Tina Dupuy

If you happen to mention the name Hillary Clinton to my grandmother, she’ll pause, lock her jaw and declare, “That woman…ambitious.” That’s all she has to say about Clinton because, after all, Granny’s polite. Also, the first female Speaker of the House’s name is akin to a curse word – something you say when you stub your toe. “Ah! #*&% Pelosi!”

But if you think Grandma is a Sarah Palin fan, think again. Once, I asked her about Palin – she faked a hearing-aid malfunction.

Even so, think of where women were when my grandmother was born:

Montana holds the honor of electing the first woman, Jeannette Rankin, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1917, a full three years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Rankin is also noted for being the only member of Congress to vote against the U.S. entering WWII (pacifism being a “woman’s issue”). Interestingly, Montana also holds the honor of electing only one (think: first AND last) woman to Congress.

Yes, in almost a hundred years Montana has elected just one female to represent them in Washington D.C.

But if you think that record is shoddy – Iowa and Mississippi have never (think: ever) elected a woman as Governor or to the U.S. Congress. Mississippi you can understand. Tell Mississippians (like my grandmother) they’re 50 years behind the times, and they’ll get mad at you for calling them progressive.

But Iowa is a more civically mindful place. America’s presidential candidates are vetted in the Iowa Caucuses. If the candidates don’t make sense, they don’t get past Iowa. Iowa is like our nation’s liver – cleaning out all the toxins (e.g., Tom Tancredo) – before they get on the ballot. Yet locally, Iowans have never once elected a female candidate to represent them in the Governor’s mansion or Capitol Hill. Currently, Assistant Attorney General for Iowa Roxanne Conlin is running against incumbent Senator Chuck Grassley. She is 25 points behind in most polls.

Presently, 51% of the population is female, yet only 17% of Congress is female. If the old white men – the majority of the Tea Party – want “their country” back, look no further than the Halls of Congress: It’s 87% white and 83% male. If Congress got together and misspelled some Nazi-laden Mao-heavy picket signs, it would look exactly like every other conservative rally since Obama took office. You know, those folks claiming not to have a voice in government.

Even in the wake of “Mama Grizzlies,” a phrase coined to describe a female Republican candidate with a Sarah Palin level of competence, USA Today reports the number of women serving in the U.S. Congress could go down for the first time in 30 years. Women have been more likely to vote Democratic, even though feminist author Gloria Feldt (No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think about Power) states, “The Democrats have been remiss in recruiting women for office.” Still, a majority of female Representatives in Congress have a “D” next to their names. And it’s going to be a bad year for Democrats. So as Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle running against Harry Reid would put it, Congress is about to “man up.”

Here’s the thing about women candidates: they are more interesting to the press than their male counterparts. The media just likes them more. There’s an obsession with female candidates’ gaffes. The idea that someone denounces the Supreme Court as “activists judges” yet is unable to name one decision with which they disagree – like Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin before her – is noteworthy. “That woman…ambitious.” The year 1992 was dubbed “The Year of the Woman” because four women were elected to the Senate as opposed to the over 30 men who were elected or re-elected to the same body.

Yes, female candidates may get all the ink – but male candidates get all the votes.

And now with Mama Grizzlies roaming about – women voters know that these female candidates sucking up all the oxygen don’t even support traditional women’s issues like reproductive freedoms, child welfare laws and social security. So – ironically – if you’re for women’s issues, you just might have to be against women candidates. Which is getting one step up and a hundred years back.

It takes a special kind of 3-D hyperbole to curl your eyelashes and simultaneously drop your jaw. Newt Gingrich’s declarations produce an Andy Kaufman type of discomfort, where I don’t know if what I’m hearing is brilliant, offensive or intentionally comedic.

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asked Americans to ponder last month. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

Wait, so who’s pro-colonial? Weren’t the Founding Fathers “anti-colonial?”

Gingrich’s schtick is Scorched Earth meets Straw Man. He not only incinerates the hypothetical Straw Man – he also verbally salts the soil where the Straw Man’s make-believe family lives after razing their made-up home.

