where's mr. smith?

Thank heaven for Frank Capra.

The great director made pie-in-the-sky movies that were so sweet they were almost saccharine. It's a Wonderful Life. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Movies ideally suited for the All-American charm of Jimmy Stewart. But you know what? The reason Capra's movies have staying power is that behind the sweetness -- behind the lovely charms of Donna Reed and Jean Arthur, actresses who were devoted to the idealism of George Bailey and Jefferson Smith -- there was a massive kernel of truth.

Yes, it IS a wonderful life -- a life worth fighting for, a life worth fighting for. And Democracy -- the Big D Democracy that is what the Constitution is all about -- may be the worst form of government ever created, but it's better than any other.

Sit down and watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington again. Sure, it's melodrama of the highest order, but see if you don't see the whole sad scenario being played out today, only without an idealistic Jeff Smith to rise up and point out the lies and the fact that the Emperor has no clothes.

If you don't have a copy handy, Jimmy Stewart's character, Jefferson Smith, appointed to fill an empty senate seat by a governor who resides in the pocket of the political machine run by Jim Taylor. The running joke of the movie has every politico within earshot of Taylor jumping every time the power broker speaks the word "frog." "Yes, Jim," they spout.

Taylor wants a dam built to feather his own nest, and he's spent money in all the right places to make it happen. Rather than appoint a potential threat to his about-to-be-realized barrel of pork, Taylor arranges to have someone he considers a stooge to fulfil the unexpired senate term, a rube named Smith.

The only problem is that Smith is a real Boy Scout (okay, Boy Ranger, but we all get the analogy) wants to built a national campground on the area the dam would flood -- a place where boys could meet the majesty of nature first-hand. The boys would repay the government for the cost of the park by raising nickels and dimes.

So, the machine consipres to silence Smith by keeping him out of the Senate chambers by using diverting his eyes from his job and focusing them on a near-by skirt. It works. Once.

When Clarissa Saunders, his senate aide, tells him the score, Smith decides to fight the dam and has the entire weight of the senate fall on his head. He's accused of graft and is on the verge of expulsion when he takes to his feet and stages a filibuster.

It's Hollywood at its best. A single man fighting a political machine -- and the machine fights back hard. Taylor monopolizes public opinion since he owns the press. The presses he doesn't own, he simply rents to silence Smith and tries to raise public ire to oust the upstart. And when Saunders rallies the Boy Rangers and their newspaper to support Smith, Taylor simply strongarms the boys, beating up a few in the process. What do they care so long as the dam gets built, right?

But in the end, when Smith collapses, the senior senator, who's complicit in the whole sceme, breaks and confesses on the senate floor. Saunders, who confessed her love in a note to Smith during his filibuster, and the exhausted young senator live happily ever after and the threat of bullies like Jim Taylor is neutralized for good and all.

If only it really worked like that.

See, we have Jim Taylor at work today. The Taylor strategy was put in motion during the Reagan Administration. It started simply enough: they deregulated the communications industry. They relaxed the rules of acquisition (those rules that the Ferengi live by, for those of you of a geeky nature). You see, a free and unfettered press works best for you when it's YOUR free and unfettered press.

Changing those rules allowed companies like Clear Channel to buy up radio stations the way my ex-wife bought up chocolates the day after Valentine's Day. And allowed Rupert Murdoch to expand his television empire dramatically -- to the point where he could start his own network, Fox. Twentieth Century Fox was an All-America brand -- why not pervert it in support of a Jim Taylor enterprise?

Changing the rules allowed newspapers to get bought up just as fast. Those that wouldn't play along, folded. Today there are fewer newspapers to choose from. Most cities have only one -- no competition is necessary in the Jim Taylor world. Those cities with two have them working under what's called a "Joint Operating Agreement." That means the papers are joined at the pocketbook, making them a Taylor-made siamese twin.

So, here we sit. A nation built in Jim Taylor's image. The best congress money can buy. Unfettered power weilded in Jim Taylor's image, for Jim Taylor's purposes. You see, Jim Taylor owns Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root and Global Crossing and Enron and Exxon. Jim Taylor owns the company that manufactures voting machines on Ohio -- and guaranteed that state would ultimately support Jim Taylor's candidate for President the last time around.

