Saturday, June 24, 2006

Thomas Friedman Wants It Hot

I met a woman who comes into NYC to work. She's here five days a week. She goes to her office from nine to five after arriving on the train and she leaves on the train each weekend.

She told me NYC has too much crime and nothing to do. She blamed it on the tax policies of the city which she feels place too much burden on corporations.

She's not a tax attorney or anyone who studies the issue of taxes (professionally or personally), she's not law enforcement or anyone who follows trends in crimes. She had quite a lot to say about life in NYC and about the makeup of NYC.

Why am I talking about her? Well why did my husband Thomas Friedman devote his Wednesday column ("Latin America' s Choice") to what Gabriel Rozman "a Jewish technologist of Hungarian roots who was raised in Uruguay, educated in America and now heads the Latin American operations of India's biggest software/outsourcing company, Tata Consultancy Services of Mumbai" thought of Peru?

Did he think that there weren't enough outsiders weighing in on Peru? I count two: himself and Rozman. The average person, someone who really knows life in Peru? Not represented. But then if they weren't in charge of the "biggest software/outsourcing company," they might not back up all his tired and dated thoughts. (Not to mention xenophobic.) Wednesday, he pulled on the black turtleneck, tossed on the brown beret and headed to my campus. He wasn't greeted very warmly.

The answer, he decided, was that he needed a blog. "But I'm so busy!" he whined. Repeatedly.
I was attempting to do some homework for class and ignoring him. Finally he cut to the chase.

"Betinna, I know you keep a diary on our computer. Have you considered posting it?"

"Posting it?" I asked.

"Yes, I think the world would embrace me tighter if they knew about me," he explained. "And someone like you, who knows how great I am, would be the best person to do a blog."

"Thomas Friedman, what do you think I write about?"

"My bon mots. My funny observations. My generous nature. My keen insight. My wonderful abilities as a lover. My delicious body . . ."

He was still listing but I was trying to remember when we last had sex? I think it was August of 2005. And it wasn't all that to begin with which is why I had to really think to remember.

"Thomas Friedman," I said interupting his lenghty description of his physique, "I really don't have that kind of time. I'm immersed in a new world and need to focus on that."

"If you loved me," he said sticking out his bottom lip, "you'd make time."

"You're probably right," I agreed returning to my studies.

Then, smarting over the fact that despite all the lies he's told the last two weeks, Amy Goodman interviewed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and not him on Thursday -- that seemed to bother him the most since "I am Mr. International!"

Apparently, there was a contest and he sang his mantra, "Gotta Be This Or That," decked out in spandex and sequins. I'm sure he dusted off some of the Garland magic and his eyes misted over as they placed the crown on his head.

"Thomas Friedman, Sgrena was kidnapped in Iraq, when she was finally safe and headed for the airport, her car was attacked by the US military resulting in wounds and at least one person dead," I snapped.

Thomas Friedman began listing off the various heads of business and finance he'd gone golfing with. I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume. Apparently the remote control works not only the TV but Thomas Friedman's mouth as well because he just got louder. Thinking I might be onto something in an Adam Sandler "Click" kind of way, I tried the "mute" button but, sadly, it only worked on the TV.

"Yes, Thomas Friedman, you are quite the social butterfly. I'm sure when Amy Goodman wants to explore the subject of corporate heads and the journalists who stroke them, your name will be the first one she thinks of."

He pouted and headed for the Charlie Rose discussion board where he always has time to post under an alias and praise himself. Then, much later, he spent about five minutes churning out his column for Friday ("The World Is Hot").

Friday, after class, Dona asked me what he was talking about?

I think too much time is spent trying to figure out the subtext. People always place some deep meaning to his columns. That's simply not the case. He was bleaching his wig further, on Thursday, and went too far. It looked like white cotton candy. He couldn't stop crying. Finally, I grabbed the thing, cut a few sections, curled a few spots and plopped it on his head.

"Dry your eyes, princess, and look in the mirror," I said.

He did and beamed as he dabbed his tears away.

"I look just like Marilyn in 'Some Like It Hot'!" he cried excitedly.

Well, Marilyn was attractive and didn't have a mustache, but, yes, the wig did look like her hair in that film.

"Some Like It Hot" led to "The World Is Hot." The confusion over the column may have resulted from the argument he was attempting to make which was not very Thomas Friedman-like. He was going for Marilyn's character in "The Misfits" who tries to make a comment on the brutality against animals but bascially ends up screaming, "Stop it! It's hurting us all!"

He did a pretty good job of channeling that character, actually. But that doesn't mean I'm staying up all night listening to him strum the ukulele while he coos "Running Wild."

I told him, "Thomas Friedman, you full figured boys need to stick together. When you want to show off your song and dance skills, go to Simon Rosenberg."

He said he would but Simon's left his "Farrah phase" and is now "soaking up Cheryl Ladd." He assured me that the new one length wig was "fabulous" and that Simon has a "killer" version of "Think It Over." I told him I'd take his word for it but I needed to get back to sleep.

He tapped me on the shoulder and said he wanted to share one more thing. Groaning I rolled over as he said he wanted to talk about the Senate.

I perked up for a minute thinking he might want to discuss the two resolutions (one weak, one strong) the Democrats tried to pass this week. I waited as he stared off into space, tilted his head (to make sure I noticed the mole he'd been applying in his quest to be the new Marilyn Monroe) and then finally spoke.

"There a 100 members of the Senate. That's a quarter of a centruy. Makes a girl think."

It wasn't a "quarter of a century," but I recognized the line and decided the sooner I played along, the sooner I'd be able to get back to sleep.

"About what?"

"About the future. Millionaires. Flocks of them. They all go south for the winter. Like birds."

"Go to bed, Sugar," I told him. "You need your beauty sleep."








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Saturday, June 17, 2006

The 'revolutionary' Thomas Friedman

I blame Amy Goodman.

The last week or so, I blame it all on Amy Goodman.

Sometimes I curse her. I know it's not her fault. But I'm the one living with the problem.

Since Thomas Friedman did his call-in on "Democracy Now!," he can't shut up about it.

He barges into my study groups, mixers, you name it -- once I was emerging from a classroom and there he was in the hall entertaining people with, yet again, "As I was saying to Amy Goodman . . ."

It's all "Amy this" and "Amy that" -- all the time.

He's completely rewritten the exchange in his mind -- as I knew he would, as he was already starting to the day of the interview.

Now it's, "Well you know, Amy, Amy Goodman, did say to me, 'Thomas Friedman, you are the last hope for humanity, for the animal kingdom, for our solar system and beyond!'"

He'll usually shrug after making that statement, in an attempt at false modesty, a very showy attempt.

How much is it working?

So much that some of my classmates are buying the nonsense.

"Oh, Betinna, you are so lucky being married to Thomas Friedman! He is such a radical!"

Thomas Friedman? My husband Thomas Friedman? The man whose only act of 'civil disobediance' involved protesting the local cable company?

I ask that and suddenly I hear, "Oh, he's for digital freedom as well? He is so incredible!"

Digital freedom?

What?

He protested outside the cable company about the cable going out! The sign he carried read: "Stop the censorship! Demand Manhattan Cable replay the 'Saved by the Bell' episode we missed yesterday when the cable went out!"

He even had a little chant:

Screech, Screech
I beseech
Zach, Zach
Bring him back
Slater, Slater
No one's greater
Manhattan Cable
You suck!

But ever since that embarrassing performance he gave on "Democracy Now!," he's convinced himself that he's now "conquered the new media medium."

We were shopping, for him naturally, last weekend, for new black turtlenecks, and he couldn't shut up about that to the saleswoman.

"Well, that is wonderful," she said smoothly, "but you do realize that you're in the women's department, Mr. Friedman?"

Thomas Friedman explained he had very weak muscles in his lower back and therefore needed to purchase his clothing from the women's department.

She looked at him, then at the black turtleneck he was holding, nodded cheerfully and led us over to the women's lingerie to show him the collection of women's thongs he had been inquiring of. If he showed half the enthusiasm for "Democracy Now!" that he did fondling the thongs, he might learn something.

Instead, he turns on the TV to 'watch.' But he never watches. He may glance at the TV while it's on as he makes countless calls.

"What are you doing?" he'll ask whomever is on the other end and, without giving them a chance to respond, declare, "I'm watching 'Democracy Now!' You know I was recently on. It's the largest independent media collaboration in the country, airing on over 420 radio and TV stations. On Pacifica Radio stations, community radio stations, some NPR stations, college radio stations, on public access TV, on some PBS stations and on satellite TV -- DISH network: Free Speech TV ch. 9415 and Link TV ch. 9410, DIRECTV: Link TV ch. 375, and on the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, in addition to podcasting and streaming online at www.democracynow.org Monday through Friday."

