A Writer asks a Famous Writer to Stop Writing Because–Why Again?

Every writer is jealous of other writers.  Whether it’s fame or fortune or talent, we can’t help but snivel a little when they become Them and we’re still just us.

Most of us do it in silence or in the midst of a narrow group of co-commiserators.  Not many (Okay, a few, but they’re gone now) do it as publicly as a writer named Lynn Shepherd did recently when she wrote a blog post on HuffPo UK telling J.K. Rowling she’s had her turn and if she had any decency at all she’d hang it up and give someone else a chance.

Now, who is Lynn Shepherd to be telling the great Jo Rowling she’s being selfish with all that extraneous publishing now that Harry Potter is done and over?  Beats me.  I don’t know and I don’t care.  Honestly, I don’t.  I’m all for audacity and truth-telling but I can’t get past her own admission that she really doesn’t read Rowling.  It’s all about the fame and fortune.  One person apparently shouldn’t have that much.
A snippet of what she said:

"I didn’t much mind Rowling when she was Pottering about. I’ve never read a word (or seen a minute) so I can’t comment on whether the books were good, bad or indifferent. I did think it a shame that adults were reading them (rather than just reading them to their children, which is another thing altogether), mainly because there’s so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds. But, then again, any reading is better than no reading, right? But The Casual Vacancy changed all that.

.It wasn’t just that the hype was drearily excessive, or that (by all accounts) the novel was no masterpiece and yet sold by the hundredweight, it was the way it crowded out everything else, however good, however worthwhile. That book sucked the oxygen from the entire publishing and reading atmosphere. And I chose that analogy quite deliberately, because I think that sort of monopoly can make it next to impossible for anything else to survive, let alone thrive. Publishing a book is hard enough at the best of times, especially in an industry already far too fixated with Big Names and Sure Things, but what can an ordinary author do, up against such a Golgomath?"

I guess you noticed that she never read any of the Harry Potter books?  Seems odd, doesn’t it, that she would then go on to say, “I did think it a shame that adults were reading them (rather than just reading them to their children, which is another thing altogether), mainly because there’s so many other books out there that are surely more stimulating for grown-up minds.”

Gulp and gasp and get outta here!  I’m a grown-up, I read a LOT.   I loved the Harry Potter books.  I felt a lot of things while reading them, but I’m pretty sure I never felt shame.

So here’s my dilemma, and I’m going to be honest about this.  I don’t much like that this person who puts herself in league with “ordinary authors” (see above) is getting all kinds of attention simply because she’s in a snit over someone else’s fame. (Check out her FB and Twitter hits.  Many more than I (sniff) ever got.  Hmmmph.)   And here I am, adding to the so thoroughly unearned attention

But why Jo Rowling?  Because she had the nerve to move on to “adult” books instead of staying in the kiddie section where she belongs?  Because people are buying her books simply because her name is J.K Rowling?  Because she doesn’t deserve it?

I have a feeling Lynn Shepherd knew exactly what she was doing with this piece.  A friend tried to warn her, but I think she saw it as the perfect attention-getter for her own books.  If that’s what it was, she failed.   Look at this (My bold):

"So this is my plea to JK Rowling.  Remember what it was like when The Cuckoo’s Calling had only sold a few boxes and think about those of us who are stuck there, because we can’t wave a wand and turn our books into overnight bestsellers merely by saying the magic word. By all means keep writing for kids, or for your personal pleasure – I would never deny anyone that – but when it comes to the adult market you’ve had your turn."

Jo Rowling’s success was anything but overnight.  I get that she's talking about her fame giving her a head start with any subsequent books, but Jo Rowling has certainly paid her dues.  There isn’t a writer on earth who doesn’t know about Rowling’s struggles while working on the first Harry Potter book.  She was a single, jobless mom living for a while on welfare and food stamps.  Her fame was not handed to her.  No magic wands.  Not by a long shot.

But, by golly, Lynn Shepherd got what she wanted.   First Huffington Post and now here.  (Oh, I’m kidding!)  I admit I’ve never read her books, but I don’t need to in order to say this:
That was a cheap trick.  I’m sorry I got pulled into it but if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have been able to say publicly that that was a cheap trick.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. – Albus Dumbledore”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

_______________

NOTE:  I wrote this post last night, before I heard there was a negative-review bomb against one of Lynn Shepherd’s books over on Amazon.  At last count I saw 44 one-stars, most of them published yesterday.  They were all paying her back for what she wrote about J.K. Rowling.

