New Media from a Journalism Veteran
Attack of the fear mongers
Incumbent Republican Congressman Virgil Goode has a long, sordid record of animosity against Muslims, African-Americans, Hispanics and, apparently, even Italians.
So he’s running ads against his Italian-American Democratic opponent that use a darkened photo that leave the impression that Tom Perriello could be Middle Eastern, Hispanic or even — God forbid — black.
The ad is smear politics in its lowest, basest form and prompted a well-deserved and strong editorial in The Roanoke Times:
Rep. Virgil Goode’s latest foray into the politics of fear goes too far.
Granted, distorting opponents’ views in political campaigns is so commonplace that the practice barely garners a public shrug. A recent Goode TV attack ad is something different, though, and warrants voter disgust.
Way beyond simply and only slightly distorting his opponent’s stand on domestic oil drilling, the Republican incumbent in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District distorts Democrat Tom Perriello’s appearance. And the distortion seems designed to encourage ugly nativist fears.
As a voice-over warns viewers that Perriello is "wrong for Virginia," the ad shows a still image of the candidate shaded so darkly that he could be Middle Eastern — or perhaps Hispanic. Voters can see whatever "other" stirs their distrust.
This kind of fear mongering is business as usual for Goode. I watched him spread his snake oil during my years in Washington and it made be sick to my stomach that this racist and misogynist not only came from my home state of Virginia but also from neighboring Franklin County.
But his ad, sick as it is, is also business as usual for the Republican Party. I know because, to my shame, I worked for too long as an operative for the GOP. I served on Capitol Hill as an aide to three Republican Congressmen. I was a political operative in the 1984 Reagan-Bush campaign and dozens of House and Senate campaigns and later as a communications associate for The Eddie Mahe Company, a prominent GOP political consulting firm.
During those years, I not only observed, but participated in, too many organized campaigns of character assassination, smear campaigns and outright distortion of facts to serve the Republican cause. I made a lot of money working for Republicans. I’m not proud of it but it happened.
What Goode is doing is just one part of a well-organized, heavily-funded and tightly-orchestrated GOP campaign of fear that runs from the grassroots to the national political parties. The current campaign of fear-mongering by the McCain campaign against Barack Obama falls under the same umbrella and is designed to raise fear about Obama’s race.
As The Associated Press pointed out this week:
By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is "palling around with terrorists" and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
First, Palin’s attack shows that her energetic debate with rival Joe Biden may be just the beginning, not the end, of a sharpened role in the battle to win the presidency.
"Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain’s ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.
To be fair, both sides use negative ads but I know from working inside the Republican Party that their attacks are too often driven by racism (both overt and latent), homophobia and fear of anything that is not white, Anglo-Saxon and pseudo-Christian.
Franklin Roosevelt said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In this election, we must fear the fearmongers even more.
A tragedy that could have been avoided
Shawn Brent Gerald, the 28-year-old son of Floyd County Supervisor Fred Gerald of Indian Valley, died Sunday night when his motorcycle crashed into a car turning left on U.S. 11 near Fairlawn.
The driver of the car, Jerry Wayne Viars, 35, of Max Meadows, was charged by Virginia State Police with driving under the influence of alcohol.
State Police Sgt. Michael Conroy says an initial investigation into the accident shows Gerald racing with a Ford Mustang at the time of the accident. The driver of the Mustang fled the scene and police are still seeking information on the car and its whereabouts.
"There are multiple factors," Conroy told The Roanoke Times. "And if you take away one of them, you may not have had this tragedy in the first place. Here you have speed, you have alcohol."
Any parent who has ever lost a child in a senseless, tragic accident such as this knows the pain Gerald’s family feels. As one who also rides a motorcycle, I know full well the dangers that come from traveling the public roads on two wheels. Taking chances on a bike only increases the danger and lowers the odds for survival. As a recovering alcoholic who works with others who battle the beast of substance abuse, I also know that climbing behind the wheel of a car while drunk turns one into an instrument of death.
Life is precious and can be cut short in an instant. My condolences to Fred and his family. Knowing a tragedy such as this could have been avoided does not lessen the sorrow and sense of loss that all of us feel.
Ban cell phone use while driving…now!
It’s time for Virginia to join other states in banning cell phone use while driving. At least a half dozen times in the last two weeks, I have almost been taken out by inattentive drivers who run stop signs, stray over the yellow line and change lanes without signaling.
