NEWS FLASH! BLOGGING IS NOT JOURNALISM!

No. Really. It just isn't.

This is why I'm a little surprised at everybody's shocked dismay that conservative blogger Ben Domenech hasn't been on the up-and-up with regard to quotes and pilfering he did from other journalists (including columnists from the ultra-liberal Salon.com, which wrote the piece that made me want to blog about this topic). Domenech was recently hired as a columnist for the venerable Washington Post, only to resign the position this morning, under fire forplagiarismm dating from his college days to his early post-grad pieces for New York Press, and for fabricating quotes, including one he attributed to Tim Russert which ostensibly (had he actually said it) would have invalidated strongcriticisms that Russert had for Bush's geometrically progressive budget deficit.

That's a journalistic no-no. It is a long-standing journalist tradition to take someone's words, twist them around, quote them out of context and present them so they seem to mean the exact opposite of what was actually said. People have won Pulitzer Prizes doing that very thing. But you are simply not allowed to put words wholesale into someone's mouth that were never spoken.

But what can you expect?

Ben Domenech isn't a journalist. He's a blogger. And we bloggers get to have something dyed-in-the-wool journalists don't -- an agenda. Ben Domenech's agenda is to prop up the conservative theocracy by any means possible in order to ingratiate himself to the Bush Administration in the hopes that he can begin his intended career as Republican flunkie-in-training. My agenda is to see to it that, come 2008, there's no one there to hire him.

This is my little corner of the universe, and here, I reign unchallenged. I reserve the right to say what I want, talk about whatever appeals to me, refuse to talk about anything that bores me, and to edit or perhaps delete your comments as I see fit. Now, for the record, I've only deleted two comments in the entire lifespan of the Chron -- one was spam, and the other was a profanity-laced, unnecessarily vitriolic response to a fairly mild-mannered gripe about White House policy that I'm almost certain was penned by Karl Rove himself, though I can't prove it. I have on several occasions kept a comment, but illiminated the commenter's site link, if I felt that the content of their sites was offensive or not in keeping with my personal feelings regarding a patriarchal society that thrives on pornography in order to "keep da bitches down." (I made just such an edit yesterday, in fact.) I get to do that because this is my blog -- my house, as it were -- and in my house, I make the rules.

Where did we get the idea that simply because blogging and journalism express their ideas via the same medium (i.e., the printed word) that they are one and the same? That's like saying that NASA should hire Industrial Light and Magic to design the next space shuttle because they've built all the STAR WARS models since time immemorial. (Though, come to think of it, I'm hard pressed to imagine how ILM couldn't even accidentally do a better job on the shuttle than NASA -- but that's another blog post for another time.)

Please don't get me wrong. Plenty of bloggers are diligent sorts, who fact-check and double-fact-check. I'm very sensitive about getting facts wrong, and when mistakes have been pointed out to me, I correct them with all due allacrity (perhaps you remember Ike Boutwell and our tussle over Jane Fonda. I loved Ike. Whatever happened to him? He doesn't call. He doesn't write. Sigh.) I attribute everything I quote and make sure quotes attributed were actually said. I attempt to use both "blue" and "red" sources for my checking, until I'm pretty sure in my mind that any discrepancy is just spin, though the basic facts be the same. I am as thorough as I can be to make sure that if I state something as fact, it has been proven thus with all due diligence.

Still, for all of my vigilance, I am not a journalist. I shouldn't go to work for Washington Post. I don't have the street cred. Neither did Ben Domenech. Yet people are stunned that someone who has never really held a job of this stature -- who was never truly vetted by most of the papers he's worked for -- suddenly turns out to be one of dubious moral character? At exactly what point in the movie was it that y'all dozed off?

And before anyone pipes up with the inane assertion that only conservative Republicans can be lying plagartists, allow me to head off that argument with three little words: Senator Joseph Biden. Desperate people who are insecure about their communication styles and are more interested in making a point than being truthful and informative tend to take short cuts. And these insecurities know no party affiliation. And let's not even discuss New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, for pity's sake.