What I wrote above is fair game.  It’s my opinion, just as Lynn Shepherd’s opinion is hers.  What is happening to this writer at Amazon is an attempt to destroy a writer’s work by giving it deliberately low ratings.

I left my post as it was originally written because my thoughts about Shepherd’s piece haven’t changed, but I’m frankly appalled by the outside attacks on works that have nothing to do with what she wrote at HuffPo.  This is chilling to any writer who writes opinions on controversial subjects.

Whatever I said about cheap tricks above goes ten-fold for those who think this is a cool way to get back at her.  Get back at her for what?  I think Jo Rowling will be just fine after this.  Whatever I think about Lynn Shepherd, I don’t want to see her own career ruined over a simple thousand-word opinion.

I hope I’m not alone.
_________________________


Follow Up:  This is what Lynn Shepherd told The Guardian on 2/27/14:
 

Speaking to the Guardian today, Shepherd apologised for upsetting writers and readers alike, explaining that she had "only ever meant to raise the issue of how hard it is for new writers to get noticed and how publishing is much more of a zero sum game than people often think".
"Many writers face the same challenges and frustrations when they're just starting out, and JK Rowling did herself," Shepherd said. "She's been a phenomenal success since then and has millions of fans who are passionate about her books. That's an amazing achievement. With hindsight I'd have written my piece an entirely different way, as I never intended it to upset anyone, and I'm very sorry that it did."

In Our Own Voices: Getting it Right While Blogging

 Once there was a post by Simon Dumenco called, "Poor Steve Jobs Had to Go Head to Head With Weinergate in the Twitter Buzzstakes. And the Weiner Is ...."  It appeared online on June 8.  The next day The Huffington Post published a piece by Amy Lee called, "Anthony Weiner vs. Steve Jobs: Who Won On Twitter?".  The thrust of the Lee article was the same as that of Dumenco's.  In fact, nearly the entire article consisted of quotes from Dumenco's piece.  There was a link at the end, but, as Simon Dumenco saw it, why bother?  Everything that needed to be said was already in Amy Lee's piece.  No need to go off-site to read the rest.  There was no "rest".  (The clicked links from the HuffPo piece to his own numbered a mere 57 -- a pitiful number, considering the source.)

That was bad, and HuffPo's Executive Business Editor Peter Goodman promptly apologized, but there are stirrings out there that this isn't the odd blog out over at Arianna's place.  HuffPo has done this many times before.  Former NYT editor Bill Keller wrote about it in the NYT magazine last March:

“Aggregation” can mean smart people sharing their reading lists, plugging one another into the bounty of the information universe. It kind of describes what I do as an editor. But too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model.


The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come. How great is Huffington’s instinctive genius for aggregation? I once sat beside her on a panel in Los Angeles (on — what else? — The Future of Journalism). I had come prepared with a couple of memorized riffs on media topics, which I duly presented. Afterward we sat down for a joint interview with a local reporter. A moment later I heard one of my riffs issuing verbatim from the mouth of Ms. Huffington. I felt so . . . aggregated.

 Oooo.   Ouch!  I confess I've heard the word "aggregate" bandied about before but didn't really understand how it might actually apply to a lowly blogger like me.  Now, with the brouhaha over HuffPo's publication of a post composed almost entirely of paragraphs from someone else's article, I've been thinking about what blogs like mine -- where other voices are prominent, where links are leading everywhere, where not all of the content is original to me -- might actually fit in with journalistic ethics and rules, even though, in the end, as chief writer/editor/publisher, I'm pretty much free to do almost anything I want on my own pages.

What is my obligation as a blogger?  Mine is a political blog, not a personal one, and I've known from the start that if I want my blog to be taken seriously (even though I'm fishing for smiles now and then) I have to be mindful of what I'm putting out there.  I know when I link to and/or quote someone else's work, it's not mine to mess with.  I can't change the words, change the meaning, put it on my page without attribution, or -- perish the thought -- print the entire piece.  It doesn't belong to me.  (I suspect in some cases I should get permission to use them, but I rarely do. I figure as long as I'm using a paragraph or two and as long as I tell where it came from,  preferably with a link, I should be okay.  I could be horribly wrong about that, too.)


