QUALITY FILM-MAKING SNEAKS OVER US ON THE ROAD TO ‘NEBRASKA’

These movie essays on current releases are not for the thumbs up thumbs down crowd but for those who want their brains teased with what and why.  Please join the commentary at the end.

By Dominique Paul Noth

Bruce Dern and Will Forte on the road in “Nebraska.”

There is no flash, bang and crash of cymbals in “Nebraska.” It possesses a comedic yet elegiac elegance that dooms it at awards time.  But at least the movie community had the courage to recognize its humanistic honesty.

The central character, Woody Grant, is unlikeable and even pitiful – a taciturn, cantankerous, retired mechanic muddled by years of boozing and bare subsistence in Montana. He’s like American Gothic drawn by Charles Addams. In his partial senility and unfailing stubbornness, he becomes convinced that a magazine sales come-on actually will bring him a million dollars if he can get to Lincoln, Nebraska.  Despite his family’s recognition that he has been duped, he wanders off determined to find his own way. Only his least successful son (as society measures success) decides to humor the old man and accompany him on his fool’s errand.

“Nebraska” is a throwback to an observational time of moviemaking.  A road movie, no less. In black and white, no less. With guitar riffs floating us past signage, monotonous highways,  side-roads, decrepit houses  and crumbling stretches of rural America – without car chases or false punctuation.

How, you may well ask, can so unpretentious a story about so unsteady a character keep us growingly interested?  But build it does.  Chuckle we do. There is a sneaky comic vision of the greed, boredom and buffoonery of the relations and old friends Woody encounters, of how the neglected way-stations of America carry generations of meaning. The son uncovers unexpected snippets from Woody’s past that quietly unravel this uncommunicative beer guzzling grizzled wreck who lacks any interest in defending himself or any ounce of poetry to reveal his soul.

Director Alexander Payne has that poetry. When not being too clever, so does screenwriter Bob Nelson, who finds humor in the articulate as well as the vulgar. It is through such skills, including remarkable cinematographer Phedon Papanichael, that Woody emerges.  But the soul of Woody, without any showiness, is occupied by Bruce Dern, and that is everything.

Bruce Dern was an uncredited extra in Elia Kazan’s “Wild River” (1960), the sailor attacking a child in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie” (1964).  The wild-eyed cowboy who tries to hang Clint Eastwood (1968) and actually kills John Wayne (1972).  The suicidal combat victim of “Coming Home” (1978).  It took eons for Dern to be elevated from psychotic and weirdo to offbeat leading man and then sought-after character  actor.  But those who watched him maneuver over six decades through good roles and bad ones understood what Hollywood often didn’t -- the artistry under the antic ability that got him cast.

No antics here.  Finally a devotion to the truth of simply occupying a character that had long been Dern’s relentless pursuit as an actor. He never tries to push with Woody. He just is, and that is precisely what the role needs – a natural hypnotic presence. Perhaps honor at his achievement will break the awards lockout for “Nebraska,” but Dern fans shouldn’t hold their breath.

There is one brief moment, not Dern’s doing, where the film breaks its remarkable wall of observational tension to satisfy the audience’s desire to strike out at those who take advantage of Woody.  But the fact that we so want to strike out and defend a character we started out barely tolerating simply emphasizes how Dern got  Woody inside our heads without artifice.

June Squibb as Woody’s abrasive overbearing wife reveals more depth than the harridan we take her for. But even better, since we see things through his quiet empathetic manner, is Will Forte as the son.  Yes, the Will Forte of SNL who here finds the rapport with Woody and never lets us see him seeing the humor of it all.

No, “Nebraska” won’t win awards.  It is too quietly paced and does require attentive patient viewing. But it steadily catches you up, reels you in and reminds you forcibly of the insights possible through humanistic cinema.

The author was film and drama critic, then senior editor for features at The Milwaukee Journal, then a leader in online news forums and editor for a decade of the Milwaukee Labor Press. He now writes regularly for several publications on politics and culture, including occasional theater reviews and Milwaukee historical pieces at thirdcoastdaily.

Other movie reviews in this series include "Saving Mr. Banks," "American Hustle," and "The Butler." Check them out and add your comments.

OPRAH ASIDE, ‘THE BUTLER’ FAILS TO SERVE

These movie essays on current releases are not for the thumbs up thumbs down crowd but for those who want their brains teased with what and why.  Please join the commentary at the end.

By Dominique Paul Noth

Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker
 as the Gaineses midway through "The Butler."

Film buffs and Internet historians have pretty much decided on their own, as I do here, that the name of the movie is “The Butler” rather than the contractually insisted insertion of the director’s name in the title.

Have you also noticed that despite the hoopla that surrounded its release, and extensive TV interviews around the memorial dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr., the movie has been shut out in the major Oscar nominations announced January 16? 

This was not only a sign of box office disappointment, which always affects the Oscar choices despite the aura that artistic quality is the decider. It was also a sign of artistic disappointment in an epic everyone wanted to succeed – a survey of 75 years of America’s struggle to rid the dominant white culture of what MLK among others described as a white sickness, not intrinsic white wickedness. (Though a horrifyingly vicious sickness.)

In one case, that Oscar snub is unfair.  Oprah Winfrey’s supporting performance -- the butler’s wife devoted to middle class status, recipes, sewing, dancing and even drinking and sexuality until she lashes out as ferocious mother and appreciative defender of her husband -- is a remarkable series of spot-on vignettes. She captures again and again the various styles and chameleonic nature of the times.  

It’s far more than the cultural shock of “Good Lord -- Oprah’s smoking!” She should have been the movie’s dramatic touchstone, as should the other behaviorist performances of Terrence Howard and particularly Forest Whitaker communicating the butler’s two faces: Dignity and naturalness as a house servant and anger as the father treated as a paycheck Uncle Tom.

In fact, Whitaker struggles to return the film to its best basic concept:  A butler human in his behavior but trained to maneuver as unnoticed observer at the White House without direct response or political reaction to tumultuous events. Except the movie keeps inserting incidents where he is a participant, a trigger, a victim or out of touch older citizen in the turmoil of civil rights.

Even if you were empathetic through these decades, even if you respect those brief insights into how an entire race camouflaged true feelings and functioned on despite establishment attitudes, the movie is a distinct disappointment. It fails to consistently and progressively get underneath and inside, leaving us clinging to those acting vignettes where screenwriter Danny Strong, an actor himself, and director Lee Daniels gave the cast some room to behave naturally.  

Neighbor Terrence Howard attempts
 to seduce Oprah Winfrey in "The Butler."

