http://mediaputz.com/07/08/putz0809.html

BuzzFlash.com Presents:
Honoring reporters who just can't handle the truth! 
August 9, 2007 

Rush Limbaugh  

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

There is no more deserving role model of the demagoguery at the heart of the right-wing media echo chamber than the porcine, illegal pill popping, Vietnam draft-dodging (due to a claimed anal cyst -- how appropriate), thrice-married Rush Limbaugh.

Toss in a heavy dollop of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, along with a streak of hedonism (don't forget his Viagra, condom-laden trip to the Dominican Republic where he sought sex with your pick of men, women, or children) – and you have the ideal role model for Republican hypocrisy.

But it's not the hypocrisy that makes Rush such an ideal shill for the right wing; it's his "down-home" appeal to the basest instincts in the disenfranchised white American vote (displaced by the globalization agreements that have put them in economic harm's way). Meanwhile, Rush's only real hardcore ideology, whatever his sexual orientation and latest drug addiction status, is to fatten his pocketbook.

So many progressives get caught up in trying to debunk Rush's lies that they forget his success as a right-wing on-air demagogue has nothing to do with the facts and everything to do with scapegoating and fear. He makes the vulnerable white male -- and female -- feel like victims. The world of "terrorist-supporting liberals and feminazis" is conspiring to deprive God-loving Americans of their "values," jobs, and rightful place at the top of the pyramid. Don't you get it?

Rush's appeal is straight from a not-so-coded "white power" script to the reptilian emotional needs of those who feel America has passed them by and need to blame someone Rush can toss like a ham hock into their salivating jaws.

BuzzFlash reader John Landis of Vienna, Virginia, nominated Limbaugh because he 

"recently illustrated perfectly the fatuous arrogance and convenient forgetfulness of right wing media attack dogs' delusional assertions when he claimed he did not know who was implying that Hillary Clinton was a murderer -- when the record clearly showed he had made such allusions on multiple occasions on his radio show. Limbaugh daily employs sophistry (actually too kind a word for his juvenile bloviating, B.S. and lies) in his role as the primary mobilizer of the idiot vote for Republicans. He has been amazingly effective, much to the detriment of our country. His dittoheads are obnoxious, impervious to reason, and their votes count as much as those of rational people. He has done more to wreck thoughtful discourse in this country than any other individual in our nation's history. He is definitely a pathetic putz, but also much worse." 

On behalf of Rush, thank you for those kind words. BuzzFlash reader Landis might be a tad harsh on Limbaugh listeners, who are more like sheep being led to their own economic and national security demise, but he’s definitely got the pigboy's number.

Rush Limbaugh, you are officially inducted into the BuzzFlash Media Putz Hall of Shame. You have proven without question that you are an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and tailor your incessant drivel to your corporate paymasters rather than serving the true needs of your listeners. You remind us how easy it is to separate faux punditry from the truth.

***

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/715

Crimes against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (Paperback)
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS


 This paperback published in 2005 and obtained at a special value price for BuzzFlash readers (including shipping) is Robert F. Kennedy Jr's "J'Accuse" against the Bush administration.

It rings even truer today. Limited number of copies available at this price.

From the Publisher:

In this powerful indictment of George W. Bush's White House, environmental attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., charges that the administration has taken corporate favoritism to unprecedented heights -- threatening our health, our national security, and our democracy.

Kennedy lifts the veil on how the administration, in order to enrich its corporate paymasters, has eviscerated the laws that protect our nation's air, water, public lands, and wildlife. He describes the White House doling out lavish subsidies and tax breaks to energy barons while allowing the corporations to profit by poisoning the public and eliminating security at the more than 15,000 nuclear and chemical facilities that are prime targets for terrorist attacks. He shows how right-wing White House ideologues have taken the "conserve" out of conservatism and trampled the free-market democracy in favor of a kind of corporate-crony capitalism that is as antithetical to democracy, efficiency, and prosperity in America as it is in Nigeria.

