Schreiner’s Media Landscape

Amy Goodman wasn’t the only journalist rounded up in the mass arrests in St. Paul for the crime of doing their job and excercising their First Amendment rights. I guess this is part of the “change” McCain, Palin and the GOP’s other goons are promising.

I like to give credit where credit is due, especially when it’s someone who repeatedly disappoints and angers you. So congrats to the Bush EPA who finally did something good for the environment: tightened emissions standards for gas-powered lawn mowers. This is no small feat as fossil-fuel burning lawn mowers produce more pollution than vehicles, according to a famous Swedish study.

Me? I’m still using my now two-year-old Ken-powered mower though I’ve nearly beaten it to death and am a little disappointed that it wasn’t more durable. My next mower- solar-battery powered.

I did something this year that I did four years ago with great success: I did not watch either the Democrat or Republican Conventions on TV. Instead, I relied on independent observers’ accounts: blogs, newspapers, websites, and my favorite, word-of-mouth. Having attended both parties’ conventions in 1992, I have experienced the phony, Hollywood-style atmosphere first-hand. But this year, I think the creepiness has totally permeated the events to the point where they are utterly unpalatable even from a cumulative distance of several thousand miles.

Having not seen the GOP picnic, I’ll let someone else sum it up in the way that most corresponds to my observations, Tom Shales, media critic of the Washington Post. Bottom line: George Bush was in charge but someone else sneaked into Washington back in 2001 and f**ked everything up. The Republicans certainly had nothing to do with any of it. And guess who’s the right party to fix everything that got mysteriously screwed up over the past seven years? That’s right- the people who screwed everything up over the past seven years.

Apparently, the Republican Party thinks the American people are grotesquely stupid and suffering from severe memory loss. Reading some of the remarks of people attending the shindig, maybe they’re right.

Irony is lost on the born-again- not to mention truth, facts, what’s really in the Bible and whose side God is on. But despite the Radical Christian Republican Party’s lack of a sense of humor, the bizarre and utterly groundless religious statements coming from their Twin Cities tent service are so sad they’re funny. Sarah Palin and the Republicans are now basing their efforts to make the oil companies richer, pollute and destroy the Earth even faster and further, and usurp the rights of innocent people in Iraq on “God’s Will.”

IS THIS IN THE BIBLE? DID I MISS IT? WHERE DOES GOD SAY THAT ANYWHERE? HOW DOES A FORMER BEAUTY QUEEN AND ATV DEALER KNOW THIS IS WHAT HE WANTS?

If I was God, I’d sue.

It’s always interesting when someone vehemently and convincingly claims innocence of a crime for years then abruptly admits they indeed committed the offense and want to get the punishment over with as quickly as possible. That’s what’s happened in the case of a West Valley City mining operation that finally ‘fessed up that they dumped deadly selenium into some of Utah’s signature waterways including Great Salt Lake.

There are a number of environmental criminals still running around free and claiming innocence: chief among them Crandall Canyon mine owner Robert Murray. But as independent media coverage, resulting public outrage and political pressure grow, hopefully more of these liars, thieves and environmental murderers will meet justice.

Now let the investigation of the Bush Regime into its protracted efforts to destroy America’s natural places begin. And so too- the claims of innocence.

Talk is supposedly cheap but the nonsense and lies oozing from the Republican Convention are costly. Here’s the party that foolishly spent us into recession, blamed the American people and their impotent political opposition for their arrogance, incompetence and deception, now telling us all the great things they’re going to do for us THIS TIME. In other words, they want us to re-elect them to correct all the things they screwed up.

Here’s the adage that really applies here: FOOL US ONCE, SHAME ON YOU. FOOL US TWICE, SHAME ON US.

And the phrase that should apply comes from The Who: WE WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN.

I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the newspaper of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois where I lived before I moved to Utah. State government is closing a number of state parks, including Kickapoo State Park outside nearby Danville, to pay for their own fiscal incompetence. Residents of the area are fighting it but it’s probably a lost cause and indicative of the tragic and short-sighted attitude our so-called leaders have toward natural places and their contempt for the people who put them in power.

I used to go there often to hike, picnic and row my raft. It’s where I took my camera to practice videotaping wildlife, Nature, and work out in preparation for my grueling trip to Tibet and hike around Mount Kailash in 2005: the result being my documentary “Kora: Tibet and the Trail of Truth.” It was one of the few, remaining natural places in an area long decimated abd denuded by corporate and large-scale agriculture.

Actually, Kickapoo was far from being wild. It was reclaimed coal-mining ground that had been scarred and scraped beyond industrial use. So it was left to return to the Earth and the result was a strangely beautiful park made up of hills, forest, streams, ponds and other stuff Illinois never had much of and has even less of now. Kickapoo is ironically, unnatural.

