GREETINGS FELLOW DEMOCRATS!





Talk back to today's McCarthyesque bullies

Right-wing vigilantes on talk radio richly deserve our contempt and scorn

By DAVID TOBIN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Fifty-four years ago Monday, something amazing happened.

On June 9, 1954, a bald, bespectacled, Gandolfian kind of man took on one of the most destructive bullies in American political history. Attorney Joseph Welch faced down Sen.ator Joe McCarthy in what history calls the Army McCarthy hearings. And thanks to the Internet, you can see all twelve 12 and a half glorious minutes of the confrontation. Just type "Joseph Welch" and "decency" into your search box. (I found it at http://www.americanrhetoric.com.)

I bring this up because it is so relevant to the cancer in today's political discourse: hateful, fear-mongering, character-assassinating talk radio.

Essential backstory: Powerful Sen. Joe McCarthy was exploiting fears and ruining lives with his communist witch-hunt. But in 1953 he started bullying the U.S. Army with a trumped-up investigation. Unlike many other victims of McCarthy's smear campaign, the Army fought back.

It all came to a head on June 9, 1954, when the Army's chief attorney, civilian Joseph Welch, rhetorically challenged Roy Cohn, the chief counsel for McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, to come up with the so-called "subversives" list "before the sun goes down."

Here's where the video footage starts, and it's classic. Google it. Take the 12 minutes to watch it. McCarthy seems angered by Welch's uppitiness. He counterattacks with a droning rant accusing one of the junior attorneys at Welch's own firm (who was then secretary of a local Young Republicans League) of dastardly communist associations back when the kid was in law school.

But Welch has had enough. He knows that McCarthy has just torpedoed this junior guy's career (and maybe more). So Welch grandly, sadly, angrily rears back and delivers a knockout blow. He denounces McCarthy's "cruelty" and "recklessness," defends the young man, and then intones, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

And the public gallery breaks into clamorous applause. It reminds me of The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandolf faces the terrible Balrog in the Mines of Moria and, crying out "You shall not pass!" stops the demon's advance.

Welch's courageous "Have you no sense of decency?" has come to symbolize the beginning of McCarthy's disgrace, a downfall triggered by television. The hearings were televised for weeks (just like Watergate 20 years later). On their flickering black-and-white screens, people saw for themselves the senator's browbeating, his dishonesty and his malice.

Browbeating, dishonesty and malice have a home today on the radio waves, as Joe McCarthy's descendants broadcast to millions. Recently, upon the announcement of Ted Kennedy's brain tumor, Michael Savage had fun playing a Nazi-themed punk rock song by the Dead Kennedys. Rush Limbaugh, who proclaimed recently that the civil rights movement has "destroyed the black family," now works himself up over Barack Obama's Muslim-sounding name, his America-hating wife, his terrorist bomber friends and his big ears.

It's interesting that both Savage's and Limbaugh's TV "careers" flamed out so quickly. Maybe the camera is less forgiving of over-the-top maliciousness than the radio microphone.

But those two blowhards are the tip of the iceberg, just two of the national demagogues. Each major radio market has its own local brand of right-wing haters as well (posing as entertainers, of course). Just listen to Houston's Walton and Johnson show to see what they're saying about immigrants, for example — or anybody who looks different or talks different than they do.

What can you do to fight back? What I do (although it's getting more and more painful) is to listen to these bullying scoundrels and take note of their advertisers. I call and ask them, "Do you have any idea what kind of malignant hate speech you are sponsoring?" Then I give them an example and tell them I'm boycotting their product.

It may not change anything, but at least it helps me feel better. The radio demonizers of today should not be getting away with murder — the murder of civility, the murder of healthy debate, the murder of truth.

I'm still waiting for my Gandolf to show up.

Tobin is a lecturer in business communication at Rice University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management. He can be e-mailed at dtobin@rice.edu.





The Texas Freedom Network's Warning of the Texas State Board of Education

Dear Brazos County,

The Texas Freedom Network has been warning that biblical creationists on the State Board of Education are determined to promote their personal religious beliefs over sound science in our state’s public schools.

