FRAMESHOP

The Judge Who Saved Baseball

Anybody keeping score of which party controls the first few innings of the confirmation debate should make note of how many times "baseball" gets repeated in the political chatter over the next 48 hours.

When a new President mentions baseball twice in the first few minutes of his first Supreme Court nominee event, it is not a coincidence.  To make sure his first nominee makes it through a potentially ugly confirmation process, President Obama is wrapping the debate in one of the most popular symbols of American life: baseball.

Obama's first mention of "baseball" came when he referenced her 1995 opinion that ended the baseball strike.   That decision, which Sotomayor issued after only 15 minutes of deliberation, ruled in favor of the players against team owners, thereby allowing the baseball season to start. 

Obama's second mention of "baseball" came in the section of his remarks about the judge having been raised in South Bronx public housing.  With a glint in his eye, Obama described Sotoymayor's home as being just a few minutes away from Yankee Stadium, which he hoped would not be a problem for Mets fans.

Two mentions of baseball in Obama's first at bat.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd caught the references, remarking to Chris Matthews in the post-announcement commentary:

They mentioned baseball, they mentioned mom, the only thing they left out was 'apple pie.'

Minutes later,  during a phone-in interview with MSNBC,  Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) hit the baseball symbolism out of the park:

Anybody who saved baseball for America, deserves America's warm consideration.

A few minutes later, Klobuchar again invoked the strategic symbolism, calling Sotomayor "the savior of baseball."

Although it may seem like a glib reference to sports, "baseball" is one of the most far-reaching and widely accepted symbols of American life.  As a national symbol, it evokes positive feeling for a majority of Americans, bringing to mind positive images of childhood, summertime, cheering crowds, tradition, community, inspiration, and family.

"Family" and Sotomayor has already been an important strand of the baseball symbol emphasized by the White House.  During his remarks,  for example, Obama made reference to Sotomayor's upbringing by a single mom who worked multiple jobs -- a biographical fact remarkably similar to his own background.

The theme of a public servant raised by a selfless mother was then repeated during the first few minutes of Sotomayor's own remarks:

I have often said, that I am all I am because of her.  And I am  only half the woman that she is.

At least half the country will smile when they watch the media clip of Judge Sotomayor making that tribute to her mom. 

Judge Sotomayor then went on to explain that the "principles"  of the founding fathers had been a guiding light that inspired her whole life.

The symbolism surrounding Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court, in other words, is not just baseball, but the patriotic grand slam of "baseball, mom, and the Constitution." 

Another sign that the White House chosen symbolism for Sotomayor is holding the debate could be the media repetition of the word "empathy" -- a quality many Americans associate with mothers, and which the media is already describing as a personal quality Judge Sotomayor gleaned from her upbringing.

Republicans, for their part, will  likely try to shift the Sotomayor confirmation debate away from "baseball" and "mom" and towards "liberal extremism."  Chances are good that they will strike out in this effort, unable to connect against the power of the symbolism thrown by the White House.

In the end, a debate about Sotomayor that stays centered on positive, core American symbols will be welcomed by most Americans, and will likely tilt the discussion in favor of the White House.  Given that the Supreme Court nomination process already favors a president, the White House use of "baseball" may be the key to getting Sotomayor around the Congressional bases and into the biggest, big league, nine-player starting lineup in the land.

George W. Bush "Kept Us Safe"?

Lately, the only thing worse than Dick Cheney's bald-faced lie that the Bush administration policies "kept us safe" is the gaggle of mainstream journalists mindlessly repeating it.  

My question for journalists working for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NPR and the like is very simple:  Exactly what kind of delusional definition of "kept us safe" is swirling around your cobweb covered newsrooms?  That definition must be some kind of crazy, because it accommodates not only the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history and the tragic death of thousands in New Orleans, but dozens of other yikes-we-are-so-not-safe moments, all which happened during George W. Bush's Presidency.

For example:

During George  W. Bush's Presidency, thousands of soldiers died in Iraq--a war we now know without question to have been waged as part of an ideological program, not out of necessity.  Those thousands of soldiers each had parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children, and hometowns dragged through the cruel stop-gap policies imposed on service men and women by George  W. Bush. 

