview the workers. An elderly man's remembrance of his life in the coal mines or breakers, and what Black Lung did not only to his own health, but to his family and friends. We might chat with an elderly woman who worked 12-hour days for a couple of dollars an hour in the heat and humidity of a garment factory. We may talk with a few current workers who, on the record will tell us they don't have it great, but it could be worse and overall, on the record of course, they work hard and are pleased with their jobs.

We won't remember that the Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day in 1882 and that the Congress made it a national holiday in 1894. But, we might interview a few readers to find out what Labor Day means to them. And, we won't be too shocked when most seem to say it means not a remembrance of the struggles for respect, dignity, and acceptable wages and working conditions, but of self-serving political speeches, hot dogs, burgers, and a pool party.

Some of us may write about the statistics of labor that now shows a retreat from the robust economy of the Clinton era. We'll quote the Bureau of Labor Statistics that "non-farm payroll employment continued to decline" and that "payroll employment was down” the past year. We'll note that the Department of Labor reports there are about 3.6 million Americans who are "not on temporary layoff," about 1.2 million more than a year earlier, and that the unemployment rate is now about 6.2 percent. We'll quote the cold reality that "job losses continued in manufacturing," and no one expects the continuing problems of unemployment, partially magnified by American corporate executive who send jobs to child laborers overseas, to level off anytime soon.

Business euphemistically claims it is "downsizing" or "rightsizing." The "bottom line" is improved; corporate investors are being "optimally compensated." But, the reality is that American workers are being fired and "laid off," while corporate management, opening factories in Mexico, Thailand, and almost everywhere but the United States, are taking multi-million dollar bonuses for improving the "cash flow." Even if executive management makes a few mistakes along the way, and the "return on investment" isn't what the Board of Directors and stock holders expect, almost all CEOs and their immediate underlings have the "golden parachute" that allows a soft drop from employment, yielding termination packages that can total millions of dollars and considerable benefits that no working class person will ever receive.

Of course, there are some industries that have gained in the past year's downward economy. Retail sales, which the Department of Labor reports as having the lowest average wages, is gaining workers. But, that's because the average number of hours per week in that industry is about 29.6, reflecting the reality that it's just "good business sense" to hire 75 low-paid part-timers and save the benefits costs than to hire 50 full-time clerks.

If we dig, we might learn that although average pay for all labor has increased from $13.75 an hour to $14.24 an hour over the past year, an increase of 60 cents, but that in terms of inflation the workers only gained eight cents an hour. But, those are just numbers. To the 50-year-old who worked hard for one company half of his life, showed up for work on time, left on time, and tolerated the company's banal preaching about everyone is "part of our happy family," and then is laid off as an "economy measure," the numbers don't matter. To the worker who put in 20 years in one job, then is fired for reasons that would be questionable under any circumstance, the numbers don't matter. To the $20,000-a-year worker who is told that she won’t receive a raise this year because "we're having a bad year," but sees upper management not only get raises and more stock options, but also hire other managers, all of them making five times or more than her salary, the other numbers don't matter.

Recent Department of Labor studies report that American workers are "the most productive" ever, that it’s up 5.7 percent over a year ago. That's because not only are they are doing so much more to compensate for their fellow workers having been laid off, but because they live with the fear if they don't work even harder they, too, may be laid off, or lose promotions, in an economy that is going as far South as our manufacturing plants.

This year, I'm writing a Labor Day column. Next year, with all the layoffs and unemployment, and the blatant anti-labor biases of the current administration, there may not be much American labor to write about. --09.01.03

Can Amphibians Lead? An American Frog Fable
by Walt Brasch, www.bushwatch.com, 08.20.03

The First United Church of the Knowledge of Universal Truth decided last week not to ordain any frogs. To find out why, I visited the Rev. Matthew Mark Johnson.

I approached him as he finished blessing the ceremonial offerings plate. “Rev. Johnson,” I asked, “the frogs-rights groups are upset with your Board’s decision. What are your reasons?”

“The Bible tells us that frogs are nothing but problems.”

“The Bible tells you that?” I asked suspiciously.

“Right there in Exodus. God said he’d smite all of Egypt with frogs if the Pharaoh didn’t let the Jews be free. It proves that God was so ticked off he had to find the most loathsome creature he could to punish the Pharaoh. Do you know how bad it must be to be smited by, of all things, frogs?”

“But God used the frogs to help the Jews. It’s not that the frogs did anything God didn’t want to be done.”

“Bad is bad,” said the Rev. Mr. Johnson. “Turn to Revelations,” he commanded. “John says that he saw three unclean spirits that looked like frogs come from the mouth of the dragon. That proves it! Not only are frogs loathsome creatures, they’re also unclean.” I tried to interrupt, but the anti-frog minister wasn’t about to let another view meddle in his logic. “Even Shakespeare hated frogs. Right there in Macbeth. The witches brewed the most horrible concoction they could. What do you think was in it?! Eye of newt and toe of frog!”

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “Are you sure there’s nothing deeper to your decision to ban frogs from the ministry?”

The Rev. Mr. Johnson cleared his throat, looked at me carefully, then somberly explained—”They’re green.” “They’re green?” I asked incredulously. “That’s it? Because they’re green!”

“Green conflicts with our basic color scheme. It’s not as if we’re the only religion not to like color. For the longest time, a lot of churches didn’t allow anyone who’s black to be ordained, let alone be a member, so I guess that green is just as good a reason as any.” He thought a moment, then added, “Of course, I guess there might be another reason.”

“I thought so!” I said, now writing furiously in my note pad.

“Frogs also have webbed feet. It’s against the laws of God for ordained ministers to have webbed feet.”

I stopped writing. “Now, let me get this straight. You don’t want to ordain frogs because they’re green and they have webbed feet?”

“That’s right. Webbed feet is not God’s wish for humanity. Webbed feet is a sign of breaking with God’s world of five-toed feet. It’s immoral and a sin. A sign of willful rebellion.”

“Shouldn’t the Church recognize that even frogs have faith?” I asked.

“The Bible tells us to love all creatures, and that we are all part of the Lord. But, nowhere does it say that frogs should be ordained.”

“But what about their knowledge of Scripture or whether frogs have the ability to lead people? Shouldn’t that count for something?”

“You think that frogs can lead people? Have you ever seen a frog walk? There’s no one who’s going to hop to church on Sunday mornings.”

“But, most frogs seem to be so much more respectful and honest than many of your own parishioners,” I pleaded in the frogs’ defense.

“I agree,” said the minister, “and the ministry should offer models of integrity, morality, and honesty—if at all possible. And, I do admit that some ministers do stray from the paths of righteousness on occasion. But, at least they’re not green, they don’t have webbed feet, and they never smited anyone!” Forgetting my role as an objective reporter and lapsing into an impassion plea, I cried out, “frogs are wonderful creatures who should be given a chance to preach the will of God!”

The Rev. Matthew Mark Johnson looked at me sharply. “You ain’t a frog in disguise are you, boy? You ain’t trying to take over this here church, are you?”

“Oh, no sir!” I said. “I’m just trying to find out why frogs can’t be ordained if they have every other ability.”

“You’re trying to cause us serious trouble,” said the Rev. Mr. Johnson, “and I don’t care to discuss this issue any more. Now, if you’ll leave me alone, I have to go watch an important television show. Never miss it. Even better in re-runs than first time I saw it.”

“What show is that?”

“The Muppets.” --08.18.03

(Walt Brasch, professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University, says there are a few green professors among the flock. His latest book is The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton Era. You may contact him at brasch@bloomu.edu)

More Brasch Essays
The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.