But open or not, it’s a gleaming example of what humans can do to correct the environmental mistakes we’ve made. Sadly, it’s now also an example of how we just never learn.

The Republican convention continues to degenerate into a farce, fraud and classic example of why these people shouldn’t be allowed to destroy our country anymore. Arresting a reporter- the highest-profile left-wing reporter in the world- doesn’t do anything to gain voters and it certainly doesn’t project the image of a party or ideology that is either inclusive or unifying. Not that the GOP had anything to do with her arrest directly. But they helped created the climate both in Minneapolis and America that led to the type of Beijing-style throttling the Republicans exercised at their past convention in New York and in their enforcement of the Patriot Act.

Sadly, it’s typical. Forget about “Trailer Park Pinup” Sarah Palin. Her and McCain’s hypocrisy on and abuse of federal earmarks- a far bigger issue than her pregnant teenager- is a way of life in our two-party system regardless of whose side you’re on. If there was any reason left to vote for McCain or any Republican, it was that they sort-of represented hope of restored freedom that was ravaged by the Bush-Cheney Regime. But as with everything Bush and Republican, it’s all talk. And it’s becoming clearer every minute that McCain=Bush. Maybe not by design but more because that’s just the way Republicans roll.

As for Obama, he’s probably just sitting watching, enjoying the whole debacle. The needless arrest of Amy Goodman, McCain’s unraveling credibility and his unflagging Mr. Nice Guy campaign make him look better every day. And that’s a lot for me to say. Thanks, Amy for going above and beyond a journalist’s duty. You may just have put us over the top.

It’s probably simple desperation because it’s Labor Day and not much is going on (that’s when most media haul out their “greatest hits’). But Big Oil’s appointed spokesmodel and successor to Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, invoked a graphic I made in April, 2006 to lampoon the pandering going on in TV news to try and gain viewers as more and more of them flee to the Internet or anything else. Plus, if you even mention Shakira on your blog, it’s good for about 1,000 hits.

Sarah Palin’s a former TV sportscaster (if Alaska was the best she could do she must not have been very good) which means she’s indeed about as qualified for the White House as Paris Hilton. I love it when reality imitates farce.

Which brings me to my other pandering-to-take-advantage of other people’s pandering- pandering. This post is from March, 2006. I love it when a pander comes together:

Choice 2008: Stunt President!

The question is: who would you rather be president? Left or right? I thought I was dumb. But I searched the Web found no one else had figured it out either. George W. Bush is our first STUNT PRESIDENT. He makes meaningless appearances and serves up platitudes to his adoring fans. But the dirty work is done by the boys in the basement.

The Hurricane Katrina video, the ports sale, Social Security and Iraq all indicate Bush doesn’t make any crucial decisions or even know what decisions have been made. That’s because he’s only a STUNT PRESIDENT. Arnold Schwarzenegger is close and more qualified because he at least remembers his lines. But the problem is he actually makes decisions.

I’ve Googled and Yahooed the phrase and only found the concept that President Bush hire a stunt double to make politically and physically dangerous appearances. The blogger has the right concept but the wrong application. Democrats are apoplectic over 2008. The STUNT PRESIDENT concept makes that concern unnecessary. Run Tom Cruise, Jessica Alba or Michael Jordan. Your shadow committee will make the real decisions and STUNT PRESIDENT goes before the cameras to read the pronouncements.

I know this system works. It’s TV news. Anchor people don’t really know anything. They’re just reading what’s put in front of them. But the “bewildered herd” as Walter Lippmann called the clueless American masses don’t care. They were sold a “package” and everyone will take a savory sizzle over a tough steak any day. Why do you really think we never see Dick Cheney?

Thanks to the incompetence, arrogance and lack of caring by the Bush Regime and then Republican-led Congress, Gustav rides into New Orleans looking more like John Wayne then the black-hatted villain. I’m sure the Republicans don’t feel that way. They thought all along THEY were the good guys. Now that Bush, Cheney and other top right-wing knuckleheads have conceded defeat at the hands of Nature, perhaps the inappropriately, self-titled “conservative” element of American society understands better that the environment is an ISSUE and not just something they can kiss off, hand over to the oil, mining and real estate industries and expect everything to turn out okey-dokey.

But given their track record and moral learning curve involved, my guess is they understand- not. Don’t let W’s standby mode in Texas fool you. This is about APPEARANCES NOT ACTUAL ACTION. WAY-HAYYYYYY TO LATE (apologies to Dr. Perry Cox), Bush doesn’t want to appear again like an incompetent, arrogant loser and Cheney- well, Cheney DOESN’T WANT TO APPEAR AT ALL. BTW: anyone see Cheney lately?

The good news is that even if Gustav isn’t as destructive as feared, he’s still done his job on America’s Radical Right. Bush and his ilk may not “get it”- but they’re getting it anyway.