Redacted

[I hope this post proves interesting. It was written by Edwize blogger Leo Casey, and previously posted on Edwize.]

On the Disney Company's corporate website, the reader will find a honor roll of teachers from across the United States who have been recognized by the American Teacher Awards, starting with the first class of 1990 and concluding with the last class of 2006. A close examination will reveal that there is no teacher listed as the 1992 honoree in the category of Social Studies. Two of the three Social Studies finalists are listed, but the teacher who was actually named Social Studies Teacher of the Year is missing.*

I am that missing teacher. My name disappeared some time after I organized a public letter, signed by twenty-five American Teacher Award honorees, protesting Disney's sponsorship of John Stossel's Stupid in America, an ideological broadside against public education and the teachers who labor in our public schools.

(Cross posted from The Bilerico Project, by Mattilda aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore)

Saltyfemme brought my attention to a piece of stunning journalism at Huffington Post -- isn't that supposed to be a "progressive" blog (or the progressive blog, according to some)?  Anyway, "Corporate America: the New Gay Activists," this post by Kirk Snyder, author of The G Quotient: Why Gay Executives are Excelling as Leaders... And What Every Manager Needs to Know, offers so many stellar quotes that it's hard even to know where to start, so let me go right through in a somewhat conventional linear manner -- starting with the beginning, that is.

Read the rest.

crossposted at the kos

Recent reports about Disneyworld refusing to hold gay weddings should serve as a wake up call to all queer Americans that just because a company has a history of supporting our community, it does not mean that they will be there when the topic shifts to controversial issues that our community is fighting for today.

According to the Human Rights Campaign's corporate equality index, Walt Disney scores a 95 out of 100 for the protections they offer their queer workers. The item that holds them back from getting a perfect score is the fact that they do not offer diversity training including gender identity or that they do not have supportive gender transition guidelines in place, but I would argue that this recent marriage controversy may have opened up a pandora's box that ultimately should bring down Disney's rating in the Corporate Equality Index.

Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a king. That's why I did this: to protect you from yourselves. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a city to run. - Sideshow Bob, as Mayor of Springfield in the Simpsons

Political systems are built through symbols, and no symbol has been more pernicious than the idea of a moderate Republican.  Since 1964, the Republican Party has gradually turned itself into a neo-Confederate group of extremists attached to a political network of partisan pagan church groups.  This transformation has happened explicitly, with a bevy of tax breaks directed at white churches, or implicitly, such as when Reagan opened his 1980 campaign at the site where three civil rights workers were murdered.  Moderate Republicans - like Lowell Weicker, who did stand up to Nixon - gradually died out, replaced by leashed poodles who substituted affability and pork for moderation.  Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson, and Rob Simmons are such figures.  

Moderate Republicans are a dangerous symbol because they are a mirage that tricks liberal and moderate voters into thinking that the natural governing center is an affable extremist.  Put a 'moderate' face on extremist policies or a party, and all of a sudden you have a country built on, say, corporate trade agreements that are reviled by the public at large.  Or you have the war on drugs, which is nonsensical but considered part of the natural governing tapestry, or 2 million prisoners costing America hundreds of billions of dollars a year, or any number of crazy policies that are considered moderate but are in fact simply elitist in orientation.

David Gergen is the epitome of the adult in charge, the governing force without which adults will not trust you.  Air America had 'moderate Republicans' running the show, and large Democratic donor networks have been stymied by donors who think that moderate Republicans exist and want to hire them to run a liberal movement (hint, it doesn't work).  People like Tom Kean Sr. are a good example of the problem - he's loved and revered by liberals in New Jersey, and was put on the 9/11 Commission as a respected character, and then he goes out an engages in a dishonest smear campaign to peg Bill Clinton as responsible for 9/11 through an ABC propaganda piece, all to help his son get elected in New Jersey.

