Cowboy Confessional

Our local scandal rag, the San Francisco Chronicle (also called the San Francisco Chronic by people who enjoy drug humor too much), is busy celebrating itself as members of the media are prone to do.

Seriously guys, check the ego at the door.

The Chronic has been printing highly readable bird cage liner for 144 year. Normally a paper with multiple Pulitzer’s would pause until reaching the 150 year mark. However, the rapid financial decline of American newspapers in general and the San Francisco Chronicle in particular is such that the journal’s current editorial board fears they may not be around six years hence.

In telling their (almost) century and a half of both high and low journalism, the paper mention a rather interesting episode that illuminates the nature of American media and the always wide open burg known by outsiders as ‘Frisco’ (technically that term was outlawed by Emperor Norton, but that edict has not been enforce since his reign).

Ever opinionated about politics, the Chronicle’s original editor – a fellow named Charles de Young – decided he was not found of a mayoral candidate called Isaac Kalloch. It was not so much that Kalloch – a Baptist minister from back east – was a bad fellow. De Young’s discontent lay in having already selected a different candidate and didn’t want a man of the cloth holding the office.

After all, San Francisco with a moral leader at the helm would destroy the city’s essence.

According to the current edition of the Chronicle, de Young wrote that Kalloch was “a tainted preacher, seeking his election in low groggeries.” What the today’s editors failed to mention was that de Young also accused the preacher of having an affair. No doubt history has unveiled one or more adulterating clerics, or at least that would be Jessica Hahn’s opinion. De Young’s low blow was low even by 19th century journalistic standards, which were somewhere south of those held by gutter drunks.

Yet the unsubstantiated account was not mentioned by anyone littering the Chronicle’s 2009 masthead. Curious omission.

Well, Kalloch responded claiming de Young’s mother of running a brothel. Granted, it is a short moral distance between a yellow dog journalist and a hooker, but assuming it was a family business and bringing somebody’s mother into the argument was out of line, especially if true. De Young, a working man of letters, power and influence did what any well tempered and worldly newspaper editor would.

He shot Kalloch. This may explain the Chronicle’s constant position favoring gun control. They have first hand experience with what short tempered snots with revolvers can do.

Curiously, this seems to have had the inverse effect. Kalloch was merely wounded and later elected. Something about shooting a preacher brings out the sympathy vote.

Ministers allegedly are of a forgiving nature. Sons, as Cain showed, are occasionally not. The following year, Kalloch’s son strolled into the San Francisco Chronicle’s offices and pumped a round or two into de Young, accomplish what de Young had not, namely a successful homicide.

If there are morals in this tale, they are warnings about select sins including pride, false witness, and mouthing off about the business activities of other people’s mothers. It also shows us the value of specialization. Had de Young kept to his accomplished trade of raking muck, he might indeed have thrown the election through slander and liable. However, he chose to employ himself as a marksman and assassin. Failing at both, he encouraged those with superior skill sets to give it a try.

Bookmark to:

Lexicographers must be laughing aloud.

When battlefield bums captured in Afghanistan were dropped on the western shores of Cuba, there were rumors of torture. Back then little specific information was released concerning the treatment of the Guantánamo gang, yet insinuated was that prisoners were being mistreated and that ‘torture’ was being practiced.

This caught my attention because the media tossed the term ‘torture’ about with characteristic abandon. You would think that people who use words to earn their daily grub might take the same care of their tools that an auto mechanic does with his. Sadly modern reporters seem to be one step removed from journalist and two steps from literate.

Back then – in 2002 – I decided to have the definition of ‘torture’ logged firmly in my cranium before opening my mouth. I did not want to be mistaken for a reporter. I checked no fewer than five dictionaries, include several online versions of prominent commercial lexicons. All five had the same central definition of ‘torture’, though the big joke is that some of the online dictionaries have been edited in the last six years to broaden the term.

torture, n. Infliction of severe physical pain or discomfort

The key stanza in that abbreviated tune is “severe physical pain”. Note that no word is wasted. To be torture the recipient must:

a) Experience pain
b) It must be physical pain, not emotional stress or psychological trauma
c) It must be severe as in ‘Please Allah, let me die now’

This presents a problem to the Obama administration and to any reporter sober enough to find a dictionary. Both groups have prattled on with wild-eyed horror about America inflicting torture upon detainees on the beaches of Guantánamo. A Senate Armed Services Committee report listed the enhanced interrogation techniques that the media, partisan politicians and plebiscites alike have called ‘torture.’

Sleep depravation: Severe = no, physical = no, pain = no

Slamming into a flexible wall: Severe = no, physical = yes, pain = maybe

Waterboarding: Severe = maybe, physical = no but scary, pain = no

Hooding and scaring with dogs: Hell, in downtown Oakland hoods are considered a fashion statement and pit bulls are pets

For a book-in-progress I recently interviewed the owners for San Francisco’s Citadel, a BDSM basement for the town’s whip-n-chain hobbyists. Those people know torture. Perhaps our Guantánamo guests should be sent to San Francisco’s SOMO district for R&R&BDSM.

The short and bitter sweet of it is that this list of American actions doesn’t even come close to the proper and enduring definition of torture. We can have a civil debate on if these interrogation techniques should be used, but no sane discussion is possible if people and reporters don’t use simple nouns correctly.

Bookmark to:

Two traits link the beautiful city of San Francisco and the power center that is Washington D.C. Those traits are rampant psychosis and yellow journalism.

Occasionally you can find both in one convenient package.