Last week, I locked up all four wheels on my Wrangler to avoid hitting a Honda Prelude driven by a teenager who was texting on her cell phone and drove through a stop sign and onto U.S. 221 without even looking. I’ve had to take emergency action in both the Jeep and on my Harley to avoid oncoming cars that crossed the center line because the drivers were more involved in talking on the cell phone than on concentrating on the road ahead.
When I’m driving the Jeep or riding the Harley, my cell phone can ring until the cows come home. I don’t use the phone while on the road. I’ll return the call when I stop. I’m not going to risk my life or the lives of others just to talk on the phone. Others, unfortunately, don’t seem to care about their life or safety. In Christiansburg the other day, I had to swerve to avoid a town police officer who swerved into my lane while talking on a cell phone.
It’s time for the General Assembly to ban cell phone use by drivers of any motorized vehicle while that vehicle is on the road (or moving in a parking lot).
Cowardly cretins
A cowardly cretin (or cretins) vandalized Floyd’s new public restroom this week, removing a urinal from the wall and allowing hundreds of gallons of water to spill out onto the floor and flow out of the building.
It was the kind of despicable act that makes your blood boil. Whether it was the act of someone with a philosophical difference with the changes that are coming to our town or just a mindless vandal who inflicts damage for the hell of it is less important than the viciousness of the act itself — a wanton destruction of public property that brings disgrace upon our town and raises questions about the character of our community.
A sad day for Floyd.
Guess we're all just a bunch of hicks
Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, the legendary Democratic political consultant who lives on Bent Mountain, brought a columnist and photographer from Denver’s Rocky Mountain News to Floyd recently to write about our "culture" and how it might play out in the upcoming Presidential election.
What we got was stereotyped trash that failed to capture Floyd’s culture, our heritage or the Friday Night Jamboree.
An example of columnist Mike Littwin’s brand of "journalism":
We’re taking "The Crooked Road" music trail – an aptly named back road that, I’m told, will lead us directly to music heaven, which is apparently located on a stage in the back of the Floyd Country Store. Every Friday night, when they hold their gospel and bluegrass and old-timey-music jamboree, this town of 432 turns into a festival of banjo-pickin’ and flat-footin’ – a mini-bluegrass Woodstock, except with no nudity in evidence but, as compensation, some mighty nice-looking store-bought coveralls.
The pickers and the flat-footers and the whoopers and the hollerers spill out from the store and onto the streets and over to the ice cream store (it’s a dry county) and onto the benches and wherever else they can grab a seat or, even better, grab a partner – no age requirement, but it seems to help if you’re on the, uh, north side of 60.
The pickers who drive out of the mountains to jam here in the streets set the beat, and while I’m not sure exactly where they invented toe-tapping and knee-slapping, it couldn’t have been far from here.
If that’s not culture, well, gah-dayem, what is?
Frankly, I expected more from Mudcat, the man who built much of his political consultant reputation on Mark Warner’s ride to the governor’s mansion. Apparently he and Littwin worked together at a newspaper once and that’s why he brought the Denver reporter here.
Memo to Mike Littwin: The "ice cream store" is in the Floyd County Store, not across the street. Floyd County is far from "dry." We have nationally-acclaimed wineries here. They serve beer and wine at most restaurants and you can even get a mixed drink down at Ray’s on U.S. 221. The Crooked Road runs for a spell along U.S. 221, a well-maintained federal highway that is not much of a "back road." On any Friday night, you can find as many kids and teenagers in the Jamboree as older folks.
Sorry you missed all that Mike. But since you’re into stereotypes, let me ask this: Were you, perhaps, on a Rocky Mountain high when you came to Floyd?
Living vs. making a living
New joke making the rounds:
Q: Why are there so many hippies in Floyd County?
A: They heard there’s no work here.
God, you know times are bad when hippie jokes make a comeback.
Hear an increasing amount of talk lately about the lack of work and/or the lack of income. The problem, of course, is nationwide. Local artists who travel to out-of-town shows say crowds and sales are down. Local businesses report more lookers than buyers. Musicians say paying gigs are fewer.
We’ve seen a shift in Floyd: Less talk about living and more about making a living.
Let’s have a show of hands: How many came here to make money?
How many came here because of the lifestyle?