So, if you’re imaginary – meet your worst nightmare: Newton Leroy Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, now testing the waters for a 2012 presidential bid.

In the ‘90s, while beating the drum of morality against President Bill Clinton for his affair, Gingrich brazenly had his own extra marital affair with a congressional staffer. And now because he’s a man of principle, he’s pictured next to his third wife on his new DVD, “America at Risk.” No, he’s not selling burglar alarms as the slogan would lead you to believe. He’s warning us about people who aren’t him – who aren’t us – “others.”

What others? The Obama Administration. Sure, Gingrich did tour with Al Sharpton last year at the request of the White House. It was surely a Machiavellian attempt by the president to ruin the Gingrich’s Republican purity street cred. Their five-city tour was aimed at bridging the achievement gap for minorities on the 55^th anniversary of Brown vs. The Board of Education. Well, Obama is foiled again! Because Gingrich has moved beyond that bi-partisan experiment he had in school. Now he knows who he is! He’s perfect to point out the moral weakness of phantom unknowns. More than anyone else you could imagine, he’s ready to take down anyone he imagines.

One has to admire the bravery it takes not to navel gaze about your own personal failings and former Sharpton associations. While I want to shrink into the fetal position for three days after making a typo on Twitter, Gingrich is out there – candid Wikipedia entries and all – among the people.

More specifically, he spoke at the Values Voters Summit last month. What pressing issue did Gingrich decide to take a hard stance against? “I am totally opposed to any effort to impose Sharia on the United States,” said Gingrich to the enthusiastic crowd. “And we should have a federal law that says under no circumstance…will Sharia be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law. And we should make clear to Justice Breyer and Justice Kagan, who both seem confused on this topic, that no judge will remain in office who tries to use Sharia law to interpret the American Constitution.”

But we have that law: the First Amendment, ratified in 1791. Done.

And yes, Gingrich called out two Jewish justices for allegedly trying to impose Islamic law in the U.S. Which is like declaring North Dakota needs to respect its border with Florida. Yes, we agree, and we are so grateful you pointed out the urgency of the issue.

To add a nice twist to this very twisted tale: Politico is reporting this week Republicans are going on record saying Gingrich sometimes goes “too far.” This is shocking! In 2010 when the first black U.S. president-as-a-Nazi is so ubiquitous it’s a cliché, and the word “socialism” is used as punctuation on right-wing media outlets – there’s still such a thing as “too far!” Congressman Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) told Politico Gingrich “has a tendency to go one stop further than he should.”

Cole clearly doesn’t see the things that Gingrich sees. In fact, it’s safe to say most of us don’t.

Who else has the leadership and resolve to take a firm position on something that doesn’t exist and no one is actually FOR? It just proves Gingrich is a visionary! Or at least having visions.

The beginning of the end for the Tea Party faux revolution occurred this Sunday on ABC’s This Week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell effectively tipped his hand when asked whether the Tea Party will help or hurt Republicans. “One thing we know about everybody who’s been active in this movement, we know none of them are going to go out and vote Democrat,” he stated.

McConnell confirms what polls show and many of us have long suspected: The Tea Party is the Grand Old Party with a caffeinated beverage.

In early August on NBC’s Meet the Press, House Minority Leader John Boehner plugged the website “America Speaking Out” as part of the Rush Limbaugh maligned “GOP Listening Tour.” Visitors submitted ideas and then those ideas were voted up or down by others. With millions of votes and page views the site is a fascinating read. Strangely, the ideas voted highest are mostly centrist: abolishing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; divorcing from the Religious Right; not kowtowing to the NRA; and, denouncing Palin/Beck/Limbaugh.

An idea voted “up” over one thousand times reads, “Can we make policy decisions that are based on sound science and that are data driven and quantifiable? Not politicized ones?”

One responder put it best, “I don’t think this is a libtard. He actually has a decent point. People should make policy decisions based on common sense.”

Some most selected ideas on the site: not outsourcing jobs overseas and cutting back expense allowances given to Members of Congress. Party defining issues like abortion? The one receiving the most votes said to make it “safe, legal and rare.” The “open mike” section contained almost unanimous calls to legalize weed. Keep in mind these are the new ideas Republicans asked for and were given by other self-identified Republicans.

So what did the Republican Party do with this new information? They released their 21-page “Pledge to America” legislative agenda last week. In it they played right into the recent criticism from President Barack Obama that the GOP just wants to go back and do they same thing they were doing during the Bush Years. They’ve even used the phrase “back to 2008 levels.” Yes, relive the golden era of 2008 when the economy imploded and the Democrats won in a landslide. Great idea…for the Democrats.

Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, cut clips from the 1994 “Contract with America” footage and aired it alongside the current video – some talking points are verbatim. Congressman Boehner is on videotape twice, first 12 years ago and then again most recently at the unveiling of the Pledge at a hardware store, stating, “A smaller, less costly and more accountable government in our nation’s capital.”

“Your fresh new ideas sound slightly – did I say ‘slightly’ – exactly like your old ideas,” Stewart quipped.

Reading the “Speaking Out” site it’s clear there is more common ground than partisanship would have us believe. Many originally Republican ideas, like mandating all Americans purchase health insurance as a way to ensure coverage and contain costs (introduced as an alternative to “HillaryCare”), the GOP is now vehemently against since the Democrats implemented it. Cap and Trade is a free market idea. It came out of conservative ideology, but now somehow it’s a cattle prod to electrify the base against “job-killing environmentalists.” The bailout is despised by Republicans and blamed on Obama – but it was signed by Bush. The soaring deficit? Republicans were for it before they were against it.

The current Republican Party is counting on the Tea Party’s morphing into the attack wing of the GOP – isolating moderates and anyone with genuine new ideas. And that means there will be Representatives who are not actually representative.

In a two-party system, if one party is broken – then the entire system is broken.

So where do the reasonable Republicans go who were not listened to?

The extremists have had their two years of attention screaming in front of television cameras. Is it time for the conversationalists yet? Is the center due for a comeback? Already springing up are non-profit groups like No Labels, who will officially launch later this year, seeking to promote centrist candidates and to bring Democrats and Republicans together.

Hm. The moderates? That seems like…a pretty new – if not novel idea.

In order to “make news” something must be…new, or weird, or unusual. It’s already assumed we know the old and usual – so news is the opposite of that. We read about outliers and changes happening in any given day. Anything sticking out as different is considered newsworthy.

So anti-war protesters protesting (yawn) gets little coverage. But old people in Tea Party rallies protesting Medicare and Social Security get a proverbial barrel full of ink. Because it’s weird…unusual.

The Tea Party is somewhat like the Temperance Movement – people marching for less. But it’s also like the Know Nothings, who organized against the scourge of Italian and Irish immigrants in the 1840s. These tea-fueled corporate-encouraged rallies resemble demonstrations during the Great Depression – with one big exception: Folks in the 1930s were demanding the government help the downtrodden…as opposed to demonizing the poor on poster board as parasites.

By all accounts the economy hit hard times because of deregulation – the government’s not chaperoning industry led to a boom and ultimately to a bust. Now there is a group calling for the government to free industry completely and do nothing…because the group is angry at the government for the economy…the economy that tanked because of government deregulation.

The Tea Party’s premise is like phoning someone you’re mad at because they won’t call you back and telling them never to call you again. That’ll show ‘em you aren’t crazy!

The de facto leader of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, is the wife of a well-known secessionist. She quit her gig as governor of a state which pays its residents to live there – at state which receives more federal money per capita than any other (for every $1.00 Alaskans pay in taxes, Alaska gets over $5 in federal money). Her message? She warns about work ethics, denounces the evils of “socialism” and gleefully touts guilt by association.

It’s weird…unusual.

What’s getting attention now are Republicans not being in lockstep unity with each other. Very weird. Ronald Reagan proclaimed the Eleventh Commandment as, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” The GOP had been devout. But in this primary season we have seen Republicans pitted against other Republicans. Some Republicans won. Other Republicans lost. Of course, there were Democrats competing in primaries (yawn), but it wasn’t as interesting as Republicans bloodying each other because of those aforementioned weird rallies.

And to make it all the more notable – the GOP unity make-up sessions haven’t panned out. In the Delaware primary, mainstream GOP candidate Mike Castle lost to fringe to the lamestream Sarah Palin backed GOP candidate for the Senate, Christine O’Donnell. Castle has yet to endorse his former opponent. In Tennessee, former state Republican Party chairwoman Robin Smith lost her bid for the 3rd Congressional District. She countered by refusing to attend the GOP unity breakfast for the winning candidate, Chuck Fleischmann. Florida Republican Charlie Crist and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski are running as independents for the Senate in their states’ general elections…against other Republicans.

Republicans support everything American and Republican – so in order to be against someone or something, it must be dubbed un-American or RINO (the ominous Republican in Name Only). This is tricky for self-identified Republicans who aren’t as adept at self-hatred as Democrats.

It’s weird…unusual.

George W. Bush’s top advisor, Turd Blossom (AKA Karl Rove), now also a paid contributor at the “balanced” Fox News, came out against a Republican candidate. He said Tea Party backed Christine O’Donnell has said some nutty things! He treated a fellow Republican with contempt he normally reserves for undercover CIA agents like Valerie Plame. The audacity!

In this unusual primary season, the kicker is the super-polarizing Palin. Yes, the hammer and screwdriver in the Dubya crack in the GOP is now the one calling for unity. The figure who divides Republicans on whether or not they like her – let alone if she’s qualified to be president – said to a crowd in Iowa last week, “It is time to unite. If the goal really is to take away the gavel from Pelosi and Reid and to stop the Obama agenda and stop the government agenda, then it is time to unite.”

The question is whether Republicans will say thanks but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere.

Disillusionment implies at some point you were illusioned. You believed something that turned out not to be true.

I watched a documentary where young people in the early ‘90s thought their music was “alternative,” and then they were disillusioned when grunge became mainstream. “It’s like…what can you believe in anymore, man.”

The point is: disillusionment means you’ve had a fall from grace…but it was mostly your fault for believing a falsehood in the first place.

Case in point: the lag in support for President Barack Obama. I’m not talking about those who could see a John McCain presidency from their house and think serious people could describe anyone or anything as “Kenyan Nazi.” I’m talking about the hordes of folks who believed in hope, empathy and America’s turning a corner. The ones who in November, 2008, turned out en masse to give the Senator from Illinois a landslide victory.

Some Americans voted for an ambiguous “change” and now see some imprecise things are “the same.” These Americans are now suffering from what beltway people call the “enthusiasm gap,” and what everyone else calls being disillusioned with Obama.

“He’s just not lived up to my expectations.”

This all started with the Purple Ticket holders at the Inauguration. Obama supporters and volunteers were given either purple or blue tickets to watch the ceremony just behind the honored and seated guests in the silver section. The Purple Ticket holders were (you guessed it) on the left of the Capitol, and security was tight for this unprecedented event. Over two million people packed into the mall that day to see the new president sworn in. If they were Republicans it would have been counted as 20 million. Regardless of what ticket you had everyone stood in the frigid air for several hours waiting to get in, but there was a snafu at the Purple gate. Some with Purple Tickets were stuck in the Third Street Tunnel unable to get to the Capitol. It was estimated 5000 Purple Ticket holders (if they were Republicans it would have been 50,000) didn’t get to witness the ceremony at all.

During the following week on blogs and Twitter Purple Ticket holders kvetched about their plights. “Obama, you owe us!” The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, chaired by Senator Dianne Feinstein, even floated the idea of giving souvenir packets to pouting Purple Ticket holders.