Modern Sodom’s scandal sheet is the San Francisco Chronicle (or the Chronic as we local observers of the dope smoking counter culture call the paper). This William Randolph Hearst bastard child of is no stranger to the stranger side of journalism despite their occasional lucid interludes when they print and pay for my op/eds. Catering to a left of center populace, the Chronic is seldom ashamed to pimp politicians of the progress persuasion. Naturally they carried affections for Barack Obama that made Alex Forrest appear aloof by comparison.

I am surprised Ward Bushee didn’t wear knee pads during Obama interviews.

Surprising it isn’t then when the Golden Gate’s local fish wrapper blazes front page stories that seem less factually devoted than devotional. Today from their Washington Bureau came an opening paragraph that had an equal mix of DNC talking points and Obama campaign messaging, as well as a complete abdication of journalist integrity.

The Obama stimulus, as history will know it, is change you can believe in. That $900 billion and counting reflects the outcome of the November election …

In less than two sentences the Chronic’s D.C. yellow dog managed to regurgitate as fresh food two distinct Democrat sound bites while simultaneously divining the future aggregate conclusion of historians. The writer (a malleable noun in this instance) commands the reader to believe yet not to think or be informed. The political immodesty of the Chronicle’s alleged journalist contorts the very definition of news and the more important concepts of balance, insight and open-mindedness.

But it says a lot about the decline of the American newspaper.

Bookmark to:

The financial news has initiated their death watch over the New York Times.

The AP reports that the yellowest of journals has a mere $46 million in cash, which does not begin to balance a whopping $1B in debt. If the Times were a profitable company in a growth industry, this situation might be survivable. However, due to their serial disinformation campaigns and associated skullduggery, the NYT is flushing down the sewer pipe of finance. With circulation abating and advertising revenues falling faster than Taliban soldiers, their demise seem inevitable.

To wit: The New York Times has $46 million in cash and lost $41M according to their last income statement. Assuming that things do not get worse for them (and given that advertisers retreat in a recession, things are already worse) they could be bankrupt in a year.

Now that is change I can hope for.

Bookmark to:

Reality is a harsh dominatrix, as the President Elect is discovering. The question is will Obama become a bottom.

A pathetic pas de deux was done between Obama and the media most suspect man, George Stephanopoulos. It is worth recalling that George – a Disneyesque proto yuppie and suspected animatron – was a strategic member of the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign and later Bubba’s press secretary. Now sinning on behalf of ABC News, Georgie makes for a curious participant in the media-politician complex having been a Democrat presidential political operative and now an alleged journalist interviewing … a Democrat president elect.

If the partisan conflict of interest escapes you, have your doctor increase the dosage on your Zoloft prescription.

George’s recent interview of Obama defies the very definition of “interview”, where according to Webster “a writer or reporter asks questions.” Take for example this passage where George (technically speaking) asks:

“At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”

George unleashed not an inquiry but a policy statement with a question mark. He outlined a theme (a sloppy reincarnation of FDR’s new Deal), talking points, and cause/effect policy relationships. In short George aped what Obama would have said if not prompted.

Obama simply answered “Yes.” What more could he add?

Let’s ignore the Speaking Greek and focus on the stated goals and demands of both this interview and the unfolding Obama economic “plan”. In this passage Obama acquiesced to changing a wide swath of so-called “entitlement” programs (to which nobody will be entitled once the federal government goes bankrupt) forcing “sacrifice” on “everybody” for the “greater good”.

Somewhere Ronald Reagan just perked up, hearing a Democrat speak Republican policy points about reducing entitlement programs. The only question is if Ronnie can hear the rest of the interview over the loud harp playing or crackling fire.

The one thing Stephanopoulos sensed correctly is Obama’s FDR affliction, seeking a return to the good old days of neo fascism. Some men who are temporarily commissioned the helm of government suffer from severely swollen heads (in Bill Clinton’s case, it was his minor head that bulged based primarily on the oral testimony of young interns). Obama ordained that “Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game.”

He hasn’t yet caught wind of the nascent opt-out movement.

After the current administration and congress absconded with $700 billion taxpayer dollars for corporate bailouts, and when nobody raised a constitutional challenge, a number of otherwise patriotic Americans had finally had enough. These folks had long accepted a certain amount of graft and illegalities from their electeds. But the staggering swiftness, lack of thought and thorough disregard for The People’s express written instructions to government caused some to start an opt-out movement – and silent effort to disengage themselves from government. These people are not hiding in the woods and living “off the grid”. They are simply finding every possible way to not pay taxes, disregard oppressive laws and remove government oversight from their lives.

In short, they are living free and they may be your next door neighbors. Jealous?

Their argument goes something like this: The Constitution is in effect a compact between The People and their slaves (the government). When the servants broke faith and violated the compact, then The People were no longer duty-bound — and perhaps not legally bound — to participate. It is like a divorce. When that husband called the Federal Government started spending the family budget on cheep prostitutes (AIG, Freddie Mac, etc.) the marriage was over. The unfaithful party was ordered out of the house and all that remains is dividing up the property.

The opt-out option is both an easy and difficult position to argue against. When the president proclaims that “everybody’s going to have to give,” he will also gladly imprison those who don’t. Since Obama is of the socialist caste – which is slightly below “untouchables” – participation is to him mandatory. Thus opt-out movement folks run the risk of offending The State.

Line on the left, one cross each.

Arguing in favor of opting-out is trickier but intellectually more satisfying. Freedom is the absence of control. The opt-out crowd is merely finding the shortest path to freedom. It is their birthright and perhaps even their duty. If there is any mass to their movement, they will succeed because the government cannot possibly find and prosecute them all. After government coffers are reduced, the ability of government to control the populace is also reduced, eventually to the point where all they can afford to do are the few tasks enumerated in the Constitution.

One of Robert Heinlein’s characters said “The only thing you can do to a free man is kill him.” I would not bet against Obama trying that.

Bookmark to: