Oprah, Orangutans and Tom Cruise

Ok, I won’t argue with ya, as a cultural observer, well, I’m not out there on the cutting edge, there’s nothing fast track about my views; but damn, I do take a look now and again, tardy though it may be. This past Wednesday, for reasons that are not important here, I ended up in a stall in Chicago, waiting at my son Pablo’s place for a flight bound up in Miami by weather. The NBA championship game (I’m told that it was good) came & went, and there I was, tired, exhausted, sitting on the couch, suffering the ravages of a 90 degree plus summer heat wave in Chicago. I sat, my tired old eyes staring at the tv, hoping one of those good lookin’ news babes I’d seen earlier in the day on the Cta transit posters advertising channel 7's news team, would pop up on the screen, such was not the case.

Around midnight (Pablo and his wife Christina had long since retired for the night) I kinda noticed, or thought I did, a big brown couch on the tv screen, as I sat in a tired stupor staring at channel 7. Furniture ad I thought. Slowly, I realized it wasn’t a couch; it was Oprah! I could tell when she flashed a big smile revealing those pearly whites. Damn! I thought, should be a sin to have ivory white teeth like that; made my own grimy, yellowish complement look like sh. . . .well . . . . something of an embarrassment. Anyway, clasping her hands tightly together and bouncing a bit on a big over stuffed chair, Oprah gleefully announced what we’re supposed to perceive as one of the viewing highlights of the year. America’s heart throb, none other than Mr. Right Stuff himself, Tom Cruise, would be her special guest for the full hour; and, she teased, he just might have some thing special to say about somebody special. I don’t know about most folks but that little hook snared me.

Perked up, I actually sat up, rubbed a little of the sleep from my eyes and leaned toward the tv just a bit. Didn’t want to miss something so special. Wouldn’t you know, just at about the time I’m about to be overcome by pants wetting excitement, Oprah breaks for a Popalene ad. You know, one of those miracle diet pill kinda products that’s supposed to just blast the fat right off your ass, even better than Cortaslim, so the ad claimed. And, you can’t beat this, all the while the blastin’s goin’ on, you can keep sittin’ on it, right there in front of the TV, eatin’ your munchies, suckin’ on a cold beer, watchin’ Oprah. Market research would probably give ya a variety of reasons they run ads like that on the Oprah show.

But anyway back to Tom, after a gushy little intro, Tom emerges from the darkness at the back of the set to the sounds of a studio filled with screaming, jumping women. Sporting a modish uncombed hair style and dressed in black, a pull over shirt and jeans. Oprah wrapped her arms around his small frame in an embrace that momentarily hid him from view. She then backed away a tad and patted him on the head and then ruffled his uncombed hair much as you would in greeting a favorite dog. Mind you now, the studio women continued jumping and screaming, in what seemed to be a spontaneous outpouring of raw, savage emotion. Now I’ve got to admit that I’ve never really paid a lot of attention to Tom, but this visceral, screaming display of raw savagery gave me some pause. Was it sexual I wondered, looking him over more carefully than I ever had. It seemed to me that there really wasn’t much to him, in a manly sense that is. I mean he’s not a brawny, beefy muscular kinda guy. And then, his face strikes me as rather mouse like, or ratish in appearance. The nose protrudes a bit too far in front of the more receded chin and forehead. . .you know, rat like. But anyway, amid the tumult coming from these unsettled studio women, Tom suddenly, inexplicably, dropped to his knees right there in front of Oprah and started pounding the floor with a clinched fist. Caught by surprise, Oprah, clasp her hands over her open mouth and nervously laughed as Tom continued to pound on the floor. She then bent over kinda gathering him up, guiding him to a seat there beside her on an adjoining couch. Tom sat giggling kidishly, and then suddenly, inexplicably, he jumped nimbly atop the couch, standing on the cushion, legs spread apart, pumping his clinched fist into the air in a victory gesture of some sort. Just as suddenly he dropped back on to the sofa in a seated position. “Yeah!” he ejaculated pumping both fists into the air and extending his legs forward as he did so.