Lifestyle still wins but he margin is shrinking.
Had a salesman walk into the studio the other day and open the conversation with "let me maximize your income potential."
Looked up from my magazine and answered: "Let me maximize your life expectancy. Leave before I get up out of this chair."
We see more and more emphasis on turning Floyd into a mini-mecca for "business opportunity." We’re overrun with those who want to "network." They hand out business cards to everyone they meet and they talk about marketing and business plans and "maximizing your potential" until you want to toss your cookies all over their designer tennis shoes.
Floyd doesn’t need more seminars on "turning your business into a success." Discussions on organic gardening or alternative engery would better serve foks around here. Most who come here are not the "hippies" who show up more in jokes than on the town streets. Most are those who made their lives an economic success somewhere else and came to Floyd to enjoy the benefits of those labors. They came here to escape the business cards, the "networking" socials, the sales pitches and the eternal chase for the almighty dollar.
Don’t let the magic that is Floyd get lost under the onslaught of those who measure success in financial terms and confuse making a living with just living your life and making the most of it.
What are these parents thinking?
In the past four years, more than a dozen local mothers have brought their teenaged daughters into my studio and asked that I shoot photos of the girl in a bikini, lingerie or partially nude for use in a "teen model web site."
Although I do occasionally shoot nude photographs of adults, I do not take such photos of children and, in each case, the girls brought in by their mothers were 14 or 15 or younger.
"Teen model" web sites feature underage girls in sexually-suggestive poses and revealing attire. Many charge "subscription fees" for access.
I tell the mothers to get the hell out of my studio and to not come back. When they leave I usually have to sit down and stop shaking. Such exploitation of children brings out blind rage.
I wrote about this problem some years ago for another web site. The story: Underage and Selling Their Sexuality on the Web brought a number of awards and calls for changes in the laws that allowed parents to give permission for their children to be exploited as sexual objects.
I’ve always wondered what in the hell these mothers were thinking when they sought to abuse their children in such a way. I’m also wondering what country singer Billy Ray Cyrus was thinking when he watched Vanity Fair photographer photograph his 15-year-old daughter, Miley Cyrus (above), topless and covered only by a sheet. With her tousled hair and sultry look, the 15-year-old appears to be in what the romance novels used to call as "post-coital" moment.
Miley, of course, is better known as Hannah Montana, a G-rated creation of the Disney Entertainment Factory, and an apparent role model for children her age. This "role model" told Vanity Fair that the steamy HBO series Sex And The City is her favorite TV show.
Shocked? Don’t be. It is now standard operating procedure for young girls to be used as sexual objects. The trend is examined in the book: Girls Gone Skank: The Sexualization of Girls in American Culture.
Writes author Patrice A. Oppliger, an assistant professor of mass communications at Boston University:
Instead of advancing women’s social and professional empowerment, popular culture trends appear to be backsliding into the blatant sexual exploitation of women and girls at younger and younger ages.
This study investigates the effects of mass marketed sexual images and cultural trends on the behaviors and attitudes of young girls and describes many ways in which young girls are increasingly taught to go to outrageous lengths in seeking male attention.
Topics include the powerful effects of cultural phenomena such as revealing fashions, plastic surgery, and beauty pageants in influencing teen and preteen girls to willingly participate in and promote their own sexualization.
These chapters also explore other cultural factors contributing to this early sexualization of young girls, including absentee parenting and material overindulgence.
Later chapters focus on the sexual representations of females in the mass entertainment media, focusing specifically on how popular magazines, television programs, films, and the Internet prey upon, promote, and reinforce young girls’ physical and sexual insecurities.
Some feel this is an urban problem but consider this:
- Radford photographer Bob Shell is in prison for his part in the death of a young model in his downtown studio. Although the model, who specialized in bondage themes, was over 18, Shell also promoted teen model web sites and many of his photos were shot at his farm here in Floyd County;
- In each case, the mother who brought her young daughter for "teen model" photographer, lived, at the time, in Floyd County.
(Photo of Miley Cyrus from Vanity Fair. Copyright 2008: Vanity Fair and Annie Leibowitz. Book cover courtesy of Amazon.Com)
Memo to racists: Stay the hell away from me
Somebody left an unsigned, multi-page racist screed taped to the front window of Blue Ridge Muse last night.