So, let's just say good-bye to Mr. Domenech and wish him luck in his newfound ventures. Undoubtedly, he'll go back to his blog. Good on 'im. He's found an audience there that doesn't care if he tells the truth or not, as long as he has a consistent agenda.

Just as I have my little "praise Jesus" chorus here. Here, on the Chron, where I can prosletize my agenda and check my facts, but where I have no delusions of grandeur whatsoever.

~C~

David Letterman Explains It All For You

Addressing Peggy Noonan's speculation in the Wall Street Journal that Dick Cheney might resign after the 2006 elections, in order to give Bush a chance to appoint the prospective Republican presidential candidate for 2008 (what the hell has she been smoking, cuz I need me some o' dat shit!), Cheney told Bob Shieffer this weekend that he had absolutely no plans to do any such thing. End of discussion.

Well, not exactly....

David Letterman later speculated on the top ten reasons why Cheney won't resign:

10. Trying to fix up Condi Rice with his daughter

9. Turns out when you shoot somebody, if you're not vice president, you gotta do time

8. Bush leaves at two every day and then it's margaritas and Fritos

7. Set the solitare high score on his office computer

6. Wants to see if he can help Bush get his approval rating under ten

5. Too hard to give up Vice Presidential Discount at D.C. area Sam Goody stores

4. Wants to stay on the job until every country in the world hates us

3. Extra-zappy White House defibrillators

2. Undisclosed location has foosball and whores

And the Number One reason why Dick Cheney won't resign….

1. Why quit when things are going so well?

~C~

A Dish Best Served Cold

Did I ever tell you I have a stellium? No, seriously. It's not a growth requiring a laser for removal. It's an astrological phenomenon where five planets end up under the same sign. I had my chart done years and years ago by a guy I worked with (whom I now realize was hitting on me, but I was a mere babe-in-the-proverbial-woods and it totally went over my head), and he was the one who first told me. In my case, I have a Scorpio stellium. Five planets in the sign of Scorpio.

For the astrologically uninitiated, Scorpios are known for a few things -- highly developed sense of eroticism (check), an inability to suffer fools gladly (check), a fiery temper, followed by a protracted silence (check and check). But there is one thing that Scorpios are notorious for across the board -- the ability to hold a grudge. Like, forever. Scorpios are renowned for sitting back on their haunches and waiting years, long after the original affront has been forgotten, particularly by the affronter. Do wrong to a Scorpio, and you won't spend the next ten years hearing about it. You'll spend the next ten years not hearing about it. Then, when everyone's guard is down, with lightening speed, the Scorpio pounces and stings, and the karmic slate is wiped clean in a single blow. At least, that's what my astrologer friends have told me.

And that's with just the sun in Scorpio. Me? I got five planets, big and small, in Scorpio. Imagine that kind of blame-laying, grudge-holding, revenge seeking drive, multiplied by five. I see by your look of abject terror, you're getting the picture.

In January, 2001, something really horrible happened to this country. The Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom, chose not to intervene in the clearly underhanded election hijinx that had taken place in the state of Florida the previous November. This is something that, I'm convinced, will come back to haunt them when karma rears its oft-ugly head. I was irritated with the Supreme Court. But the person I truly blamed for it all was the person at the heart of an unjust, illegal and unconstitutional travesty of the American electoral process -- the criminally blythe and arrogant Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris.

Oh, how I hated the very sight of her. Her large, gaping cocky face with that "we pulled it off" calculated grin. Her cooing, smirking little congratulatory flattery of George W. Bush. Her clear-cut conflict of interest. Her freakin' ugly blue eyeshadow. I used to dream that horrible things would happen to her. I used to imagine that, now that her job was over, once she was no longer of use to them, she would be abandoned by the uppermost echelon of the GOP, then forgotten with her blue eyeshadow and her sly little smirk. I actually predicted that very thing, back when the Chron was over at another site.

