Leslie Griffith

Come on Home, Van Jones

 Oakland is your home. We need you here. Can you ride to the rescue?

Oakland needs a mayor. The recycled ideas and personalities of the past are not working in the present.

Come on home.

The globe is shifting to solar power and you are a widely-recognized patriarch of that movement.

Remember when you said this?

“The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.”

If there is any community in need of a second chance, it’s your hometown.

Here’s another quote from you, Van Jones:

“A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs.”

You are not alone in thinking those big thoughts. 

Bright Source, an Oakland-based company, is in a race with China to build the world’s largest solar grid.

The race is on, and the finish line could be right here in the East Bay .

All politics is local.

Come on home to the city where you grew up.

Let’s make the world green with envy.

Never Underestimate a Beauty Queen

This piece published in The Huffington Post and SFgate.com

Reporters used to laugh when beauty contestants began saying they wanted to someday be television “anchorwomen.”  They did not say “reporters.” They wanted the lights! They wanted the camera! They wanted the action and attention that comes with “anchoring.”

No one is laughing now, except for those former beauty queens occupying those chairs. Most are smart enough to take the catapulting beauty queen experience off their resumes. Consider this: Would you be willing to don a bikini, stiletto heels and tape your body into perkiness just to parade in front of lusty crowds fawning for attention?

Giving away power and agreeing to be objectified from the “get go,” as Sarah Palin might say, is a form of ambition taller than the Transamerica building.  The comparison is intentional, because it was here in San Francisco that George W. Bush was handed a wedge issue that helped him get re-elected. And, Palin is all about wedges…one in particular. She’s playing the “Sarah the Saint” card, ready and willing to tear an already torn apart county into shreds with an issue that should never be politicized to begin with.

Before getting to that, let’s take a stroll down memory lane. It’s November, 2004 and George W. Bush wins Ohio, pushing the Electoral College count in his favor. Here’s what the New York Times wrote: “Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates.”

In Ohio, residents began coming to the polls just before they closed, spurred on by watching gay marriage ceremonies on the nightly news. Those images of men and women rushing to marry their same sex partners got Ohioans fired up and primed to punch any chad located next to Republican names.

Fast forward to Friday as Sarah Palin delivers a mean-spirited address to the all White, middle-aged Tea Party crowd. Following the manic hiccups and incomplete thoughts, she came right down to her own wedge issue—abortion. It’s an oldie. But, in terms of stoking passionate fires, it’s a goodie.

In a new book-- “Game Change”-- Palin is re-named “Saracuda.” The book describes a woman fighting hard not to look like what she is—a woman way over her head and certainly not ready to be president. In the book, Palin is often quoted as saying, “I know, what I know, what I know.” By that she hopes to highlight what she considers her instincts for relating to the people. What Palin knows is that her anti-abortion comments got the most raucous ovations of the night. The beauty queen with the “special needs” child—Saint Sarah—who implies she would have continued with her pregnancy in spite of any dangers related to her advancing age, and no matter how “special” her child’s needs might be. The reasoning is Palineque, taking huge leaps in logic to get to the coveted wedge. Why? Because no one ever knows for sure why such intensely personal decisions are made, but a beauty queen can spot a wedge and an advantage like a Neiman Marcus store. (Palin apparently had Neiman Marcus bags full of clothes all over her hotel room during the campaign.)

Make no mistake; she’s willing to use whatever it takes.  She’s already signed up with FOX News.  So, she’s already got the conservative bully pulpit and the coveted anchor chair.

Writer Len Colodny, who co-wrote “The Forty Years war: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama” said recently on C-SPAN that “Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in drag.” I took that to mean, ambitious without the brainpower, and therefore, easily used by the Dick Cheneys and Karl Roves of this world. The names will be different, but they’ll use her up as “Saint Sarah” and then likely throw her away. From the ridiculous to the sublime:

Sarah—the renegade—is really just another rote. 