So the “everything didn’t go perfectly and now the president owes us” theme was born. Because Obama is just that good of an orator, he created the illusion that he really is your buddy..not something you’d ever accuse Bush of being, something Bill Clinton had to a certain degree. “Obama’s cool, he’ll fix this Purple Ticket mess.” As if the moment after Obama took his semi-botched oath, every tiny annoyance should be eradicated for those who voted for him, or they would be – unhappy. Disillusioned.

Obama is just a president. A leader of a (still) rich and (still kind of) powerful country. Politics is tedious, grinding, petty and – unless you’re completely twisted beyond all reason (like myself) – kind of boring. Presidents don’t cure all ills and make everyone get along – no one does that. Ever.

The fact is: Obama is a good president. He’s a centrist who is somewhere between what mouth-foamers on either extreme say about him. He does listen to all viewpoints, which makes people of some viewpoints – ironically – dislike him. He’s not the villain the insane Right says he is, nor is he the do-nothing turncoat the insane Left says he is.

Pulitzer winning fact-check site PolitiFact.com has diligently kept track of what this president has done and not done. By their count Obama has currently kept 121 promises. He’s compromised on 39 and broken 22. Currently, 81 are stalled, and 240 are in the works. According to their calculations he’s kept way over five times more promises than he’s broken. We aren’t on track to go back to the Moon by 2020, but he did fully fund the Veteran’s Administration as promised. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wasn’t repealed two years ago, but the deficit is down 8% from last year. There’s still a 9.6% unemployment rate, but the economy is creating (as opposed to losing) private sector jobs.

Most importantly, America voted for and got a president – not a mythological character.

See related video here.

The term “net neutrality” has the magical property of making most people’s eyes glaze over. First, it sounds like a gambling term. “I have a system and net neutrality – I can’t lose!” Second, no one using the Internet calls it “the net” anymore. Just like no one in San Francisco calls it “Frisco.” So the term “net neutrality” either sounds super techie and over-your-head, or more dated than the 1995 Sandra Bullock movie called…The Net.

The concept of Net Neutrality is simple: all content should be treated equally. The Internet should be, as it has been, on a virtual level playing field.

Google and Verizon announced at the beginning of August their agreement for an “Open Internet.” In their statement the FCC will continue to lack the power to enforce an open Internet, and it excludes wireless broadband from transparency, citing proprietary concerns. This is worrisome since wireless broadband is the future of the Internet. Plus, in order to ensure “openness,” wireless or not, the Internet should be regulated like any other public utility.

So as soon as the word “regulation” is uttered, a Frankenstein monster of a faux populist movement arises to dispute and/or cloud the issue. With corporate sponsorship they’ve become a loud lobbying spectacle for business interests. Cleverly they use pro-working people language, and often working people themselves, to sell policies of freedom for corporations. Yes, the Tea Party or the Grand Old Party on caffeine, is (of course) against Net Neutrality.

The Tea Party and its coalition of “grassroots” think tanks want corporations to be in control of the Internet so it will “stay open.” In a signed letter sent to the FCC and the media the day after the Google/Verizon agreement was announced, the Tea Party groups’ statement added that government regulation, “could also remove the ability for parents and ISPs to prevent inappropriate material from entering the home.”

Catch that? Let business do what it wants or you won’t be able to protect your children from smut. It’s the most vulgar thing I’ve ever heard. Horribly untrue. And a cynical attempt at fear-mongering. “Your children are at risk!” Deplorable.

Government regulation is always annoying – unless we can’t swim in the Gulf of Mexico, or eat eggs, spinach, beef or peanut butter. But wait – annoying to whom? Government regulation irks corporations. For those of us who drive the cars, eat the food or take the medications made by corporations, government regulations are in the most basic way – lifesavers.

Personally, I would like a government bureaucrat between me and Salmonella.

The Tea Party would have opposed the National Parks system. Sectioning off millions of acres of land which otherwise could be privately developed is a job killer! Letting places like Yosemite Valley just sit there without allowing business to “improve the experience” is an affront to freedom! Uncle Sam’s telling Americans where they can and can’t build is government overreach! The whole scheme will raise your taxes! Taxes – and they’ll take your guns!