Hopefully, with all the people he's calling, the program's getting some new listeners and viewers, but I'm not sure. Any interest they might have in the program is probably killed as soon as he explains that he's "taken Amy Goodman under my wing. I even wrote a column for her 'Access of Evil' that's in the current edition of 'The Nation' magazine. 'Access of Evil.' What's it about? It's about how we give too much access to a bunch of blowhards and not enough to the people like me. It was inspired by Amy, Amy Goodman, saying to me, 'Thomas Friedman, the world needs more you.' Of course, I attempted to disagree but she's a very intelligent and persuasive person so even I had to agree that, yes, the world did need more of me. She's begging me to do a weekly gig on her show and I'm telling her I'm too busy for that but we need to schedule a time for me to come back on where we can be face to face. She said, 'Oh Thomas Friedman, you opposite me? I'm not sure I could think straight!' I told her I'd carry her, the way I do everyone when I appear opposite them. You know how you could help her? You could e-mail her at
mail@democracynow.org and say, 'That Thomas Friedman is a hoot, a holler, and a gas. Thank you for having him on!' Or better yet, call 1-888-999-3877 and purchase a copy of the broadcast featuring me. Oh, gotta run! Talk at you later!"

And with that he's on to the next call, over and over throughout the hour. Tuesday night, I heard him on the phone with Simon Rosenberg discussing how to best care for wigs and pantyhose, when he slipped in, "Did you hear? Amy Goodman's trying to drop Juan Gonzalez as her co-host and give the job to me?"

As soon as he was off the phone, I confronted him.

"Thomas Friedman, how dare you spread lies?"

He looked hurt and replied, "Well, I couldn't tell Simon that the Farrah Fawcett wig looked bad on him! He's already bought a red one-piece bathing suit, Betinna!"

"I'm not referring to your shared tips on cross-dressing. You know damn well that Amy Goodman is not trying to replace Juan Gonzalez with you."

"She could be!" he screamed getting agitated. "She could be! You don't know every thing. You don't know every damn thing, Betinna. How dare you listen in on my private phone call! Who do you think you are anyway? Alberto Gonzales!"

With that, he tossed his head wildly to make the blonde ringlets on his wig bounce and shimmer.
That wig.

I'd almost gotten used to it in the apartment. Then I see him on campus without it and realize, the next time he's at home with the wig on, how ridiculous he looks. He doesn't think so. He's even found an artist to paint him wearing it. He's been sitting for the portrait in his "spare time." His life is nothing but spare time!

Mid-week, I was wishing he would show up on campus in that wig just so everyone could see a real side of him. But there he was, in his silk, black, women's turtleneck, with a brown beret perched on his head (he wanted green but it clashed with his blouse), an unlit Gitanes dangling from his mouth, as he spoke about the coming 'revolution' of which he is, of course, one of the leaders. As he poisoned young minds, I was prepared. I'd printed up the transcript of his appearance so that they could read what had really happened a week ago as opposed to the way he was portraying it.

As Thomas Friedman continued speaking, bit by bit, there were bursts of giggles as people read through the transcripts. Slowly the crowd vanished. As they walked away, his confused eyes trailed after them and then slowly came to rest on me.

"You!" he hissed. "Betinna, what did you do?"

I just waved at him and walked on to class with a broad smile across my face.

When I got home he was on the phone with Simon Rosenberg, attempting to explain to him why cotton did not make for good stuffing material when you were going to the beach. He eyed me for a moment, then clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clopped out of the living room in his high heels -- the phone cord trailing behind him. (We must be the only home in Manhattan without a portable phone!)

Why he even bothered is beyond me. The more excited he gets, the louder he gets. I could hear him throughout the apartment.

"She will not stop our goal! This revolution belongs to you and me, Simon. Us and all the other full figured boys."

I'd hear something like that and burst out laughing. But he was quite serious. I made a mental note to drop "fat ass" and use "full figured" the next time I needed a favor from him.

Who knows what Simon Rosenberg was saying, but Thomas Friedman was full of tossing out "morsels to the masses" that would let them think they were in control when, in reality, nothing had changed.

"Mark my words, Simon, we will get our war with Hugo Chavez!"

I'm sure he thought he sounded quite masterful, possibly even diabolical, but the reality is he sounded just as pathetic as any of the female characters on 'Desperate Housewives'.

But he puts the pathetic talk where his mouth is. I saw that Friday when a friend slid his latest column over to me in class. "Seeds for a Geo-Green Party" has all the sloganeering you'd expect from a fraud like Thomas Friedman. Just enough to make you think he might be doing something when the reality is that he's doing nothing. "Tax the people, not the corporations" is inscribed in his DNA. And, just as he promised Simon, he was pushing Hugo Chavez as the great, big-bad, even if it made no sense in the context of the sentence. (Unless the peroxide from his newly blonde wig has seeped into his head and damaged his memory, Thomas Friedman does know that Venezuela is not part of the "Arab-Muslim" world. He must have been so giddy on war pornography that he forgot that basic fact.)

My friend, Dona, a journalism major, asked me, "Why does he act like he's unsure of the Iraq war now while he's wanting war with Venezuela?"

I told her what my neighbor Rebecca had told me: If the detergent doesn't work, you don't keep claiming it gets clothes clean while you're trying to market your new product.

Thomas Friedman's new detergent is war with Venezuela, he can't promote that and still stand by the illegal war he cheerled us into -- not when it's gone to hell.








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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Thomas Friedman, the Jayne Mansfield of the New York Times

This morning, I'm eating my grapefruit, reviewing my notes for class in my head and trying to get Thomas Friedman off my back.

"Read my column, Betinna!" he's screaming in a voice far too loud for five-thirty in the morning.

Truth be told, I hadn't been reading his column.

His wearing my pantyhose was a godsend. Yes, the elastic was shot to hell, yes, his toe "claws" left runners, and, yes, he looked ridiculous them.

However, it's also true that we all need a good laugh and the joke is always my husband Thomas Friedman. Another benefit from his nylon fetish was the fact that I didn't have to read his drippy columns.

"Thomas Friedman, get out of my pantyhose and I'll read your column," I offered early on.

He didn't and I just let it ride -- enjoying the ride. Which sadly came to an end all too soon. Pin it on his love for the "golden age of Hollywood." One night, he woke me up screaming and slapping my shoulder.

I opened an eye to see what the fuss was while thinking, "I am not running to the store for gummy bears or canned cheese. Fat ass better just make do with the beef jerkey and corn nuts he screamed for all last week."

Meanwhile he's pointing at the TV screen and screaming, "Look! Look!"

Black & white movie. I squint, try to focus and finally make out someone.

"Barbara Stanwyck," I say, rolling over and wondering why he felt the need to wake me for his pop quiz?

"No, Betinna!" he said punching my shoulder. "On her leg."

Rolling over, I glared at him.

"No, you didn't," I said rubbing my shoulder.

"It was just a love tap," snapped Thomas Friedman. "Don't try to play Tina Turner."

"Why?" I asked. "Do you already have that wig too?"

He ignored me and pointed again at the TV screen.

There was Stanwyck with an anklette.

"Isn't that pretty?"

I grunted and went back to sleep.

I knew this was not a case of my husband Thomas Friedman spotting something "pretty" that he planned to give to me as a gift. As always, it was all about Thomas Friedman.

The next day was Tuesday.

He was gone half the day. When he returned, carrying many shopping bags, he'd purchased himself an anklette.

Actually, it was a gold necklace. But he has very thick ankles.

What's more, he had bought his own hose and garters. He didn't care for my pantyhose, he told me. The hose were much "silkier" and helped with his alleged lower back pain.

Whatever. That a grown man can conduct himself thusly while a war wages is truly sad. It's all just faceless victims to him. Not surprising, of course. He read a TV review in the paper about "CSI" and laughed along.

"Oh those stocky middle-aged men," he chuckled. "When will they learn the world belongs to the young studs like me."

Like him?

Regardless, his decision to purchase hose meant that he was out of my pantyhose.

So this morning at breakfast, he informed me, I had no excuse to avoid reading his latest -- "A Well of Smiths and Xias."

Possibly the most racist thing he's created yet. I say "created" because we do not have a daughter named "Natalie" or, for that matter, any daughter at all. Nor had he attended any high school graduation. However, they did rerun the episode of "Saved By The Bell" Monday where everyone graduates and sings that dopey song about "Our moments here have all become unraveled, and so our high school story finally ends, we'll go on with our lives once we have parted, but how can we say farewell to our friends." Thomas Friedman was blubbering by the time they repeated the last line, "But how can we say farewell to our friends."

So it shouldn't be a surprise that he ended up creating a high school graduation for a column this week. Listing various surnames of hypothetical graduates, Thomas Friedman wrote: "I went to a high school graduation Monday and a United Nations meeting broke out."

Written like the middle-aged, fat, White man he is. I acted like I continued reading but mainly just glanced at it. His racist remark was in keeping with him in so many ways. For instance, if we had a daughter, which we don't, it would be just like Thomas Friedman to never know any of her classmates' names until he breezed in for a high school graduation. That is just the type of father Thomas Friedman would be. Of course, if we had a daughter, she would be bi-racial -- a detail Thomas Friedman left out of his little invention this morning.

Finishing my grapefruit, I made to leave. I've been leaving before six each morning, claiming it took that long to get to The New School but mainly just wanting to get away from him as soon as possible.

On the way through the living room, I happened to look at him sitting smartly on the sofa. He was wearing his white hose with red garters, his shorty robe, a pair of flip flops and what had to be, I swear, the Judy Miller wig bleached blonde.

"Well aren't you all dolled up," I remarked still a little stunned.

"I'm going to be on TV," he giggled. "Sh. Don't tell anyone."