Jim Taylor makes the machines of war, so invading Iraq was a great idea. And Jim Taylor owns oil companies that just HAD to get their hands on Iraqi oil. And since Jim Taylor owns big companies on Wall Street, things like social security should be reformed so those companies can get their hands on the social security trust fund and we should all be encouraged to run right out and create Health Savings Accounts administered by Jim Taylor's money managers.

Who cares of a bunch of young kids get strong-armed by Jim Taylor and his men -- No Child Left Behind is a GOOD idea, right? Jim Taylor thinks so, so it must be.

So, what does Jim Taylor want next? Besides keeping all that money he rakes in? How about reforming the tax code so Jim Taylor doesn't owe a dime to the IRS -- and while we're at it, let's give him a massive refund on all those taxes he doesn't owe. That's fair, right? Jim Taylor thinks so.

The problem with the Jim Taylor's of the world is that they've gotten too big, too powerful. So far, they've throttled the Jefferson Smiths and managed to control the reportage of Jim Taylor's crimes and manage public opinion to fit Jim Taylor's vision of the way the world ought to be.

We just have to pray that Jeff Smith doesn't stay throttled forever.

More soon.

it's official: republicans have a Boehner

Morris Udall used to tell a story about the time he ran for House majority leader. Going into the election, Udall had been assured he had all the votes he needed to win the election.

And he lost.

To put the experience in a nutshell, Udall would ask "Do you know the difference between a caucus and a cactus? With a cactus, the pricks are on the outside."

Good 'ole Poll Roy Blunt, Tom DeLay's hand-picked successor knows that feeling. Blunt, who, like most of the GOP leadership, has scandal lapping at his heels, had been assured he was the man to beat by all the insiders. And he was.

Boehner promises to bring reform to House Republicans. That's highly unlikely. That would be like trying to impose order over a herd of pigs addressing the feed trough. Between Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bob Ney and the rest -- these guys have all the subtlety of The Running of the Bulls.

See, the thing is, Republicans keep acting like a Democrat will never again be elected -- either in their home districts or to the White House. That kind of arrogance and short-sidedness is the ultimate kiss of death. Granted, there have been some very, very shady things transpire during the past two elections -- things that have been muffled by the iron boot of Republican leadership. But that can't and won't last forever.

Tom DeLay already is finding the running difficult in his heavily jerrymandered Texas District. Ohio's GOP leadership asked Bob Ney to step down and not run for reelection. Randy "Duke" Cunningham will get his mail at the federal pen for the next few years -- as will Abramoff unless he unfurls a laundry list of cronies and their crimes. Imagine what would happen of Nancy Pelosi were to become Speaker of the House and Democrats suddenly controlled subpoena power again.

The sooner these guys get shown the door, the better.

More soon.

read my lips

The president's father got into trouble with the simple phrase: "Read my lips: No new taxes!" It was a simple pledge. No gray areas to muddy the waters. It got him elected. And it got his reelection bid shot down in a hail of self-inflicted gunfire.

Now the son wants to ressurect that familiar refrain. Of course, his entire presidency has been built on "Read my lips rhetoric." Don't both to check the truth or look for contradictory facts. Just read his lips. And if you don't like it, you can kiss his ass.

The latest "Read my lips" assault is over massive wiretapping of innocent Americans.

Granted, George W. Bush's entire approach to life has been "It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission." The problem is, this is the Constitution of the United States we're dealing with here. Our nation was built on it. It's bedrock. This isn't a Yale frat party and there's beer on the floor after midnight.

Have you ever heard a little child lie? They keep repeating the lie over and over again, reinforcing the fragile bridge the lies create.

Now listen to W. talk about his wiretapping scheme (calling this wiretapping is like calling Niagra Falls a leaky faucet). It's legal. He says. Again and a again. I know it in my heart, it's legal. We had lawyers look at it: it's legal.

It's not difficult to understand. W. and the Republicans have always held the belief that if they say it often enough, it will become true -- and that a lie can travel around the world before the truth gets out of bed and finds its socks.

