These Bitches should be Pilloried

Some of the most vocal critics of the role of government and advocates of personal responsibility are also amazing hypocrites.  Michelle Bachman, Max Baucus, Sam Brownback, and Blanche Lincoln have been steadfast in their contention that healthcare reform is part of a severe government overreach.  They hold that we should be wary not only of growing deficits but also the expansion of government power.  They are some of the taxpayers’ most staunch advocates.  These Senators and this congresswoman are also enormous hypocrites who personally benefit from the largesse of the taxpayer. 

I have to give a big fat swollen bacon wrapped shout out to Doris Brown, Southside Magnet School, the City of Chattanooga, and Facebook!

Convoluted

I have twisted myself into knots

my vision is not clear

I move with a cumbersome blind inertia

what is it that I have done

I do what we all have done

created my own fear and pain

gladly and willingly surrendered my power

I feel shallow and cold

distant and alone

how dare I

with so much life to live

and so much life to share

“This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.” ~Ellie Wiesel~

driven to distraction

I am animated by the most perverse energy

it can be corrosive

so plodding along

plodding along

i find myself wherever i need to be

and i happen to be wherever i need to be

some call it grace

but i am driven to distraction

Precious

fault

no fault of my own

ripped away

Love

is energy

and it does not die

what it becomes is unknowable

it is supple

and so I will shape it

bend it to my better self

and become precious

Bat shit crazy

George W. Bush is an asshole.  He managed to taint and corrupt an already unstable foundation of ideals.  He subverted the 1st amendment with free speech zones .  He can not take credit for the failure of the press.  That stunning dereliction lies at the feet of the corporate media.  He plunged us into two wars with more than 4,000 U.S. casualties and uncounted(at least by us)  Iraqi and Afghan deaths.  Two wars financed by slight of hand and off the budget.  The military has been stretched to its limits.  Recruitment and reenlistment was so bad that stop loss was initiated as a back door draft and enlistment standards were veritably thrown out the window.   He demonized nations and peoples and our unilateral military campaign against Iraq on the most mendacious of reasonings has made the U.S. a pariah on the world stage.   He took a surplus and plunged the nation into a record deficit with the ready assistance of a Republican majority legislature for 6 of his 8 years.

This is what we elected Barack Obama to contend with.

President Barack Obama is being portrayed as a Nazi, a cartoon cat, the Muslim Communist Joker, etc etc.  He is being hung in effigy.  Someone painted a swastika on the sign of Georgia 13th District Congressman David Scott.  A man ripped up a sign bearing the image of Rosa Parks at Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill recent town hall meeting.  A man with a gun strapped to his thigh  showed up at President Barack Obama’s healthcare townhall in Portsmouth, NH.  The man was holding a sign ‘It is time to water the tree of liberty’, a statement reminiscient of Timothy McVeigh’s T-shirt “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  The tshirt he was wearing he bombed the Alfred P. Murah building in Oklahoma City, OK.  People who either themselves or their family receive government healthcare are some of the most vocal opponents to healthcare reform.  The environment is toxic and stupid.  It maybe toxic simply because it is so very stupid.  Obvious lies and distortions are magnified and there is only the most obligatory efforts to counter.  Broadcast and cable news broadcasters and pundits and analysts are so amazingly inane and useless.  They are spineless and ineffectual.  They are sniveling and contemptible.  They are fully participating in and perpetuating the utter stupidity and outright lies.  There is however an unmistable racial component to this cognitive dissonance.  There is a segment of the population that can not bring themselves to accept this Black man son of a white woman and Black man.  His father was born in Kenya and muslim to boot.  I can understand the suspension of belief that Barack Obama demands.  A man from this background becoming the leader of the free world has to fuck with your head in a way.  His existence and success and bearing flies in the face of so many of our most firmly held ideas.  Black men are criminals, junkies, and absentee fathers.  America is rascist to its core and that is irrevocable.  But here we are and it is driving people bat shit crazy.

People to the Power

We must learn to live together as brothers or we are going to perish together as fools. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is fairly obvious that we are facing amazing challenges.  Chief in my perspective is the 9.6% unemployment rate.   Which is exacerbated by the fact that wages have hit a 1 year low and the average work week has fallen to 33 hours. We are working less for less money and the costs of necessities continue to rise which further squeezes these very limited resources.  As of June there are 15 million people without jobs.

