Monty Python's Meaning Of Death

Neda Agha Soltan. That is the only name worthy of repetition. She was the only figure over the last few days who merits immortality in print or pixels. No other individual living the early part of their afterlife in Live Team Coverage carries the same need to be memorialized.

Miss Soltan was murdered in the streets of Teheran by thugs solicited by authoritarian theocrats masquerading as leaders. Indeed it is reasonable to question the tenuous link between faith and totalitarian bastardry in Iran. Faith is a gift from the Almighty; it cannot be coerced.

The dictatorial cadre in Iran has used faith as a pretext for some of the most odious prohibitions upon personal liberty, culminating with a sham election. Everything was made up and the points did not matter. Miss Soltan died yearning for the basic human right of conscience, disillusioned by the realization that her voice had been denied, unable to exercise ant latitude in the decisionmaking that will affect the lives and well-being of her contemporaries. Thieves and murderers moved quickly to associate thher reasonable wishes with a cabal of the unfamiliar.

On the other side of the world, a politician took advantage of a similarly convenient approach to faith. Years ago he was among those who attempted to thwart the will of a nation's choice for president, based upon his judgement of the fitness of that president's moral character. In the case of Iran and the politician's jurisdiction alike, holy literalism has served to cloak poor stewardship of the electorate's interests.

It is the politician's great good fortune that his overt hypocrisies will be judged by educated adults with computers and free speech. One only wishes that Miss Soltan had enjoyed the same freedom. Only the politician's ambitions have died. Barring some divinely just irony, he will awaken tomorrow, free, affluent, and able to choose a new path. His constituents should be so fortunate.

Truly dystopian were the deaths of the two entertainers. One was a former sex symbol attached to the most famous nipple in the history of humankind. Her health had been poor for some time. The other was a lost song-and-dance man-child who had long since spent his own fortune, and continued spending the fortunes of others.

These events, although tagedies for the humanities, were not the same tragedy to humanity that was Miss Soltan's death. They had earned celebration and recognition for their talents. They were more than liberally compensated.

The sex symbol made efforts to use her talent to reveal the suffering of women at the hands of neanderthal brutes who must reconcile their differences through violence. That is laudable.

The Man-child spent twenty years under a cloud of accusations of pedophilia. A performing career which had once concentrated upon raising the lot of famine sufferers became a self-parody of odd, self-destructive behavior. One hopes hat he is reunited with his right mind in the afterlife.

Indeed, one hopes that he was truly innocent of the unforgivable things he was accused of, not just beyond a reasonable doubt.

Neda Agha Soltan, however, was innocent. She died at he hands of a child made subhuman by brainwashing and the hope of escaping poverty. Her death was the product of those who believe and teach that basic human rights are only to be conferred upon those with whom they agree.

The other names were heard a lot. Neda Agha Soltan's name deserves mourning in words, thought, and prayer.

The Liberal Media Myth

As the news spread of the heinous and brutal attack on the Holocaust museum in Washington, onehopes that the Gentle Reader was deeply and sincerely offended. Simply stated, free speech mutated from the rantings of far-right cretins to a cancerous blight on libertarian discourse.

Deep condolences to the family of Stephen T. Johns are inadequate. The nation owes his family a proactive measure as means of beginning a memorial to a man who gave his life protecting a repository of evidence of what happens when extremism replaces sanity. Rounding up extremists and prosecuting them is compellingly attractive, but we are in the position of having to be the Good Guys.

Whatever we do, referring to the collective as those of good will and love for our system of constitutional jurisprudence, it must be informed by an unabiding adherence to the rule of law and the rights of the accused. No matter how distasteful we may find extremism, rounding 'em up and locking 'em down is just terribly George W. Bush-league. A better solution exists.

Repeal the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Get rid of it and salt the land from whence it came so that nothing ever grows there again. This law is an odious act of corporate welfare which has served to stifle dissenting opinion and deprive valid viewpoints of a platform for expression. The 1996 Telecommunications Act has provided fertile ground for breeding far right extremism of the kind which killed Officer Johns and devastated his family.

One station per band per market was the rule until a preliminary deregulatory law allowed companies to begin acquiring multiple stations in the same city. Free-to-air broadcast licenses being a finite commodity, limits were placed upon any entity consolidating large numbers of licenses. Prior to 1996, stations such as WIRY in Plattsburgh, New York, who focused upon the community they served were the rule.

WIRY is now the exception, as many broadcasters move to a business model of satellite-delivered programming. Author Stephen King refers to the most prolific type of music broadcaster as "Robo-oldies." While one is not inclined to focus upon the disgraceful state of oldies radio in America, the same model applies for news and opinion broadcasting: Robo-Republican.