"Holy mother of God," I thought, "if he goes on TV like this, Bill Keller and Gail Collins will fire his fat ass."

"Thomas Friedman, you are not leaving the apartment like that!"

"Jealous?" Thomas Friedman asked, dangling his leg to draw attention to his anklette.

Seeing my college dreams go up in smoke, us out on the street homeless and standing in the unemployment line with a Thomas Friedman dolled up like Bette Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", I jumped on him and wresteled him to the floor.

There was a knocking at the door.

"Mr. Friedman," the voice said. "It's your driver. Ready to go?"

"He's not going with you!" I yelled through the closed door as I covered his mouth. "He's arranged other transportation. No tip! Go away!"

I could hear the driver walking away from the door and feel Thomas Friedman biting into my hand.

Looking at my hand, my first thought was that I was bleeding. Then I realized that it was just Thomas Friedman's heavy lipstick.

"Ha!" I told him. "Now you won't be on TV!"

Angry, Thomas Friedman rose to his feet, fixed his wig and checked the seams of his hose before glaring at me.

"But ch AAH, Blance, ya AAH in that chair," he hissed.

It took me a minute to realize he was quoting Bette Davis.

"Whatever," I said leaving the room to wash his heavy lipstick off my hand.

When I came back in he was on the phone.

"I would still love to talk to Amy," he said into the phone before covering it and whispering to me, "Amy Goodman."

Amy Goodman?

Yes, Thomas Friedman was still smarting over Arundhati Roy's critique of him.

He'd whined to his former mentor Robert Fisk, begged and pleaded, until finally, probably just to get rid of him, Fisk had phoned Amy Goodman to see if she'd do him a favor and book Thomas Friedman for her show? She probably heard the weary desperation in his voice and agreed.

I waited, wishing I could turn away, but unable to. Filled with that feeling of "It's going to happen!" that you get when you see someone about to trip and fall.

Thomas Friedman winked at me and twirled a finger through a ringlet of his wig.

I have no idea how it went on Amy Goodman's end. I'm honestly afraid to watch the show. I know how it went from his end of the phone call. He gave two minute replies that never appeared to possess a coherent thought though they were all heavy with corn pone phrases and plugs for his book. At one point, the exchange must have gotten testy.

Either Amy Goodman confronted him with some of his past remarks or else she brought up his weight because his whole face turned red. Redder than the lipstick he'd smeared across his lips. He huffed that he couldn't be expected to remember something he'd said in the 1980s because he'd said "Hundreds of thousands of words since then."

I hope Goodman responded, "Yeah, just in your replies on this show alone!"

At one point, he started talking about how I am against Bully Boy's illegal war.

I hissed, "Don't you dare mention my name!"

He rolled his eyes but didn't mention my name. Thankfully. Like I need to become a joke at my new school -- ironically called "The New School."

By the end of the interview, he wasn't crying. Just spitting mad.

I left to head for campus. Checking my e-mail at the library, I see he's already sent out a "press release" (apparently my being married to him puts me on his list of recipients)

In his press release, he writes: "As I argued before, we must invade independent media to educate them. I feel that I did that today. I will go anywhere, to any location, regardless of whether or not they have a Starbucks -- but they better have a Dunkin Doughnuts -- to get my message out. I think that the lively exchange I and Amy Goodman had will help her, help independent media and help the world which, as you know, is flat. I am glad to do my part in this global battle."

Moment later, my cell phone rang. It was Thomas Friedman.

"Betinna," he began, "I'm worried about how I may have come off on 'Democracy Now!' today."

"You came off very blonde," I replied. "In fact, like a natural blonde."

"Thank you, dear. You always say just the right thing. Hey, on the way home this afternoon, I need more jerkey and probably two cans of NAIR. Thanks."

With that he was gone. The blonde starlet had listed demands and had nothing else to say. Thomas Friedman, the Jayne Mansfield of the "Times."







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Saturday, June 03, 2006

Focusing on the paper to avoid my husband

I'm ignoring Thomas Friedman until he gets out of my pantyhose. He thinks it gives his legs shape. I think it just ruins a good pair on pantyhose. Let's face it, he's a very large man. So I've spent the morning going through the paper and I found two things I want to put on the computer so I remember them. First up, a TV review that was very interesting and, second, I have found a roundtable exploring a number of issues.


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"TV Review: Will & Grace -- goodbye, good riddance"
Thursday night, NBC's Will & Grace ended its eighth season and its series run.

For us, the funniest plot revolved around Rosario (Shelley Morrison) and Val (regular guest-star Molly Shannon). Having fought Grace, stalked Jack and been knocked out by Karen, it was past time Val set her eyes on Rosario."Hey, Nutso!" Rosario cried catching Val watching her wax the floors of Karen's mansion, "if you get off on household fluids, go stalk Mr. Clean!"

Of course Val did no such thing, but she did provide Rosario with a scheme to oust Karen (Megan Mullally) from the manse and make it her own. It was hilarious, and a long time coming, to see Rosario get the upper hand.

Meanwhile, Grace's water broke just as Leo (Harry Connick, Jr.) showed up and learned he was the father of the baby. Accompanying Grace (Deborah Messing) and Will (Eric McCormack) to the hospital and listening to them bicker throughout the labor, he finally had to face the reality that, while there was a place for him in Grace's life, the friendship bond between Will and Grace will never fade or die.

Jack rediscovered the joys of performing when a recently out of the closet Harlin (Gary Grubbs) returned to announce he's purchased a legitimate theater on Broadway which will be where Just Jack: 2010 will debut. "Oh my God," Jack will realize, "that only leaves me four years to pull my act together!"

Best line in the subplot was probably when Harlin explained to Jack why it took so long for him to realize his own sexuality, "I'm from Texas, Jack. We watch a lot of football. Took me forever to realize it wasn't the cries of 'Hut one! Hut two!' that were getting me excited. It was the the buns in the air on the guy crouched over --"

"That's great," Jack replied. "Now about my revue. I see sequins. I think it's important to sparkle when I move."

Which leads him to recruit Bobbie Adler (Debbie Reynolds) to help him with arrangements and choreography -- a post she readily accepts because she's determined to sabotage the production in order to take the lead in her own show Menopause or The Men All Paused: Bobbie Adler's Salute to Rocking Pop Classics of the '80s and Life Changes.

Best of all may be the moment when Rob (Tom Gallop) and Ellen (Leigh Allyn Baker) put Leo straight: Will and Grace and Leo, without the buffer zone of Will & Grace, is just Rob and Ellen.

"Long term marriage without the sex," Ellen explained.

"Long term marriage without the sex, Leo," Rob confirmed nodding agreeably.

"That's what I just said, Rob!" Ellen snarls at her husband.

It was hilarious. It wrapped up threads and points you might have feared were forgotten.
It was a classic series finale . . . if, like us, you provided your own finale.

If, however, you merely watched the two hours on NBC (one hour of tribute, one hour of show), you should probably immediately head for the nearest police station -- you were robbed.You were robbed of laughter, you were robbed of joy.

Someone thought that instead of wrapping up details, we need an "experience." Despite having an hour, the laughs were in short supply -- but then when you time travel forward over eighteen years offering "experience" there's so little time for anything else.

You read that correctly. Will & Grace, the show that could utilize multiple minutes with the game of Hate Her/Love Her (where Will and Grace flipped through a magazine noting celebrities) suddenly decided it really needed to say something.

What it had to say wasn't funny and, hate to break it to them, it wasn't worth hearing.
We expect to hear from friends involved with the show about this review. If the critique hurts, consider the pain you inflicted on the viewers with that finale and accept the review as payback.
What was the heart of the show? Will & Grace, their friendship. Early on in the finale, that's destroyed. But, good news!, in two years time they make up! Of course, with the good comes the bad -- basically the full hour episode -- which is they then avoid each other for about fifteen years.

This is an ode to friendship?

This wasn't about fate -- a concept the cynical Will & Grace would normally sneer at before a half-hour episode's end -- it was saying that the friendship was too intense and needed a long rest. That was the message from beginning to end of the finale, belabored, underlined, highlighted and spelled out. If Grace hadn't broken with Will, she never would have been happy! Nor would he!

So we ask you, dear readers, are you unhappy?

A little or a lot?

Maybe you're just bored?

Well, look to the person nearest and dearest. That friend, the one that you think has helped pull you through? No, no, no, he or she has pulled you down. For years. And years. You must break with him or her.

Considering that we're talking about a show with two gay characters (and Karen), Will & Grace has seldom had anything to say about or to a community. What it has offered is the importance of friendship. It spits on that concept with the finale. The message is, if Will and Grace had moved out on each other sooner (and stopped being friends), they would have actually gotten on with their lives.

Maybe that message seems familiar? If it does, it's probably because the show has floated it before. As early as Jack and Rosario's wedding (season one finale), Will and Grace were splitting up. That moment repeated throughout the life of the show. But the thing was, the characters, all of them, knew that wasn't reality. Reality was that Grace could never make up her mind about men. (She was breaking up with Ben until he beat her to it and suddenly she had to have him. That's the basic Grace storyline throughout the show.) Reality is that Will couldn't have a successful relationship because NBC worried that gay love scenes would freak out viewers.
This is the post-Ellen show. And it did very little for gays and lesbians by comparison. Ellen ended with a roar. Will & Grace came along with the producers repeatedly belaboring that they weren't Ellen. And they weren't. They had to have many years of ratings success before they'd finally attempt a same-sex kiss that wasn't played for laughs. Will & Grace was some sort of regressive Hokey Pokey television program, you take two steps back and inch your big toe forward, you take three steps back and . . .

But on the show, we were supposed to believe that Will's relationships died because he was too controlling. For most of the series, we were told that and not shown it because the men were all offscreen (such as Michael) or the romantic/sex scenes happened out of camera range (which is also true of the bulk of Jack's love life as well).

As early as the show's seventh episode, Grace was blaming Will for the state of her romantic life.
Season two had them encountering the bitter, angry Joseph and Sharon -- a possible fate that awaited them both. This happened repeatedly, these warnings, and always the characters rejected it. The characters, like the audience, understood the importance of friendship. A full hour and over eighteen years to cover might have seemed like the perfect time for a 'life lesson' to the producers, but it spat on the audience who made this show a hit by embracing 'the destructive power of friendship' message as the show faded to black.

Until the last episode, the jokes were always there, the timing was always there and it was all built on the bedrock of the two main characters' friendship. On the finale, they decide to pull the rug out from under the audience.

What falls to the floor is their own understanding of what made the show a hit.
Refuting everything the show's endorsed didn't leave them any time to be funny. If, like us, you see the episode as one producer's attempt to demonstrate that he and his own Grace couldn't cut it as friends, but that doesn't mean they weren't important to each other, you may wonder why he can't grasp what the audience long had -- Will & Grace left the world of mortals some time ago.

No one needed someone's sorry reality to go out on. No one watching needed to wipe some bitter producer's spit off their face. Will and Grace surpassed their prototypes years ago (probably somewhere around the taping of the first episode), to drag them back down to someone's ugly reality wasn't funny, wasn't entertaining and wasn't worth watching.

Ty says we (Ava and C.I.) got a number of e-mails on Friday complaining that last week we didn't tell readers the character of Eric was returning for the final episode of the other Thursday night finale. We didn't. We told you that That 70s Show paid up the debt to the viewers. We hinted several times. But they were attempting to keep Topher Grace's return a secret so we weren't going to spoil it.

Normally, we'd stand by that decision. However, having watched as puke was hurled from the screen on NBC, we think now that maybe we should have headlined that piece, "Watch That 70s Show season finale -- Topher Grace returns!" The surprise we may have spoiled for some would have been minimal compared to the damage Will & Grace did to its loyal viewers in the lousy, disgraceful finale.
The only good thing about the ending is we don't have to fear Will & Grace: The Reunion. Not just because the earliest they could do an update is about twenty years from now. But also because, who the hell would want to watch? In one hour, they destroyed all the good will they'd built up.

The thing with actors in comedy roles is that they some times get a little itchy for 'drama' to prove to everyone they can 'act.' Possibly that's why the actors didn't scream when they got the script? They should have screamed. They should have said no. The network couldn't. It was the final episode, they had no say other than to air or not air (they shouldn't have aired it, or else burned it off during the summer). The actors were the audience's last line of defense and they failed the audience.

Friday, friends started calling to ask "What the hell was that?" Good question. Hope no one involved with the show is dreaming Emmy wins because most of the people who would normally vote for the show and its team are pretty disgusted with the sh*t that made it on air -- maybe that'll fade by nomination time but right now the mood is disgusted.

It had nothing to do with the characters or with the audience, it had to do with one drama queen (with a St. Elmo's Fire fetish) wanting to work through their own personal issues. As a friend in programming said, "That's what therapy's for."

If you missed the finale (consider yourself lucky) but watched at other times, let's explain to you what you were spared. Having already had a dream sequence (that was actually funny) where the characters aged, you might have thought makeup wouldn't be overly taxed for the rest of the episode but you'd be wrong. We had to see three attractive performers "aged." (Three because the joke for the character Karen was that she avoided aging through repeated surgery -- the same joke they trotted out in the dream sequence.)

Deborah Messing, if you really look that way in 20 years, avoid the cameras. Really, no one needs to see that. And the thing is, these days most people don't see that. Not because of plastic surgery (though that helps some people) but because the boomer generation broke the concept of what middle aged looks like. But not on this show. On this show, finding the characters in the near future means finding them fat, tired and ugly. Which, by the way, wasn't played for laughs.

Now when you're sleek, shiny and pretty much all surface (Will & Grace was) appearance matters. The show that never wanted to say anything that couldn't be prefaced with a pop cultural reference suddenly had a "message." The message was that when a gay man and straight woman are friends, they will always stand in the way of each other's happiness and only by ending the friendship (sixteen years is ending, not a "break") can happiness be brought about. It's an ugly message and a bit like The Andy Griffith Show deciding to go out with a hard hitting look at police abuse. It was unneeded and unwanted.

Val? If you're wondering, she wasn't on. Nor Rob or Ellen. Who has the time to provide characters the audience loved, let alone laughs, when you've want to preach the sort of hate that usually comes out of Jerry Falwell's mouth?

Sure, Will kissed a homophobe in a hospital (don't ask, it wasn't funny, it was just preachy -- the whole hour played as though everyone had just graduated from some right-wing divinity school). But the real message was -- and Falwell, Dobson, et al can take comfort in this -- a friendship between gay and straight only brings misery. We've gone beyond the stereotpye that gays will lead unhappy lives to a new one that says not only are they prone to unhappiness (such as breaking off friendships), but they're bound and determined to drag down every straight person who befriends them.

The producers were right the first year when they told Entertainment Weekly that they weren't making Ellen. Where that show (with the coming out) offered a look that went beyond the stereotypical, Will & Grace didn't. If the same-sex possibilites (largely off screen) bothered you too much, you only had to wait a moment or two before Karen was using some stereotypical insult for gays and lesbians. Or maybe Jack would launch into yet another attack on lesbians -- fun for lesbian-haters of all orientations!

A braver show on friendship, Sex in the City, didn't feel the need to trash friendship as they offered up their final episode. Detractors may argue that Karen and Jack demonstrated the counter-opinion -- that a straight and gay could be friends and helpful to one another. Anyone making that argument has a very elastic concept of straight considering Karen's sexual history.

So here's what happened. You spent eight seasons celebrating friendship only to learn in the last episode that, indeed, the friendship held the main characters back, prevented them from living.

It's an ugly message and it's really too bad Will & Grace bothered to come back from the nonsense (and laugh killer) of Grace as fashion plate. They did come back from that. But now our attitude is why did they even bother? Over a year ago, we wrote "We Will Miss Will & Grace." The last episode made letting go so easy.


It also made us fear tonight's finale, another show going off after eight seasons. We worry that if we watch the final episode of Charmed, we'll be informed that Piper could have had joy, happiness and non-stop good times if only she hadn't been held back by those two sisters (Phoebe and Paige currently; Phoebe and Pru originally). If Will & Grace can use the last episode to destroy all they stood for, sky's the limit for the super natural sisters of Charmed.


And here's the roundtable. "A Conversation in three parts."

I
Setup

Rebecca: So this is a joint entry and it was planned to be C.I. and myself and then I started thinking, "Why don't we see if Cedric wants to take part?" C.I. was fine with that but said that Betty should be invited because she's "trapped under Thomas Friedman" at her sight which is very true. So we invited both and it's now a joint entry of four people. When it was just the two of us, I asked C.I., "Will this be in lower case?" That is how I do it at my site and C.I. responded, "Are you going to type it up?" So no lower case if you're reading this at my site.


Cedric: That's Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Betty's site is Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man, C.I. does The Common Ills and is part of The Third Estate Sunday Review, and I'm Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix.

Betty: Cedric and I are helping with the note taking and typing so it's not all falling on C.I. I'm thrilled to be invited to participate and even more thrilled not to have to figure out what idiotic mess Thomas Friedman's made for Betinna to clean up.

C.I.: Betinna is the main character in Betty's online, comic novel. This weekend may, or may not be, the fiction edition of The Third Estate Sunday Review. Rebecca and I had discussed that and how a roundtable wouldn't be possible if it was the fiction edition, where short stories and other things are highlighted, and we wanted to address a few things. Cedric had noted something in an e-mail to me and in a phone call to Rebecca so we knew he was on the same page, to recap on why he was invited. Elaine and Mike weren't invited, nor was anyone else, but that was due to the fact that they have their own pattern for posting and also I'm not sure that they're posting this evening. If they do, it will be late because Elaine has plans. So they may be posting on Saturday instead.

Rebecca: Betty was our cut off. Four people we could handle. Besides the fact that she's always looking for a way to post an entry about anything other than Thomas Friedman, we were also curious about what she would think about the topics discussed. Add in that she got a promotion at her job and wasn't sure she'd be able to do a post this week as she got used to the new responsibilities and we really wanted to include her. But four is our cut-off for this. Anymore and Jim would be saying, "I think this should be a piece for The Third Estate Sunday Review."

Betty: I think the easiest way to start this off is to note Rebecca's grandmother's because she wrote about her last night in "more marine news and talking about my grandmother." As a result, I'm sure people are concerned. I read C.I.'s entry this morning and saw that everything was fine, then went to read Rebecca's entry and it still made me anxious, even knowing that her grandmother was fine.