This would not seem to be the time for politics.  This would not seem to be the time for scandal and salaciousness.  This would seem to be the time to turn a critical and visionary eye towards working people.  Why is it such a difficult prospect to absorb?  Our economy is overwhelmingly consumer based.  If people don’t have money they can not spend and they can not support this economy not to mention the fact that poverty demands desperate choices.  Do I feed myself or my children?  Do I go to work when I can not afford childcare?  These concerns are very rarely addressed in our painfully consumerist culture.

We demand so little.

It seems painfully obvious that we can not depend on the Democrats to sack up and really join the fight.  Republicans do not deserve any consideration and have offered little else other than incessant criticism.  You can not govern with invective and you can not  compromise with invective.    You can not claim credibility when you offer either no solutions or tried and failed solutions.

“Things are so bleak.  People are so weak.” Mos Def – Umi Says.

It truly comes down to us.  We can not continue to allow our perspectives and beliefs be defined for us by people who would not recognize a real person if they were being mugged by one.  The punditocracy is so far removed from the experiences of actual human beings.  They cavalierly discuss politics as if there were not living beings on the other sides of policy.  People actually live and die on the basis of many of these debates.  The average persons lives are fodder at best.  A rhetorical flourish in a world where the most inane and preposterous lies go unchallenged.  This is the world we allow.  None of this would be happening without our passive consent.  Our sedentary state extends well beyond the physical.  We are not curious.  We are not critical in any meaningful way.  We are much much to silent.

What should we do?

I don’t know that there is any one answer to the question.  I would like us to stop purchasing name brand goods despite the fact that this would lead to higher unemployment.  I firmly believe the people have to exact a financial sanction against corporate power.  How amazing would it be if there was a true universal default.  If we all just stopped paying our credit card bills.  I don’t advocate that lightly and I do not propose it as permanent solution.  These institutions built their profits on unnecessary fees and punitive policies.  How much sympathy should we have for them.  More importantly I would love to see us organize our individual communities into support systems where individuals and families contribute what they can to support each other during difficult times.  This could take a variety of forms: a food and clothes bank, a rotating deposit and withdrawal system where each family contributes say $10.00 per month and one family gets the proceeds of that pot each month.  We assist in the maintenance of each others homes.  We help care for each others children.  We pool our talents, skills, resources, and personalities.  We create communities not neighborhoods.

We can transform this society.

Family

I am so sorry to say that I have allowed the true meaning of family get away from me.

My cousin Joi got married today.  She was a lovely bride.  There was a genuine feeling of familial love, support, and pride.   I saw members of my family I have not seen in years, my Aunt Sammie and Uncle Tee, who are more like my brothers and sisters, my Aunt Hattie, and my cousins Kashia and Ahmad.

I spent the most time with Tee.  I really enjoyed our conversations and for the first time I think I appreciated the esteem with in which I am held.  I finally understood what I have denied myself and most damningly denied Kevin and Christina.  I have no valid or credible excuses or explanations for such a tragic lapse.

My family is full of warm, loving, intelligent, witty, and beautiful people.  I made connections to the person I am reflected in the faces and personalities and experiences of people I love and who love me.  I am both grateful and regretful.  With all certainty I will not continue to alienate my family or myself from my family.

With much respect to De La Soul

what can I drag myself to and from
how far can immerse
how deep submerse

how strange
and sudden
and beautiful I am
how desperate
how strong
how filled with contradictions
hypocrisy

I wax
on
I wax
on
I never wane
I am never diminished
I am
I be

Latch Key Kid

I don’t know a great deal about my past.  This is not intended to sound mysterious it is a simple matter that I was never particularly curious.  I never asked my mother who my father was.  He was not there so it did not matter.  I never questioned whether he had a choice in the matter or not or if he was even aware of my existence.  I do know the reason I was born in Atlanta, GA.  My mother and her family are from a small town called Midway, Ga 31 miles from Savannah and I was conceived in Syracuse, NY.  When my mother informed her parents that she was pregnant she was ordered to return home and was then sent to a home for unwed mothers in Atlanta.  It seems almost quaint now but it also seems sad and humiliating.  My mother was not a teenager she was 25 years old when she gave birth to me.  I don’t know how long we remained in Atlanta but I do know that before I was five I had lived there, Savannah, St. Petersburg, FL and in Syracuse, NY.  I can only imagine what my mom went through – as a single black woman in the early seventies, but I guess things got tight and I was sent to live with my grandparents Dee Dee and Danny back in Midway, GA.  I don’t remember how I felt about that transition but I do remember being happy while I was there.  I lived their with them and their two youngest children Sammie and Tee.  I felt very much at home there.  It was truly a community where everyone knew everyone else.  Everything was familiar and close.  Dee Dee worked at my elementary school, and at the nursing home that was right behind our church and both she and Dannie were leaders in the church. Sammie and Tee were both very popular, talented, and intelligent.  I felt like a special part of a special family I was surrounded by family – cousins, uncles, aunts.  In short it was nurturing and insular community.