But then Strong with heavyset words and Daniels with heavy-handed cutting take away those very insights. This is a Classics Comics treatment of important history, a gaseous fueled headline assault that seldom knows how to relax and let internal realities tell the tale. The production must underscore and punch hard every historic incident to the point of turning off both white and black audiences.  Yet no punch is needed to make us feel the power of Eisenhower stepping in to protect black schoolchildren or JFK getting shot. 

The defiance in the younger generation can’t just be perceived by the moviemakers. It has to clobber us. Butler Cecil Gaines’ oldest son must embody every flavor of rebellion – sit-ins, jailbird, Freedom Bus rider escalating into Black Panther and then “reformed” college student and member of Congress. In a telegraphed inevitability, the younger son laughs it all off and is killed in Vietnam.  

If there is dignity in house servants, if there was any refutation of bigotry in the ethics, skills and pride of the butler class, it has to be explicitly explained to the rebellious son in MLK’s motel room, of all places.  The audience must be told what to think, not allowed to think.

Profound moral contractions can be communicated without pounding social placards into the audience’s chest. If you doubt that, revisit the British “Remains of the Day” of 1993. It’s subtle to be sure, but fascinating how Anthony Hopkins as the devoted butler to an English lord playing footsie with the Fascists makes us fume with outrage at his indifference. It relies on good acting, quiet screenwriting and the audience’s intelligence.

“The Butler” is based on the true tale of Eugene Allen, a butler to eight presidents (truncated for time, thankfully, into five, with major acting names imitating the presidents – the real acting chops under the makeup falling mainly to Liv Schreiber as LBJ).  It correctly explores the historic emotional discipline and conduct code needed at the White House – (“You hear nothing. You see nothing. You only serve”). But even the White House echoes with pejoratives and pay discrimination.  The plot ties the characters’ progression to the major decisions being made and overheard by the butler from Eisenhower to JFK to LBJ to Nixon —concluding with how Ronald Reagan’s resistance to sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime finally brings  the butler’s family together again.

Liv Schreiber as LBJ

It is all too pat, a disservice to the controlled anguish of black society of all strata, a constant effort to rub our noses in the obvious injustices. There was a reason why it took a Washington Post story in 2008, when Obama was on the verge of becoming president, that we only then learned about the black butler who succeeded through humanity and invisibility to White House longevity, an admirable example but not an activist player.  

The director, who insisted this film be called “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” has clearly put the wrong people first, and not just in the title.  If the movie had worked it didn’t need his name.  The film hurt its best acting moments, not because Oscar is forgetful but because the awards recognized Daniels’ failure to let tension speak for itself or grasp the difference between art and polemics. 

That explains the Oprah snub and why moviegoers and awards voters have gravitated toward the truer slice of history in Chiwetel Ejiofor (best actor nominee) and “12 Years a Slave” (best picture nominee), blocking out the deeply respected Whitaker and the steadily disrespected “The Butler.”

The author was film and drama critic, then senior editor for features at The Milwaukee Journal, then a leader in online news forums and editor for a decade of the Milwaukee Labor Press. He now writes regularly for several publications on politics and culture, including occasional theater reviews and Milwaukee historical pieces at thirdcoastdaily.

Other current Noth movie reviews on this domain include “Saving Mr. Banks” and “American Hustle.”

THE BEST (SOCIALLY DECEPTIVE) ‘HUSTLE’ ON THE BIG SCREEN

These movie essays on current releases are not for the thumbs up thumbs down crowd but for those who want their brains teased with what and why.  Please join the commentary at the end.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams having

 a bizarre confrontation in “American Hustle.”

By Dominique Paul Noth

As I watched Christian Bale as con artist Irving Rosenfeld  diligently minister to his elaborate comb-over and hair patch, for the first time in my life I felt a pang for Donald Trump and what his ego and self-image must go through every morning to face the world.

This is not a cheap joke at the expense of The Donald and his coif.  It is really the gift of director David O. Russell. He guides our empathy toward the most unlikely, quirky and self-obsessed characters, forcing us to rethink our priorities and social conventions.

 In “American Hustle,” hair becomes a society metaphor of how the imperfect present themselves to sucker, con or manipulate those with even less confidence or more desperate greed. From the immense pompadour flourished by Jeremy Renner as a baby-kissing 1970s mayor not above some under-table corruption (a still current metaphor for New Jersey apparently) to the huge hair curlers of Amy Adams as a just clever enough wannabe preparing to fool the marks, from the puffed hairdo and artificial suntan of queen bee Jennifer Lawrence to the permed Brilliantine locks and tiny rollers of FBI agent Bradley Cooper, the movie loads up on follicles as Freud.

The fact that the actors are in real life beautiful people mocking the need to be beautiful people is just a layer upon a layer of the hustle.

Russell is great at this.  The movie constantly turns upside down our attitudes about nutty behavior and appropriate conduct, mocking our belief in traditional values, nastily upending our establishment ideas of appropriate ethical norms.  It has a comic spin and sense of outsized grandeur and con, but it also strikes true.

The movie is an actor’s paradise of improvisation and outrageous behavior, from Adams indicating submission to sex and then  peeing and howling in a nightclub stall to Lawrence dancing madly to “Live and Let Die” after setting the mob loose on her wayward husband.   But there is a wacky enduring romanticism that permeates this commentary on Americana values, as in many of Russell’s outings.

In the 1960s the academic auteur theory often went too far. It correctly noted how pervasive a powerful director’s style and themes could be (John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock) but ignored the collaborative nature of moviemaking.

But among the handful of modern directors who fit the auteur theory – yet embrace teamwork and improvisation -- and whose unique (in this case cockeyed) vision of humanity dominates (“The Three Kings,” “I Heart Huckabees,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and now “American Hustle”) Russell is right up there – and according to industry reports as beloved, hated and outspoken as many of those directors of yore.

One reason why the love affair at the heart of “Silver Linings Playbook” carried so much weight is we were forced to rethink the boxes we put couples into. Here were two people (again Cooper and Lawrence) wrestling for control of their mental faculties yet somehow closer to love and trust than the rest of us.

Similarly, down to the mad dance motif, “American Hustle” and its bizarre leads are hardly what society regards as normal. But that same money-crazy society that would question their mores is clearly a pushover for their methods.  Bale with his pot belly, self-absorption and a heart condition interrupting his sexual entanglements and Adams with her desire to flaunt her British accent along with her body are hardly models of decent behavior.  Bale's  street scam,  built around dry-cleaning and fake art, is modest crime until he is forced by the FBI into a million dollar wire hustle that fills him with personal and emotional doubts – along with guilt over  who he is targeting while becoming a target.