Harris is now a representative in the United States Congress, serving Florida's 13th District. It's not the job she wants, however. The job she wants is a seat in the United States Senate, a campaign she is currently waging against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. It appears that my predictions about Harris' relationship with the good ol' boys from the Grand Old Party have proved prescient. Harris has been claiming for the past several months that the GOP has turned its back on her. Florida is truly a divided state, with the military and Southern factions tending to vote red, and the Cuban, Black and East Coast retiree factions usually voting blue. (The Cubans are a question mark, thanks to the abortion issue.) Nelson, though, has been a fairly moderate Democrat, and has managed to keep most groups fairly happy -- or at least not altogether miserable -- with his voting record. As a result, he's proven to be a tough incumbent to oust. Harris' campaign has been suffering since before Christmas from a lack of monetary support from the party. By comparison, her 13th District Congressional run was a cake walk, because the people voting for her were people just like her. Or people she grew up with. Or people who "knew her Daddy." (This holds a lot of weight in the South. In the South, you can finance a small country on loans acquired because somebody "knew yer Daddy.")

But the electorate this time around consists of all of Florida, and there are plenty of people who were once described by news agencies (back in 2000) as "disenfranchised voters" -- the very people whose votes Harris conspired to ignore or discard. This makes Harris a very tough candidate to sell in West Palm and Miami Beach, to the blacks and Jewish retirees whose chads weren't quite pregnant enough to count. Bet those semi-pregnant chads are looking really good right about now to Katherine Harris. I'll bet she'd give a small fortune for some of those thrown-out pregnant chads. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll come to that in a minute.

Because of her obvious handicaps amongst Floridian voters statewide, the GOP has been largly disinterested in Harris. She was forced to contribute $250,000 of her own money to her fledgling campaign to keep things going. Last fall, in sheer desperation, she even accepted $30,000 in illegal contributions from a shady defense contractor that her campaign was forced to repay. Her election committee staff has been deserting the sinking ship in droves. I'm sure she expected the GOP to come to her rescue. They did not.

Hate to say "I told ya so, but..." Wait. No, I don't hate to say that at all. In fact, besides "I love you so much," and "Have you lost some weight?", those are five of the loveliest words in the English language.

It really was enough to see my dreams of her abandonment and subsequent whimpering come true. Really it was. I needed no more than to be proven right. But this week, I found out that my faith in karma was not misplaced. In light of her struggling campaign's fiscal troubles, the press had been expecting an announcement for days from Harris that she would be withdrawing from the primary race. Wednesday, they collected in anticipation of just that announcement. Instead, Harris vowed to continue and contributed $10,000,000 (that's ten million dollars, for the numerically challenged) of her own money to keep her primary campaign going. Against Bill Nelson. Whom she trails by at least 15 points.

Tee hee.

The lovely thing about having a tiny bit of money in the bank is that you get to send it places where you think it will do some good. Ms. Harris can tell you that. And, inspired by her grand gesture, I made one of my own this morning. I contributed $100 to Bill Nelson's campaign today, and it made me feel like dancing in the aisles. As some of you know, I came within inches of living in Florida a couple of years ago, until the end of my relationship made it moot. So, though I'm sure I would have voted for Bill Nelson had I moved there, I'm not his constituent directly. But if my contribution can, in tandem with others, help push him over the top in his efforts to retain his seat, I will have accomplished two major goals.

First, I will have assisted in some measure in helping the Democratic party retake control of the Congress in 2006. We have had enough of the rubberstamping, one-party, Bush-boot-licking hullabaloo for the past six years. Its time somebody stood up and challenged these overgrown frat-boys with a loud and resounding "sit down and shut the fuck up with your bad-ass self."

But the second thing my $100 hard-earned dollars will have done is help to make that inherited $10,250,000 that Harris will have been spent on her failed campaign utterly and totally in vain. And there she'll be. Without the boys. Without the money. Without the job.

And then, my revenge will be complete. Oh, sure. It's been a long time. Six long years of waiting, waiting. Being patient. But somebody needed an ass-kickin' in her blue eyeshadow. And I was wearing just the pair of open-toed sandals for the job.