But no, Republican leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt saw how these parks should be nationalized, saved for future generations to have and enjoy. Lincoln did coin the phrase “for the people, by the people,” the perfect slogan for a walk through a government-regulated and, therefore, pristine forest.

And our more perfect union needs to ensure that the Internet can be open and indifferent to content (even if you disagree with said content). Congress didn’t just sit on their hands and hope that just because no one had yet developed Yellowstone it wasn’t at risk of such a fate. No, they acted. They protected it. Yellowstone is still there for all of us to enjoy. It’s ours.

What needs to happen? Earlier this year, the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed down the Comcast Decision stating under current law, the FCC doesn’t have the authority to regulate equality of content. This means the law must be changed.

Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that oversees the FCC, said he is for Net Neutrality. Waxman said any bill about the issue would have to come out of his committee. What’s taking so long? The hold up is that the term “Net Neutrality” sounds like a fishing ordinance instead of what Senator Al Franken describes as “the free speech issue of our time.”

In case you missed some of the lowlights of the 20th century, one Florida charismatic pastor is trying to bring them back. Yes, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville is planning a Koran burning for the ninth anniversary of 9/11. His church, the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center, plans to show their contempt for the Islamic holy book, a tome the pastor admits he’s never read, by using it as fuel for a bonfire.

While the debate about books by those who read had been centered on the iPad versus the Kindle – Dove World’s debate is the bible versus the kindling. Which makes bloodletting suddenly seem forward thinking.

If you thought the Twilight series cornered the market when it came to a lack of literary subtlety – think again. Here we are in 2010 talking about burning books.

So what if a small religious group is on a quest to quash copies of other religious books? Why is that such a big deal?

This biblio-barbeque will be covered by the international press because it’s a train wreck of a bad idea; therefore, Pastor Jones will be our face to the world. Mine, yours – Americans in general. Yes, a preacher to a flock of nearly 50 will be the guy who Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Atheists from all over the world will identify with America. Everything about our country is about to be boiled down to a picture of a heap of Korans smoldering. Shock and awww.

It’ll be, “Americans burned the Koran.” And it’ll be true.

Never mind that we have soldiers on the ground in two Muslim countries. Remember in 2005, the first scandal of Guantanamo Bay involved the alleged desecration of detainees’ Korans by guards. That caused outrage across the globe. Way to support the troops, buddy.

Other than a pointless, smoke-filled flip off to the second largest faith in the world, does the torching of media these days do what its purveyors want it to do?

The Ancient Library of Alexandria was burned by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C.E. The loss of its contents arguably set back technology and culture for millennia. The Conquistadors destroyed Mayan codices of their history and religion, obscuring the ancient Mayan culture indefinitely. The Mongol invaders massacred the Library of Baghdad resulting in the death of a massive “house of wisdom.” These events forever altered history mainly because they took place before the printing press.

After the printing press and the creation of multi-copied media, book burning become just a showy homage to the brutes of the past.

Libricide is an act of overt hostility. While Pastor Jones told the New York Times that he hopes this event won’t lead to violence, he’s planning a violent act. Author and professor Rebecca Knuth studied book burnings in Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait, China and Tibet. She concludes libricide often precedes genocide. Needless to say, this is not an act of “furthering the dialog.” You don’t exactly make the case for how your religion is the one of peace while you’re lighting things on fire.

Maybe Dove World has tapped into the conventional wisdom that you can never go wrong blaming the media – a literal shooting of the messenger. A book is a symbol. So the tactic preferred by the Nazis and Conquistadors alike is still alive as a tone-deaf attempt at cultural criticism.

John Lennon said his band was more popular than Jesus, so Beatles representations were treated like 17th century witches and burned at the stake. In the 1980’s metal albums were thought to bring 1980s teenagers to Satan so they also were torched. Harry Potter books have met a similar fate. Did this eradicate the subjects? No. Do public displays of pitchforks and torches make them any less popular? No.