The lies are becoming more frantic these days. And that's not a good sign. Not for the truth. Not for the civil liberties we all expect to have insured by the Bill of Rights. Not for the men and women put in harm's way because of those lies.

Is it too much to ask to get a straight answer?

More soon.

the dark age cometh

There's a reason why those Republican fundraisers fear Ted Kennedy.

For decades, the senior senator from Massachusetts has been the boogie man in the closet for every Republican flavor-of-the-month with his hand out. And every presidential campaign has featured some variation on the theme -- "He's even more liberal than Teddy Kennedy!!!"

Monday, the senator gave us a brilliant reminder of just why he's been so durably effective. His speech in support of an attempted fillibuster against Samuel Alito's nomination for the Supreme Court was a thing of rhetorical beauty. He put forth his concerns regarding this unsatisfactory nominee clearly and forcefully. It was a thing of beauty.

And it went for naught.

The fact that a Democrat could find reason to support this nomination is disgusting. In the case of Robert Byrd of West Virginia, I can only believe that it has something to do with advancing senility -- it's one thing to fight Republicans as they threaten the rules of the Senate, but you can roll over like a lapdog when they threaten Civil Rights or the Constitutional guaranteed checks and balances"

A day after Senate Democrats could barely muster two dozen votes to support a fillibuster, Sam Alito was sworn in on the high court and the Right Wing rejoiced. Roe v. Wade immediately went on life support. So did any governmental agency exercising any oversight of the corporate world. The bedrock of our liberty, the concept of "One person, one vote" was pulled from the wall of freedom, replaced by the "gospel (Alito's term)" of the unitary executive.

This day is a victory for corporate rights -- which in Alito's view always trumps the rights of what one Senator called "the mythical little guy."

It's a good thing Coretta Scott King didn't live to see it. She passed away quietly this morning. Today begins an all-out assault on everything her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, fought and died for.

We can only hope that this day will become a springboard for uniting those mythical little guys into a political force once more.

Republicans as they exercise power now have never had an effective political philisophy, but they have had a maginficent marketing campaign. The slogans come out at election time, but beyond that the Neo-Con agenda takes precedent over all else, including the Constitution.

In that vein, these Republicans have done some very bad deeds. They lied us into a war. They trashed the economy by shoveling money from our treasury to their big money contributors. They gutted government services -- especially emergency services -- by putting political cronies in charge.

Maybe now, instead of merely accepting the slogans and political rhetoric on "faith," people will begin to see that the words and the deeds have never matched up.

We can only hope.

More soon.

adieu, Wendy

I read this morning that playwright Wendy Wasserstein had passed away after a battle with cancer. She was 55 and should have been in the prime of her literary life. It's a sad way to start the week. I truly enjoyed her vision and her way with words.

The Heidi Chronicles (which won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize), The Sisters Rosensweig, An American Daughter were all classic plays about modern women and the struggles they face. I admired them all. To understand the reach and impact of Wasserstein's work, look no further than the incredible list of actresses who starred in her plays: Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, Swoosie Kurtz, Joan Allen, Diane Wiest, Jill Eickenberry, Kate Nelligan and so many more. However, it wasn't star power that made Wasserstein so important to the collective conscience. It was the words she wrote -- the words that drew so many powerful women to want to say them on stage.

Way back when, living in Seattle, we would be treated to whatever play Wasserstein had just finished in a trial run through a Seattle repertory company. I particulary enjoyed "An American Daughter." It was a local production with local actors, but you could see that, even in its earliest incarnation, that this was sharply written, incisive play about the toll politics takes on families and individual lives.

It's sad whenever a powerful voice is stilled -- even a voice you don't agree with. More so when it's a voice in which you have found inspiration or has sparked a vibrant debate between friends.

Living in the Pacific Northwest you do not have the access to great live theater the way you do in New York, so I wasn't able to see all of her work produced on stage. But I have read her work and enjoyed it very much -- finding insight in each play. To me, that is a powerful statement to make about someone's work for the stage: Is it still a good read all on its own? In the case of Wendy Wasserstein, the answer is a profound yes.

More soon.