~C~

****If you want to join in my campaign of retribution against Katherine Harris, contributions can be made to Nelson's campaign through ActBlue. The initial amount that you offer to contribute will be automatically split equally between Nelson's campaign and Boxer's PAC for Change. You can change the amounts so you don't have to contribute to the PAC at all (I have contributed to that independently). Nelson needs the money most right now, since the GOP wants to see him unseated in the worst way. Take revenge on the Republican juggernaut. Show those theocrats what's what here in America. But most importantly, help me kick the ever-lovin' crap out of Katherine Harris and her Senate campaign, and send her home to Arcadia, broken and dejected.****

"You Can Trust Me. I'm a Doctor."

This from CNN.com:

"Home-state favorite Bill Frist won the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll Saturday night, besting a slate of other potential 2008 GOP presidential candidates in this unscientific survey of Southern and Midwestern Republicans."

Tell me, please. Is there any other kind of survey that one could take of Southern and Midwestern Repulbicans these days? Especially with regard to Bill First? Isn't this the man that looked at a videotape shot by Terri Schaivo's family and then insisted that we should trust his diagnosis because he was a doctor and all and, hey, she wasn't in a persistent vegitative state at all, by golly, but merely in a deep coma. Waiting, no doubt, to be awakened by the kiss of the handsome prince immediately following the requisite dragon-slaying.

This is the candidate the Southern theocrats want to put forth in 2008. He's the best they can do. I shudder to think what a country run by this loonybelle would be like. Genuine scientific pursuit would certainly take a hit.

Leeches, anyone?

~C~

"The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World"

No, it doesn't.

And on a day such as today -- International Womens' Day (not to mention in the blogging community, Blog Against Sexism Day) -- it's vitally important to note precisely what, for the record, the hand that rocks the cradle actually does.

1. First off, it rocks the cradle. Statistically, it will spend approximately 75% of the time rocking the cradle, even though there may be another, more masculine hand living in the same house which shares an equal quantity of DNA with the cradlee.
2. The hand that rocks the cradle statistically also holds down a job for thirty or more hours per week.
3. While at its job, it will have to fight harder for promotion because its bosses are afraid that rocking the cradle will take precedence over career and the workplace. This is against the law, of course, but hands that rock the cradle rarely find justice in civil courtrooms, and are usually told to go home and rock the cradle somemore. Meanwhile, the hand that rocks the cradle will be earning 70 cents to the dollar her non-cradle rocking male co-worker (who may have a cradle at home, but fortunately has someone else to rock it for him) earns. Meanwhile, ABC News' John Stossel will report that this short-changing is due to "career choices" made by the hand that rocks the cradle, and not by any innate unfairness in the workplace. (Because, well, he's an idiot.)
4. Furthermore, if current trends continue, hands that rock the cradle ten years from now will exprience a larger gap than the hands currently working and rocking cradles simultaneously (in other words, we're moving in the wrong direction, wage-gap-wise.)
5. The hand that rocks the cradle is twice as likely to hold a master's degree than her male partner or spouse, yet her chances of achieving a senior management position are less than 10%.
6. The hand that rocks the cradle, if she takes time out to actually rock the cradle full-time, will find that, should her partner choose to leave her after her cradle-rocking days are over, her retirement benefits will go with him, and she will be left with several missing years from her wage-earning history. This will result in a huge income shortfall in her sunset years.
7. The hand that rocks the cradle will come home from her thirty- to forty- (or more) hour per week job and statistically take on between 65% and 80% of the housework and cradle-rocking chores.
8. Should she become ill with a serious illness, the odds are good that the hand that rocks the cradle will be at an extreme disadvantage in terms of medical knowledge about her condition. Medical researchers have now only begun to fess up to the fact that they have been omitting women from clinical trials and research studies because they feared the presence of women would make the studies too "complicated." So far, the medical community does not appear to be troubled by the resultant deficit in knowledge about women's health issues.
9. Before the hand that rocks the cradle even gets a chance to rock the cradle, her biggest obstacle could be surviving the pregnancy. The single biggest risk in this country to the life of an expectant cradle-rocker is not a complication due to childbirth, but rather homicide at the hands of the one who got her pregnant.
10. One in eight hands that rock the cradle will develop breast cancer in her lifetime.
11. One in four will be sexually assaulted.
12. One in nine will experience some form of serious abuse at the hands of a partner or spouse in her own home.
13. One in twelve will battle a serious eating disorder.
14. One in twenty will develop a serious, life-threatening addiction to chemicals (including alcohol).
15. The hand that rocks the cradle will be twice as likely in her lifetime to experience an episode of severe depression which requires treatment, either psychtherapeutic or pharmaceutical, or both. (And I think we see why, don't we?)