 
 

Plucked Peacock

(This piece also published in the Huffington Post 2/8/2010  and at SFGate.com)

We, Comcast and AT& T, take you, NBC, to be our wedded peacock—to have and to pluck as we see fit.

Let the nuptials begin with a quote from one of Comcast’s current bedfellows. Drum roll please! He’s the king of the threesomes. Hell, he’s the king of the quadruple-somes.  A man who famously brandishes his First Amendment right to say and show anything. A man who will now have indirect access to one of broadcasting’s once honorable “family” networks. Let’s hear it for Larry Flynt!

Felled by a would-be assassin’s bullet, a subsequent stroke and a sub-subsequent addiction to drugs, he’s a surprisingly affable guy, a plucky fellow who keeps rising despite adversity.

Is the drum still on a roll? It should be. Larry Flynt is something of a best man to put these strange bedfellows in context.  He is a man reflective of his country’s inherent contradictions. Many years ago, he boldly showed what no man dared to show before—the “pink shots.” Flynt once took Jesus as his savior, promising to “hustle for God.” Then, presto! He’s an atheist again. He is nothing if not pliable and resilient. Stronger than Mount Rushmore and Rush Limbaugh combined! Unflinchingly pornographic, unapologetic and prolific, Flynt’s corporation produces “about a thousand films a year” for Comcast/AT&T and others.

Larry laments:  “The world is not what it used to be and will never be that way again.”

By that, he means “innocent.” Flynt’s an expert on lost innocence. He has an infamously high tolerance for helping others lose theirs. But, even he sounded confused by the upcoming 30 billion dollar wedding. He was not, however, objecting at the altar since he stands to profit from the union.              

     ###

So, let us bow our heads in honor of the NBC/Comcast/AT&T threesome.

I, Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company and, therefore, one of the largest purveyors of double X pornography in the country…

AND

I, AT&T, the world’s largest warrantless wire-tappers outside of China and wealthy financial beneficiary of National Security Council and F.B.I. contracts…

TAKE YOU

NBC, as our corporately wedded partner, to have and to molt, until stock price death do we part.

It is now NBC’s turn.

I, NBC, promise to cross promote, product place, placate and propagate Comcast/AT&T’s propaganda. And, that’s not all.  We promise to do it with a shiny smile while skipping to Bri-tunes, waving red, white and blue pom-poms and singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

We at NBC have shown that we are a compliant partner, proven to have and hold tightly all unsightly corporate secrets. You see we have been married before.  During that marriage, we learned loose lips sink ships—the military kind—with engines made by our first corporate betrothed, GE. Neither were NBC’s lips loose when the New York Times won a Pulitzer for reporting on the cabal of retired flag officers who worked for defense contractors and pimped the progress of the Iraq war for NBC and other networks while posing as “independent” military analysts. The Bush administration was happy; the Pentagon was happy; and GE and other defense contractors were happy. Brian Williams, a very cool dude, was so happy he was speechless. To this day, Williams has never informed his viewers of the Pulitzer won by the Times or the fact that his “independent “military experts were pimping for God, Country, Bush, and the military-industrial complex. Sometimes words can just fail a guy, even a cool one.

General Electric claims to “Bring Good Things to Life,” and we were a peacock that never tired of parroting that slogan. At NBC we rarely brought bad things to light. Like the fact that General Electric is one of the world’s leading beneficiaries of war. GE makes military aircraft, fighters and tankers, helicopters and surveillance aircraft and bombers. GE builds and tests nuclear bombs, is known for making billions on questionable international arms deals and has a history of large-scale air and water pollution. But never mind all that! Corporate marriage vows, like those exchanged between all brides and grooms, say “for better or for worse.”