Crimes Against Nature is a book for both Democrats and Republicans, people like the traditionally conservative farmers and fishermen whom Kennedy represents in lawsuits against polluters. "Without exception," he writes, "these people see the current administration as the greatest threat not just to their livelihoods but to their values, their sense of community, and their idea of what it means to be American." 

***

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/723

Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (Paperback) 
By Nikolas Kozloff 
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Good Summary of Book on Chavez with a Perspective that You Won't See in the Corporate Media, From an Online Reviewer:

"This book is an excellent primer on Chavez, warts and all. The challenge to the US Kozloff delineates fully and articulately, not least by spending ample time revealing his subject's severe awakening to political and global realities through prison, failure, and a lightning quick mind. The first three chapters patiently define the origins of Chavez's political consciousness, and make the rest of the book more important and substantial. Chapter 3 - 'TINA - There Is No Alternative' - is especially helpful in getting to the root of who Chavez is, and who he might become, and why his appears to be a success with unlimited possibilities in terms of resisting the hegemony of American foreign policy. True, Kozloff is an admirer of sorts, but he pulls no punches. There is much to be admired in Hugo Chavez, as the world witnessed during his recent no-nonsense address to the UN, where he clearly distinguished himself as a determined, even poetic, global thinker. Chapter 4 takes its time outlining the nefarious meddling of Gustavo Cisneros, documenting along the way Cisneros' cozying up to George Herbert Liquor Bush. This is one of the few books around casting a clear-headed overview of the IMF, the disastrous effects of NAFTA, and the early White House plots against Chavez involving Otto Reich (Lockheed Martin), Pedro Carmona, and the CIA. These ideas are fully documented throughout the book with 65 pages of scrupulously detailed notes. One of the most interesting findings in the pages of this book is the struggle against racism represented by Hugo Chavez. His grasp of world affairs and his love for Venezuela come to be seen as inseparable from that honorable struggle. An excellent antidote to the prevailing American government line, it's also an essential look at the aiding and abetting committed by American corporate media in conformist manipulation. A must read."

Another Online Reviewer:

"This is a well written study of Chavez's rise and battle with American inspired/directed/financed efforts to destabilize his regime. Clearly, the author is sympathetic with the global efforts to resist IMF (i.e., US) hegemony and sees Chavez as a prime leader. Of course, most Americans blindly believe the lies that routinely emerge from our corrupt governement sources, but Kozloff paints a picture, perhaps sometimes too rosey, of Chavez's efforts to socialize his deeply-divided country."

From the Publisher:

"Audacious, provocative, and bombastic, few world politicians are as colorful as Hugo Chávez, now making international news for his plans to nationalize U.S. owned businesses and his bold opposition to Washington's economic and trade policies. As Venezuela gains importance as the fifth largest oil exporter in the world, this firebrand leader is quickly moving to the public spotlight by uniting much of South America against the Bush administration and wielding oil as a 'geopolitical weapon.'"

From BuzzFlash:

This book is a great complement to the astounding documentary on the attempted coup supported by the Bush Administration, "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" (which is not for sale as a DVD, but can be found by searching around the Internet).

Chavez is a complex, innovative, charismatic and flawed leader. But you got to hand it to the guy. He has more courage to stand up to Bush than the Democratic leaders in Congress, not to mention the Stepford Stalinist Republicans.

Maybe it takes a populist, emotionally volatile former general from Venezuela to give Bush a few pokes in the snout.

Someone has to.

***

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/072

Dr. J.'s Commentary
Hairspray: We've Come so Far; We Have So Far to Go
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 08/08/2007
Steven Jonas 

Hairspray is a movie that can be taken on a number of levels, your choice. It's a funny, sassy, heartwarming old-style Hollywood movie musical about teenage life in Baltimore, circa 1962. It's about actors like Christopher Walken, John Travolta, Queen Latifah, and Michelle Pfeiffer playing against type (and doing it marvelously well). It's about a classic Hollywood "discovery," the previously unknown high school senior, an aspiring actress from Great Neck, NY, Nikki Blonsky, delivering a drop-dead performance as the lead, Tracy Turnblad. It's about terrific singing and dancing all designed to make you feel oh-so-good while you're watching it. 