Killing the idea of the moderate Republican is critical if we are to convince the country that progressives can govern.  As we've seen, right now journalists, opinion-leaders, donors, and politicians do not think that the hawkish pro-corporate bipartisan consensus will be disturbed if Democrats take over.  Already we have Thomas Riehle trying to say that it is the netroots that want a targeted strategy versus James Carville-types who want to widen the playing field.  We have stories in the New York Times about New Democrats ascendant and the progressives being beaten back in a more moderate party, and Harold Ford splashed on the cover of Newsweek as the face of a new and more conserative party.  The LieberDems are licking their chops at a perceived ability for Joe to rule the Senate if he is reelected (prepare for a bad Q-Poll tomorrow, kids, polling director Doug Schwartz ain't a fan of Lamont).  Certain House Democrats are panting at the ability to reach out to the Republicans as one of their first acts in office, to show a new spirit of openness to their GOP Beltway boyfriends who have been abusing them.

Fortunately, even as power players preen about how close they are to moderate Republicans in their style and attitude, the electoral fortunes of the 'adults' is waning.  The most potent symbol of the moderate Republican up for office is Tom Kean Jr.  He's the poster boy for faux moderate, extremely affable and likeable, and culturally liberal in that he likes Starbucks coffee and doesn't belong to a mega-church.  He's facing Bob Menendez, a candidate who has always had overblown rumors of corruption surrounding him, which is actually standard for New Jersey politicians.  If any matchup were to deliver a Senate seat to a moderate Republican, it would be this one.

And yet, New Jersey is a Democratic state, with leaners likely to go for the Democrat, especially in a year like this one, and a traditional pollster undersampling of Democrats.  Remember in 2004, when Bush was totally almost going to capture New Jersey, until he got blown out?  I would peg Tennessee as the opposite, with all the optimism for Harold Ford somewhat misplaced (I'd love to be proved wrong, of course).  And with Menendez surging in the polls after having run a standard campaign, it's looking like it's becoming increasingly impossible for any Republicans to get the critical cross-over votes they need to stay competitive in blue states.  

That Kean is losing is a big deal, because it shows voters have moved away from at least one of their illusions.  Tom Kean Sr is a beloved figure in New Jersey politics, a statesman who parlayed a genteel affability into a Governorship in the 1980s and a storied place on the 9/11 Commission.  He was considered for a time Presidential timber, and he's now the model of bipartisan honor and integrity, one of the last good Republicans.  He's a dream, an "independent, honorable public servant, the kind that citizens admire and long for", as New Jersey's master of the obvious pundit David Rebovich puts it.

Of course, there's another thread to Kean Sr.  He won his governor's race in 1981 by an extremely narrow margin using hired racists thugs to suppress minority turnout, his fiscal policies destroyed New Jersey's budget picture, his family shakes down corporate contributors, and he dishonestly pushed the film 'The Path to 9/11', a historical travesty.  His legendary sheen has both threads running in parallel, the race-tinged corruption playing footsie with the bipartisan ethical righteousness.  In 1971, Kean made his first important political move, becoming speaker of the Assembly even though he was a Republican in the minority party.  The myth is that Kean was so respected on both sides of the aisle that he was a consensus pick; the reality is that he cut a deal with a white corrupt Hudson County politician, David Friedland, who couldn't ascend to the speakership because of a loan-sharking scandal and then threw his support to Kean to keep the a black Democrat from becoming the Speaker.

And it was off to the races for Kean Sr, moving quickly to the Governor's mansion and then to a storied place as an elder wiseman for the nation.  His son, who is mostly a lightweight in the State Senate and similarly affable, simply can't get above the mid-forties in the polls.  His avoidance of Iraq and his refusal to disavow Bush has hurt him badly among cross-over voters.  The nasty core of faux moderate Republicans - affability over substance - is dying out.  Iraq is too bloody and obviously wrong for Democrats to be fooled anymore.

So the 'moderate Republican' adult aesthetic - greatly weakened - may still be in charge of DC on November 8th in the form of Beltway journalists, politicians, and lobbyists, but the people are gradually voting it out of power.

OK, since Tuesday I've been feverishly working on a YouTube special event.  Originally Arken suggested to me last Sunday that we do a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" treatment to Disney's hackumentary "The Path To 9-11."  After a couple days of technical difficulties, we finally did it using nothing more than a Macbookpro for video, sound and editing.