The Robo-Republican nodel works thusly: acquire a potent signal in a medium to large market. Dismiss the news-gathering and local on-air talent. Replace the local talent with Fox News, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Savage and Noory. Preemptively purchase any signal where a competitor may be established with the profits. Develop friendly professional relationships with entrenched local personalities like Neal Boortz and Mark Davis. Continue until able to throw loss-leader advertising rates against any program which appears to challenge satellite-delivered content. Eventually establish a monopoly upon audience.

Now is where things would most appropriately move in an anti-trust direction. The most egregious of all Robo-Republican megabroadcasters is Clear Channel. Clear Channel also owns Premiere Networks, which owns or distributes most of the content mentioned. While one does not suggest that Clear Channel directly specifies content, 900 signals, a lack of high-profile progressive voices, and the occasional leveraging of a Clear Channel board member (J.C. Watts) as a guest on Premiere Networks programming do indicate a definite agenda and conflict of interest.

The conflict is most easily ascertained when combined with the ability to direct dissent over to inferior signals or reformat entirely. It also helps to be able to elect an inferior rival, such as Air America, which sounded like it was produced on a dorm-room laptop.

The most compelling case for reregulation and anti-trust investigation of megabroadcasters does not lie in conservative rhetoric. As long as megabroadcasters are in a position to obstruct opposing viewpoints, a violent fringe of radical conservatives takes comfort in increasingly angry rubric. This rubric is couched in the idiom of inevitable subservience to a monolithic authority which would violently suppress all dissent. Listeners are encouraged to become active with the tacit subtext that conservative voices will only survive through the implicit threat of sustained violent rebellion.

Therefore, many sincere, decent conservatives been absorbed into the hateful thing that they themselves most fear. Right-wing broadcasters have tiptoed up to the line of inciting the overthrow of the United States Government. That one is pretty much a no-no in the Constitution. They put it right up there in the front. Aggression against a body which has committed no crime or has made no threat and justifying said aggression with fear is not the American way. It is the Nazi way. We are obligated by our constitution to be better than that.

It is time to take the microphone away from those whose acrimony and paranoia would deprive an innocent Stephen T. Johns of his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

When Only The Worst Will Do

Attorney General Eric Holder has reversed a ruling made late in the Bush Administration that defendants in deportation cases may not appeal based upon inadequate counsel. Apparently, former Attorney General Mukasey was under the illusion that the US government was not required to follow the constitution here any more than in Guantanamo Bay.

Whatever, we here at the Wandering Gentile applaud the fact that the Obama administration feels that due process may suffer when an attorney graduated from Ray-Ray's House of Tacos and Accredited Law School of Mabelvale, AR, instead of, say, Harvard or Yale.

It is now important for defendants in deportation cases to find incompetent attorneys. As a service to undocumented persons who are innocent until proven guilty, your Wandering Gentile is offering advice on picking a bad attorney.

1. His office is a single-wide mobile home encircled by a chain-link fence.

2. His image car is a Kia Sephia.

3. His legal books are all paperback. Some of them were written by Dean Koontz. The shelf is made from cinder blocks and planks.

4. During consultation, he participates in an animated conversation with his "baby mama," because the child support check bounced.

5. The same animated conversation ends when his Trac Fone runs out of minutes, and his service abruptly cuts off.

6. Confronted by the word "tort," he asks for extra whipped cream on his.

7. His laptop is the approximate size of a Chevette. It operates on a Windows system that uses a Roman numeral like "I.I/VIII."

8. He asks for a change of venue because he has an outstanding warrant.

9. A plastic bag from Dollar Tree serves as his briefcase.

10. He shows up for court with a gold tooth, oversize aviator shades, and a "13" sweatshirt from an urban haberdasher.

11. He brings a QT chili dog to court because he missed breakfast.

12. His opening statements include an imitation of a Dodge Dart on a cold morning.

13. He refers to the judge as "you old pickle-smoker," instead of "your honor."

14. He returns from lunch wearing a Long John Silver's paper pirate hat, and most of a hush puppy.

15. During his closing statement, he moons the bailiff while consulting his "legal briefs."

Maybe there was a reason he had to advertise on daytime television...

THE HUNDREDTH POST! (How to blog like the Wandering Gentile.)

Today, in honor of our hundredth post, your Wandering Gentile is going to share a DVD-type special feature, explaining how a post becomes a Wandering Gentile post...yay!

Always have a subject in mind. Sometimes your original first paragraph is crap, so expect an alternate plan. This happened today.

At roughly one-tenth of an administration, we have a better picture of where the Obama Administration is going. The President's objectives on the economy, the environment , health care and justice are now coming into focus. He had a task to clear out the Augean Stables before getting to work on his agenda.