Rebecca: She called me out of the blue and asked me to visit. We usually talk on the phone several times a week and see each other at least once a week. If she'd called Thursday about wanting to get together next week, it wouldn't have surprised me but when she called Thursday and asked me to come over that day, I was expecting either good news or bad news, and worried about it being bad. We had a nice visit and discussed a number of issues, personal ones, current events, etc. But near the end of the visit, I kept asking her if something was wrong because I was sure she had to have some bad news that she was waiting to break. When none was forthcoming, I worked myself up into a state of worry where I was convinced that she had some bad news about her health and this was one of those "Everything's fine" moments where, only after, you realize that the person was trying to say goodbye.

Cedric: But that wasn't it.

Rebecca: No. She phoned this morning and she was just very disturbed by the news of Haditha.

C.I.: Just to set the stage, November 19, 2005 something happened in the Iraqi town of Haditha. The military's official version, which the mainstream press was happy to parrot, was that 'insurgents' had attacked American troops, a roadside bomb had gone off, taking the lives of 15 Iraqis and a United States marine, following the explosion, 'insurgents' had began firing on American troops and, in responding with gunfire, eight insurgents were killed.

Cedric: Give an example of two who ran with the official version because you covered it this morning.

C.I.: Writing for the New York Times, Edward Wong and Hassan M. Fattah contributed "Road Bomb Aimed at Convoy Kills 15 Civilians and a Marine in Restive Iraqi Province" which offered nothing but 'officials say . . .' There is no correction to that item currently. If you access the article online, they've still not provided a correction.

Rebecca: And before we go any further, explain that paper's ads because I understood it in the second entry but you were on the phone with me for both entries and I don't think they were written the way they would have been if I hadn't been jawing your ear off. FYI, when I called C.I. I was blubbering and it took about ten minutes before I calmed down enough to explain that everything truly was fine, I was just filled with relief that my grandmother was okay.

C.I.: Hold on. Let me grab a paper so I can read it word for word. The ad runs all the time. It's an ad for the New York Times run in the pages of the New York Times. Okay, this is Tuesday's paper because I just looked at the backs of the sections to avoid flipping through them to find it. It's probably run since, more than once. They run it all the time. On Tuesday, the full page ad appeared on B8 which was the back page of "The Arts" section. It's a black and white ad, full page. You see the "T" and maybe the "i" of the "Times" in a square with an arrow, like the on you have with your computer mouse, resting on it. Big letters: "College students, meet your new research assistant." Smaller letters: "Looking for help with that research paper? Find it at TimesSelect, the premium service at nytimes.com. With TimesSelect, you'll get access to 25 years of articles from The Times -- articles on politics, history, science, art, business, sports and just about any other subject you're assigned. And TimesSelect also offers e-mail alerts whenever a new article on your subject appears." Either in the same size or slightly bigger: "Find out about our special university discount for students and faculty." Then: "Visit nytimes.com/university." Then: "TimesSelect" with "nytimes.com" beneath it. This ad runs all the time.

Betty: So the point of the ad is that they're telling college students and, let's face it, high school and middle school students, that a subscription to the Times will provide you with accuracy but if you're trying to find out about Haditha and you search that looking for November, what you find is Wong and Fattah's article which still has no correction to it?

C.I.: Correct. And in case anyone's been asleep for the last few weeks, the official version has come undone. Civilians were killed. For more on that, you can listen, watch or read the transcript of "Haditha Massacre: Was it an Isolated Event and Did the Military Try to Cover it Up?" from Tuesday's Democracy Now!

Cedric: Before we go any further, can I ask what the service, the paper's, provides?

C.I.: I can't tell you the full service because I rarely go to the website. Links to articles we discuss each morning are usually coming from members' e-mails. There are tiers. For instance, the op-ed columns are now "behind the wall." You can't access them without paying for them. The opposite of the Wall St. Journal which makes those available to everyone at their website but makes people pay for news content. The first tier, as I understand it, is somewhere around fifty-five dollars for a year. That allows you to read the content online, new content, and allows you to search a certain number of articles, I believe. I subscribe to the print edition and the way it works for me is, if I log in, I can see anything in that day's paper with no charge, I can also see anything in the last seven days for free. After that, for anything older, I'm able to see 100 articles a month for free -- articles in the archive that I would be charged for otherwise.

Cedric: Okay. Sorry to go off topic.

C.I.: No, it's a question that pops up in the e-mails and now I can pull that post it off the computer. That's what I know of it, what little I know. I'm sure, and I'll even give the phone number out, that anyone at 1-800-698-4637 can answer any questions on it and, if I got a number wrong on that, it's 1-800-NYTIMES.

Cedric: Thanks. If anyone's wondering, my nephew's doing a college course, this summer, he's still in high school, and he's nervous about the research paper that will be a part of the class.


C.I.: Well, instead of signing up for something, just call me and I'll e-mail whatever he needs. I really do not go online that often and have never had more than ten of my hundred alloted articles for the month. So let me know, he can then look at what it has to offer, and if he likes it, you can go on from there.

Cedric: I will gladly take you up on that kind offer to test drive the Times. And I will get us back on topic by noting something, on Haditha, from the Iraq snapshot on Thursday. This was what a young girl, one of the survivors of what looks like a slaughter of Iraqis by US marines in November 2005 had to say: "They killed my father in the kitchen. They killed my mother, and my sister Noor. They killed her when they shot her in the head. She was only 15 years old. My other sister was shot with seven bullets in the head. She was only 10 years old."

Betty: That stuck in my head. More than any back and forth or "investigation is ongoing" or anything else, that stuck in my head. That little girl that Cedric quoted is only twelve-years-old. I forget her name.

C.I.: Safa Younis.

Betty: In front of her, she saw her father die, she saw her mother die, she saw two sisters die. Safa is just twelve-years-old. And that's what she saw. And if you spoke to other Iraqis, you'd probably hear some with similar stories.

Rebecca: Because this is the occupation.

Cedric: The illegal occupation. Dahr Jamail made a point on Tuesday's Democracy Now! about how this, Haditha, is getting attention but most of the other incidents haven't and, at this rate, won't. He specifically tossed ou Falluja and I want to note that. For a few reasons. First off, Jim, Dona, Ava, Ty and Jess always point to the Iraq coverage at The Common Ills as why they were reading from the first day.

C.I.: To cut you off for a second, it was the second day. There was a tiny post on a Friday, outlining the intent, as I saw it, and noting it would probably all be tossed aside quickly. Which it was. But when they say the first day, they mean the first day of real posts. But what happens is, I end up with e-mails saying things like, "It's so great that from your very first post, you were addressing Iraq." That's not true and if I come across those e-mails, I reply to correct that. So let me correct it here. It's the sort of thing that with a larger group, I'm biting my tongue on because there are more important things to discuss and everyone has a point to make. But this will go up at The Common Ills and I want it to be clear there.

Cedric: Okay, second day. What grabbed me was music. First thing I ever contributed for the site, December of 2004, was noting a song that I felt we should all take a moment to appreciate. On Falluja, all I had was what the mainstream provided. That's an issue I've learned about since. That is a huge issue to Dahr Jamail and to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! as well. They always note it. But the reason I'm noting it is because most people don't. That's really true. They ignore it. Or they tossed it out at the end of 2004 and 'moved on.' There are over, I googled, 200 entries at The Common Ills on Falluja. That's how you spell it, "Falluja." If you're highlighting and they spell it "Fallujah," that's how it goes up at the site, so I also searched that spelling. And I realize from trying to find stuff via google on my own site that google doesn't catch everything. But that's what it takes, it takes more than that probably, to get people to pay attention. You can't talk Iraq and not mention what happened in April of 2004 and in November of 2004.

Betty: I would agree with that. Rebecca called me when WBAI, during pledge week, had Robert Fisk's speech on the history of Iraq. That was a powerful speech and I was listening at work. The woman who had the desk next to me was listening and, after the speech, which may have been forty minutes long, she was asking me about Falluja. She knew the mainstream, rah-rah coverage and that's all she knew. She was under the impression that people had been allowed to leave in November, she didn't know about the April events, and that it was just Saddam Hussein's "gang" left inside. She didn't understand why "the British guy," that's what she called him, would go on about Falluja because wasn't that a "good moment" for the country?

Rebecca: So what did you tell her?


Betty: I told her about the fact that it wasn't just men. It was young boys and that many had tried to leave but were turned back. I talked to her about the use of white phosphorus, I talked about how the hospitals were under seige and not allowed to come to the aid of people. And -- are they talking about Mexico?

Rebecca: I'm listening to Flashpoints, sorry. Yes, Dennis Bernstein's speaking to a man named John about of the elections in Mexico. The election is July 2nd, by the way. Marcos and the Zapatistas.

C.I.: I'm not listening because I'm taking notes but I would guess it was John Gibler, independent journalist.

Rebecca: That sounds like the name.

Betty: Sorry to lose focus. But, just to tie what we heard in, that's on a Pacifica station. On a Pacifica station, you can hear that. You can't hear that on a lot of other stations.

C.I.: And we'll come back to that in the second half. There are three breaks planned if they're needed. This first one is the long one -- where, for Betty, she'll be sitting down with her kids for dinner.

II
Race

Cedric: When we left off Betty was making a point about Pacifica Radio.