So, okay.  That's bad enough.  But what about when we grab something from another site or via the social networks that looks legitimate, seems plausible, but turns out to be all wrong, and we've passed it on?  We part-time, unpaid opinion bloggers already have to work hard at overcoming our dillettante reputation.  It doesn't help when the facts go by the wayside in order to get to the clever, hopefully brilliant observations we all want to be singled out and known for.

On Poynter I found an article that answers some of the questions about what to look for in order to verify a piece you want to share or quote.  (It's written for journalists, but I personally think political bloggers have the same obligations to their readers.)  It specifically zeroes in on social networks like Twitter or Facebook, where I admit I spend a good amount of time scouring the snippets for leads to stories that might interest me enough to write about.  I also admit I'm astounded by how much misinformation there is in just those two places.

From Jeff Sonderman's Poynter piece (relevant to what I'm talking about here) :

Evaluating credibility

Consider the social history of the source. Has this person been on the network for years, or is this a brand-new account with no profile photo, friends or history? Has the person regularly posted information that was credible? In the rare case that someone deliberately tries to spread false information, it will probably be from a newly created or fictitious account, not from a social profile someone spent years building up.

Seek social corroboration. Are other social network users posting similar, independent reports from the same location? If a tornado really touched down in a city of 8 million people, for example,  there ought to be more than one photo of it. Be sure to look for other primary-source reports, not just retweets or messages based on the account you already have.

 Without naming names or even going into the entire story, I read on FB the other day that a famous news person I really admire had been canned.  I was pretty sure it didn't actually happen, and when I looked at the provided link, it clearly showed that the startling new information was in a piece written over a year ago in a piece published by The Onion!

That's why I wrote this, in fact. That sort of thing doesn't go unnoticed.  Sometimes it grows wings and flies.  I love blogging and I'm all for encouraging more of it.  I just want us to get it right.
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Shades of Dr. Phil! Pop Psych at HuffPo, and AIG is the patient

Today is Sunday and I started my day by reading Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and Tom Friedman. They all talked about AIG and the current money crisis, and I have to say--the wheelings and dealings and sheer dollar amounts are so beyond me I don't even pretend to understand. I just take their superbly-written words for it. Those jackals screwed us, we let them, and now we're in so much trouble we may all have to go back to living in caves and foraging for food. It's scary, I tell you. . .

Then I moved over to the Huffington Post to see what they had to say about it all. (I started reading the HuffPo on its very first day online (before it became HuffPo), and I can almost always find something worthwhile to read there. I admit I cringed a little when they added an Entertainment section, and I absolutely hated their screaming Tabloid headlines last week when they reported hour-by-hour the latest on Natasha Richardson's skiing accident and subsequent death. Disgusting ("She is brain-dead!") and more than gagworthy.)

After reading that triad of truth-seekers , I was ready for bear. But I saw a headline for an article called, "How Corporate America can Earn Forgiveness and Rebuild Trust", and decided to take a little humor break before I went hunting again. Arianna often has comedians or humorists giving their takes on politics, and after that whole Jon Stewart thing in the last couple of weeks, I could hardly wait.

But here's the weird part. I think the guy who wrote this was serious!

I don't know the author, Mark Goulston, and again, I'm no expert, but after reading those NYT columnists I'm having a hard time making a connection between what those AIG crooks have done so far and the notion that they're now humbled enough to work on earning forgiveness and rebuilding trust.

But the good doctor (He's an MD) seems to think that if they will just follow his "Four Hs" and his "Four Rs" (We'll get to that) all will be well in Dizzyland and there will be no more need for tent cities or snaking unemployment lines. (He doesn't actually say that, but it's implied.)

He starts off like this: To err is human; To admit and accept complete responsibility for it, divine.

Really. That was "erring"?

He goes on:

"There is a way to repair the damage wrought by corporate transgressions. Be forewarned. This solution is not for the faint of heart or the uncommitted.

THE FOUR H'S: THE FALLOUT OF IMPROPRIETY & DECEIT

When a company, CEO or Board of Directors commits an unethical, if not immoral act, it triggers Four H's in investors, shareholders, employees, and the public at large:

• HURT
• HATE
• HESITATION TO TRUST
• HOLDING ON TO RESENTMENT"

Uh huh. But wait--the Good Doc has thought this all out and there's a solution. The Four Rs:

THE FOUR R'S: DAMAGE CONTROL AND HEALING THE PAIN

The corrective responses to the Four H's are the Four R's: Remorse, Restitution, Rehabilitation and Request for Forgiveness. If you are the CEO or part of the team responsible for guiding your company or industry through such a crisis, these are the steps you will need to take, (You is used to describe an individual, management team or company).