Yet we root for him. And for Adams, who is manipulative, shrewd and strangely honest, which contrasts her with Lawrence, who turns every bizarre behavior into a justification of her impulsive personality.

There is a curious code of fidelity among thieves missing in the establishment world of FBI, prosecutors, politicians and even the Mafia (Robert De Niro blisters the screen through dangerous presence in an uncredited cameo).  Crooked politicians and gangsters would normally be the targets of comeuppance, and the law would normally be the agents of justice, but the movie turns that expectation on its ear. 

In a plot too bizarre to explain, but based quite loosely on the infamous ABSCAM (fake Arab sheik scam)  of the 1970s that netted several payola politicians, the story reverses comedically the people we want to see punished, with a satirical point of view that resonates with viewers.

Despite some overhype at awards time, in contrasting ways Adams and Lawrence have never done as good work, and Bale and Cooper are great fun.

The finale is a bit of loose-ends wrapping up of escapist romanticism. Some of the antics along the way can mainly be explained as letting actors cut loose.  Still, “American Hustle” is a vision of America that needs a hearing, a slyly original piece of storytelling that still echoes the values of humanistic cinema. It is one of the most satisfying movie journeys of the year.

The author was film and drama critic, then senior editor for features at The Milwaukee Journal, then a leader in online news forums and editor for a decade of the Milwaukee Labor Press. He now writes regularly for several publications on politics and culture, including occasional theater reviews and Milwaukee historical pieces at thirdcoastdaily.

DISNEY’S DIG FOR GOLD – can these Hollywood self-embraces finally cease?

Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks going round
 and round to promote Disneyland and
 “Mary Poppins” while starring in “Saving Mr. Banks.”

These movie essays on current releases are not for the thumbs up thumbs down crowd but for those who want their brains teased with what and why.  Please join the commentary at the end.

By Dominique Paul Noth

The Golden Globes gave cool reception January 12 to a much touted film timed in its release to woo insider votes. But “Saving Mr. Banks,” may turn hotter with Oscar nominations – since thousands of the Academy voters have close affiliations with Disney Studios, which has been pressuring for the film. 

But here’s hoping not. Here’s hoping “Saving Mr. Banks” writes finale to the movie industry’s fetish for wet sloppy kissing itself in presenting its accolades.

Two years ago there was considerable artistic motivation when Oscar honored “The Artist” – and it was easy to be swept up in the acclaim.  Few wanted to believe that statuette success was primarily about Hollywood in a self-congratulatory fever.

The positive finale from “The Artist”

But ask yourself – how was it possible that a silent film in black and white from a foreign director could seduce thousands of motion picture industry veteran cynics so readily?  While expertly done and using the best storyboard techniques of cinema, “The Artist” was an emotional pat on the back for Hollywood’s self-importance in world culture and its redemptive power.

The story of how the arrival of sound did indeed humiliate and destroy silent film artists seemed at first an attack on the ugly side of the studio system, only to flip in its concluding huzzahs into a triumph of Hollywood righting itself – the big hearts of stars and studios recognizing talent and using the magic of big screen enchantment to reverse suicidal depression.   Forget what MGM did to John Gilbert and Judy Garland, forget Warner Bros suspending Bette Davis. Hollywood corrected its tendencies. Just like real life.

A little self-indulgent glee is natural in the movie industry, but worse was to come. In my view the 2013 Oscars and Golden Globes will long regret passing over the “best film” that will prove immortal, “Lincoln,” to honor “Argo” – but that sad story has more to do with insider agencies and political advertising than artistic judgment.

In fairness, “Argo” had some built-in justifications for its Oscar and Golden Globes wins. One of the rationales behind the “Argo” sweep was the grave snub to Ben Affleck, wrongly passed over for Oscar best director nomination.  It was a better made fictionalization of a true story of heroism than “Zero Dark Thirty” -- and had the advantage of time passing as well (the rescue from Iran in 1979 of Americans trapped in the Canadian embassy using the ruse of a mythical Hollywood film). “Zero’s”  hunt for bin Laden was too close an event to compress and controversially  fictionalize.

Hollywood insiders John Goodman (left) and Alan

 Arkin (center) with Ben Affleck toasting “Argo.”

But few outsiders realized that “Argo” with its canny storytelling and good production values was a ready occasion for Hollywood to again embrace itself in its own virtues, this time for helping save democracy. A few of the community’s leading specialists  (including the late makeup artist John Chambers whom I once interviewed) helped sell the ruse and then kept quiet about it for decades, a rare case of moviemakers keeping a secret.  “Argo’s” best lines and performances are all echoes of that “inside Hollywood” affection -- so clever, so good, so deserving more pats on the back at awards time.

Now,  timed to awards season,  comes “Saving Mr. Banks” -- also based on a true back-story of how “Mary Poppins” author P.L. Travers proved a splintery British nut for Walt Disney Studios to crack in her determination to preserve her “Mary Poppins” creation from Walt’s manipulations.  The movie spends endless time retracing Travers’ childhood hardships in Australia and the roots of her Poppins fantasy, but it  hardly gives credence – just tons of screen time -- to her prickly nature and suspicion of Walt.

Inevitably, “Saving Mr. Banks” concludes

 with Travers attending the “Mary Poppins” premiere.

The whole exercise ends up serving as the longest indirect trailer the original 1964 film ever had.  It makes us long to see “Mary Poppins” again, a truism reflected in the final credits -- backstage photo memories from the original production.

The highlight reel for “Saving Mr. Banks” should consist completely of the catchy movie tunes and alluring story boards for “Mary Poppins” that Travers so unreasonably resists, until she finally taps her toes. The Disney creative forces imagined by actor Bradley Whitford (with Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak as the musical Shermans) are the best things in the film, underscoring that Disney’s creative people are the greatest gift to America since the invention of the refrigerator.

The always expert Emma Thompson broods magnificently and with devastating acerbic flourishes as Travers, only to literally melt into Mickey Mouse’s fuzzy embrace for no apparent reason.  Walt Disney in the arms of affable Tom Hanks is almost painfully pleasant, assured, temper controlled, always caring of others. That’s unlike the real Disney, admittedly a PR expert and visionary – but frequently ruthless to rule so huge a dominion.

No tantrums here.  This is father Disney painted by Disney Studios in a major studio promotion as the boss and guru everyone loves.  In reality, the relationship of Travers and Disney has been fictionalized. Disney already had bought the film rights and left her the more problematic script approval rights. Walt wisely left most of those conflict debates to his team, as a final audiotape in the movie amusingly reveals.

