By Beauty Damned

Gone Crazy

The news is insane. There is so much crazy shit going on that I can barely keep on top of it all. My boss must have emailed me fifty articles yesterday, each one more disturbing than the last. Articles relating to everything from the FCC "indecency" witch hunt to this indescribably heinous torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Boy, things are really in the crapper right now. I would try to write about something cheerful, perhaps the party the other night or my adventures with Kathleen yesterday, but I can't ignore what is going on in the world. Everyday I feel more and more as if life is starting to resemble one of the scary sci-fi novels that my dad gave me to read as a kid.

Howard Stern is being hounded by the FCC, while equally "offensive" material on the Oprah Winfrey show raises no flags with the FCC and she continues with her usual program, unhindered. This article in the Nation did a great job of highlighting the inequities within the FCC's focus and pointing out the transformation that seems to have occurred in the attitude of Michael Powell, who once said "I have gained a deep and profound respect for the wisdom of having an unwavering principle that stands at the summit of the Constitution, and holds: 'Government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.'... Benevolent or not, we did not sign away to a Philosopher-King the responsibility to determine for us, like a caring parent, what messages we should and should not hear."

Powell has flip-flopped on the First Amendment and media regulation. When he was an FCC commissioner, he said that "government has been engaged for too long in willful denial in order to subvert the Constitution so that it can impose its speech preferences on the public--exactly the sort of infringement of individual freedom the Constitution was masterfully designed to prevent." When he became chairman, he said, "I don't know that I want the government as my nanny." In 1999, he accepted the Media Institute's Freedom of Speech Award with a stirring defense of the First Amendment: "We should think twice before allowing the government the discretion to filter information to us as they see fit." But now, Powell is regulating something far more sacred than the business of media: its content, its speech, its freedom. And he dismisses--or at least tries to wash his hands of--the chill, telling Congress recently: "I do not have the luxury of ignoring my duty to enforce the statute because owners might react with excessive conservatism."

That article is worth reading in its entirety as it goes into specific rules and regulations that the FCC is currently trying to reinstate or put into place while bypassing the judicial process that has hindered its efforts in the past. So there is that madness.

And then there is this madness. So Rumsfeld apologizes, professes that the whole thing is his responsibility and states that he would step down if he were to personally determine that he is unable to lead the Defense Department effectively. This is about as ridiculous as Justice Scalia having the authority to decide whether or not he wants to recuse himself from the Cheney energy matter. He should not be the one to decide! Obviously it is in Rumsfeld's personal interest to stay on as Defense Secretary and anyone who thinks he's going to let that get taken from him without a fight doesn't know much about Donald Rumsfeld. He's a proud, proud man. Too proud. And to think that he and Bremer suppressed this information for so long and that Rumsfeld did not even have an answer to a simple question like "what private contractors were in charge of questioning the prisoners and had authority over the guards?" displays how truly unprepared our government was for a situation like this. So many bases failed to be covered before we entered into this war.

Meanwhile, Bush is breaking his promise not to ask for more funding for the Iraqi war until next year, by putting in a request for 25 Billion in additional funds. 100 billion dollar vision thing. What a fucking mess.

As for the depictions of abuse and torture that these Iraqis suffered at the hands of U.S. soldiers, it is so sickening. I cannot even fathom that any human being would do these kinds of things to another human being. It is beyond heinous. There are not even words to describe how ugly those acts are. It honestly makes me wonder what really goes on at Guantanamo Bay. I think people should be calling for independent investigations from every angle to make sure that this is not continuing anywhere else. These abuse allegations are obviously not isolated incidents at this point.

Posted by Maria at May 7, 2004 11:26 AM | TrackBack