Betty: Rebecca had Flashpoints on and they were discussing the upcoming elections in Mexico in a way that was quite a bit more than the soundbyte manner of NPR. Cedric had brought up Falluja and some people have no idea of what happened in that city in April of 2004 and November of 2004 which led me to explain how I had listened at work to WBAI to hear Robert Fisk's speech on the history of invasions in and war on Iraq. A woman whose desk was next to mine before I got a promotion at work had been listening as well and what she heard was, really, a revelation to her. She does follow the news on cable, reads the Atlanta Journal-Constitution each day, tries to keep up and she was finding out that there was a great deal she hadn't been informed of.

Rebecca: Did she become a Pacifica listener?

Betty: Not yet. She has kids like I do and that's probably the biggest problem with listening online. If you're at the computer, and you only have the one computer, you've got a kid wanting to put in their Barbie game or whatever. Or else, you're all over the house running after them, in which case, there's little or no listening. But what did change was that she listens WRFG. At five o'clock, you can grab headlines, I do, from Democracy Now! as you're entering traffic after work and headed to daycare to pick up the kids.

Cedric: Could you give the information on where it is on the dial?

Betty: Sure. It's 89.3 FM, WRFG. [Atlanta.] So five to six, you've got it right there, on the airwaves and it works well there because in the morning, you're dropping the kids off and forget about paying attention to anything other than what's going on in the backseat. For me, the way it works out is that I'm alone in the car for the headlines and the first ten to fifteen minutes after depending on traffic. Then it's grab a parking spot, go inside and get the kids, come back and grab the last twenty-five minutes which, when it's hot like it is now, the kids are usually just listening along. They're tired and it's hot, in fact, today it was so hot there wasn't even any griping among them. So that's usually the whole make it home trip, that hour.

Rebecca: And your co-worker is listening to Democracy Now! through that station?

Betty: Yes. She's someone who tries really hard to keep up and we can grab that hour except on Friday when Democracy Now! starts a half-hour earlier but, to be honest, if it was on at the same time on Friday, the second hour would be lost on me in the car because there is no too tired on Friday, on Friday, the kids are always too alert, too active and too vocal to follow anything on the radio after they're in the car. Just a little over on the dial, and I'm not giving it's position, is WABE and I have no use for it. It's NPR. Drive time is the second of two hours of All Things Considered which, strange considering the title, really offers very little to consider.

C.I.: I think that works just reading, but what anyone reading will miss is that on "strange, considering the title, really offers very little to consider" was delivered in Betty's parody of NPR.

Betty: My "White voice." Everyone on NPR sounds exactly the same. And they also have this way of speaking at the end of the piece that seems to be an attempt to make you go, "Hmmm."

Cedric: No matter what the stories is, they always think they're "Things That Make You Go Hmmm."

Betty: If I can stay on that for just one more second, in Atlanta, the PBS problem, the Whiteness of it all, is brought home even more because all the programming seems geared to White people and about White people. To give an example that people brought up today at work, tomorrow there will be a special on skincare --

Rebecca: What?

Betty: I'm not making that up. The woman's name is Adrienne Denese and everyone's making fun of her at work. It's going to teach us how to avoid aging -- public monies for Mary Kay basically. But who is that audience? There's a saying, I bet Cedric knows it --

Cedric: "Black don't crack."

Betty: Right. I mean, African-Americans do get wrinkles. But it's just one more example of WPBA causes the very large Black community in Atlanta to scratch their heads and wonder who they think watches?

Cedric: Do you watch a lot of public television?

Betty: I don't have cable. Or "satellite" since that's now the big thing. Don't have it, won't have it. If broadcast TV ends, the kids can watch their DVDs. TV's never going to be something I'm going to waste money on. Not with three kids. So when we get home in the evening, they'll watch Arthur and I'll work on dinner. In the morning, they're watching Maya and Miguel. Teletubbies is really too young for them. And I really think they should move Sesame Street much earlier. It broadcasts at ten a.m. I don't think most kids catch it.

Cedric: And it's probably the only show for kids where there's actually different races.

Betty: Right. And you get asked that by your kids. I used to lie and say Francine, on Arthur, was "mixed." But my oldest got too smart for that. With the hair on the characters on Arthur, when kids get to a certain age, they know it's drawn White. I've really gone off topic, sorry.

C.I.: Don't apologize. These are points worth making. Someone needs to be saying it and good for you for doing so.

Cedric: Because there is no "public" in public television. It's White with a few guests brought on. That's all they are, guests. And that's not how it was when I was a kid but these days you're more likely to see a Big Red Dog, Clifford, than you are to see an African-American character. And, as Ava's pointed out, Maya and Miguel is a fifties show airing today. Maya's not really that active. Miguel's the adventurous one and Maya's basically saying, "Oh you boys, be careful." There's a lot of social conditioning going on with that show. The muppet characters on Sesame Street really were a breakthrough and that's obviously one person's idea and never what PBS wanted to reflect. On their own, they go for White characters in gender roles. Even when the characters are animals, they have characteristics that clue you in that they're White, either the bits of hair that are drawn on their heads or the person hired to voice the character. But let's get back to the war.

C.I.: Wait, no. For this section, let's focus on race. At The Third Estate Sunday Review each week we've tried to fit time in to address the topic but it hasn't been possible and if it is a fiction edition, there won't be a roundtable or an easy way to address it outside of fiction, so since that's a topic that's come up, let's stay on it.


Cedric: Well, we're always wanting to discuss KPFA's The Morning Show, there are many shows but that's the program most of us have started noticing really will address race.

Rebecca: The hosts are Andrea Lewis and Philip Maldari. It's a two hour broadcast, Monday through Friday.

Cedric: I really like Andrea Lewis. Betty had a good phrase for her.

Betty: "Down home." She's just really comfortable on air. She can do the serious interview or she can be funny. She's just really down home on air and I have to say thank you to Kat here because my chances of hearing online are limited, Kat knows that and makes a point to put in a cassette most mornings and I get a weekly shipment. Kat always apologizes that she doesn't have time to turn the tapes into a weekly best of but she'll note which things she thinks I'll really enjoy. When I'm cleaning the house on the weekends, I'm listening to The Morning Show. And not to take anything away from Philip Malderi who does a fine job himself but, as a Black woman, I listen and wonder why we don't have a thousand Andrea Lewises all over the airwaves. What we get instead is a lot of women with an attitude on air that translates as, "Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to prove to you that Black women can speak and think." Andrea Lewis is just down home. Like most non-Whites, it's never occurred to her, nor should it, that we can't have an opinion and express it.

C.I.: That's a point that Ty really wanted made, when we've talked about this for The Third Estate Sunday Review. That the relationship on air between Andrea Lewis and Philip Malderi is very much an equal one, Malderi is White, and that there's a balance there that you don't get very often. For those who've never heard the show, it's two hours, like Rebecca pointed out, and it's a morning show that has news breaks, anchored by Sandra Lupien, and they have guests on who discuss issues of the day and the arts. And among the many issues they are comfortable addressing is race.

Cedric: And I agree with that summary you just gave but I want to add to it because you listen to Pacifica and when you say that, it's going to make sense to people who listen to Pacifica. They're going to understand even if they don't listen to KPFA. But if they're listening to commercial radio, they're going to be nodding, if they think they get it, and thinking, "Soul Food on the radio!" They're going to be thinking it's Tom Joyner or something where there's this one big guy, and it's always a guy, surrounded by a lot of people on air who basically say, "You are so smart, tell us more."


Rebecca: Or they're going to be thinking, it's a bunch of ha-ha, "And then I went to the beauty parlor and, girl, let me tell you."

Betty: I was just thinking that. I'd call it the shuck-and-jive hour, shows like that. And in terms of radio, that's really often all you get. The thing Ty's pointed out where the Black staff member or co-anchor is basically there to say, "You White Guy are so smart and I am so lucky to be at this mircophone with you." Where they're scraping and bowing the whole time. They may do it for jokes or, if it's a more serious program, they may do it from a kind of eternal wonder position. But that's your one model and then you have the loud laughter, "So she comes up to me in front of all the ladies at the beauty parlor saying, 'It's not a weave. I have my hair processed.' And I said process! Girl, looks like your hair done been served! Ah-huh. Ah-huh. Ah-huh." On Fraiser, they had a character called Dr. Wendy and she was that type. Look, I'm from the south. There are women like that, I know them and some of them are wonderful friends, but that's one of two types we get and there are so many other types. You just don't hear them.

Cedric: And to fall back to Tom Joyner, he does the male of that character over and over and then his voice will get a little higher and it will be the and-now-we-get-serious moment. When we were all in California, Ty would be asking, "Who is that woman?" about Andrea Lewis. Over and over. And his point was, because by the first day, he knew who she was. We'd all be listening as we went here and there and all over, but his point was, this is an African-American woman that is like many women we know, she's smart, she's funny, she's obviously educated, and where is she on the radio? She's on KPFA and good for that. But where are women like her otherwise? I'm sure there are other women like that because she's not some creature that just landed on the planet. But I mean, what we get instead is "Gossip to Go with Flo."

C.I.: Florence Anthony.

Cedric: C.I. told me last week, when I brought this up, that Flo had gone to Howard University and graduated from there and I was shocked because --

Betty: Wait! Flo, went to Howard University?

