Good Reputation Sleeping

Too Close To Home

I FINALLY saw V for Vendetta over the weekend on DVD.

Wow!

Now I understand why so many people (critics) had a problem with this movie.

Its not that its bad, its actually very, very good.

In these days of silence to the truth, however, it cuts way to close to the bone and makes people uncomfortable.

I think more people need to be uncomfortable about what is going on in the world today.

Gordon Parks, At Rest

'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers.

Gordon Parks, a photographer, filmmaker and poet whose pioneering chronicles of the black experience in America made him a revered elder and a cultural icon, died yesterday at his home in New York. He was 93.

His nephew, Charles Parks of Lawrence, Kan., said Parks had cancer and had been in failing health since 1993.

Parks, the son of a dirt farmer, rose from meager beginnings and above recurrent discrimination to walk through doors previously closed to African Americans. He was the first black person to work at Life magazine and Vogue, and the first to write, direct and score a Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree" (1969), which was based on a 1963 novel he wrote about his life as a farm boy in Kansas. He also was the director of the 1971 hit movie "Shaft," which opened the way for a host of other black-oriented films.

Elegant and aristocratic with a trademark mustache, his work traversed a vast landscape from poverty and crime to luxury and high fashion. He was a high school dropout turned award-winning photographer who traveled the world, using his camera with deftness and defiance.

"I didn't set out to do all that I did," Parks told an interviewer. "I think there was always fear -- fear of not being educated. All the things I did were done because of the fear of failure." - Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, TWP; Photograph by Suzanne Plunkett, A.P.

After Katrina - Starting Over

Behind the Door.

"Exactly one month after Hurricane Katrina chased him out of New Orleans, Todd Larche is driving back.

He has an ax and a box cutter and gallons of water in his pickup. He has bleach and rubber gloves. He doesn't know whether he'll be allowed back in, but he's packed everything he can think of to hedge his bets against what he might find.

It's over 20 hours and 1,100 miles from his in-laws' Silver Spring home, where he and his family of five have taken refuge, to his own home in the Ninth Ward.

His wife, Michele, has given him a list of things to get from the house. At the top: "Anything," underlined twice." - Lonnae O'Neal Parker, The Washington Post

A wonderfully sad tale, with heartfelt photographs by Sarah L. Voisin of The Post.

What Me Worry?

NPR : The Federal Government's 'Strange Paralysis'.

NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr says that the government's "strange paralysis" after Hurricane Katrina has resulted in a widespread loss of confidence in government agencies and officials -- and more significantly, with the whole concept of the role of the federal government.

United States of Shame - Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

United States of Shame - New York Times.

"Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?"

Fair and Balanced

Administration Paid Commentator - The Washington Post.

"The Education Department paid commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to help promote President Bush's No Child Left Behind law on the air, an arrangement that Williams acknowledged yesterday involved "bad judgment" on his part.

In taking the money, funneled through the Ketchum Inc. public relations firm, Williams produced and aired a commercial on his syndicated television and radio shows featuring Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige, touted Bush's education policy, and urged other programs to interview Paige. He did not disclose the contract when talking about the law during cable television appearances or writing about it in his newspaper column." - Howard Kurtz

With all the talk about CBS on Monday, it was easy to over look this story from the weekend. Any heads rolling here?

What Am I Missing?

Political Wire: Bonus Quote of the Day.

January 07, 2005

"Get some devastation in the back."

-- Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), quoted by the AP, to a staff photographer taking a picture of him before leaving tsunami-stricken southern Sri Lanka.

New Job for Ms. Mushroom Cloud?

Moves Cement Hard-Line Stance On Foreign Policy - Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post.

"Powell's departure -- and Bush's intention to name his confidante, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, as Powell's replacement -- would mark the triumph of a hard-edged approach to diplomacy espoused by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Powell's brand of moderate realism was often overridden in the administration's councils of power, but Powell's presence ensured that the president heard divergent views on how to proceed on key foreign policy issues."

Spooked

Yahoo! News - Deputy Chief Resigns From CIA.

"Transitions between CIA directors are often unsettling for career officers. Goss's arrival has been especially tense because he brought with him four former members of the intelligence committee known widely on the Hill and within the agency for their abrasive management style and for their criticism of the agency's clandestine services in a committee report.

Three are former mid-level CIA officials who left the agency disgruntled, according to former colleagues. The fourth, Murray, who also worked at the Justice Department (news - web sites), has a reputation for being highly partisan. When senior managers have gone to Goss to complain about his staff actions, one CIA officer said, Goss has told them: "Talk to my chief of staff. I don't do personnel."

The overall effect, said one former senior CIA official, who has kept up his contacts in the Directorate of Operations, "is that Goss doesn't seem engaged at all."" - Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Link: N.Y. Times Op-Ed Columnist: Voting Without the Facts.

"I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.

This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won." - Bob Herbert

This should serve as a wake-up call to the so-called mainstream press, so worried about drops in viewers and readers. We are not getting even the most basic information out to people.

Forget your politics, our readers (and viewers) are not paying attention. The 4th estate is in danger of giving up its important role in the system of checks and balances to 'fly-by-night' media; low power rural talk radio and community papers, who are spreading miss-information like its the gospel truth to the 'Walmart Nation' American public.