Yet the movie still turns Walt into the Carl Jung of Hollywood psychotherapy, figuring out the ego-id secrets behind Travers giving him such a hard time. He explains it all to her and the audience in florid sentences that suggest his love of children and storytelling embody the true genius of our age and anyone who resists his goodwill is a self-abusing silly.

No doubts flights of imagination and the powers of memory are central in all artistic creation, which lends charm to the young Travers (lovely child actress Annie Rose Buckley) and her unstinting  adoration of her wayward father (the ever appealing Colin Farrell).

But “Saving Mr. Banks” is a turgid exercise, beautifully filmed and surprisingly seriously paced, that makes nonsense of a genuine strain in artistic creativity.  Does anyone remember “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945)?  It is a similar theme of an imaginative child whose resilience and creativity are enhanced by a drunken, doting poetic father.  This was standard in 20^th century literature. Countless authors and screenwriters quietly turned childhood hardships into positive insights, though the best hardly used this to crassly promote one studio and one film.

“Saving Mr. Banks” is the Hollywood pat on the backside so blatant it should slap the industry back into common sense.

The author was film and drama critic, then senior editor for features at The Milwaukee Journal, then a leader in online news forums and editor for a decade of the Milwaukee Labor Press. He now writes regularly for several publications on politics and culture, including occasional theater reviews and Milwaukee historical pieces at thirdcoast.

Why politics lurked but never struck an unsullied Milwaukee judicial race

By Dominique Paul Noth

Janet Protasiewicz

There are reasons when local races don’t erupt into extremist gridlock.  Usually unreported. Journalists are more consumed by outbreaks of actual gridlock.  But sometimes the best political stories are about why combat doesn’t happen.

One that didn’t happen involves the April Branch 24 election for Milwaukee County Circuit Court, where highly qualified Janet Protasiewicz is now running unopposed by the wealthy forces that spent big against her in spring of 2013.

Yet for weeks, Madison insiders were abuzz with how the conservatives in the Capitol were pushing Gov. Scott Walker to appoint his own incumbent for the seat after the November retirement of feisty maverick Charles F. Kahn Jr.  The Walker administration even accepted applications and held vetting sessions to find a foe to the announced Protasiewicz.  

Technically nonpartisan, judicial races from the Supremes on down have drawn toxic high campaign money and vehement ideological claims for a decade, often backfiring on governors in both parties.  Both Doyle and Walker have lost this game because the public likes to elect their own judges and only then give them virtual lifetime tenure.

But appointed judges carry the taint of any governor’s politics. Experienced lawyers are flattered by the offers from the governor’s people to apply but increasingly wary of the political fallout, several told me.  Right now an image of leaning toward Walker may be what the conservatives want and what Walker once bought into, but this time he was balking over Branch 24.

It was the Walker taint in 2012 that helped propel peppy bilingual Carolina Stark – also a better campaigner – to oust Walker appointed incumbent Nelson Phillips III and take the Branch 17 judgeship.  When a year later Walker appointed Rebecca Bradley as incumbent to another vacant seat, Branch 45, he didn’t trust his personal clout for her incumbency alone could help her survive against a far more court-experienced field (including hard-charging Protasiewicz). So he doubled down.  It took a full blast of talk radio and $167,000 in TV ad buys by Club for Growth to help Bradley win in April 2013.  Walker was an eager player because then he wanted the right-wing financiers to know whose side his bread was buttered on.

But this time Protasiewicz is back – a 25 year veteran of the DA’s office, a workhorse of the courts, courteous and tough as nails, supported by court experts across the political spectrum. Yet some Club for Growth powers in Madison continued to press Walker to appoint someone to oppose her despite no political reason or ammunition.  Even Phillips was interviewed by the governor’s minions. So was another assistant DA, plus two more candidates.  When I spoke with them, none would talk about being offered the job, but then again pointedly, none accepted.

For weeks, while Walker must have felt like the cat being played with by the right-wing mice, Protasiewicz felt like the mouse being played with by the gubernatorial cat.  She was in, but was anyone else? She was highly qualified -- but would she have to face the big spenders Walker has encouraged before, particularly with Judge Bradley, former head of the Milwaukee chapter of the Federalist Society who used big money and political attitudes to retain her seat?

Walker was balking not out of conscience but weighing the timing, according to Madison insiders.  Nothing looks more intrusive than the governor leaning on the local judicial scales, though this is just where heavily biased unreportable money loves to lean. He has been running around the country proclaiming he is about economic not social issues – and definitely not mucking with local control or politics. (Though of course that has been his signature.)

Now he cannot look like a double-dealer in national eyes and also needs every conservative dollar he can muster for his own race. Should he waste gunpowder on Protasiewicz?

Weeks went by. The start of the Dec. 2 five-week countdown to raise 1,000 signatures for an opponent came and went.  Yet Walker stalled and then finally announced, in a remarkable switch in tone December 13, that he “would let the people decide.”  He never revealed he had previously called for applicants and actually had four to choose from.

His belated response assures that Milwaukee County  will now have only the most qualified and popular candidate, Protasiewicz, to decide for.

But the decision has more to do with fear of stirring the electorate pot negatively before his own November election – because honestly, when has the governor avoided stepping into Milwaukee politics?  

The race that never was winds up telling us a lot about the governor’s race that will be.

Why do far-away citizens care about one lousy Assembly election in Milwaukee?

By Dominique Paul Noth

I had several themes when I wrote my article on the JohnHermes race for the State Assembly in District 82, but basically wanted to wake up the citizens in Franklin and Greendale (plus a sliver of Greenfield and tracts of the city) to a harsh reality. Given the holiday shopping date of the special election, December 17, they were in danger of being shanghaied by a minority who always shows up to vote way out of proportion to the community’s genuine rounded interests.

Unlike Brazil or many other countries where voting is high or nigh mandatory,  less than half the eligible US voters turn out for local, district or even statewide elections – a tragedy in itself.  But in this case, less than 5% could determine the new incumbent in the Madison legislature, as a similar sliver just did in nearby Assembly District 21.

However you lean in your philosophy, this is flat wrong and lazy. It robs reasonable and intelligent residents concerned about their communities a fair voice in their own future.

One of the larger themes in my article was political strategy around turnout  -- are we blaming those who run for public office for failures that are the consequences of our own ignorance, inattention or  indifference? The 82^nd is shaping up as a precision attack on partisan gridlock at a horrible time for off-year elections. Hermes the Democrat is seeking out a middle ground emphasizing the need for locals to demand a bigger voice in Madison in the face of entrenched party machinery, power games and finances – all intrusions citizens said they loathed in my extensive interviews.  But then, again, few promised they would get to the polls Dec. 17 to express that loathing.

