GWB and the Incredible Shrinking FDR

A new media tic -- likening George W. Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt -- is already so widespread that it's apt to become a conditioned reflex of American journalism.

By now, countless reporters and pundits have proclaimed GWB and FDR to be kindred inspirational leaders -- wildly inflating the current president's media stature in the process.

Hammering on the comparison until it seems like a truism, the Washington press corps is providing the kind of puffery for the man in the Oval Office that no ad budget could supply. But the oft-repeated analogy doesn't only give a monumental boost to Bush's image. It also -- subtly but surely -- chips away at FDR's historic greatness, cutting him down to GWB's size.

Ever since Roosevelt's death in April 1945 after more than 12 years as president, many Republican leaders have sought to move the United States out from under the enormous political umbrella created by the New Deal -- bitterly opposed by most wealthy interests and the well-heeled press.

Roosevelt's economic reforms embodied and strengthened grassroots

The Politics of Hip Hop - Part One of Two

The politics of hip hop culture took an important step forward recently with the Russell Simmons-founded Hip Hop Summit Action Network's hosting of the historic West Coast Hip-Hop Summit. Organized by Summit President Minister Benjamin Muhammad, hundreds of influential performance artists, music executives, grassroots activists, public leaders, and others gathered to address key issues and to establish a progressive political agenda. Prominent participants included rappers Kurupt, DJ Quik, the Outlawz, Mack 10, Boo-Yaa Tribe, Mike Concepcion and the D.O.C., and radio personality/comedian Steve Harvey. Significantly, the keynote address was delivered by the leader of the Nation of Islam, Minister Louis Farrakhan, who also keynoted the first national hip-hop summit, staged last summer in New York City.

This latest Hip-Hop Summit Action Network followed closely after two recent New York-based events connected with the effort to build a progressive hip hop political agenda. On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (January 21), the first hip hop youth summit was held at York College in Queens. Featuring

The Government and Business

AUSTIN -- The State of the Union was fairly surreal Tuesday night. We won the war against Afghanistan, but we're still at war with Al Qaeda, so we have to go attack North Korea.

The big paper-shredders at Enron are finally coming to a halt, so we should go ahead and pass huge corporate tax cuts to help all the other companies that use aggressive accounting practices and need the dough. They especially need the rebates on the taxes they didn't pay. We're a better people than we were on Sept. 10, so let's all donate 4,000 hours to the country, except for those who are too busy stashing their loot in offshore banks so they won't have to pay taxes.

To further this noble scheme, the taxpayers will pony up to fund volunteers with religious groups. Does this mean Mormon missionaries will get paid to knock on our doors and persuade us that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young are the light and the way?

I'm clearly confused, but I think some of my colleagues are, too. During the run-up to the State of the Union speech, I heard apparently

Afghanistan Aid

Dear Editor,

It was heartening to read that our government is pledging almost $300 million to aid in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. This is a large number but it hardly compares with the amount of money that we are spending to make war. The war in Afghanistan costs US taxpayers $1 to $2 billion per month, and since Sept. 11 the defense budget has been increased by $50 billion to fund weapons programs (like the F22 fighter and the Crusader artillery system) that the Pentagon doesn't want because they are outmoded. This looks to me like war profiteering pure and simple. I'm opposed to terrorism, but I pay taxes too!

p.s. the spending figures come from an article in The Nation (Jan 28, 2002) "Making Money on Terror" by William D. Hartung, a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School University.

This is Terrorism? The Prosecution of Petrelis and Pasquarelli

Throwing the book at people is nothing new, but in our post 9/11 world, the screws are tightening. Take San Francisco, whose district attorney, Terence "Kayo" Hallinan, has the reputation of being an unusually progressive fellow.

Yet this is the same District Attorney Hallinan who's hit two gay men who are AIDS activists with an escalating barrage of charges, currently amounting to 36 alleged felonies and misdemeanors, all adding up to what he has stigmatized in the local press as "terrorism."

Held in San Francisco county jail since Nov. 28 of last year are Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli. Neither man has been able to make bail, which Hallinan successfully requested to be set at $500,000 for Petrelis and $600,000 for Pasquarelli.

Why this astonishing bail? What it boils down to is that the two accused are dissidents notorious for raising all kinds of inconvenient, sometimes obscene hell about AIDS issues. They've long been detested by San Francisco's AIDS establishment, which Petrelis, in particular, has savaged

Enron, Enron, Enron

AUSTIN -- The seminal historic event always affects the language. Already we can see that Enron is of this shattering magnitude. A stick-up artist goes into the Jiffy Mart to pull a heist. He whips his heater and says to the clerk, "Put 'em up, this is an aggressive accounting practice."