Remember now, he's writing this for all those execs who've conned, are conning and will continue to con. But there's apparently hope for them--which means there's hope for us. Here's what the Doctor ordered:

"Delivering the 3 R's of Remorse, Restitution and Rehabilitation may not prevent the injured from holding on to their resentment. If that's the case, you will need to exercise the 4^th R -to Request Forgiveness. Make this request only after you have demonstrated a track record of remorse, restitution and rehabilitation for at least six months (and perhaps even as long as the length of the transgression). Forgiveness, like trust is something that must be earned. One hopeful point to keep in mind: If you demonstrate a solid track record of Remorse, Restitution and Rehabilitation, and then Request Forgiveness and are not forgiven, it is not you that is unforgivable. Your investors, shareholders and employees are unforgiving. You cannot control other's feelings. You can only be true to and control yourself."

Oh my God. "It is not you who is unforgivable"???

And NOW he tells them to control themselves. Where was he when all this was going on? Probably delivering homilies to Oscar the Grouch in hopes of turning a frown upside down.

This is pop psychology at the kindergarten level--the very reason we came up with "psychobabble" . Here is Dr. Goulston's last word to those naughty execs:

"Your ability to handle this crisis may be the lifesaver they've been reaching for, and the lift needed that will finally allow them to believe in you and more importantly to begin to believe in corporate America again."

Have you ever believed in Corporate America?  No, neither have I. So here's my last word: You want an "R"? I'll give you an "R". How about "Revenge"?

(The REST of this story: I tried to leave a comment at the bottom of Gouldston's article and it was rejected! I mentioned some of the same things I wrote about here, but I did it in a polite way. Really. I might have said "You've got to be kidding!" and maybe I mentioned "kindergarten stuff" and I think I might have sounded like I was scoffing a little, but is that reason enough to just delete me? I don't know what's going on over there at HuffPo. Who's running that show, anyway?  But I got a blog post out of it, which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been--I'll just say it--rejected.)
 

Ramona

A contract is a contract--WHEN??

The real scandal of AIG isn't just that American taxpayers have so far committed $170 billion to the giant insurer because it is thought to be too big to fail -- the most money ever funneled to a single company by a government since the dawn of capitalism -- nor even that AIG's notoriously failing executives, at the very unit responsible for the catastrophic credit-default swaps at the very center of the debacle, are planning to give themselves over $100 million in bonuses. The scandal is that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money.
Robert Reich here.

I'm going to make this short because I want to go off and think about that number, $170 BILLION.  I might have to get out my handy calculator again, but from right here, right now that looks like a whole hell of a lot of money.

I guess we're supposed to feel good about the $100 million worth of bonuses going to those needy, worthy AIG execs, since it's nowhere near $170 BILLION.

I guess we should all feel good about honoring contracts. After all, these same people have always been so good about honoring contracts with their workers. Doesn't Big Business enter into contracts with ALL workers? Don't they promise, at the hiring of those workers, that if they do their jobs they'll be entitled to job security, pay raises, reasonable benefits--and best of all, down the road, a bankable, safe retirement fund that'll take them happily and healthily into their Golden Years?

What? They don't? They haven't? I'm shocked.  I thought all those other figures--more than 600,000 workers losing jobs EVERY MONTH--were just more socialist propaganda.

Those unemployment lines? Pshaw! They're people who really don't want to work and would rather collect checks from the government. (See Erin Burnett's "maybe, possibly, some people say, let's look at China" here.)

Seven hundred out-of-work Americans standing in line for a handful of jobs? Grand-standers, actors even,  probably hired by the Democrats to make a pathetic point.

A Bailout LOAN for GM? Ridiculous! The unions must die. . .

But let's, in the name of all that's holy, save those CEO bonuses. We will not survive as a civilization without them. We can't let AIG fail!!

But wait. . .that was yesterday. This is today. Is there anybody today, besides Erin Burnett, who believes that taxpayers should be paying huge multi-million dollar bonuses to AIG execs? Erin, dearheart, was just on Morning Joe claiming that if AIG doesn't honor those contracts, they'll end up paying twice that amount to some upstanding businessmen in London who are obviously entitled. To which Mort Zuckerman, sitting on the set, said, Outrageous! It's a rogue operation in London. AIG should never have had dealings with them. (How come Erin didn't know that?)