When I was nine I moved back to Syracuse to live with my mother.  Again I don’t remember exactly how I felt about this transition, I do have a vague impression of a certain sadness.  I also know that the transition was not nearly as smooth.  When my mother went to register me at Moses Dewitt Elementary School she was told that they would need to place me in remedial classes – this was not based upon any assessment.  The combination of my brown skin and rural southern origin trumped any aptitude or intelligence or merit.  My mother was indignant and insisted I be placed in gen pop.  I would not say I necessarily excelled but I did slightly better than hold my own.  My first day of the fourth grade was a difficult one.  I was extremely nervous.  The environment was wholly unfamiliar.  I went from a school where not only did I know everyone but the racial dynamic was a hell of a lot more diverse to being the only Black child in a class full of white children.  The class was arranged with all the desks pushed up against the wall facing the center of the classroom.  When it got to be my turn I threw up.   My memory of the moment may be embellished but I recall a sea of vomit engulfing the floor.  My mother had to come pick me up on my first day.  The moment itself was traumatic but after it past it past.  I was happy there – I apparently adapted to my new surroundings.

The biggest change was that I would became a latch key kid.

Betty Geneva James 1945-1998

My mother passed away July 13th 1998.  Now that she is gone I find myself with a great deal of questions.  I so deeply miss her presence.  I have grown in many ways and there is so much I would love to share with her.  Most of all I miss that my son never got to know her.  He was nearly a year old when she passed.  He would have really benefited from her intellect and insight and love.  Everything good and clean about me I owe to her only the mistakes have been mine.

Kevin Nkosi James

This is the person who calls me daddy.

Raquliah Christina Nicole Vanzant

I have never believed in destiny or soulmates.  I don’t think that anything is inevitable.  I do believe in grace and fortune.  Sometimes the best things enter our lives and whether we either recognize them immediately or gradually but we do recognize those people or cirmcumstances as blessings.  I am very blessed that I had my only child with Raquliah Christina Nicole Vanzant.  She is so much that I admire.  She is so much that I aspire to be.  She is wise and funny and compassionate.  She is thoughtful and hard working and disciplined.  She keeps moving.  She keeps something greater than herself and her circumstances within her view.  She is the most giving person I have known since my mom.  I tell Kevin he should be grateful and proud that she is his mother.  In her he has a mother that has always worked to make a wonderful life for him but also leave a wonderful world for him.

Obama

Final Electoral Map

Some of My Favorites

Abortion

March 2nd 2009

Today  President Obama nominated Kansas Governor Katherine Sebelius to head Health and Human Services.  Apparently this has raised the ire of abortion rights foes and they apparently are preparing to make their voices loudly heard.  Does it come as some suprise that a pro choice president would select a pro choice HHS Secretary?

I vaguely recalled that during this past year’s campaign someone said abortion rates typically go down during Democratic administrations.  I found that Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Howard Dean have posited a variation of this meme by claiming that abortions have gone up during the Bush administration.   The implication is that Democrats are better on economic issues particularly those that effect the poor and working class and policies that benefit the poor and working class are policies that work to reduce abortion rates.   Unfortunately the facts do not necessarily support that notion.   I came across this very balanced and well researched post Abortion, Poverty, and Democractic support for Black Genocide – don’t let the title completely throw you.  Which lead me to this post which supports my liberal bias - Abortion and Economics .  My notion that facts have a liberal bias was challenged with - Poverty and Abortion: A New Analysis and The Biography of a Bad Statistic.   While the decline of abortion rates during the Clinton administration may be accounted for by an overall decrease in conception is it not possible that lower conception rates are also a function of decreased poverty?  Is it also possible that the slowed decrease in abortion rates during the early years of the Bush administration is only a result of restricted access and that that decrease would not have been slowed if rates of poverty did not dramatically increase?

While the empirical data to this point may not fully bear out the notion that Democratic policies work to reduce abortion rates I still cleave to the notion that it is perfectly legitimate and perfectly moral to work for a life with less conflict and deprivation.  I believe if you raise the waters all boats rise.  There is no equivocation between Democratic policies and egalitarianism but Democrats are demonstrably better economic stewards.

It is part of fulfilling our obligation to leave a better world for our presence.  I want a world for my son where there is a lessening impetus to armed conflict and a greater appreciation for dialog, discourse, and diplomacy.  I want a world where people feel compelled to save and improve lives and to eliminate disease and deprivation.  I want my son to live in a world where egalitarianism is the goal. Why are those aims less legitimate than an ever present bellicosity that steels parties against one another?  I happen to believe that the ideals espoused by Dr. King, Gandhi, and Christ are ideals for crafting an ethical, peaceful, and prosperous society.  We can have honest debate and honest disagreement when we can at the very least have a honest discussion of peace as an objective.  I don’t believe that those that I would deem my political opponents agree on an ethical, peaceful, and prosperous society as an objective.  I believe that they are content with turf wars and dissembling.  If you champion life then don’t let that commitment end at legislating.  Chris Askew, a local radio host (Atlanta, GA WRFG Unwrapped), instilled this idea in my head as a rhetorical point – we can do more than one thing at a time.  I am not saying the pro life movement only does one thing – fight to overturn Roe V. Wade.  I am not saying that they do not work to serve the poor or support young mothers.  I am saying that is not the public face of the movement.  Their efforts to be on the front line of crafting a society where women no matter their backgrounds feel less compelled to seek abortion should be more central to the public face.  The commitment to life should not end at the womb.

I am going to Hell.

**Someone close to me interpreted this as an anti Christian screed.  That was not my intent.  I have nothing against Christians or any other people of any faith.  My intention was only to say that I don’t believe in Hell. **

I am not a Christian.  I don’t identify with any particular faith, religion or doctrine.  I am not an Atheist.  Agnostic is the closest I can come to a particular spiritual affiliation.  I consider myself an ethical person and a thoughtful person.  I strive to be a better person everyday and I fail and I succeed. I treat people with respect and I hope that on balance I have a positive effect on the lives in touch.   My mother taught me to be compassionate and she taught me to seek.  Not to dismiss and not to judge.  I have such an enormous respect for her belief and her journey.  She came from the rural southern traditional Christian background.  She lived through the Civil Rights era and walked through a momentous change in her opportunity and circumstance.  She chose not to simply hold to the easy path – she allowed herself to be open to new ideas and beliefs.  I never once heard her condemn or judge a single soul.  Many people hold that a lack of judgment equals a lack of standard.  They think a live and let live philosophy equates to moral relativism.  That was certainly not the case.  She had her standards, as do I,  as well as an ideal for living.  The ideal that she passed down to me was an unbridled respect for people that allows you to let them make their own choices and cleave to their own beliefs and only allowing their choices and behavior to determine if they are welcome to share your sacred space and time.  The ideal she gave me was to lead a life of integrity and self discovery and self improvement and to leave this world a better place for my presence.

But I am going to Hell.

If I were to die tomorrow I would be condemned to eternal damnation.  I have not accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.  I fail to understand the rationale of a loving God that would condemn any of his dominion to torture and damnation.  That does not fit my conception of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent force.  A being of that magnitude would certainly be beyond anthropomorphism.  A being of that magnitude is truly unknowable.  I think Hell is an entirely human conception – I think if Hell exists we create it for ourselves. The point seems to me leading an ethical and thoughtful life is its own reward.

Workers of the World Unite!

I would encourage anyone to read this very prescient article   Clinton, Republicans agree to deregulation of US financial system By Martin McLaughlin 1 November 1999.

Working people have been taking it up the ass for some time now.  If we took the time and gave honest and thoughtful consideration, we have to admit the the last 3 decades have seen the gradual and then spectacular ascendancy of the wealthy and powerful – particularly corporations and the gradual and then spectacular burdening of working people.   Working people have been taking all kinds of shorts.  We have gone from earning a living to financing a lifestyle.  We are burdened by ever rising costs of health care, college tuition, childcare, energy,  and food – yet our wages have not kept pace.  The Economic Policy Institute’s authoritative The State of Working America 2008/2009 finds that the for the first time on record, middle-class families are at the end of a recovery without ever having regained the ground they lost during the previous recession. Gross domestic product and historically high productivity growth should have raised paychecks up and down the income ladder, but instead the benefits of that growth have bypassed most of the people who made it possible.

At some point our self interest must surpass our fear and insecurity.  The needs of our families – our children should make the wealthy and powerful fearful.  The pendulum has swung away from us and we must be the agents and actors that force that pendulum swing back.   On some level we understand and recognize what has happened to working people.  Pew reported, “The public thinks that workers were better off a generation ago on every key dimension of worker life — be it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the loyalty they are shown by employers.” And, statistically, the public is right.

David Gregory is a douche bag

He is not the only douche bag.  The corporate press is overflowing with douche bags.  Assholes who either by a sense of entitlement or by privilege fail to appreciate the gravity of their positions.  They have traded objectivity for access.  The most galling thing is that their privilege and access or had only because of the public airwaves.  We own the airwaves and accordingly they should operate as keepers of the public trust.  The primary role of the press should be to find and present the truth.  Instead they are content to parrot the conventional wisdom and rehash the most inconsequential bullshit.  Are they lazy? Stupid?  Willfully ignorant?  Or do they see their lives as more akin to the powerful, wealthy,  and famous people that they are supposed to maintain an adversarial relationship with.  The above mentioned douche bag can be seen here dancing and rapping with Karl Rove. As douchey as he is he can only be held to the standard that we allow.  It all comes back to what are we willing to do – how are we willing to respond – what are we willing to accept in the name of what?

Masochism

Every morning I vow to myself that I will not turn on Morning Joe.   Invariably I do.   Maybe this is a case more akin to addiction than masochism.  Joe Scarborough is pompous and relies on the same tired rhetoric that has polluted political debate for so long.  Chief among his tactics is hyperbolic indignation.  If I am more offended by something than you then obviously my position is not only sincere but it is also proper and correct.  He is a master of the ‘either or’  Either I am right or you are right – there is no appreciation of nuance and subtlety.  He will talk over his guests or yell like a petulant over grown child with a giant head.  He is a despicable human being.

Vapid and Pompous

I don’t know what is worse being pompous or being vapid.  I won’t trouble myself to figure it out.  Co-host Mika Brzezinski has the analytical and rhetorical skill of a bucket of snot.  She seems content to merely parrot the most tired and stale aspects of conventional wisdom and I have never once heard her utter a truly original thought.  How a serious thinker and world citizen like former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski sired and reared this idiot is beyond me.  This morning she amused her self by uttering the most shallow and dismiss notions about the protestors gathering ahead of the G2o summit in London.  It completely escaped her that these people might actually have a point of view and or are simply filled with a justifiable anger over the world’s finacial situation and its disproportionate impact on working and poor people.

My friend Angela does not understand why I can not stop watching it – I guess I am constantly amazed at how far public discourse has fallen.  Angela by the way will subject herself to Hannity and Limbaugh, neither of who I have the stomach for.  Those two skidmarks in the underwear of humanity are easily dismissed while people actually think serious debate occurs on Morning Joe.  Unfortunately they represent what has taken the place of real discussion in the corporate media.

Fucking up on a Galactic Level.

You can never lose betting on the self destructiveness of humanity.  Self destructiveness in the most willful sense.  We are well aware that we are polluting our planet with a whole host of contaminants.  As we speak there is a patch of garbage twice the size of the continental United States floating in the Pacific Ocean.

Aproximate size and location of Pacific Garbage Patch

Environmentalists say that the waste is almost impossible to clean up.  The patch is composed mostly of plastics – bags and containers.  Many of the components are small pieces that the marine wildlife consume.  Unlike human beings they are not aware that these objects should not be consumed.  When their plastic poisoned carcasses wash up on shore their bellies are filled with a variety of plastic pieces.

What kind of beings shit where they eat?

You have to give it to us though we are thorough.  We are leaving trash in space – relatively speaking within our immediate orbit.  The debris is composed of spent booster stages, nuts and bolts from International Space Station construction, various accidental discards such as spacesuit gloves and cameras, and fragments from exploded spacecraft.  The current estimate is that there are over a million bits of debris orbiting the Earth. About 70,000 objects about the size of a postage stamp have been detected between 850 – 1,000 km above the Earth. They are probably frozen bits of nuclear reactor coolant that are leaking from old satellites.