On the contrary, since the creation of copies and more recently the Internet, Dewey Decimal Demolitions and Album Atom Rearrangers seem to make the subject more popular and maligned the source of the spark.

So as all Muslims are apparently judged by their extremists who on 9/11 crashed planes into buildings – all Americans will be judged by our extremists who on 9/11 burned Korans into ashes. Muslim-Americans are in an awkward position.

But most notably it means the Muslim world and Americans are about to have more in common than they thought.

See video: Burning Books

Right after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a dry cleaner’s storefront was vandalized and set ablaze in Modesto, California. The reason? The business was named “French Cleaners.” The French government took a strong anti-war stance regarding the preemptive invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. They said they would not join the Coalition of the Willing. Republican congressmen Robert W. Ney and Walter B. Jones, Jr. then rallied to make French Toast and French Fries less “wimpy” and championed new names for the fried fares. “Freedom toast” and “freedom fries” were soon available in the House cafeteria. Ironic since the French helped us win our freedom from England in the Revolutionary War.

The French Cleaners became a victim of a hate crime because the French were personae non gratae. Enemies of America! You’re either with us or against us – and the French were against us!

Of course, the Modesto French Cleaners owner is Pierre Frik, a Middle Eastern man from Lebanon. Frik admitted he thought he might end up a target because he was Middle Eastern – never guessing it would be because the name of his store contained the word “French.”

Which leads me to urge the following: Let our paranoia be accompanied by just a little research. No, I’m not promoting some “kumbaya – stop the hating” message. No “can’t we just all get along?” query. No, the economy stinks. No one should be expected to love everybody. We’re hurting. Instead, this is a plea to get the hating straight so at least we have the accurate thing in our crosshairs.

For example: In May, Arizona passed a law banning ethnic studies as part of its pandering to the election year anti-immigrant fervor. Following the “fear of outsiders” theme, the next national news story out of Arizona was about a pair of escaped convicts at large, John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch. The two were described as “fiancée-cousins.” So, which is more of a threat: learning about other cultures, or refusing to marry outside your family?

If any state should be teaching multiculturalism, it’s the one which launched the phrase “fiancée-cousin” onto America’s headlines.

A Pew Poll recently found that 18% of Americans think President Barack Obama (who bucked a 20 year trend to have a name that wasn’t Bush or Clinton) is a Muslim. The U.S. just spent a trillion dollars “liberating” Muslims in two countries and helping them democratically elect leaders. You’d think we’d all be super pro-Muslim judging by our national budget. But no, “Muslim” has a negative connotation because of terrorists on 9/11. Christian terrorists have “nothing to do with Christ” – but Muslim terrorists must be BFF’s with everyone of the Islamic faith.

Believing Obama is a Muslim shows how little we understand about actual Muslims. Some have rightfully pointed out that Obama drinks alcohol (remember the Beer Summit?) and eats pork, both of which defy the teachings of Islam.

In reality, Sharia Law, the sacred Law of Islam is completely opposite of how Obama’s kneejerk critics describe him. “Radical leftist” doesn’t fit with being a “secret Muslim.” Nor does having an “extremist” Christian preacher like Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Nor does calling yourself a Christian and attending a Christian church. Oh sure, Obama is a sleeper cell: soon, 19 months into his presidency, he’s going to decree that girls not go to school and we have to stone adulterers. He’s a closet foreigner tyrant who will make us all bow toward Mecca. So, what’s the hold up? Is the bill being stalled in the Senate or what?!

You know what tyrants don’t do? Let you call them tyrants.

Of course, Obama’s legitimate critics say he has yet to close Guantanamo as promised, and there are still killings of alleged terrorists without trials.

Criticizing our elected leaders is part of being American. But using innuendo to try and make our president un-American delegitimizes the whisperer. It lacks logic and, therefore, credibility.