So can we all agree now that if we're going to own 80% of AIG we should have a say in who gets what? Thank you. Now can we, the taxpayers, light a fire under our leaders and get them to do what they promised to do when we gave them all of the power?

I think we can. The calculator can wait. Those number are too big for my little mind, anyway. I'm going after my congressmen instead. I've got their numbers and I know how to use them.

Ramona

Harsh Realities in a Country gone Mad with Greed

This is one of those stories that will seem so unbelievable, so beyond the pale, so, well, un-American, you might be tempted to either disregard it completely or cast it in a fictional light in order to escape the obvious conclusion: There are horrors perpetrated on human beings in this country that rival those in the worst of the worst of any third-world country.

Everything that happens in this story happens because the ones with the power could not, would not, control their greed. Everything that happened to these people happened because there was nobody looking out for them. The perpetrators knew they were living in an era where laborers were a dime a dozen. If one died off, there were plenty more where they came from. And the best part of their scheme was that, because most of these people were here illegally, nobody would be the wiser. Nobody would care. Least of all, the government.

This is the story of the cruel exploitation of produce pickers, but it didn't happen in the 1930s of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" or in the "Harvest of Shame" 1950s-60s, before Cesar Chavez began to organize migrant farm workers. It happened--and is happening--right here, right now, under our watch, in the 21st Century.

In an article published yesterday, Barry Estabrook writes this:
Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.”

Working at breakneck speed, you might be able to pick a ton of tomatoes on a good day, netting about $50 at 45 cents per 32-pound basket. But a lot can go wrong.
The beige stucco house at 209 South Seventh Street is remarkable only because it is in better repair than most Immokalee dwellings. For two and a half years, beginning in April 2005, Mariano Lucas Domingo, along with several other men, was held as a slave at that address. At first, the deal must have seemed reasonable. Lucas, a Guatemalan in his thirties, had slipped across the border to make money to send home for the care of an ailing parent. He expected to earn about $200 a week in the fields. Cesar Navarrete, then a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, agreed to provide room and board at his family’s home on South Seventh Street and extend credit to cover the periods when there were no tomatoes to pick.

Lucas’s “room” turned out to be the back of a box truck in the junk-strewn yard, shared with two or three other workers. It lacked running water and a toilet, so occupants urinated and defecated in a corner. For that, Navarrete docked Lucas’s pay by $20 a week. According to court papers, he also charged Lucas for two meager meals a day: eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and, occasionally, some sort of meat. Cold showers from a garden hose in the backyard were $5 each. Everything had a price. Lucas was soon $300 in debt. After a month of ten-hour workdays, he figured he should have paid that debt off.

But when Lucas—slightly built and standing less than five and a half feet tall—inquired about the balance, Navarrete threatened to beat him should he ever try to leave. Instead of providing an accounting, Navarrete took Lucas’s paychecks, cashed them, and randomly doled out pocket money, $20 some weeks, other weeks $50. Over the years, Navarrete and members of his extended family deprived Lucas of $55,000.

Taking a day off was not an option. If Lucas became ill or was too exhausted to work, he was kicked in the head, beaten, and locked in the back of the truck. Other members of Navarrete’s dozen-man crew were slashed with knives, tied to posts, and shackled in chains. On November 18, 2007, Lucas was again locked inside the truck. As dawn broke, he noticed a faint light shining through a hole in the roof. Jumping up, he secured a hand hold and punched himself through. He was free. 


This is not somebody's hysterical hyperbole designed to bring out the Socialist in us. This is journalism at its best, drawn from information obtained through government, union, and other reliable sources. This particular article--this superb piece of investigative journalism--came from. . .are you ready. . .?

. . .Gourmet Magazine.

This has been an on-going public story for a few years now, but despite the best efforts of Douglas Molloy, the CIW (click to read about six other cases of slavery in Florida since 1997), The Campaign for Fair Food, and the Collier County Sheriff's Office, who in the mainstream media has picked up on it and kept it going? Has Fox News reported on it? "Morning Joe"? Charles Gibson? Katie Couric?

I found the story at Common Dreams first, but it's been out there in one form or another for a long time. This is how networking works best. We find these things that the MSM deems Not Worthy of Big Splash and we spread it around until it gains momentum. It's been Blogged and Digged and Facebooked and Tweeted and soon enough the story will be big enough and out there enough so that those Mainstreamers will look foolish if they continue to ignore it.