Or, you take your car to Ralph's Rip-Off Garage to get a 50 buck problem fixed and, sure enough, he bills you $600. You say, "What an aggressive accounting practice!"

Euphemism of the Year, and not even February yet.

The single most distinguishing feature of the Enron collapse is that no one is yet sure the company did anything illegal. (Aside from destroying documents, which arguably falls in the "seriously ill-advised" category.) As we gyre and gimble in the wabe of Enron, we run across such delightful items. Did you know that Enron's board twice voted to suspend its own ethics code in order to create private partnerships? But how thoughtful of them to suspend the ethics code first! Otherwise, they might have violated it.

Slaves to fashion: What fur?

Speaking as an animal that has, throughout time, been eyeballed by humans as mostly a delectable honey-baked ham or candidate for a barbecue – always the main course, never the guest – I’m not writing this for my own or my species sake. Yes, perhaps they used to (do they still?) make footballs out of our skin. But pigs have hair, not fur, which is why my dander-allergic daddy picked me for a pet in the first place. Nobody will be wearing a floor-length Iggy to keep them warm this year. I know fur must be warm, though, as my kittycat friends and nemeses in the backyard can attest. I can hardly fault my human friends for wanting to cozy up in a fur during these cold gray days. I’m a tropical pot-bellied pig by nature and spend my winter days on the back porch by a heater.

But here’s my plea for all Freep readers to call for an end to killing animals for fur. I know none of you wear fur, don’t get me wrong. Here’s some quick facts on the fur industry you can use in your arguments and a few local retailers to boycott:

Ashcroft's Media Scam: A Confederacy of Amnesia

Even by Washington's standards, the ability of John Ashcroft to reinvent himself has been a wonder to behold. Just a year ago, squeaking through Senate confirmation as attorney general, Ashcroft found himself shadowed by his own praise for leaders of the Confederacy. Now he's able to tout himself as a disciple of Martin Luther King Jr.

It's quite a scam, and Ashcroft couldn't have pulled it off without major help from news media. Mainstream journalists have declined to subject the attorney general to the most elementary comparisons between present and past stances on race-related issues.

With scant challenge from journalists, Ashcroft is presenting himself as someone with a fervent commitment to racial equality. His lofty pronouncements -- floating like overinflated beach balls in dire need of sharp pins -- are held aloft by the prevailing media winds.

To be sure, when it comes to the undermining of civil liberties since mid-September, the attorney general has faced appreciable criticism from commentators. When the president takes aim at the Bill of Rights, a

Prisoners and World Trade

AUSTIN -- Why do they hate us? Well, scope out the deal at Guantanamo, and see what you think.

We go along for months having a war -- the war in Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, the war to get Osama bin Laden dead or alive, troops on the ground, bombs in the air ... in other words, war. Those of us who suggested that maybe war was not the right rhetoric for this situation were booed down for being insufficiently bloodthirsty, and the caissons went rolling along.

Now we've won the war It's not clear what we've won, but we've definitely won, which is better than losing. So we take the prisoners we've captured off to our base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and suddenly announce that they are not prisoners of war after all, because this isn't really a war we've been fighting. Therefore the prisoners are "illegal combatants," and we don't have to treat them in accord with the Geneva Convention on POWs.

This is why a lot of people hate us. For the sheer bloody arrogance of having it both ways all the time. For thinking that we are

The Enron Uproar

Everywhere we look, it's Enron, in the biggest tumult over corporate criminality since the looting of the S&Ls in the 1980s. Enron will be on the menu for months, if not years. Congress launches into at least eight separate hearings. Federal and state prosecutors prepare indictments. The press marshals, investigative teams and columnists inscribe earnest reflections about the necessity for capitalism to be honest about its balance sheets. My favorite thus far: an article in Reason magazine (a journal of the libertarian right) shouldering a heavy burden of argument to the effect that the evaporation of the life savings of Enron workers, locked in their doomed 401Ks, should in no way slow the effort to privatize the social security system.

Of course Democrats can be forgiven their malicious glee. After years of battering over Whitewater, Chinese influence peddling, Monica, Travelgate, etc., they now enjoy a scandal of epic proportions in which the prime players are: Texan Republicans who were big-time contributors to George Bush; plus a company whose executives were somehow able to locate

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