At the next level, the social issue of obesity is prevalent, how it affects the lives of so many Americans in so many different ways. John Travolta in a fat suit playing Tracy's mom shows how socially crippling it can be. Tracy, also obese, shows how one can overcome the prejudice our society has against overweight people, even as it encourages overweight (much more now through the role of the food industry than back then, but back then too). Tracy says "I'm happy with myself. I can do tons of stuff, and if you don't like me because I'm fat, that's your issue, not mine." 

The next level is classically political. The movie shows very starkly just how the nation was beginning for the first time to deal with race-relations and the coming desegregation, in a former Border State city, Baltimore. A highly popular afternoon teenage TV show that features high-powered singing and dancing by and for teens is totally and consciously segregated. It's an all-white show, with one "Negro Day" a month. In Tracy's high school, when she is sent to detention for some minor infraction in the classroom, virtually everyone else there is African-American. It is in that setting that Tracy, who can already dance, is introduced to the coming wave of African-American popular dancing that is about to burst into the mainstream for the first time. 

Tracy, who looks entirely different from all the other white kids on the show, somehow manages to win a dance contest and get a slot on it for herself. But by then, she has already been taken by the black dancing and is beginning to spend time with and work her way into the culture. She eventually proclaims that the show should be integrated and, with Queen Latifah who plays the entertainer-leader of the black kids, she is in the leadership of a street march and demonstration that eventually leads to just that eventuality. For a Hollywood movie, this one has an unusual amount of bare-bones, yes, that-is-what-it-was-like, politics in it. The progressive forces are the good guys. The police and the station management are the bad guys (and boy does Michelle Pfeiffer do a marvelous job of playing a bad guy). And the movie ends with the triumph of integration over prejudice, at least circa 1962. 

The next level on which one can view the movie and its lessons is not nearly so happy. This is one that is encapsulated in a line from the movie's climactic musical number: "We've come so far; we have so far to go." Indeed we do, in terms of race relations in our country. The issue is not on the movie's agenda in any way. But the line does make the politically conscious person think, right to the present. Are things better than in 1962? Of course they are, in many areas of discrimination. Are things worse? Oh yes they are, in the political arena. During the 1960s, it seemed that political racism was on the way out, that George Wallace would be its last howl of un-reason. And then came Nixon and the Southern Strategy that has defined the modern Republican Party. 

Race prejudice and its political usage is what defines the Southern Strategy, and defined the Nixonian Republicans into the Reagan Era. Starting with Reagan's capitulation to the Christian Right, the modern Bush-Cheney-Rove Republican has taken prejudice to a much broader level and made it into their party's political foundation. Race is there, of course, in the judicial nominations that led to the recent Roberts Court decision that said racism is for communities to decide, through their democratically elected representatives. And racism is there in the conscious campaign started by Ashcroft to use the "Justice" Department to suppress black voting, under the cover of "dealing with election fraud as mandated by the Civil Rights Act (sic, and sick)." But these folks have taken the political use of prejudice to a whole new level. 

Just consider: the political exploitation of prejudice against homosexuals simply because of who they are, not anything they have done; the political exploitation of prejudice against those of us (in this case, the majority of the population) who believe life begins at the time of viability, and the drive to criminalize our belief; the political exploitation of prejudice against Hispanics through the whole so-called "illegal immigration crisis"; the political exploitation of a prejudice these people are building from the ground up: Islamophobia; the political exploitation of prejudice against anyone who is labeled a "liberal," because as Ann Coulter/Sean Hannity/Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly say out in the open and the party's leadership says in code words, "liberals" are traitors, and, it so happens, the penalty in this country for treason is death. 

Yes, the modern Republican Party has reached new depths. If the Democrats don't begin to take it on directly on this issue of the political use of prejudice, and soon, it will very likely, very quickly get to be too late. Yes indeed, "We've come so far; we have so far to go." 

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly contributing author for The Political Junkies, and contributing editor for The Moving Planet Blog. 

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