No, it'll never be big enough to supplant the really big stories--like who's the latest of the Limbaugh kowtowers to have to apologize to their Rightful Wing Leader. (Ed. note: Oh, the mighty--how they have fallen.)

Mark Rodrigues and Rebecca Smith wrote about it more than a month ago in The Huffington Post. They wrote:

In December 2008, federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice wrapped up yet another farm labor slavery case in Florida, a case the Chief Assistant US Attorney called one of Southwest Florida's biggest and ugliest slavery cases ever, according to the Ft. Myers News-Press. When the defendants were indicted a year ago, US Attorney Doug Molloy called the case "slavery, plain and simple."

This latest case in which, according to court documents, workers were chained to poles, locked inside trucks, beaten, and robbed of their pay, was the seventh such case in just over a decade. Indeed, so shameful is Florida's record of farm labor abuse that a federal prosecutor involved in one of the slavery prosecutions told the New Yorker magazine, "What you get with agriculture is a pattern of exploitation that can be understood only as a system of human-rights abuses."

Charlie Crist, Florida's Governor, knows about it. He recieved a petition with thousands of names on it last month, so any day now we should be hearing cries of outrage from the Governor's Mansion over these abuses.

On February 28, 2005, Evelyn Nieves wrote a piece about the organizing of the Immokalee migrant workers called "Florida Tomato Pickers still reap 'Harvest of Shame'." At the very end of the piece, she wrote this:

No one disputes that Immokalee farm workers have been subjected to the most extreme injustice. The coalition has uncovered several slavery rings in Immokalee-area farms. In one case, based on two years of undercover work and investigation by the coalition in 2002, three Florida-based farm bosses were convicted in federal court of slavery, extortion and weapons charges and sentenced to nearly 35 years in prison. They were also ordered to forfeit more than $3 million in assets. The bosses had threatened more than 700 farm workers with death if they tried to leave and assaulted passenger van service drivers who gave rides to farm workers.

In a 2000 case, a farm contractor was convicted of holding more than 30 tomato pickers under armed watch in two trailers in an isolated swamp near Immokalee. When three workers escaped, the employer tracked them down, running one of them down with his car.

The coalition's work uncovering slavery garnered Benitez, of Guerrero, Mexico, and two other workers the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2003. The coalition is working with a federal task force that continues to investigate slavery rings.

Benitez said he hoped publicity for the Taco Bell boycott would help inform more people about the slavery, along with the general conditions of farm workers.

That was four years ago. Four years ago. And today I'm reading about the Immokalee slaves as if it were a brand new story. There has been a breakdown in investigative reporting in this country that is beyond frightening. Were we living in a police state the past eight years? How could this happen?

I'm going to do my best to keep this story going. I hope you will, too. Please use the links above to read the entire story, and then pass it on wherever you can. Let's be Tom Joads. Let's be there:

Tom: I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

This is one horrific example of what unchecked greed does. The victims are human beings, and this is America. This is not how we Americans are supposed to be.


Ramona

Crazy with Fear - CPAC 2009

You know how, when you're witnessing a personal meltdown--when someone you happen to be near finally reaches the breaking point; when everything they've ever held near and dear is suddenly slipping away, and they try desperately to hang on, either with lies or tantrums or tears--how you just can't look away?

As the drama unfolds, if you're not too personally invested, the polite thing to do is just move along. There's not much you can do for them anyway, and, honestly, they don't care what you think. But you're riveted by the spectacle, and--admit it--fascinated by the sheer craziness of it.

Ever since January 20 that's how I've been feeling about the eerily escalating Right Wing meltdown. It's breathtaking to behold. The scope of it is beyond anything I could ever have imagined. Day after day, I awaken to some new evidence that they've not just lost their way, they've lost their minds.

From Limbaugh to O'Reilly to Keyes to Beck to Shelby to Santelli to Jindal to Steele to Bachmann . . .it's been one nutty thing after another, just in the last week alone. (That might be because it was CPAC week. Everybody from Joe the Plumber to 13-year-old Jonathan Krohn had a moment in the sun at the Conservative's main event. )

Here's Joe the Plumber. (It's 6 1/2 minutes of Joe, so be forewarned.) The ALG Network (Americans for Limited Government) had their crew out there full time at the conference, filming speeches, doing interviews, and just generally presenting those Conservatives in their best light. So I have to assume that sabotage wasn't really in the plans when they filmed and then edited Joe's little talk; I have to assume that this is the BEST of Joe:



Along with some of the usual suspects, ALG also interviewed Jerome Corsi, author of "Obama Nation", and all-around odd ball:



At 5:00 today Rush Limbaugh spoke to the rapt convention crowd (Sorry, no video.  He's not on my agenda here) and then, afterward, was the recipient of the "Defender of the Constitution Award".
Honest. (Why am I not laughing out loud? See last paragraph below.)