Forever faithful, NBC will kiss GE goodbye and be a loyal mouthpiece in its new corporate marriage to Comcast/AT&T. GE is divorcing itself from the old, tired bird. It no longer needs a marketing network. Perhaps that’s because this bird has been well trained and can be released safely from its gilded cage. And, during wartime, GE’s war record speaks for itself. I guess when corporations buy the line…they get to decide where to draw it. With the bird in hand, NBC was an ally with a far reaching, mouthpiece.  A thirty billion dollar mouthpiece that now will look the other way for Comcast/AT&T.

So, don’t expect the FCC or any other regulatory agency to stand up and protest. They are bound to smileJ, look away, and permit by demurring. We know this because of the other wedding bouquets already  thrown. ABC caught one and married Disney. CBS snared another and wed a dashing bachelor named Viacom. With the Big Three owned by entertainment companies or communications companies in cahoots with government surveillance, journalists don’t know whether to break out in song during auditions, or begin using pay phones to avoid surveillance.  Most up and coming “journalists” are so confused about their roles in the Fourth Estate, they’re hedging bets by getting degrees in marketing and advertising as well. 

Larry Flynt might call that a head job.

 Final Marriage pledge:

NBC, the Nothing But Complicit network, promises to never rat on anyone with the potential to deflate its stock prices or the stock of those who peddle in greed, war, spying or sex. Unto Comcast/AT &T, NBC now pledges its troth.

 ‘Till death, or a better offer, do they part.

Ethic revolution

published by The Huffington Post and SFgate.com

The San Francisco Bay Bridge and an Ethics revolution

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is the artwork right outside my family room window.  But, last night it was Van Gogh without his ear.

It was horrible to find out that two, newly-installed cables broke and that this left the remaining cables straining to hold up tons of  bumper to bumper commuter traffic. Could they hold all those cars with less support or would they snap?

We can safely assume that skydiving without a parachute was not how anyone beginning the commuter slog home from work envisioned ending their day.

Without sounding pushy, don’t you think it’s fair to ask WHY those hundreds of lives were hanging by fewer threads yesterday?

Reporters where are you?

Here’s the dialogue I heard:

Reporter:  Jenny Martinez-Steinberg-Wo: “What happened to the cables?”

Caltrans officials: “Don’t know yet, our investigators will find out!!!“

Reporter:  Jenny Martinez-Steinberg Wo: “Uh, okay.”

Then a short silence and an artless throw back to the studio. No follow up

I’ve been thinking about the mainstream media and its new role in our conformity conscious, televisual world. A world where it is considered rude to ask the “WHY” question, even when lives are in danger. I watched and listened and worried about those commuters, but never saw Caltrans feel any heat from reporters. Amazingly, the only thing I learned from the coverage was that Caltrans and reporters are very nice and get along swimmingly. Caltrans got a chance to give the perfunctory “We’ll be looking into this” public relations response, and reporters met their deadlines. Regarding both Caltrans and the reporters, I wonder if their families had been the ones stranded on the Bay Bridge…held up by fewer cables…if perhaps their questions and answers would have been more relevant?

Here are a few things to consider:

·         Exclusive government bids

·         Inadequate rods and cables

·         Enormous bonuses for Caltrans for finishing the job early.

Let’s take these one by one.

My sources are builders and engineers and architects, and I don’t expect Caltrans to answer any questions honestly right now. But, they should still be held responsible. Reporters have to get their hands on evidence. That takes time.  Blueprints and cable contracts might be worth asking for. Caltrans has to turn them over if asked by reporters, they are public records and, if they have not been altered, will tell us what we need to know.

Exclusive Government Bids: Remember that Caltrans, a public agency, has exclusive rights to award government contracts such as the Bay Bridge to whomever it chooses. Here’s how that works to our disadvantage. No one bids against Caltrans. No scrutiny…no comparisons. We have to depend on the unreliable to keep us safe. I wish the press would point this out.

Inadequate rods and cables?  It is public record Cal-trans hired suppliers who sub-contracted the fabricated steel from China for the New Bay Bridge. Apparently the bids were lower than American Steel fabricators. Did that same steel used in the Labor Day repairs come from the same Chinese source?  We cannot even trust pet food or children’s toys coming from China. And just yesterday it was discovered that toxic sheetrock from China has forced thousands from their homes in the South eastern United states.