Readers like lists. They also like realism. Sarcasm doesn't hurt much, either.

THE ECONOMY.

If one were to consider the economy in terms of a tractor-trailer, this country's was going across the George Washington Bridge toward New York with two flat tires on Election Day. By the time President Obama got to the White House, it was stuck on northbound Jerome Avenue in the Bronx under the El, with eighteen flats, and somebody had boosted the stereo out of the dash for good measure.

For readers unfamiliar with operating a large commercial vehicle, this scenario is as bad as it gets before destroying your rig or accumulating a body count. Commercial drivers will require a crowbar to get the seat from a puckered sphincter.

The Republican answer, keep moving forward and then turn right is not an appropriate solution. Obama's tack of turning left at the first McDonald's is the only solution which will save the vehicle. In a spectacularly suboptimal situation, this takes the fixed overhead obstacle out of the equation.

Turn right once arriving at the faster track of I-87. Obama's rolling, and he's made the turn, but plenty of obstacles await before he gets to the Major Deegan Expressway.

THE ENVIRONMENT.

Compared to the Economy, Obama is out in the back end of North Dakota on this one. Unless he is in imminent danger of freezing to death (He's not), Obama has a long, boring slog in front of him in which nearly everyone wishes him well in the objective of getting to a much greener place with a tree. Obama would do well to hope that the tree is near a Burger King, because nobody wants to be in North Dakota with him.

North Dakota's state tree (envied by South Dakota because they don't have a tree, yet) is in West Fargo, a couple of blocks from the truck stop. There is also a Burger King.

HEALTH CARE REFORM.

Ready or not, it's coming. Nobody in America trusts health insurers as much as they trust Congress, and they don't trust Congress at all. (Hyperbole is always fun. Ask Dave Barry.) In Congress' case the tiebreaker is the fact that it is at least theoretically possible to vote a congressman out of office. When was the last time a health insurance customer had a vote on the direction of the insurer? (Not guaranteed even if holding preferred stock.)

Health insurers are right when they state that they cannot compete. Competition does not exist when a business model is built around a captive market and the fundamental inability of a customer to challenge the providers service without litigation. A publicly subsidized option-not corporate welfare for insurers to serve the entire public, not just the ones they like-is urgently and desperately needed.

We already have de facto rationing in the form of pre-existing condition codicils. Government is already on the hook for half of all health care spending already, shelling out more per capita than the universally covered citizens of the rest of the industrialized world. Freedom of choice should include the ability to fire an inferior or inept health payment provider.

This is the possibility that Obama's plan from the campaign-and ironically the French- make available to non-millionaires. You know, the ability to make a rational decision.

I forgot. We're Americans. We're not supposed to be able to do Rational. (Quips like this are good for annoying conservatives, particularly when mentioning the French.)

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR.

Get used to saying it. Republicans don't have anything. It isn't even going to be close. Too bad she's not a Red Sox fan.

IMMIGRATION REFORM.

(If I need to rant, this subject is good because I can make fun of Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo. And those two are made for being mocked and harassed, when not taking on the entire G.O.P.)

What do you call a bus going off a cliff with the entire Senate Republican caucus aboard? The waste of a big damn bus, sorry about Collins and Snowe.

Immigration reform is the big bus which will go off a cliff with the Republican party's future aboard. In states which have large numbers of socially-conservative, entrepreneurial latino voters they will wind up with the approximate lifespan of a triple-meat, triple-cheese plain-and-dry Whataburger left in the care of your Wandering Gentile.

Republicans cannot afford to trade Miami, South Texas, and Arizona for a significantly smaller number of Anglo-Saxon bigots in states without enough electoral votes to beat Walter Mondale's '84 performance against Reagan. Immigration reform is a winner for the USA and Mexico.

The US economy wins, gaining ten million people with a pent up demand for homes, automobiles, and durable goods gaining the clout to buy them. We could also anticipate a trillion-dollar shot in the arm for tax revenues over the next ten years. It doesn't hurt that the undocumented population is disproportionately entrepreneurial and disposed to risk taking.

If combined with a workable guest worker program and some mechanism enabling labor to organize without being forced to take anti-labor propaganda before making their decision, ethical businesses would prosper. Border security would improve, owing to the resources not allocated to pursuing people forced into illicit crossings by an overreaching prohibition.

Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs would go broke though, because their support of that same overreaching prohibition is what enriches Mexican organized crime, their true masters. The Kluxers and Neo-Nazis would have to fold up their tents and go back to Idaho.

(Bad quip goes here!!!)

Who da pimp, now?