I spent a few hours today wandering around the virtual halls of CPAC and I'm here to tell you--Alice in Wonderland has nothing on me. Up was down and down was up. In was out and out was in. People said one thing and meant another.

I half expected to see the Cheshire Cat grinning from a limb:

Cheshire Cat: If I were looking for a white rabbit, I'd ask the Mad Hatter.
Alice: The Mad Hatter? Oh, no no no...
Cheshire Cat: Or, you could ask the March Hare, in that direction.
Alice: Oh, thank you. I think I'll see him...
Cheshire Cat: Of course, he's mad, too.
Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you can't help that. Most everyone's mad here.
[laughs maniacally; starts to disappear]
Cheshire Cat: You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself.

On Thursday, Bob Cesca wrote a piece for the Huffington Post called "The Wingnut Revolution".

. . . accountability (a "day of reckoning" as President Obama called it) is underway in the form of the president's housing proposal, his healthcare plan and, naturally, the recovery act. At the end of the day, ninety-five percent of Americans will benefit from what amounts to the largest tax cut in American history, along with increased access to affordable healthcare and millions of new jobs.

Though, alas, the super rich will have to pay slightly more in taxes.

Yeah, that's a shame.

So they're gathering in their secret war rooms in the Orange County underground and on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, grinding the tips of their Salvatore Ferragamo Pregiato Moccasins into razor-sharp spears and fashioning their Bentley key fobs into makeshift nunchucks in preparation for a supremely ridiculous rebellion led by a cast of far-right characters more freakish than the acid trip monsters from Yo Gabba Gabba.

It's a great piece, done in usual Cesca style, but when he got to this part I was hooked:  

For the last year or so, Glenn Beck has been attempting to peg Barack Obama and the Democrats as actual communists, and now he's going all out with, quite literally, a red scare segment on his show -- festooning his set with Soviet flag graphics, a "Comrade Update" logo and a Russian language crawl in the lower-third of the screen.

I have no words.  (I did have the red scare clip inserted on this page but it's no longer available.  Too bad.  It was something to behold.)

On that very same Thursday, Paul Jenkins wrote a piece for HuffPo called, "Worst Week Ever: Republicans Unhinged".

He wrote, In just seven days, Republicans have offered up more amusement and fodder for an election campaign than even the most hopeful among us could have expected. What is especially thrilling is that it comes at little expense: Obama is competently in charge, as are, by and large, Democrats elsewhere, and change is happening at a mind-blowing pace. In the long run, yes, there should be concern that having buffoons in opposition is not healthy, but for now let's enjoy the moment.

Oh, enjoy! Yes, let's! They're a laugh-a-minute, that bunch.

Remember how some of us folks were laughing hysterically when we heard the Republicans had chosen George W. Bush as their (mwa-ha-ha!) presidential candidate?

And remember how we cackled when, after weeks of beating the bushes (Bushes) for a best choice, Dick Cheney appointed HIMSELF the vice-presidential candidate?

And remember the hoots and hollers, the LOLs, the LMAO's, when we got wind of that loony idea to attack IRAQ after 9/11 instead of al Queda-harboring Afghanistan?

And remember how we roared over the idea of those absolute fools running for a second term? 

OH, I remember, all right. So I may smirk a little, and I may go so far as to showcase their more memorable loony binges, but laugh out loud? Not on your life.

I laughed at the idea of "preachers" like Pat Robertson or James Dobson or John Hagee pulling so many righteous legs all the way to the bank.

I laughed at the idea of a Rush Limbaugh or an Ann Coulter achieving even a thimbleful of fame and fortune.

I laughed at the idea of Ronald Reagan--a "B" actor if you wanted to be charitable, a dimwit if you wanted to be fair-- running for the highest office in the land. Now look where we are. He's a damned "hero" and we're screwed.

So let me just leave you with this: Tonight they anointed Rush Limbaugh as their fearless leader.

I may think that's odd, but I know better than to think it's funny.

Ramona