Cedric: Yeah.

Betty: What a waste. There are some people at work that listen to her "Gossip to Go" thing. She also does that magazine . . .

C.I.: Black Elegance Magazine.

Betty: That's it, thank you. But I mean, for an educated woman to be doing that? God, I'll shut up before I start sounding like Bill Cosby.

Cedric: (Laughing) I know exactly what you mean. When C.I. told me that, I was just floored, Flo at Howard University? So why does she want to come off like the loud woman screaming into her cell phone on the bus?

Rebecca: I'm sorry, I don't know her. Fill me in.

Cedric: It's just a waste of a few minutes each day as she summarizes whatever made the gossip page in the New York Post --

C.I.: Where she used to work.

Cedric: That would explain why she plugs it. It's just trash. And Betty's "Ah-huh, ah-huh, ah-huh" really applies to her. If she were in Vegas, she'd be screaming, "Drum roll!" after every sentence but she's not funny. There are women like her and they can be very nice women. I'm not picking on that so much as I'm pointing out that that's what we get instead. We get a million Flos and if there are Andreas, we have to search high and low, long and hard just to find them.

Betty: Because, and I'll wrap up on this, when that's one of two types presented and only two types are presented, Flo doesn't come off as Flo but as one more touring in a never ending minstrel show.




Rebecca: I know we want to get back to the war, but we've just talked about portrayls or, maybe, access is the better word. Do we want to talk about anything else since Betty just pulled a Dona and said "wrap up"?

Cedric: Yeah, but that would probably be better to hold on. In terms of topics. I mean, you know what we're talking about, Rebecca, but there are a lot of people who will be scratching their heads over this and thinking, "Wait? They don't all go around grinning and laughing every minute of the day?" Probably not in this community, but there are people who have really strong stereotypes. And I don't just mean racists. There are people who -- I don't know how to word it.

C.I.: How about this. Colin Powell is seen as a living miracle because he can speak and think. And it's a bit late in the game that that should come off as somehow an exception to a race. But in terms of who is given access in the mainstream media and who is denied, Colin Powell stands like a giant just for how he carries himself because, despite reality, strides made still aren't reflected in the media?

Cedric: Yes. Yes, I'd agree with that.

Betty: I would too. I'm not a fan of Powell's and I know no one here is. But he comes off as an exception only because White America isn't presented with more reality.

Rebecca: Well, if I can add on a few more seconds here, can we talk Powell without talking Harry Belafonte since, if the mainstream media created Powell as the "good one," they spent a lot of time demonizing Belafonte recently?

Betty: I'm glad you brought that up because I read C.I.'s thing responding to someone's impression that this community had a war with The Nation. I don't think there's any more ridiculous claim. But if someone wants to toss that out, I'll toss back, "Is there a war with Black people?" There's Patricia J. Williamson and then whom? And I'll be honest, that thing of Katrina vanden Heuvel's pissed me off.

C.I.: She wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post and an expanded version was at her blog, Editor's Cut. She's the editor and publisher of The Nation. Cedric wrote about it, so he should probably do the set up.

Cedric: Well, she wrote a piece about the way people are talking, the political discourse. And to prove that it was on all sides, she included many examples, one of which was Harry Belafonte. You didn't agree with the column?

C.I.: Me? No. I noted that here. I don't buy into the tone arguments. People should speak in their own voices. That includes Flo. The problem is when the range of voices is so narrow that a wide variety isn't presented. But people should speak in their own voices. She was, KvH, calling out to our better natures, that was the theme of the column. More power to her but I think we need a lot more voices and they need to speak in the way that suits them. I wrote about it because she got trashed online, basically called a hypocrite, and I didn't see it, the column, as being hypocritical when contrasted with a TV appearance either the same day or the next day. You were offended by the inclusion of Belafonte in the examples and I honestly hadn't read the examples.

Cedric: I had a real problem with that, more so than the tone argument. I didn't think it read "reasonable." I thought she'd entered into, unwittingly, racially charged territory and that it was a mistake on many levels to have included him in her call outs.

C.I.: Because he was already under attack and had been for a lengthy period. He'd even been disinvited to the Coretta Scott King funeral. So for the publisher of The Nation to join in the chorus of tsk-tsk Belafonte was upsetting.

Cedric: Right. And that sets it up. Harry Belafonte was trashed and there was no reason for someone on the left, considering all that he'd gone through, to engage in, "He shouldn't have."

Betty: And it's not that he's above criticism. It's that there was a reaction, which she probably wasn't aware of, in the African-American community of "back off." We were tired of it. We were tired of the nonsense. I didn't speak to anyone who wasn't tired of it and sick of it. Whether they had grown up admiring him, as I did, he's an important person in my family, or whether they didn't care for him, they were sick of seeing him trashed. To her credit, she was comfortable with him in terms of being able to discuss him as she would anyone else. You could argue, and I hate this term, that she was "color blind." I hate the term because I don't think we can afford to be because we don't have racial parity in this country. But I think she was comfortable enough with him, in terms of her thoughts of him, I didn't think she hated him, to treat him as she would anyone esle. But where she came into the dialogue, because possibly she wasn't aware of what was going in, the reaction to the trashing of him, it was, my attitude, "Back off."

Cedric: The comfort factor was something I hadn't given her credit for and hadn't thought of it so I'm glad you brought that up. That's probably true. To her, it was probably one more example of how a statement or statements, and I agree with his statements, but there's a reaction, like Betty said, that she was completely unaware of. And my attitude was, and still is, I don't need you to tell me your non-endorsing opinion of this African-American who is under attack. This wasn't Michael Jackson where someone was accused of a crime --

Betty: Again!

Cedric: (Laughing) Again. This is someone who has lived his entire life in a way that uplifts so many of us and encourages so many of us. At a time when he was under attack, I didn't think her including him was helpful, needed or wanted.

Rebecca: It was personal, the attacks on Harry Belafonte and the reaction. And it's easy to say, "Well, that's how I would treat anyone." But I don't think that allows for the reality of the attacks or the reality of the times or, for that matter, the mood of the country. I disagreed with the entire column. For me, "I'm not ready to make nice," like the Dixie Chicks sing. I have no interest in being seen as "reasonable." We don't live in "reasonable" times. My reaction was, "Why is she including him?" I didn't see his statements as equivalent to others included. And maybe I'm remembering this wrong but it seems like only days after Amy Goodman was interviewing him on Democracy Now! and he was talking about the reactions to his comments and then I got even madder that he was included in the column.

Betty: I loved that interview Amy did. But back to Katrina vanden Heuvel, I think she is trying to rally and to inspire and that is needed in these times. I don't fault her for that. I don't even think it occurred to her that including Belafonte would be hurtful, nor do I think it was intended as such. But I do think it struck many as hurtful and it's something that bothers me even now.

Cedric: Just to repeat, and then we can close, one more time, I want to thank C.I. because I was really bothered by it and thought, "Well I can't write about this. The community, and that includes me, likes Katrina vanden Heuvel. " And that only made me more upset. So I called C.I. for input and was told, "Write it. I'll link to it. Just write what you feel and speak in your own voice and it's not a problem." I appreciated the support.

C.I.: Don't be silly. We all support one another in the community. We're going to take the second break and then return to the issue of the war.

III
Back to Iraq

Betty: We looked over the other two sections and the first one was our intro and the second was about race. In this section, we're going back to the war. And we're going to start off with Rebecca talking about her grandmother.

Rebecca: The news of Haditha, and this was before othe incidents began breaking in the news, just really upset her. The alleged crimes upset her, but what upset her even more was the reaction. Which is "oh, that bad Bully Boy!" She wondered if this was how our own "descent into hell" as a nation really began. And she is under no illusions that the last six years have been beneficial to Americans or the Constitution or the world. There's an effort to heap all the blame on the Bully Boy. He is to blame for setting the tone and creating the conditions under which the alleged abuse would have taken place. But she's bothered that those who are alleged to have participated in crimes are not responsible for their own actions.

Cedric: Which is how it's playing out in the discussions. Not with Michelle Malkin who's on a tear that the media's just going after the military. They're not. They're not even going after the accused. We're running behind --

Betty: My fault. It was supposed to be a short break, but one of my kids had an upset stomach.

C.I.: Not a problem. I used the time to run to the store.

Cedric: Yeah, no one was just sitting there thinking, "When is Betty getting back?" Rebecca and I ended up deciding that we'd do Mike a solid and open with a Democracy Now! news item when we posted this at our sites and Rebecca also noted that if this is tagged, we should do it at the top like Betty's been pointing out for some time because long entries don't get read, although mine never get read.

Rebecca: Hold on one minute. Sorry, I wanted to check something. C.I. published and republished Friday morning while we were on the phone together and the tags were never read in terms of showing up.

C.I.: Tags, quickly. I don't mind spending time exploring the real topic but I don't want to waste it on tags. There are people who never get read and they contact Technorati and get no reply nor is anything done so that they are read. I don't like tagging, it takes up too much time and Rebecca's the one who discovered it and thought it was a way to get the word out on the community. If it's not showing up anywhere and that continues, I'll stop tagging gladly. It's been a hassle from day one. The time it takes could be spent cross-posting at the mirror site or on any other number of things.