During George W. Bush's Presidency, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were injured, only to return to the squalid conditions and cruel indifference of a veterans' care medical system that fell through the cracks of America's for-profit healthcare racket.  The tragedy of our injured soldiers came to light during George W. Bush's Presidency.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the number of Americans living in abject fear for lack of  health insurance reached the tens of millions.  As a result of this crisis of fear,  a private medical relief agency initially set up to fly doctors to remote jungles in South America began flying relief into poor American communities.  This happened during George W. Bush's Presidency.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the NSA spied on the private citizens, thanks to the willing participation of major American telecom companies, a major violation of the most fundamental Constitutional rights Americans thought protected them from KGB-style domestic surveillance.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the citizens of nearly all American foreign allies began to view the United States as a hostile threat to world peace, safety, and security as a result of (1) the preemptive invasion policies of Dick Cheney and (2) the torture-of-prisoners policies of Dick Cheney.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, job security for working communities dropped, underemployment reached historic highs, and earned wages for worker output stagnated. 

During George W. Bush's Presidency, Bernard Madoff was arrested for running the largest financial Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding private citizens, retirement funds, and not-for-profit organizations out of billions of dollars.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the United States impeded global cooperation to lower carbon emissions levels, thereby heightening a general fear over the destructive potential of global warming. 

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the United States economy tipped into the deepest economic crisis since the 1920s, hastening experts to describe the housing and financial market meltdown as a potential global economic 'depression.'

During George W. Bush's Presidency, pet food produced in China was discovered as the cause of deaths for American dogs and cats contaminated by toxic melamine, resulting in a nationwide panic.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, ecoli contamination killed multiple people who had ate spinach, tomatoes, and peppers.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, elderly Americans panicked over shortages of flu vaccines.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the Republican Party ran political commercials claiming that voting for Democratic Party candidates would lead directly to the death and destruction of small town America by terrorists with nuclear bombs. 

During George W. Bush's Presidency, fear and hatred of homosexuality reached a fever pitch in American politics.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the Republican Party ran election campaigns designed to scare Jewish voters into thinking that the election of Democrats would result in another Holocaust.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, civilian planes were hijacked and flown into two of the tallest buildings in the world--the event was broadcast on live television--and when the President was told these events were happening by one of his closest aides, he sat there stone faced and did nothing, while his vice President--Dick Cheney--vanished into an "undisclosed location."

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the country was swept up in fear that terrorists were attacking ordinary citizens by sending the anthrax virus in the form of white powder through the United States Postal system.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, invasive strip searches coupled with racial profiling were introduced to the act of getting onto an airplane.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, a man who looked mentally ill was able to get past airport security, get on a plane, and then light a fuse connected to explosives in his shoes.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, a color-coded system was created to tell Americans via broadcast television that the threat of a terrorist attack was high at all times.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the Republican Party launched a national campaign to convince the public that the Democratic nominee for president was a covert adherent to radical Islam with covert ties to domestic and foreign terrorists.

During George W. Bush's Presidency--a time lauded and celebrated by the National Rifle Association, who claimed to have "their man in the Oval office"--the largest gun massacre on a university campus occurred at Virginia Tech, resulting in the violent deaths of 5 faculty members and 27 students.

During George W. Bush's Presidency, the CIA at the bequest of Dick Cheney tortured prisoners using techniques in direct violation of U.S. and international law, dramatically increasing the likelihood that captured U.S. prisoners in the future will also be subject to torture.

And that is just to name a few, but you get the point.   So, remind me again:  How did George W. Bush's policies keep us safe?  Call me crazy, but I just do not see it.

To understand what it means for a President to keep us safe, my advice is to ignore Dick Cheney altogether and listen directly to former President Franklin Roosevelt.  

In 1941 FDR gave a speech about "Four Freedoms" which spoke directly to the issue of security for Americans and the rest of the world:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

To be fair, George W. Bush did some good work relative to Roosevelt's list of "Four Freedoms," in particular his dedication of a considerable funds to help fight AIDS in African nations.  And yet, in his domestic and foreign policies--most of them designed and pushed by Dick Cheney--George W. Bush shrouded American life in a politics of fear.   He did not make us more safe.  Using the media and the military, George W. Bush made us more afraid, more anxious, and more concerned for our future.  Even worse:  he sought to profit politically from the fear he created.

If there is ever ranking of Presidents who made us feel the most safe, I will bet you a gas mask and a roll of duct tape that George W. Bush ends up in last place.

So the next time Dick Cheney repeats his big, fat, stinking lie that George W. Bush "kept us safe," I hope journalists have the wherewithal and the basic decency to laugh out loud. 

The rest of us are already laughing.

GOP Grotesque, Gingrich Style

Politicizing the Holocaust, equating the Obama administration with totalitarian communism, telling Jewish voters that the destruction of Israel by a Nazi-like threat is 'imminent'--such were the talking points in Newt Gingrich's speech to the American Israel Political Action Committee.  And that was just the first few minutes.

Without exaggeration, it is fair to say that Gingrich's speech to AIPAC ushered in a new era of GOP grotesque. 

In the bygone days of yesteryear---say, 24 months ago--when the GOP wanted to scare voters away from Democrats, they would invoke threats of dirty bombs exploding at Mrs. Field's Cookies in the Any-town, USA shopping mall. Dick Cheney would be rolled out of his undisclosed location, given a fresh battery for his pacemaker and a fresh coat of gloom for his suit.  He would then be propped on some public stage where he would hiss and wheeze a smoldering image of America destroyed by nuclear weapons within five minutes of a Democratic Party win in the House of Representatives or the Senate or the White House. The fear was palpable, the shadowy ads of terrorist training camps were scary.  Ah, 2006.  Simpler times.

Gingrich takes this fear tactic to a new level.  Gingrich pushes it to--grotesque.

At Gingrich's recent speech to AIPAC (listen here...but keep a light on) he stood up and told the mostly Jewish audience that the coming threat of another Holocaust committed by Iran was "imminent," and that "many of our elites around the world," were engaged in a totalitarian effort to deny the reality of this looming genocide.  Gingrich then claimed that the year 2009 presented the same danger to the world as the year 1939--the year the Germans invaded Poland.

"A world that will destroy Israel will surely destroy the United States," Gingrich predicted.

Nazis!  Genocide!  Hitler!  The Gingrich grotesque does away with trifling images of mushroom clouds rising above middle America and invokes the nightmare of blitzkrieg on the march.

But wait.  It gets worse.

On top of the specter of another Holocaust, Gingrich heaped the threat of another cold war, and the singular "effort of genocide and annihilation" by the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Moreover, in the Gingrich grotesque, the problems we face do not end with genocides-in-the-making wherever Islam or the Arabic language lurk in the Middle East and Central Asia.  These problems are compounded by the dangerous fact that neither our current president is not, nor has he ever been, Ronald Reagan.  Instead  of the one true hero that American history has ever known, we are saddled with the cowardly legacy of Franklin Roosevelt--a man who mobilized the country to victory in World War II, but did not, in Gingrich's estimation, use the right words in 1939 to describe the coming war. 

Without a Ronald Reagan at the helm, Gingrich bid his AIPAC audience, America and Israel face a future so filled with genocidal horror that it makes all four Terminator films look like light romances by comparison.  But if we were to find a new Ronald Reagan--then we could solve all these threats of genocide "without even firing a single shot."

And so we see the blood-soaked contours of Gingrich's GOP grotesque.  From the depths of Republican despair in the face of a new 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate, with a new President reclaiming the pragmatic value of government in American life and soaring in popularity as a result--the Gingrich grotesque fills the room with horrifying tales of death, destruction, Nazis, holocaust--and not a Ronald Reagan to be found to save us from it all.

Gingrich's speech at AIPAC was less politics or policy than grotesque "B" movie poster.  Listening to it reminded me of the posters for Ruggero Deodato's legendary film Cannibal Holocaust about a group of filmmakers who get lost in the Amazon rain forest only to be devoured by the natives.  Deodato's posters showed his natives caught in the act of such unspeakable, unthinkable violence that their humanity fades away, leaving them as fiery red outlines soaked in an orgy of blood and death.  In Gingrich's grotesque horror, the cannibals are the terrorists, the Amazon river is the Middle East, and the lost film makers are "elite" global leaders--but the shock effect of the scenes is pretty much the same.

Will Gingrich's grotesque fear politics help to rebuild the dwindling GOP base?  It might.  We live in strange times.  But it will rebuild the base at the huge political risk of redefining Republicans as the party willing to cheapen the memory of World War II and the Holocaust for political gain--and to do so with an intensity that makes people think of bad cinema at least as much as they think of difficult times in history. And if that happens, Newt Gingrich's speeches could become more fodder for late night stand-up routines than starting points for "adult" policy discussions, as the former speaker likes to say.

Either way, it should be interesting to watch the grotesque unfold, if not titillatingly offensive.  Pass the popcorn.