All I’m proposing is this: Ask some follow-up questions before burning in effigy. Are there French people who actually own it? Do we happen to have the same grandparents? What do you mean by “secret Muslim?”

Otherwise, let’s all shake our fists until more of us are employed.

See video: Cultural Studies in Arizona

The MSNBC documentary series Lock Up ran a story earlier this month about a Maricopa County Jail inmate charged with identity theft named Cecil Kunkel. The 29-year-old Kunkel has a swastika tattooed on top of his “skinhead.” He’s covered in “white power” slogans and imagery. The only ink-free spot on him is an empty space in the shape of another swastika over his heart. The crew first finds him spending time in the hole as disciplinary action for refusing to house with black inmates. When asked why he refuses, Kunkel says, “Because it’s wrong…nothing personal – it’s just the way it is.” In the next scene Kunkel is caught on camera beating an African-American inmate who is, of course, smaller than himself.

Filmmakers for the series interview a close family friend of Kunkel’s, also locked up in Maricopa County. When asked about Kunkel by the producer, the self-proclaimed cousin offers, “He’s not a racist.”

Yes, here is Kunkel – being documented on national television proudly boasting about being a criminal, who has more Nazi ink than a copy of Mein Kampf – and the person closest to him doesn’t want Kunkel to be vilified by the term “racist.”

The whole conversation about race has turned into a rigged game of Whac-a-Mole where every time you hit a mole with your tethered mallet, the mole declares, “I’m not actually a mole, and how dare you use such a horrible label to describe me and my mole-like actions, appearance and affiliations.”

Denying racism while being overtly racist isn’t a new thing. In the hilarious 2001 book, Them: Adventures with Extremists, British journalist Jon Ronson spends time with the KKK during their attempted image makeover. Not using the “n-word” was part of the New and Improved Klan. Yes, the Klan wants you to know it’s no longer anti-non-whites…just very pro-hood.

Making a living promoting a fictional idealized version of 1950’s morality while having saucy nudie pics on the Internet, Dr. Laura Schlessinger last week felt she suddenly needed to move us all forward about how an affluent white woman should be able to use the “n-word” with impunity. Dr. Laura said the slur on her syndicated radio show – some 11 times. Then the melba toast ideologue decided to become the arbiter of what’s funny and said to the caller, the black wife of a bi-racial couple, “If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry outside of your race!”

After taking such a definitive stand, Dr. Laura apologized the next day. See, she’s not a racist.

Racial agitator Andrew Breitbart is best known for promoting the heavily edited Sherry Sharrod video to show, according to him, the racism of the NAACP. That ordeal resulted in the firing of Sharrod from the USDA followed by the discrediting of Breitbart after the complete unedited video was released. And guess what? Breitbart is also not a racist. Sure, almost every one of his slanted stunts, including the one that brought down the community organizing group ACORN, targets black people – but that’s just a coincidence. How dare you imply race has something to do with it – such a horrible slight!

The right-wing is now frothing at the mouth over a Muslim community center within walking distance (as are most things in lower Manhattan, including a couple of existing mosques) from where the Twin Towers used to stand. President George W. Bush at least gave lip service to the Muslim community’s being “peaceful,” but now he’s an embarrassment. So the GOP thinks they really have a winner in denouncing and “refudiating” American Muslims with their goals of occupying buildings. The subtext is that all Muslims are terrorists. This goes along nicely with Republican leaders attempting to make all Latinos into job-stealing, people-beheading, baby-dropping threats to national security. If you whittle down enough groups of people, you do eventually make a point. A pointed neo-Republican talking point.
But the GOP isn’t racist.

Yes – hatred, intolerance and discrimination based on race are no longer racist. So surprisingly, the next wave of the Nixon-founded Southern Strategy is no longer “racist.” Pandering to our darkest fears about “the others” coming to our side of the island to kill us is, also, officially no longer racist.

Perhaps the term “post-racial society” is a typo. What they mean is “post-racist.” Racism no longer exists because the word for it is too offensive to those who practice it. Nice twist.