But there was another theme that, somewhat to my surprise, brought instant response by email, social media and phone calls from throughout Wisconsin and from states as far-flung as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Colorado, California and Georgia  where they don’t know John Hermes from Miley Cyrus.

Citizens and journalists had their own examples of local elections driven awry by special interests married to a simplistic narrative or kneejerk label.  One of the most popular labels seems this cry of “no new taxes!” to defeat any effort at local improvement. Yet the cry often comes from people uninformed of how badly their current tax burden already represents special interests running amuck that no one paid attention to.  Nor how that  “no new taxes” mantra actually destroys sensible corrections of current policy as well as new ways of generating jobs, revenue and the “quality of life” that taxes are supposed to be about.

 Legislative races don’t directly deal with local  taxes, but party labels propel some nonsensical  extremist views about lock-step tax and spend ideologies, as opposed to calculated correction and fresh ideas from individuals seeking public office. Meanwhile the “no new tax” cry drives to the polls a gaggle of government haters who don’t want politicians to do anything but follow their commands, whatever those may be.

The  messages to me  – and they came from devout conservatives as well as progressives  – provided  example upon example of what author and historian Thomas Frank explored in  his 2004 best-seller “What’s the Matter With Kansas,” how ideological exaggerations could get people to vote again and again against their own economic interests.

As one Appleton  correspondent told me,  this is not a right or left issue, but a case of whether sensible locally committed citizens show up at these “boring and wonkish” local elections (his description) to take back their municipal or state representation.  A colleague from Georgia shared an editorial about how unforeseen high turnout in a county election provided a surprisingly intelligent outcome:  “When there is a comparative strong turnout it is not the liberals that win, not even the progressives, but rather those who have thought about the matters at hand and reached their own conclusions.”

From Pennsylvania as well as northeast Wisconsin  came details of how routine bond issues, property development, school expansions and the like were routinely defeated when 10% of the community controlled the ballot box. But several messages also celebrated the simple turn-around when a mere 30% of residents showed up to vote more reflectively about local needs.

No wonder the billionaires such as the notorious Koch brothers, the Walton family and other groups have shifted so much of their money away from failed national  frontal assaults (such as backing Romney) to targeting local elections, school board races, bond issues and the like.  It is here where citizens are hardest to rouse and a small committed group of ideologists can be stampeded to the polls against the desires of the community at large.

Frankly, though I sell to many outlets,  I had trouble pitching this story about the 82^nd district and decided to post it myself.  The resistance  reminded me of the issues facing today’s journalism.  Democracy is indeed hard work, journalism has to explore nuances yet the Internet discourages discussions outside ideological confines or longer than four paragraphs  – and geographical terrain tends to dominate, so if you don’t have a lot of eyeballs in Franklin and Greendale, why run such a story?  The citizens of Milwaukee County are suffering from a narrowing rather than expanding exchange of research and analysis in the local mass media.

How curious that folks in other states picked up on the lesson faster. But they know. The shrunk turnout in local elections at odd times of year has crippled the general future of our democracy and republic and cost many communities forward-looking efforts to deepen community growth.  So this is no longer an issue of narrow geography or  Twitter one-liners but broad social and government policy.  How we get more people to vote is vital. Even in one lousy Milwaukee assembly race.

Hermes rides local desire for sensible middle in Madison legislature

The perfect test tube for a strategy that may roll out in many Wisconsin state elections in 2014:  Emphasize local desires. Downplay the partisan gridlock.

 By Dominique Paul Noth

John Hermes facing Dec. 17 election to Assembly.

During extensive chats in the shops and neighborhoods of Franklin and Greendale after Thanksgiving, residents active in both parties agreed: This time the Democrats have the best known, more energetic and proven candidate for State Assembly District 82.

So much so that two Republican headhunters even sheepishly confessed they had tried to recruit John Hermes for the GOP ticket, until they learned about the Democratic ties and principles of the Greendale village president.  Now he’s even been endorsed by the local Republicans’ original choice in next door AD21, Steve Scaffidi, the Oak Creek mayor who withdrew when pressured to toe the Madison majority line. 

But since the race occurs Dec. 17 the right-wing believes it has the edge. The special Tuesday election is a week before Christmas. A regular Assembly race in a presidential year – such as November 2012 -- drew nearly 30,000 district voters and even in off-year competition can easily garner 23,000.

Yet both parties estimate Dec. 17 could attract a total of 6,000– and maybe not that many if the weather is bad or citizens are behind on holiday shopping.  The GOP remains supremely confident that some 2,500 to 3,000 of their diehards will vote the R side of the ballot whomever.  Buying into that view, much of the local media has ignored this race because it is not partisanly juicy on the surface.

It’s an old off-year story. “The best qualified should win public office” – that’s  what  the people  always say. Yet they let a tiny group that actually turns up at the polls decide -- especially with these bizarre special elections for the Madison legislature that fall way outside the normal voting calendar.

But there is a contrary mood heavily at work when you talk with the residents – an underlying dislike for labeling expectations, a growing agitation about the pundit assumptions about past practices.

The contest is a perfect test tube for a strategy that may roll out in many Wisconsin state elections in 2014:  Emphasize the local desires and downplay the partisan gridlock. Get through to voters’ real concerns even at a weird time in an off-year.

The Republicans are  banking on how Romney won the district over Obama in 2012 and how GOP Rep. Jeff Stone – who rode a moderate conciliatory image in the late 1990s to win and maintain after decades of Democratic control – got  60% over popular teacher but novice politico Kathleen Wied Vincent in 2012.

But there is a relevant counter-narrative that exposes the danger of relying on old labels, past laurels and selective voting data. This is also the district where Tammy won handily over Tommy for US senate in 2012. And Stone lost all vestiges of a moderate label when he jumped away mid-term this fall to take a better-paying job with the Gov. Scott Walker administration, forcing this odd election.

“I know where these families came from,” noted Milwaukee historian John Gurda, recalling how these suburbs on the edge of Milwaukee County grew dynamically through government incorporation after World War II. Even the area’s state senate seat had for decades before Mary Lazich been the domain of Democrat Lynn Adelman, now an influential federal judge.  “This is hardly a locked Republican area,” Gurda commented. “And certainly not in this climate.”

There is no joining at the political extremist hip between Franklin and Greendale (the 50,000 population heart of the district) and AD82 includes a sliver of Greenfield and key tracts of the city of Milwaukee that lean more liberal.

Republican planners concede that their choice, Ken Skowronski, faced a lot of opposition within the party to win its Nov. 19 primary and draws little of the outside money that helped other GOP candidates survive.  He has been described by peers as “notably crusty” and gave a WisconsinEye interview that emphasized his faithfulness to whatever his party leaders are backing in Madison. He actually told a neighbor that he was running mainly because the Assembly would be a “feather in my cap” after combative terms as Franklin alderman.