The hand that rocks the cradle rules nothing, because she's trapped inside of a patriarchal social structure that tries to quiet her objections and kill her spirit and drive with little epithets about how being a breeder is actually analogous to wielding some form of power in the larger world order. As a cradle-rocker-in-training, she lives in a world that tells her her value and worth depend on her purity and virginity, her beauty, her fecundity and her willingness to please the men around her. She will probably give oral sex long, long before she receives it. She will probably have her first orgasm long after the loss of her virginity (and very likely, she will be alone when she experiences it). She will be judged more rapidly and more harshly on her appearance than any of the boys she was raised with. She will be devalued, demeaned and diminished by images of other potential cradle-rockers depicted in sexually degrading imagery used to sell everything from lingerie to high-end automobiles to Sports Illustrated.

By the time her hand rocks the cradle, she will most likely (according to statistics) be the "primary care giver." Should her partner/spouse leave her, she runs the risk of financial ruin -- in spite of the hollow cries of sperm donors who complain that their exes are bleeding them dry, one fifth of all Americans currently living below the poverty line are children whose fathers have beat it for greener pastures, leaving single parent households, with overwhelmed, under-supported cradle-rockers as the only means of support.

The hand that rocks the cradle -- if she's smart and knows what's good for herself and her little cradlees -- will teach them to stand up for themselves, feel good about themselves, that they can do anything they set their minds to, and have her permission to do so (felonious activities notwithstanding, of course). She will teach them that, though rocking the cradle can be a beautiful, wonderful thing, it is by no means compulsory, and sometimes, choosing never to rock the cradle is the best choice. She will teach her potential cradle-rockers that their uteruses are their own, to do with as they wish, and that no one -- man or woman -- has any right to co-opt them in an attempt at procreative slavery. She will teach them that just because there are women in the world who will submit to the surgeon's knife in order to fit some porn-driven ideal of beauty, self-mutilation is never the answer. She will tell them that if they wish to be truly, meaningfully beautiful, they must first strive to be decent, smart and strong.

Better yet, rather than telling them, she will stop rocking the cradle for a moment or two, get out in the world, pursue a dream, and show them.

~C~

Flattery Will Get You Everywhere, Apparently.

Sidney Blumenthal has written an appalling, amazing, frightening op/ed piece about the Bush White House and Bush's reliance on cowtowers and flatterers who allow him to continue in his delusions of grandeur. His constant self-comparisons to Abraham Lincoln during the waning years of the Civil War are the most disturbing -- at least for me -- because it confirms what I've believed since the first time I ever heard President Bush say those fateful words, "I'm a wartime president." (Since when did you ever hear a president boast with pride that he is a "wartime president?" It's not usually considered good form.)

Blumenthal's comparisons between Machiavelli's "The Prince" and the actions of Vice President Dick Cheney's carefully tended ego-stroking are eerie and accurate, in light of the Bush's recent actions, which seem to defy all logic and rationale. And his tracking of Condoleeza Rice's career, which apparently rises in direct proportion to the number of her cooing little handwritten notes of congratulations and agrandizement, confirms what we' ve have suspected all along -- though there are many woman in the world more than qualified to make brilliant Secretaries of State, Rice was never one of them. And those of us who asked, "what the hell was he thinking?" when he nominated Harriet Meier to the Supreme Court, though she had absolutely no qualifications for the position suddenly have the "lightbulb moment" when Blumenthal relates that Meier is another courtier who knows how to flatter a paper tiger Prince. This would explain why, on the day her impending nomination was announced, Meier gushed to the press, "He's the most brilliant man I have ever met."

Forget the opening of Fox Searchlight's The Hills Have Eyes. Blumenthal's piece is the most chilling work of horror you'll see this month.

~C~