A series of Letters to President Bush

Skye, Elana and I will soon be launching a wonderful website featuring letters we have written to the famous. A letter to Whitney Houston was featured in this site before; today, to commemorate President Bush's reenactment of George Wallace's "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door" regarding the gay marriage issue, are a series of letters to Bush himself.

Dear President Bush,
What year is this? What country are we in?
Sincerely,
Merrill

*******************

Dear President Bush,
Come to think of it, that last letter was a little unfair. Here are some clues:
1. The year is a really high number, well after 1950.
2. The name of the country rhymes with "Blue Knighted Crates of Bo-Derek-A."
Helpfully,
Merrill

*******************

Dear President Bush,
I hate to imagine you straining over the previous questions I've asked you, therefore missing the point of those questions. So I'll come right out and give you the answers:
1. The year is 2004. That's a good 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, which, while it specifically addressed education, also struck down the idea that the United States was made up of different classes of people who could be forced into different institutions. It's 106 years after Plessy v Ferguson, a Supreme Court case in which the decision -- much like a decision involving a certain election in the year 2000 -- is seen as completely against reason and unconstitutional. The dissent, written by Justice John Harlan, stated what we would eventually come to see: "Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens."
2. "Blue Knighted Crates of Bo-Derek-A" is meant to remind you of "United States of America." That's one country on earth which is supposed to stand out as a place where religion does not rule the citizenry. Even in an election year.
Sincerely,
-Merrill

Dear President Bush,
That last letter may have been a bit wordy. I'll be more direct this time, just in case your attention drifted at any point. If you have to change the Constitution in order to deny a group of people a right, maybe that's a sign that you should not deny them that right. Our Constitution moved to restrict people's rights once, in the wildly successful Prohibition amendment.

Do you want the mafia performing gay weddings? I'm just trying to figure out the logic here, especially the idea that this huge federal amendment would come from someone who claims to support states' rights. Isn't it funny how most people who talk loudest about states' rights only want states' rights when the state can be more restrictive of civil rights than the federal government?

OK, maybe irony isn't exactly your thing. Look, I went and made this too complicated again. I'll send one more message to simplify.
Sincerely,
Merrill

*******************

Dear President Bush,
No.
Sincerely,
Merrill

Yellow Press Primer

Matt Drudge, the ethics-free author of the Drudge Report, once seemed to care that people thought of him as a journalist. Now, though, he seems happy to be the Igor-like lackey for the RNC. The most recent example: just when everyone begins to take a closer look at Bush's military record and questionable statements the President has made about his service, Drudge runs with the sensational story of the year -- the Democratic frontrunner had an affair!

Never mind that no facts have emerged to back this up. Never mind that the principals mentioned have all denied the affair. Never mind that major news organizations didn't run with the story as it had no merit. Drudge runs this as a full-page story for more than a day; other lapdogs like Rush Limbaugh start making noise, accusing the media of "liberal bias" for not picking this story up; a few conservative commentators and newspapers of ill repute run stories-on-the-story; everyone hears some version of the story, however false.

Here's how 21st Century yellow journalism works: first, you take a painfully obviously biased individual who can rattle off a bunch of half-truths, exaggerations, inaccurate statements, and outright lies while sounding somewhat authoritative (examples: Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly). Bonus points if you can find someone who lucked into breaking a major story at one time (such as Matt Drudge). Then, take these characters and have them crank out a line, true or not, and then repeat it endlessly until some news outlets pick it up due to the fact that "everyone's talking about it." In this case, most of the media were temporarily distracted from the actual story they were investigating -- remember, war records -- to see if there was anything to this non-story. See how it works? And did anyone notice, in the midst of all of this, that RNC chairman Ed Gillespie told party members that the *Democrats* were planning a negative campaign like no other in history! Basically, he's giving everyone the clearance to go as negative as possible against the Democrats, once again testing the "pre-emptive strike" policy of our current administration.

Even the photos circulating on the internet last week which showed a young John Kerry with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally speaker's podium -- used by many to show the Democratic candidate as a "traitor" -- turned out to be fake. This from the BBC News:

A dirty trick which went wrong has already been exposed. This involved a photograph showing a youthful John Kerry sitting alongside Jane Fonda as she made a speech during an anti Vietnam war rally.

It turned out that two photos had been put together. In the original one of John Kerry, he is sitting on his own.

The big question here is this: how many people saw the photo vs. how many people know it's a fake? Maybe in the end, it doesn't matter; it could be long-forgotten by November. It could be that all of this negativity coming out now is an attempt to get a softer candidate against Bush. And I'm not even a big Kerry supporter; I'm just annoyed by all of this.

But let's get back to the original non-story. Now, Matt Drudge is running everything-but-an-apology related to his "story," therefore keeping it in the news. In the spirit of his journalistic ethics, I would like to provide the following headlines:

Matt Drudge Fathers Five Kittens
Matt Drudge Kills Seven
Matt Drudge: Unethical Pseudo-Journalist

...wait, that last one is true!

The Miracle of Sight

I worked until after midnight last night, a condition that's been rather persistent lately. Freelance work has piled up considerably, and while that's a good thing, it kind of interferes with any free time at all -- between a full-time job and the music, there's not a lot of down-time as it is. This is my excuse for not writing much, and here's the update. Click photos for larger views:

The biggest news first: So this morning, I woke up and experienced a true miracle -- I could see! Deep in my heart, I knew that it was just that the "sleep" in my eye had arranged my eyelashes in such a way that the light was refracted just so and it was only temporary... but I was still amazed. Then, yes... went into the bathroom, opened the contact lens case... empty. Seriously, my absent-mindedness has reached new heights. Like on Tuesday: I was trying to remember where I parked, which led to me wondering if I had, in fact, even driven.

the Standing 8s in the studio: There are 2 new 8s, and the energy is amazing. Nanda Zipp and Mario Esquivel have joined forces with Michelle and myself, and we begin rehearsals this week for our first studio album. More news on this as it develops over the next couple of months. Here's a picture from our first full show at Brennan's:

and finally... oops, out of time! Where's Andy Rooney when you need a quick commentary to finish things up? I'll give it a try...

You know what I can't stand? The word "legumes." I lived 95 years without ever needing to know it, and I'll be damned if I have to learn it now.

-M