But even left-leaning Daily Kos senses the right’s confidence. After noting Skowronski is “certainly not a top candidate,” Kos analysts  slyly added, “However, he may not need to be.”

Yet Hermes has won handily in a conservative environment since 1998 as village president (a position he will resign if he wins the Assembly).  He is a leading force in 76^th St. business corridor expansion.  He’s an influential leader in the private-public Aerotroplis to interconnect and galvanize regional transit and is a respected commissioner on the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. He champions academic ties to improve southeastern Wisconsin job creation through the Water Council and the University of Wisconsin NanoTechnology Hub.

All that, along with a clean campaign pledge, leads him to expect the opposition to play nice.  “I don’t think the Republicans would dare come after me on economic issues,” Hermes said, who modestly rated his own WisconsinEye interview at “80% okay” though his answers were forthright and his command of the issues voluminous.

But his Democratic roots (including negotiator and committee chair for the Air Traffic Controllers Association during his three decades as FAA controller) are not on blatant display in this contest. His campaign is hardly hiding the fact but rather emphasizing experience, service and rounded support from municipal leaders, education and community groups and such unions as the nurses and operating engineers.

That may not be enough for the Democrats that spit bile at the mere mention of Gov. Scott Walker, his agenda and tactics – an exorcism moment that creates hostility even among traditional Republicans now discovering the governor does not represent the Party they grew up in.

Hermes’ early literature was not developed around his reputation as pro-choice, anti voucher schools, pro equal pay for women and pro environment sensibility – though he frankly discusses all positions at the doors and has given speeches strongly defending women’s rights.  “I don’t think of those as left or right issues, just sensible,” he told me.

As village president he conceded some temporary gains from Act 10 he could take advantage of for taxpayers while excoriating the exclusion of police and fire unions that would have most helped Greendale’s bottom-line.  He also disliked Walker’s methods and treating “professional managers as wimps” incapable of negotiating across an even collective bargaining table. “To pretend we don’t know how to deal with our workers was just insulting,” he said in an interview. That’s a stance on Act 10 that Wisconsin could see more from many Democrats in state races in November.

Hermes was also one of the first municipal leaders to publicly attack the GOP assault on residency rules as destructive of local control.

This  “big tent” approach -- though embraced in national Democratic strategy -- has chilled a few activists in the party’s left-most wing. They want the D more prominent on his campaign literature and more “in your face” political tactics.

 “Everyone has their own style,” said Hermes in an interview. “All campaigns say they will reach across the aisle to work with the other side. The difference is that when I reach out, the other side actually wants to reach back.”

That’s why he has emphasized broad endorsements from municipal chiefs across ideological lines – Whitefish Bay, Cudahy, Brown Deer, city and county of Milwaukee, West Allis and even the mayor of Racine. “They know me as a common-sense facilitator, to get both sides together,” said Hermes.

His campaign manager, Democratic strategist Brandon Savage, thinks Hermes is the ideal candidate for the district and has strictly controlled the messaging, even stiffing more absolutist party voices. 

 “We’ve got to express the urgency of keeping local representation front and center in Madison rather than using the same old playbook,” Savage said. “We have to think outside that narrow box.”

But Dec. 17 still comes down to which voters jump out of the box.  Hermes needs to draw from traditional Democrats (11,854 turned out for Vincent) as well as crossover Republicans and those disenchanted with intrusive state politics.  

Vincent, who withdrew from the race in October with enthusiastic praise for Hermes --- “he’s the real deal,” she told me – has cooled of late, feeling her doorbell and signage techniques were not given fuller hearing by the Hermes managers. “I know he’s the better candidate,” she told me Nov. 30, “but I don’t feel my role should be endorsing anyone directly, more preserving my own options.  These are citizens who should make up their own minds.”

 “It’s the main thing I hear at the doors,” Hermes said. “People are tired of no middle anymore, of being told what brand to vote for. They want party extremists to stay out.”

Triple weasel words -- Dolan, Walker and PolitiFacts

By Dominique Paul Noth

 

Dolan receiving Milwaukee  social justice award

We’ve entered strange times when New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan shows a shrewder  grasp of marketing language and more skill at semantic manipulation than either Gov. Scott Walker or those hired wordsmiths of the Journal-Sentinel PolitiFacts team.

It was in Milwaukee as archbishop that Dolan polished his ability to play all sides of the class warfare strata, spouting conservative rhetoric backing GOP style politics while supporting -- in newsletters and award ceremonies at least -- the church’s traditional progressive vision of social justice.

That’s a talent he has deepened as leader of the US bishops. Now he adroitly encourages media quotes on the horrors of the Affordable Care Act (opposing contraception despite those lavish religious exemptions) yet quietly backtracks in other statements to support the ACA as helping Americans to better health care.  If this is a selective and sanctimonious word game, how would you describe any politician’s campaign platform?

More recently Dolan has used the techniques of an infomercial pitchman to explain why gay marriage is on the upswing against his own bishops’ statements and actions.  (In state after state, 16 so far, many with high Catholic populations, full marriage rights for gay partners have become the law of the land, with more on the horizon.)

Catholics, he suggests, were falsely painted as “anti-gay” and had been “out-marketed” by “Hollywood” and vague “opinion-makers.”  It is typical Dolan shrewdness – and probably fair to let him have his say in a breaking news story, where readers can see the holes in his argument and decide for themselves. It is in analysis, the sort of digging into the facts that PolitiFacts is supposed to be about, that a different picture should emerge.

Since PolitiFacts hasn’t and probably won’t dissect Dolan, we will. As a reporter who actually interviewed Dolan, I know exactly what sort of misdirection he is up to – and it’s not quite what leaders of SNAP (the Survivors Network of Abused by Priests) are saying, that he is deflecting attention from the church’s pedophilia problem. He’s actually carving a public relations narrative of his own – that the church is not against gays or anyone, but has been outmaneuvered for the time being by clever opponents.

The hole is obvious.  Dolan has creatively ducked the central issue in a democratic society -- human rights – by suggesting this is all about better salesmanship. But religions abandoned exclusive control of the word “marriage” over centuries of letting secular powers determine who gets licensed to marry or perform the ceremony.