I can now officially present to you, with a budget of $15 for beer (approximately $39.999985 million less than the actual movie), Part 1 of a 2-part series.

link (I don't want to embed, as it is kinda copyrighted material)

Below is an email I sent to Marcos on the Daily Kos website because the original post was on that site.  (I posted a similar Diary here at MyDD.)  The Kos Diary I refer to can be found at
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/9 /8/164416/0200
The title/author/time of the diary post was:
Remote Smackdown: Downrate or Block ABC/Disney Programs
by a lynn
Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 01:44:16 PM PDT

As best I can tell the theory in that post is that modern ratings use real-time, minute-by-minute collection from cable (especially with boxes) program and channel watching.  One implication (among many) was that if a cable users blocked a channel with a TV's V chip, that channel would receive 0 ratings (never watched in this household).  If 10's or even 100's of thousands of people block ABC and Disney channels their profits would suffer enormously.  These would be real consequences for ABC.
  In historical context, I believe that the Sinclair Group suffered no real long-term consequences for airing the inaccurate and prejudicial "documentary" about Kerry in key battle ground states just before the 2004 election.  I think that if Sinclair had suffered truly horrific mometary losses then ABC would not have aired Path to 9/11.
  It's plausible to think that the Sinclair Group, Disney/ABC strategy will continue and even escalate.
   Here's my questions.

1.  Is the information on "a lynn's" post accurate (does the blocing of ABC with my V chip actually affect their ratings)?
   
2.  If it is accurate, is there follow-up for a long term, massive blocking of Disney/ABC?  if not why not?  (I don't want to be the only one in America blocking ABC on my TV; that would be ineffective, even idiotic.)
   
3.  How can we organize a net roots (yes, I bought the book) campaign to reduce ABC's profits so substantially that no other broadcaster will do this again?  Is the Daily Kos the correct vehicle or is MoveOn or ThinkProgress, or MyDD, etc. better or is a coordinated effort the best?
   
4.  Is there any follow up to "a lynn's" post?
   
5.  It may not be quite this systematic, but I propose that Sinclair was a proof of concept and ABC/Disney was a full-on roll out of the stategy. Our complaints and letter writing campaigns are essentially ineffective.  The people responsible for the Path to 9/11 are probably laughing about our complaints and critiques as they plan an even more massive use of the strategy for 2008.  It would be more useful if ABC suffered profit loss so great than no broadcasting group would do this again in 2008. Should is stop blocking ABC and the Disney channel because I'm alone or ... or what?
   

I can't disassociate the right-wing takeover of America from the tragedy of 9/11.  Within 24 hours, the security lapses Bush allowed on that day were used to push tax cuts for the wealthy, and our business elite used 9/11 as an opportunity to steal from investors and undermine American markets.  The event was used to justify a ghastly and immoral war, and to concentrate power in the executive branch at the expense of the idea that is America.  The press has been completely cowed to the point of uselessness, and the Republican Party turned into a group of cruel and treacherous eunichs who consistently call for a security state.

I am by nature a hopeful person, and I can see paths out of where we are, a way for America to restore its moral universe.  But to me, someone who didn't really know anyone killed in the towers, I am compelled to remember the events of 9/11 by Bush's call for all of us to go shopping in response.  Progressives will spend our lives working to fill that moral vacuum, but many of us will need to be held to account for not speaking out, for being silent and cooperative in the travesty that continues to this day.  Like with Katrina, it is a silent rage I feel, an anger that these people I deal with every day mock the country I love, and do it while wearing the flag, while behind closed doors they engage in the organized evil political Bacchanalia that destroyed Rome.

The American people must rise up and reclaim the country, in bars and over dinner tables.  If that doesn't happen, and the country continues its obsession with the security state and the clearly fraudulent war on terror, that day is the end of America.  I don't believe that this is the case, I think we can take back our party, our churches, and our country if we want to.  But evil is banal, and evil is hypocritical, and evil lives deeply in our hearts and in our culture.  I took this picture at Pier 39 in San Francisco, and to me, it's what we're fighting, the feel-good sense of self that lets us ignore our blaring moral sirens.