Roosting Chickens

Finally politicians are being called for getting the support of religious bigots and extremist wing-nuts. As well they should, No candidate for President, Senate or the House should be allowed to let others spout hatred on their behalf without having to answer for their supporters views or disallow or refute or reject that support. However they want to phrase it. And we're talking about both Presidential candidates. The corporate media is also being taken to task for allowing their bias to show. Obama and Farrakhan? Small potatoes.

In a Salon column, Glenn Greenwald calls on McCain to reject the support of certain neo-conservative, radical evangelicals.

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Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people. They are still fit for good company, an important and cherished part of our mainstream American political system. The entire GOP establishment is permitted actively to lavish them with praise and court their support without the slightest backlash or controversy. Both George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent formal greetings to the 2006 gathering of Hagee's group.

By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers.

How come Tim Russert -- in all the times he sits and chats with Lieberman, McCain and various high Bush officials -- never reads all of the inflammatory, disgusting, crazed "Rapture-is-Coming/ All-Jews-will-Burn/ Kill-All-Muslims/ Hurricanes-are-Punishment-against-Gays" pronouncements from John Hagee and James Dobson and Pat Robertson and demand that John McCain and George Bush and Joe Lieberman "denounce" those views and "reject" their support? What's the difference, exactly?

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Good read. Check out the follow-ups. Including the interview with Bill Donohue of the Catholic League (no flamer,he) about the religious intolerance of some of McCains supporters.

The Arts? Who Needs Them?

Lindsey Dreyer, over at her My Dance Space has done a favor for lot of us in the theatre community by posting the Presidential Candidates positions on funding for the arts. I've written before about Mike (The Evolutionary Revolutionary) Huckabee and his position on increased arts funding. He sees the arts and arts education as a way to teach children how to communicate ideas in digital society. However he's had a limited impact on the arts in the national scene. The other candidates have had the opportunity to actually vote on the subject. Congress approved a FY 2009 budget request for The National Endowment for the Arts to $160 million. Bush proposed a cut in the budget from the present $144 million to $128 million. Bear in mind that in 1992 the NEA budget was $176 million.

from her blog:

Barack Obama:
-Supports increasing funding for the NEA from $125 million to $175 million annually
-Wants to expand both public and private partnerships between schools and arts organizations
-Supports the creation of an "Artists Corp" to work in low-income communities
-Promotes cultural diplomacy (send performance artists abroad)
-Welcomes international artists into the US
-Wants to provide health care to artists and their family members
-Supports ensuring tax fairness for artists
-As Senator, co-sponsored and passed legislation to honor the legacy of Katherine Dunham
-Supports the Artists-Museum Partnership Act, which allows artists to deduct the fair market value of their work when making charitable contributions

Hillary Clinton:
-Supports the NEA's mission and increasing Federal funding for the NEA
-Wants to reform No Child Left Behind to strengthen funding for arts education in public schools
-Believes in international cultural exchange as a form of diplomacy
-Supporter of Public Broadcasting
-Created the Finger Lakes Trading Cooperative, an initiative that links local businesses with artisans in upstate NY
-Helped to develop affordable living/work space for artists in Buffalo
-Entered a statement to the Senate Congressional Record in support of creative arts therapies
-As First Lady, was the honorary chair of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities

John McCain:
-In 1999, voted NO on funding for the National Endowment of the Arts
-Does not support abolishing the NEA
-Voted in favor of the Helms Amendment to withdraw Federal funding grants to art considered "obscene"
-An honorary member of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, 1997-present
-2007, proposed a bill to protect Indian arts and crafts

When Will McCain Lose It?

Finally there's some real red meat in this election. The question won't be black or white, male or female, old politic or new. Thats all the cerebral crap that fills MSNBC airtime and sells commercials on Fox. That's the polite nattering of talking heads. No way you were going to be able to keep peoples interest in this election between now and November. Not over issues like health care, snore. Even the war is being watered down. There needs to be an appeal to the lizard brain. And now we have it.

The question that will hold us on the edge of our seats will not if but when, in what form, where, with whom? Will we see it on Youtube or read about it thirdhand? Will it be this generation's Hunter Thompson vision of Election 2008 or repressed by the best handlers in the business with all the powers of censorship that they control? What am I talking about? When will McCain lose it? When will he go "Jerry Springer"? Will it be a grainy camera phone clip of he and Ann Coulter going nose to adams apple with spittle flying over the value of torture and patriotism? Or McCain storming into Rush Limbaugh's studio and bitch slapping him into submission on the air? Or will be more of a "Macaca" moment, unexpectedly lapsing into country club speak in front of a hidden camera saying what he really thinks of Mexicans. How base will his appeal to the base be? How much grovel is in him before he starts swinging blindly?

This is worth staying tuned for. This is going to be good television. You read it here first.

Hucksterism and The Religious State

You know, I want to like Mike Huckabee. He and I agree on at least one topic and that's the need to greatly increase arts spending in the schools. He's the only candidate talking about creating an educational system that teaches young people to be able to create content in the digital age and not just be data processors for the digital mill. At one appearance in Iowa, he got on the stage with the school band, put on a bass guitar and played "Louie, Louie" and "Sweet Home Alabama". How cool is that? He wants to create "instruments of mass instruction" in order to challenge some of the 6000 students that drop out of school each day. At least one of the candidates is talking about the subject.

However, being a musician, he is, as is wont with musicians, subject to some pretty daffy ideas. On the subject of evolution, he apparently not only disputes the theory of evolution but that "anyone who wants to believe that they are descended from primates is free to do so". I guess that when asked the old multiple-choice question about if he's animal, mineral or vegetable, his response is "none of the above".

I work with musicians and I was married to a musician so I’ve seen and talked to quite a few of them. Sweet people but I’ve learned three hard and fast rules about them. Don’t let them dress you, decorate your house or balance your checkbook.

As far as Huckabee being a minister I have far fewer qualms about that than the whole subject of religion in politics in the US. Dwight Eisenhower was a Jehovah’s Witness and Richard Nixon was a Quaker and we survived that administration, Red Scare and all. If Huckabee were elected, I doubt that we would start seeing baptisms in the Reflecting Pool but it will give some credence to the recent talking point that has been developed by the Religious Right that this country was founded on “Christian Principles.” If that were the case then I think that we would be seeing a lot more of “feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick and freeing the imprisoned”. Driving the moneychangers from the temple is pretty low on the order of priorities today.

When you go back and look at the historical data you find that among the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the majority of them were Anglicans. When Constitution was signed there were none. Why? Because the head of the Church of England was also the King of England and he expelled them for being treasonous rebels to the State and heretics to the State religion. Thus the majority of signers to the Constitution were newly created Episcopalians who had to form their own church as a result of the excommunication. Also bear in mind that this was The Age of Enlightenment and thinkers everywhere throwing off the shackles of the Roman Catholic Church, the official religion of many European states and kingdoms. Read in this light the Bill of Rights takes on a whole different context. The Freedom to Assemble, the Freedom of Speech and others Rights speak more to freedom from a religious state and the subsequent religious intolerance than the creation of a “Christian” state.

I think that the founders of this country were religious and spiritual men and women who were determined from their past experiences to keep a wall between the clergy and the government. Pretty wise people, our founders. Even if not one of them played rock and roll.