Blood tests, documents, elected or appointed officials as well as delegated religious leaders are all equally engaged and approved by secular regulation – and it goes deeper. Marriage had been legally limited in definition, in obeisance to dominant religions in the US, as between one man and one woman. To back that up, all manner of legal rights – tax laws, inheritance, hospital visits and dozens more in regulations  – were embedded in the process. Only now is the public catching on, thanks to activists. It’s dawned that such constricting legal binds have turned the word “marriage” into a “human right” far more than a religious term for a sacrament or ritual.

Dolan knows the church can’t win that debate in a free society, so he claims the church is losing to smarter PR rather than on  a moral ground.

If this were PolitiFacts, which analyzes news statements for accuracy and attempts to rate the truth or consequences, Dolan’s explanation  would require a robust discussion of semantic trickery and historic  rationale. But Wisconsin PolitiFacts  team, a curious mix of journalists and political mouthpieces, dodges and weaves when it comes to calling out Walker.

The gov now spends most of his time AWOL -- out of state pitching hay in the presidential sweepstakes. And he’s getting away with slick evasion in studio interviewers with  TV talking heads pretending to be journalists. Perhaps they can be excused for not knowing the ins and outs of his behavior in Wisconsin, allowing him to say he is not about hot-button social issues but focused on economic policies. At least it sounds to the uninitiated that he’s not vindictive on matters of women, marriage, worker rights and voter ID.

But what can possibly be PolitiFacts’ excuse for letting him say that? They know the real Walker intimately, as well as his statistically provable  ineptitude on the fiscal success he’s pitching.

It is Wisconsin journalists who have studied his whole career who should be stepping up immediately when he plays fast and loose in those studios and podiums far away. They know how heavily he has engaged in vaginal probe laws for women, against equal pay initiatives, opposing any municipality having better rules on wages or sick pay,  forcing poor families off Medicaid and so forth. They know how only while campaigning for president has he backed away from taking a position on issues he has privately supported, such as abstinence-only sex ed in schools,  demeaning mascot names and right to work legislation.

There is a movement afoot to have Amazon place Walker’s “Unintimidated” in the fiction bin where it belongs.  But his co-authored version of his reign as governor will not be heavily marketed in Wisconsin in any case. There are too many citizens, politicians -- and journalists -- who can tell the real stories. Not PolitiFacts, apparently.

Local journalists should jump all over the sales myth he is hawking outside the state. Yet JS amply discusses all these fables he pitches on the national campaign trail as news stories and in analyses don’t even trot out its standard  “Pants on Fire” or even the bizarre label  “Half True”  (why not half false?). Admittedly, these half and half  labels  have  become a PolitiFacts safety valve to avoid offending advertisers, using  fine print loopholes so that a statement that is completely true to the knowledgeable public  can be labeled half true to avoid upsetting conservative readers  –  especially if Mary Burke said it.

But the kicker came when Walker discussed his opposition to gay marriage and PolitiFacts treated it as an “In Context” discussion -- as if simply explaining on behalf of Scott  how he never intended to sound so extreme on gay marriage. It was quite a show since PolitiFacts usually pounces when a politician stands the dictionary on its ear.

Walker said he was merely following a state amendment (not mentioning how heavily it is under legal attack), yet the newspaper ignored the recent past when he gave  full-throated support against gay marriage, defending one man-one woman because it worked with voters. They also know through the John Doe probe he openly hired the sort of  gay staff members who can be arrested while opposing hospital visitation rights for gay couples.

To allow him to describe his current position as “a healthy  balance” between opposing camps is sheer nonsense that should have been nailed.  All this turns  PolitiFacts into a  bigger joke and  a deeper stain on objective journalism than it was.  And reminds readers that the worst mumbo-jumbo of labels or non-labels defending Walker can be traced back to one writer.

But frankly politics shouldn’t matter.  PolitiFacts is supposed to analyze and probe independently, opposing any fudging from any quarter --  rather than allowing more fudging.  It would be wrong if they protected Obama. What they are  doing to let Walker off the hook is shameful.

The author is a former senior editor at The Milwaukee Journal and recent editor of the Milwaukee Labor Press.

Secret right-wing money steps hard into Wisconsin legislature

By Dominique Paul Noth

National news media have caught on that secretive right-wing funding networks are focused not just on the presidential race and major gubernatorial and senate contests but most effectively in the normally sleepy hollows of state politics. From Iowa to Ohio to Colorado to Wisconsin, from school boards to city halls and other local run-offs, under the guise of ALEC, Koch funded groups such as Americans for Prosperity and the innocent sounding State PolicyNetwork, outside wealth from the Citizens United case and other decisions have upset the homegrown apple cart.

Races that used to about local concerns and which candidate could make the best case and do the most doors have been turned into a sophisticated expensive blitz of mailers, radio ads and half-truth generalities.

Special legislative elections in Wisconsin are driving the point home.  In Milwaukee County’s Assembly District 21 (suburban communities Oak Creek, South Milwaukee and an inserted slice of Franklin), the state GOP  passed up the local Republican’s best choice (popular Oak Creek Mayor Steve Scaffidi quit after being told how to run by Madison powers and has now announced his support for the Democrat in the contest next door, John Hermes in District 82).

Jessie Rodriguez (left) had far more
 outside money than Elizabeth Coppola in District 21.

After turning down the preferred local choice,  the state GOP was forced to rely not on groundswell but on outside right-wing funders to push Jessie Rodriguez into the legislature (much to the anger of her four GOP primary opponents, equally right-wing but more reliant on community campaign support).

The money used to elect her as well as the deceptive motives proved staggering – and insurmountable Nov. 19.    It apparently works out to about $40 for every vote Jessie got.

Rodriguez drew a mere 4,546 votes to win a district of some 60,000 people. This was less than a third of the usual turnout in such assembly races, but not unexpectedly low given the week before Thanksgiving timing.  Here’s the first reality --- passivity. Only about a tenth of those of voting age in the district determined their representative, and it wasn’t even with their own money or sweat. Or their own issues, since voucher schools don’t yet exist in a district where public schools are much admired.

While the tale of the tape is in the math, deeper arithmetic is elusive since much of the money for Rodriguez came in unreported “issue advocacy” ads – you know, those misleading radio commercials that concoct a position for a candidate and then urge listeners to “call Elizabeth Coppola and tell her to oppose increasing property taxes” though the Democrat never mentioned increasing taxes in her campaign talks or literature. But under the current bizarre rules, this is not advocacy for Rodriguez because she was not named.

In Wisconsin in particular such issue ads played into the politics of divisiveness, with progressives and unions clearly still  upset over forced policies rammed through the legislature and believers in Gov. Scott Walker convinced that  landing hard on workers was the only way to cut tax costs.  The facts reveal that taxes are going up, as are state deficits, and that it is needed public services not fat that has been cut, but the dominant ads are more persuasive than the nuanced realities.