We were right.

In the last week the New York Times and the Hearst newspaper chain, which includes the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News, have published major stories detailing the religious right’s anti-science strategy in Texas. Read those stories by clicking here for the New York Times and here for the Houston Chronicle.

The words of biblical creationists on the state board should erase any remaining doubts about the coming battle:

The battle is between “two systems of science. . . . You’ve got a creationist system and a naturalist system.”
-- Board chairman Don McLeroy, R-Bryan

"Evolution is not fact. Evolution is a theory and, as such, cannot be proven. Students need to be able to jump to their own conclusions."
-- David Bradley, R-Beaumont

“I just don’t think (evolution is) true or it’s ever happened.”
-- Board chairman Don McLeroy, R-Bryan

The New York Times and Hearst stories pull back the curtain on the real agenda of creationists on the state board: requiring that teachers and new science textbooks teach students phony “weaknesses” of the theory of evolution. This year creationist crusaders are taking unprecedented steps to win the battle. Far-right groups have even poured millions of dollars into making and marketing an anti-evolution feature film, Expelled!, promoting their phony arguments.

Mainstream scientists have repeatedly debunked those myths and point out that evolution has been documented by solid research beyond a reasonable doubt. Those scientists know that the phony “weaknesses” argument is just a political gimmick. Its goal is to create doubts about evolution and open the door to teaching religious doctrine in science classes instead.

The religious right’s anti-science strategy would turn the clock backward in Texas, sentencing our schoolchildren to a 19th-century education in their 21st-century classrooms. The state’s universities and industry would also suffer as Texas becomes the nation’s laughingstock and gains the reputation of being a scientifically backward state.

TAKE ACTION!
Biblical creationists hold a near majority on the State Board of Education. To thwart their efforts and hold on to the votes we need to win, the Texas Freedom Network has launched a broad-based campaign to promote sound science education in our public schools. This campaign will require more resources, more activists and more broad-based support than any of our previous efforts.

In fact, the Stand Up for Science campaign already includes a growing coalition of scientists, business leaders, educators and mainstream activists working to remove the phony “weaknesses” language from state’s public school science standards.

You can help. Take action by doing three things right now:

1. Sign the Stand Up for Science petition by clicking here. TFN will keep you informed and give you the tools to advocate for sound science education in our public schools.

2. Donate to the Texas Freedom Network by clicking here. Your donation will help the Stand Up for Science campaign compete with the massive funding behind far-right groups promoting religious doctrine in public school science classes.

3. Forward this e-mail to other supporters of sound science education and encourage them to join this important cause.

With your help, the Texas Freedom Network will lead the fight for sound science in our state’s public schools. The future of our schoolchildren’s education and the economy of this state depend on it.

Sincerely,

Kathy Miller
President,
Texas Freedom Network

P.S. Your support will help TFN sponsor Stand Up for Science events around the state, ensuring that the voices of mainstream activists in key state board districts are heard.





Editorial: The Cons of Creationism

When it comes to science, creationists tend to struggle with reality. They believe, after all, that evolution by means of natural selection is false and that Earth is only a few thousand years old. They also believe that students who are taught a creationist view of biology — or who are taught to disregard the Darwinist view — are not being disadvantaged.

The Texas State Board of Education is again considering a science curriculum that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, setting an example that several other states are likely to follow. This is code for teaching creationism.

It has the advantage of sounding more balanced than teaching “intelligent design,” which the courts have consistently banned from science classrooms. It has the disadvantage of being nonsense.

The chairman of the Texas board, a dentist named Don McLeroy, advocates the “strengths and weaknesses” approach, as does a near majority of the board. The system accommodates what Dr. McLeroy calls two systems of science, creationist and “naturalist.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/opinion/07sat3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print





Brazos County Democratic Party
P.O. Box 4568
Bryan Texas 77805
979-779-5600 Fax 979-779-5601

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman, Democrat, President of the United States of America