I only got through the first-page of the hate-filled diatribe aimed at Democratic Presidential contender Barack Obama before starting to retch. I ripped the pages into shreds and dumped them into the nearest trashcan.
Let’s get something straight up front: I despise racism and those who practice it. I have no patience with bigots, homophobes, racists and anti-Semites.
So stay the hell away from me. Don’t waste my time with your ignorance, your hate or your intolerance.
Terror with a badge
Too many Floyd County residents this past week say they were more terrified by some of the more overzealous "tactical team" state police officers searching for Steven Dale Branscome than they were of Branscome himself.
"There were rude, menacing and frightening," says one Indian Valley resident who asked not to be identified when she contacted Blue Ridge Muse.
John McEnhill, executive director of The Jacksonville Center and another resident of Indian Valley, says fatique-clad cops came onto his property, pointed their weapons at him, and demanded to know who he was.
"I put my hands up and tried to explain that this was my land," McEnhill said. "I was afraid they were going to shoot me."
Such stories have poured in via email and over the phone during the week long search for Branscome, who wounded a State Trooper after a car chase ended in West Virginia.
Cops pull out all the stops when one of their own is shot. The trooper’s wounds were relatively minor and he was back on duty this week but the rule is simple: When a cop goes down — either wounded or killed — the response is immediate, massive and often intimidating.
Yet one Floyd County Deputy told me privately this week that he is embarrassed by the aggressive attitude of some the cops in the Branscome manhunt.
"It’s overkill," he said, "but if Branscome was willing to shoot a police officer that makes him even more of a danger to civilians."
Perhaps, but was a career petty criminal like Branscome worth the presence of 16 different police agencies, SWAT teams, armored vehicles and a presence that seemed more like an armed camp? Would the response be the same if Branscome shot a "civilian?" Those are questions that must be answered after Branscome is captured.
Sheriff Shannon Zeman says he is "grateful" for the help of other police agencies in the hunt for Branscome but the officers who routinely patrol the roads of Floyd County are a far-cry from the swaggering, over-aggressive group that invaded the county over the past week. Even worse, I sat a table away from these state tactical team officers at breakfast a few days ago and heard them make jokes about the "local yokels" and brag amount "scaring the piss" out of some county residents. They also denigrated some of the Floyd County deputies, calling them "jokes" and "Barney Fifes."
I’m sure that most of the officers involved in the hunt this past week treated residents with respect and conducted themselves in a professional manner but the handful of over-the-top members of the State Police Tactical Team damaged the reputation of all who came to help.
As the week ended, most evidence pointed to a successful escape by Branscome from both Floyd County and Virginia. The truck he stole in Indian Valley turned up in Statesville, NC, and he is believed to have stolen at least two other vehicles since dumping the truck. He’s gone but you wouldn’t know it by the continued police presence here in the county. It will be up to the U.S. Marshalls to catch Branscome.
Lies, damn lies and Ramada Inn
The Ramada Inn web site clearly stated that their hotel on Eastridge in Richmond’s West End has high-speed Internet access in the rooms so I booked a room for Friday night . The plan was to stay in Richmond for the state championship game if the Floyd girls’ team won or stay over and drive back home early Saturday if they lost.
The Lady Buffs won, of course, and I left the Siegel Center for the 15 minute drive to the city’s West End.
Found the hotel without any problm (thanks to the in-car GPS) and asked as I checked in:
"Is your Internet access wireless or hard-wired."
"We don’t have Internet access," the clerk behind the counter said.
"You don’t."
"Nope. Never had."
"The Ramada web site says you do."
"Sorry sir, we don’t."
Internet access is a requirement for any hotel when I’m traveling so I cancelled the reservation and started looking for anoher hotel, a difficult enough task on a state high school championship weekend but even more difficult when Richmond is also hosting a big crafts fair.
After 11 phone calls, I found a room at a Motel 8 on West Broad Street — their last one. I grabbed it after confirming that they did, in fact, have wireless broadband in the rooms.
That room was a smoking room and reeked of cigarette smoke but the Internet worked and the bed was soft. I settled in, posted a game update on Blue Ridge Muse, sent a strongly-worded email to Ramada Inn (along with a promise for a strong letter to follow) and headed downtown to meet Jonathan and Jeri Rogers for dinner.
Turned out to be the only glitch of the weekend.