Seeming to have some sense of what this just might be about, Oprah said, with her hands still up near her disbelieving mouth, “You’re in love!”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!" Tom gushed, "I ‘ve never felt like this before in my life.!” At which point he again initiated a deft little jump, putting himself atop the cushion once more, this time in a kneeling position, extending his hands to the cushion just to his front for balance; he then preceded to jump up and down in the fashion of an orangutan putting on a show at the zoo. All the while Oprah sat nervously laughing with her hand variously covering her open mouth and then slapping his knee as she ejaculated, “Yes, Yes!”

At the risk of being considered a mendacious soul, because it so strains credulity, let it be noted for the record: Tom’s orangutan like jumping on the couch, alternating with stints of him on the floor pounding his clinched fist, continued for a good ten to fifteen minutes; at least until I’d finally had enough to rescue myself with the clicker. I never did quite figure out what brought out the primate side of Cruise, but I did hear a day or two later that it was just his strange way of declaring his love for some kid half his age. I also heard that he’d had another media encounter on NBC’s Today Show with Matt Lauer that featured Tom's attempts to disabuse people of their misconceptions about the value of psychiatry, particularly actress Brooke Shields who, according to Tom, has been takin’ drugs to cope with her postpartum blues. Now, as a self-avowed member of the church of Scientology, I guess old Tom’s a scientist. . .I don’t really know; I’m just not up on that crap, but I will say this, if you’ve got a friend who just happened to tape Tom on the Oprah Show, you might want to take a look at it.

Ever on the watch for ya,
Davy Crockett

Finally! Senate Passes Anti-Lynching Resolution. . .Sorta

In an historic move last week the United States Senate finally passed a unanimous sense of the Senate resolution condemning lynching in America and in the process putting an exclamation mark behind one of the more shameful chapters in Senate history. Let us not forget that the same or similar resolutions failed some 200 or more times because of opposition led by Southern Senators. It is important to note that this “unanimous” consent resolution did not receive the support the label would suggest; some twenty or so cowardly souls refused to sign it. Indeed, Senator Frist led the fight to block a roll call vote that would have forced Senators to vote against it on the record, letting them instead remain hidden in the anonymity of a voice vote. Yes, this is the same Senate leader who spoke forcefully in favor of up and down recorded votes in the Senate just a week or so before in the contest over judicial nominees.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was right on the mark with the observation that, “It's a statement in itself that there aren't 100 co-sponsors, and as I’ve noted, he correctly observed , “It’s a statement in itself that there's not an up-or-down vote."

What is it they used to say, “with friends like that, who needs enemies?” I refer, of course, to the twenty or so Senators who, at this late date still refused to put their names on the line as supporters of the ant-lynching resolution. Gratuitous remarks aside, America needs to come to grips with the implications of it's racist past. This unanimous consent resolution represents a small step in the right direction. . .for decades our history books have glossed over the facts basic to our American holocaust. Too many of our national leaders do not want to even talk about racism, arguing that it's history, over, done, gone. The clear implication is that racism didn't have consequences. Until we understand something of those consequences we'll never begin to understand the difficulty blacks, as a race, have swimming in the mainstream today. Slavery and the racism that followed in myriad legal-cultural forms did and continues to have consequences. American history be it good or bad lives in us, in our spirit of who we are as people. It's not biology that explains why so many blacks fill our prisons, do poorly in school, etc.

Now, in terms of politics, look at the names of those Senators who did not sign or support the consent resolution if you can find their names listed. . .the voice vote didn’t put them on the record, and the cowardly mainstream media did not see fit to hold their feet to the fire of public opinion.

So, in some sense, the problems associated with centuries of racism and it’s ugliness continue; it’s something we don’t want to talk about and don’t. We’ve blotted the horror of lynching from our history books but we haven’t been able to blot out it’s consequences; to do that we must remove the darkness.


Fortunately, thanks to the bloggers, all is not lost; the names of those cowardly souls are as follows:


The Senate hall of shame !

Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee)
Robert Bennett (R-Utah)
Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico)
Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi)
Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota)
John Cornyn (R-Texas)
Michael Crapo (R-Idaho)
Michael Enzi (R-Wyoming)
Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)
Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire)
Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
Kay Hutchison (R-Texas)
Jon Kyl (R-Arizona)
Trent Lott (R-Mississippi)
Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island)
Richard Shelby (R-Alabama)
Gordon Smith (R-Oregon)
John Sununu (R-New Hampshire)
Craigh Thomas (R-Wyoming)
George Voinovich (R-Ohio)

Ever on the watch for ya,

Davy Crockett

Amnesty International and The Bush Administration

In the interest of identifying my potential biases, I am, and have been for a number of years, a proud member of Amnesty International. To be sure the reports issued by Amnesty International receive world wide distribution and, except for those countries accused of abuses, their work is highly respected as accurate and objective, free from political bias. Indeed, until the recent report, members of the Bush Administration, including George himself, have frequently quoted from the Amnesty reports. As the record so clearly demonstrates, Amnesty International reports were used by Bush, Cheney, and Rummy to justify the rush to war against Iraq. The following article from the Washington Post nicely summarizes the Administrations hypocrisy in using or trashing Amnesty Reports depending upon political expediency.

The Bush people talk reverentially about the importance of democracy and freedom in the world; yet, do not hesitate to lock people away in prison, incommunicado, held without charges, denied access to the legal system. In some instances, those arrested have been shipped to friendly countries where they’ve subsequently been subjected to the worst kind of physical abuses, apparently at the behest of our government.

To vilify the Amnesty report because it is so highly critical of US abuses in the prisons used to house suspected terrorists is shameful. We are told that Defense Department self investigation indicates that they’ve behaved in an angelic fashion; therefore the Amnesty Reports aren’t true. What simple minded bull shit! I can understand the importance of self analysis on a psychiatric couch, but deference to the accused in criminal matters is like asking the fox to guard the hen house. Weren’t we advise in kindergarten against such folly?

We heard the Bush White House endlessly vilify Newsweek for reporting that military prison guards defiled the Koran. Never mind that the International Red Cross issued a report noting that the Newsweek report was consistent with their reports, reports that had been forwarded to the Defense Department on numerous occasions. And, of course, yesterday (4 June) the Defense Department released a report verifying the discovery of abuses of the type reported in Newsweek.

But, let the facts speak for themselves, i.e., read the Washington Post article by Dana Milbank.

Davy Crockett


From the Washington Post
An Administration's Amnesty Amnesia

By Dana Milbank
Post
Sunday, June 5, 2005; A04

The folks at Amnesty International are practically begging for a one-way ticket to Gitmo. After the human rights group issued a report late last month calling the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our times," top officials raced to condemn Amnesty.

President Bush: "It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation."

Vice President Cheney: "I don't take them seriously. . . . Frankly, I was offended by it."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld: "Reprehensible . . . cannot be excused."

Funny -- these officials had a different view of Amnesty when it was criticizing other countries.

Rumsfeld repeatedly cited Amnesty when he was making the case against Saddam Hussein, urging "a careful reading of Amnesty International" and saying that according to "Amnesty International's description of what they know has gone on, it's not a happy picture."

The White House often cited Amnesty to make the case for war in Iraq, using the group's allegations that Iraq executed dozens of women accused of prostitution, decapitated victims and displayed their heads, tortured political opponents and raped detainees' relatives, gouged out eyes, and used electric shocks.

Regarding Fidel Castro's Cuba, meanwhile, the White House joined Amnesty and other groups in condemning Castro's "callous disregard for due process."

And the State Department's most recent annual report on worldwide human rights abuses cites Amnesty's findings dozens of times.

"This administration eagerly cites Amnesty International research when we criticize Cuba and extensively quoted our criticism of the violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the war," protested William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

But Schulz isn't protesting too much. In the past week, traffic on Amnesty's Web site has gone up sixfold, donations have quintupled and new memberships have doubled.