Space debris

NASA now has a program dedicated to analysis and mitigation of space debris.  Space debris poses a threat.  The individual components are not floating gingerly along they are moving at incredible speeds.  As they inevitably collide they create more fast moving debris.  The more debris the greater the chance of a collision with an operational satellite.  The European Space Agency web site has a video showing the rapid accumulation of space debris. Consider the things that satellites make possible and or facilitate – television, cell phones, weather, business, and defense.

I don’t mean to be alarmist.  Space debris does not keep me up at nights.    While the Pacific Garbage patch poses a more immediate concern I do not really lose any sleep over it either.  What does bother me far beyond the dangers posed by each is what they both say about us.

Disonance

There is a pervading sense of disonance.  A potent combination or real economic turmoil, unemployment, and one ot the most toxic media landscapes in recent memory.  George W. Bush’s administration was most certainly characterized by an obscenely compliant corporate press.  Obama’s short time as our President has been characterized by an amazingly broad and yet spectacularly superficial scrutiny.  Easily dismissed issues like whether he bowed to the Saudi king have been a simmering and ubiquitous controversy, while the Obama Department of Justice continues to invoke Bush’s state secrets claims in the face of judicial review is barely discussed.  I would be ecstatic if the scrutiny he faces was as deep as it is broad but it is merely a constant and annoying chatter.  Despite this purposeful disonance Obama still maintains high poll numbers.  How will that last when the corporate press wallows in an orgy of mud slinging.  They have abrogated their constitutionally enshrined purpose of being yet another check on government overreach by finding and presenting the truth.  The press, particularly in a digital age, should be agents of truth primarily.  Unfortunately they are an outlet for only the most shallow and poorly researched and poorly examined and poorly analyzed drivel.  I should not hear a single real journalist open a line of discussion or question with the phrase “Some people say”.  That is some truly lazy and disengenous shit.  Attribute the statement or sentiment.  Realistically ‘some people’ say a lot of dumb shit.  That does not mean you give them an outlet.  Outlets should be reserved for arguments and ideas that have factual merit and factual merit is determined by genuine journalism and reporting.  What every we had of that is completley absent in todays corporate media.   The media space is part of the commons and should be treated as such.  It is incumbent upon us to take back the press – they use airwaves that we own.  But I believe the best approach is a market approach.  We must demand more through there advertisers.  We must make a more direct and powerful statement that the press continues to let us down.  It is disonant.

Echo Chamber and something beyond

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. – George Orwell

One of the touchstones of media criticism is the echo chamber.  The idea that the same concepts, events, quotes, voices, and perspectives are simply repeated over and over again.  I think its problematic and valid, but the corporate press does so much more than echo.  It amplifies and it distorts.  The reason that the press is considered the fourth estate and why it is constitutionally protected is because its purported role is so significant in a representative democracy.  The press is supposed to inform.  It is supposed to seek truth.  The press is not to act as a mediator between opposing agendas.  It is supposed to present the facts underlying the debate.  It so desperately fails in that regard.  According to David Gregory, the doucheist of douche bags and one of my favorite charlatan journalists, my assessment is completely wrong.  The right questions were asked.  “I think there’s a lot of critics — and I guess we can count Scott McClellan as one — who thinks that if we did not debate the president, debate the policy in our role as journalists, if we did not stand up and say, “This is bogus,” and “You’re a liar,” and “Why are you doing this?” that we didn’t do our job. And I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role.”

My question for him would be then what is your role?

In my mind your role is to challenge factual inaccuracies and out right lies.  Your role is to challenge people when they misrepresent their opponents positions.  Your rule is to afflict the comfortable.  Your role is to investigate  that the powerful are held accountable for their words and their deeds.

Unfortunately the dominant form of political coverage is the opinion show.  Day after day and hour after hour we have political coverage dominated by opinion with a paucity of fact.  We have few if any moderators or hosts who consistently gird their broadcasts with anything approaching good journalism.  More often than not they allow one guest or another posit utter bullshit without challenge or question.  All to often they lie or misrepresent themselves.

It seems that we fail to really appreciate the disservice that is being down to us and to scour the wound with salt this is done on our dime in part.  We own the airwaves that broadcast television and radio depends upon.  The fact certainly does not compel anyone to act in our behalf but it should.

I am just not at all certain what to do about it.  I just know something must be done.  What is the reasonable approach – what is the effective approach?