Smart guessers say an additional $60,000 was “spent for Jessie” in such undisclosed advocacy buys and in multiple home mailers from Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, not subject to the same reporting rules as conduits and contributions directly to a candidate.  What is known is that as a lobbying group, WMC is in third biggest spender in the state.

The $24,000 portion of radio buys by the Jobs First Political Coalition is reportable as is the initial $45,647 from the American Federation for Children, a national school voucher advocacy collection agency for the rich based in D.C. that intrudes on many local elections and usually disguises its actual voucher agenda. (It is No. 9 on the state lobbying list.) In a report now deleted from its website, AFC boasted of spending more in Wisconsin on elections than any other state, nearly $2.5 million. Its leader, Betsy DeVos, is the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party while her brother, Eric Prince, founded Blackwater, the private military contractor.

AFC was effective in District 21 by hiding its core mission.  It talked only vaguely about choice (obviously educational choice and definitely not choice for women’s reproductive rights) but quickly turned its mailers into attacking Elizabeth Coppola as the outsider – she had moved into the district from the southern edge of that foreign land known as Milwaukee -- and mainly defending Gov. Walker’s “rescue” of local property tax expenses (despite the reality they are actually increasing).

If you combine the known outside money, the unknown outside money and the direct campaign contributions to Rodriguez of $48,000 by individuals and such groups as the realtors – it’s clear that whatever doors Rodriguez  visited did not drive her appeal . It was the radically high advertising money, following the food coupon formula that a mere one-hundredth of one percent return justifies the investment.

In contrast, the third-party funding for Coppola of $30,815 and her own campaign gathering of $25,000 translated into a more normal $15 for every one of the 3,520 votes she got – and obviously she thought this reasonable expenditure on supportive literature and contacts would carry greater weight. Comparing how the campaigns operate could be interpreted as sour grapes, but it certainly pinpoints the reality of why relying on outside money and issues not central to the community can indeed work, particularly in local contests.

There are wheels within wheels of this funding game that clarify why the GOP paid so enormous a price to secure a temporary seat.  The campaign is likely to be repeated in bipartisan funding fashion in November of 2014, less than a year away. The Democrats wanted to run on issues and what’s best for the community, but now they may decide that it’s all about how much money is employed no matter the source or the motives.

Incumbency gives every candidate an edge, but a year also gives voters time to decide on issues not blandishments, which has to worry Rodriguez supporters when they look at how shallow her reach proved – a pretty pitiful 4,546 votes.

Some progressive wags openly suggest she is a mere stalking horse for a politician barred by law from running. That may be too insulting since by reflective mirror Jessie Rodriguez has national voucher funding status from her role with Hispanics for School Choice, headed by her brother-in-law, Zeus Rodriguez, and her marriage to right-wing blogger Aaron Rodriguez, who wields strong GOP contacts.  

But there is a banned name haunting her campaign ---

Scott Jensen

Scott Jensen, the once powerful GOP Assembly leader forced out of office for misconduct and then convicted and sentence reversed on jurisdictional issues involving felony campaign fraud.  In 2010 he finally reached a deal to avoid felony sentencing by paying a fine and agreeing never to run for any public office in the future.

Immediately Jensen became a behind the scenes funding source, aided by the secretive nature of third-source money. He is closely allied with Jobs First (which parrots Walker’s take on business stats) and the American Federation for Children that poured such enormous money into the Rodriguez election.

You can dismiss as left-wing bile these open suggestions that Jensen has now bought a political office he can run as a puppet master in his old assembly home turf. But you can’t escape the reality of “follow the money” and wonder why so much was invested by his groups in this election.

And here’s another game to ponder with.  The Waukesha DA who made the deal to keep Jensen out of prison is Brad Schimel, who is now the lone Republican announced to run for Wisconsin attorney general now that J.B. Van Hollen says he is abandoning the seat.  It will be interesting to read between the lines of the secretive money that backs Schimel in this bid.  Any bets?

What’s beyond the pale on Sarah Palin?

By Dominique Paul Noth

The erudite and sarcastic British born commentator Martin Bashir, host of a popular weekday afternoon show on cable network MSNBC, opened his November 18 program with a lengthy and clearly seriously contrite apology to Sarah Palin for remarks he made in his end of week telecast November 15.

Martin Bashir on MSNBC

Which immediately raised a question for viewers – can cable news really insult Sarah Palin?

What could he possibly have said about a fading political figure who gets too much air-time anyway for her mangled rhetorical meanderings and has a penchant for thrusting herself into the media spotlight?  She simply reminds us all she is too easy a target and cable news thrives on easy targets.

So what happened? Did he insult her looks?  Her children? Her gender? Did he make some jest about transvaginal probes in her life or some similar Bill Maher moment, since that cable humorist loves to harp on her mannerisms and personal failings? All that would obviously be out of bounds for a TV news show and warrant such an opening minute groveling, as long as “60 Minutes” devoted to apologizing for welcoming a liar into its Benghazi report.

So naturally thousands of curious viewers who missed the first show rushed into the video archives to find what horrors Bashir had hit Palin with.  The results speak volumes about the speed to apology of MSNBC journalism standards more than about Palin herself.

 Because Bashir was clearly outraged – and deserved to be -- that Palin in a speech said the Affordable Care Act was a new form of slavery, slurring her offhand denial that anyone who took her comments as supporting racism would clearly be out of bounds.

What infuriated Bashir was simply comparing an effort to help people with health coverage to shackling people into servitude, that being beholden to any effort at government service or debt was equivalent to slavery.  The choice of comparison itself suggested Palin didn’t know anything about the true horrors of losing your freedom to the power trips of another – and how slave owners ultimately behave.   Of course, the plight of blacks remains the most prominent example in US memory but slavery continues to flourish around the world.

So Bashir called her a “dunce” and a “world class idiot” – and I doubt that was what he was apologizing for.  Truth is always a fair defense, and he was simply describing, after all.

But then Bashir went back to 18^th century documents describing in scatological details the sort of humiliations slaves were subjected to by their owners – routine whippings, skin rubbings and being forced to eat excrement.  He ended his commentary with the statement he clearly was apologizing for  and that must have driven producers in the control room nuts when he inserted it on his own – that if anyone in modern times deserved to be subjected to this sort of defecation treatment, it was the governor who quit Alaska in midterm.  That was out of bounds.

So he was right to apologize for being so carried away on his rhetorical flight.  It was a moment that made the public long for similar brakes in all public discourse.  Bashir in his inflammatory zeal has now allowed Palin supporters to pretend she ever made any sense in the first place.  For that, he owes all viewers an apology.