Rebecca: Okay, so Cedric got cut off, sorry.

Cedric: No problem. I was going to note the Hannah Arendt quote that went up at The Common Ills Friday: "Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing." Who is guilty? If the Haditha reports are true, who is guilty?Betty: Because in the coverage, it's Bully Boy alone. I have no problem with directing his share of the blame to him, and it's big, his share, but at what point are we going to stop saying, "Oh, well these things happen." That's what bothered your grandmother, right?

Rebecca: Yeah. She was very bothered by that. In Abu Ghraib, it became a lot of "Oh, but we can't punish these poor soldiers because they're not responsible and they're getting all the blame."

Cedric: If I hire the assasin, I'm just as guilty as the person who did the killing. So it's perfectly well and good to portion out to Bully Boy but the idea that we're going to look the other way on the individuals who may have actually killed someone is really sad.

Betty: I think there's responsibility at both ends and on up the chain of command between. And instead, I feel like, and I'm more disappointed in the left here, there's this attitude of, "We must not criticize the soldiers involved."

C.I.: That attitude . . . One of the things that's often asked is, "Where is the outrage over this war?" A lot of people are outraged. But it's equally true that there's a lot of attempts to divert that outrage and to tap it down. Abu Ghraib was a scandal on many levels but what happened to it? It became this elephant in the room that we can only talk about in the most general terms.

Cedric: I wrote this down from something you put up on Friday: "Pay attention to what Sandra Lupien noted on KPFA's The Morning Show this morning, Donald Rumsfeld said 'Things that shouldn't happen, do happen in combat.'" I think I got the implication but I was hoping you'd talk about that.

C.I.: What that reminded me of first of all was Rumsfeld's idiotic comment about the looting, how it was just one vase. And we know that it was easily over 14,000 pieces that were stolen. People should have been outraged about the looting but instead it became, "Oh well, these things happen in a war." These things happened because the concern was with protecting other things, such as the oil fields. By the same token, Abu Ghraib became a "these things happen." And here comes Rumsfeld to talk about an alleged massacre and to say, "These things happen." And the fear is, he'll be successful at it because no one wants to call out the individuals who allegedly did the killing. That's sad and it's honestly sick.

Rebecca: Which was my grandmother's feeling, that's what had bothered her so much and why she called and asked me to visit that day. If it's not called out, it creates another lowered expectation, another pass. We're no longer appalled by Abu Ghraib and the next massacre will be a yawn. A shrug. It's like Betty said, it's the left here that's refusing to confront the reality. They're too busy directing all the blame to Bully Boy and letting off the accused perpetrators of the act.

C.I.: And if, in the face of these allegations, can't express disgust and can't draw a clear line that says the behavior is not acceptable, for any reason, under any reason, then what are we saying about ourselves and about our country?

Betty: Well you saw, and Elaine covered this, you saw the usual bullies, and the left has bullies, come along and say, "Oh don't you dare call those men 'baby killers!' I will come after you if you do!" Well what did they do? Are we going to invent new terms to avoid calling killing "killing"? Is that where we are now? Have we all left the reality based world?

Cedric: And this on the day that someone got sentenced for Abu Ghraib.

C.I.: He didn't really. I almost included in that in the snapshot but I assumed everyone knew it. Santos Cardona was sentenced to X number of days of hard labor. I think it was something like seventy days. He'll lose about $600 dollars a month for twelve months. His lawyer is calling it a win for Cardona. And it is. It's very much a win for him. He's found guilty of a multitude of crimes and he's basically walking. I believe his lawyer pointed out that the hard labor doesn't include any prison time. While it's one thing for your heart to go out to the people put in that situation and to say that people being punished shouldn't be just the low-level ones, it's another to say, "Go torture Iraqis and don't worry because there's no real consequences." But that's the message. By the same token, this effort to point only to the top sends a message.

Rebecca: What does everyone think about the investigation into Ishaqi?

Betty: That's where the BBC just got a hold of the tape and, from the tape, it appears that a slaughter went on but that, Friday, the military finished their investigation into the events and cleared everyone, right?

Cedric: I don't know what to think about that.

C.I.: I think we were played. I think the administration knew they had a scandal with Haditha. At which point they floated to the press that there was another scandal being investigated.

Cedric: Why do you say that?

C.I.: The story for the weekend is "Military cleared!" That's the headline. Look at tomorrow's papers and see how many run with that, I bet many will. There are three scandals right now and most people are having trouble, if they're not following it closely, keeping up. They'll see "cleared" and they'll think it's Haditha or they'll think, "Oh, that's that scandal." They probably won't know Haditha by name.

Cedric: So you think it was leaked on purpose?

C.I.: I think that's very likely. You've got a scandal breaking. Suddenly you want to leak about a supposed ongoing investigation into another? No. If you wanted to leak, you would have leaked while it was ongoing. It's only after Haditha captures attention and it's known that a finding, and they knew what the finding would be, that Ishaqi is leaked. It was damage control, plain and simple. What do you think, Rebecca, you're the one with the p.r. experience?


Rebecca: I agree with that. Look at Haditha where the leaks revolve around charges. It's not completed yet but they have a sense of where it's headed. The Ishaqi one, they knew where it was headed, it was, as you point out, winding down when it was leaked. This was damage control and it's a laughable investigation and one that should have been prevented from releasing a conclusion since the conclusion was written prior to the BBC's announcing that they had just gotten a hold of a tape. That's a bit like a jury coming back in with a decision while someone who's been watching the trial stands up in the court room and screams, "It wasn't him! I killed her and here's how!" I can't imagine a judge would say, "Shut up and sit down. Jury deliver your verdict." They would investigate the person's claims. The fact that the BBC broke the news of the tape, I believe Thursday evening our time, and Friday morning the conclusions of the investigation are released indicate that it was damage control because a real investigation would say, "Let's look at that tape." But it was judged important to do damage control and the results had to come out on Friday so that all weekend people could say, "Oh, they were cleared." Confusing Ishaqui with the other two investigations.


Betty: I didn't know that the man sentenced on Friday wasn't going to be serving time. For Abu Ghraib. That's really sad. And it does send a message which says there are no serious consquences. If you're serving and you say, "I'm not going to do that because it's wrong and I don't want to go to prison," the logical reply, now, is, "Oh, but you won't go to prison." And I think that gets at the problem. When all we're doing is saying, "Oh, it's all the Bully Boy's fault!" and when we're refusing to say, "These actions are horrible, they're criminal, and they must be punished," we're saying that we'll tolerate anything and look the other way because, darn it, nobody better use a word like "baby killer."

Rebecca: I think you're exactly right and to get back to the "Where is the outrage?" -- when even the left won't express their disgust and their outrage over torture and killing, then go ahead and pack it in. Don't expect the cheerleaders for the Bully Boy to express outrage. We've gone from the nonsense of everyone is guilty, Hannah Arendt's point, to one where "Only the Bully Boy is guilty." And that's only by the left. Others don't even offer that much. So another massacre happens and people are a little less shocked, a little less appalled. The war's never going to end if we're all going to supress our outrage over crimes and make a point to say, "Oh well, the Bully Boy put them there! It's his fault!" He started the illegal war, he trashed our understanding of warfare from just and unjust wars on down the line, he set the tone. But the people participating in war crimes need to be held responsible. Whether it's someone who commits one in Iraq or Bob Kerry with his war crimes in Vietnam which we're also supposed to just forget because he gave a p.r. conference where he owned up to being "troubled." Too bad other war criminals, at other times, didn't realize all they had to do was say, "I'm troubled by my actions" and they'd get off scott free as well. There's no sense of scope or magnitude, just a lot of idiots weighing in with, "Look what the Bully Boy has caused!" Well what has he caused? Can we talk about that? Can we talk about the actual events and expect to be allowed to hear that war criminals must be held accountable at every level? I don't think so. My grandmother who can see hope in any situation doesn't either. That's why she really feels that our reaction to Haditha, as a nation, may be the real beginning of a "descent into hell." Bully Boy's done awful things but the difference here is that we're confronted with murder and our attitude is, "We can't and mustn't talk about the actions of the ones who allegedly killed. We must only talk about the Bully Boy." If that's where we are, then forget about right and wrong. People can do whatever they want in Iraq and they should know now that the right will look the other way and the left will play Pin-the-blame-on-the-Bully-Boy. It's very sad. And he may have pushed the nation into lowered expectations on accountability, but the nation's responsible for embracing it.

C.I.: Unless anyone else has a closing thought, I think Rebecca just covered it all in her summary?

Betty: Nothing to add. Thanks for inviting me.

Cedric: Just to back up Rebecca, if you're okay with this, get used to more because there was a huge failure to discuss it, just a rush to blame Bully Boy. A rejection of consequences and an ignoring of the fact that Iraqis died. Or maybe it doesn't matter when it's Iraqis? The message that was sent out was very disturbing. Can I use the slogan?

C.I.: Cedric's referring to a slogan that we avoid at The Common Ills because it's a p.r. created slogan created in order to avoid discussion and debate. Go ahead.

Cedric: "Support the troops." In what? And which troops? The left proved that they could do so blindly as they bent over bakwards to avoid discussing what happened on the ground as they rushed to carry every bit of the blame to D.C. Not a proud moment.
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