Early finish incentives: Caltrans received huge monetary incentives to finish before their scheduled date. Guess what? Lo and behold, twenty-two hours before the designated deadline. Voila! Caltrans took the bonuses and the bows.  Holy bridge over troubled waters! The politicians and the press loved it…praise be to Caltrans. Can you hear me laughing?

Final thought: Remember the New Bay Bridge is built by Caltrans, too. Even as the foundation piles were embedded deep below the water onto concrete blocks, it was reported that the concrete on the new bridge was “adulterated.” That was good reporting at the time, but it was never followed up by public outrage or additional reporting.

And think of this:  Anyone who’s ever seen a concrete block that’s pure knows how tough it is.  “Adulterated” concrete is much weaker because it’s been broken up and used in the past. Re-using concrete saves money. So our new Bay Bridge sits on piles held up by “adulterated,” re-mixed and re-used….concrete.

We need an ethics revolution in this country.  

There are still those who believe American government agencies are there to protect the people. And, there are those who believe the government’s an ATM machine with no limit. If you were sitting bumper to bumper in a very compromising situation last night and still are naïve enough to believe these government officials are looking out for you….I’ve got a couple of bridges you might want to build.   

 

Black-op at Black Rock

 

In all the world only one man challenged the Killing of JFK –Jim Garrison, a bold and dauntless New Orleans, D.A. “It was a coup d’etat,” he told a nation, but how could that be? And, if it was and Americans did nothing, what sort of country are we?

Lord Tennyson was quoted in the lone prosecutor’s closing arguments:

“Authority forgets a dying King,” 

An eternal flame is a much more palatable thing! 

With a Grand Canyon of lies, a president’s life is erased. Whew…glad that’s over. America is once again safe!

That “Magic Bullet” sure did the trick.  And, with Vietnam exploding, military contracts were kept. These were the moments we witnessed our national morality and openly wept.

The unholy trifecta of a Coup d’etat—denial, disconnect, and deliverance—saves the psyches of us all. Oh now, come on, let’s not be glum! Blaming those victimized or those who try to warn us is such delicious fun!

The fearless, you see, are always targeted first. Especially now, after eight years of a Rovian, Cheneyesque morality dearth. Who is left to regard as the salt of the earth?

Dan Rather was the most notable to go, but there were others who spoke and fell, leaving an information vacuum that creates its own distinct uninformed- divisive hell.

Still, Rather was one of the brave few.

For 44 years he made us look at our lives and what our nation might do. Vietnam, Watergate, Afghanistan too. A gift from God’s eyes…the oft-times difficult, painful other point of view.

Rather is the last of broadcasting’s great newsmen. But believing ourselves righteous we fell asleep and, without a shrug, deserted him. We listened when told by tyrants du jour, “there was our national security to keep!” That’s a good enough excuse for most journalists falling to sleep.

But, like Garrison, Rather forged ahead. Challenging those in power…digging up buried bodies no matter who might end up dead.

Rove, the political Gapetto, was just playing around. A frame up is easy when a professional gang bang of puppets rule the town. And planting a document? Heck that’s nothing new. The beauty of it all was everything in the document was essentially true.  Oh, such evils immoral men do.

Now, with one broad brush stroke 44 years of protecting a nation is whitewashed away. So here is what I want us to know today.

We wonder where the press has gone. Did you see what happens when a few among them are strong?

The stakes are so high when the truth becomes a lie. And it’s always about the prophets of profits for America’s military war machine. It grinds on even at the expense of a King. So make no mistake as we blindly forge ahead, that’s why JFK, Bobby, and Martin Luther King are dead.

So now we have some new facts to face.

NBC is the military itself. And CBS is Viacom—a Hollywood movie machine making war look like a dream. And Disney animated the old ABC scene.

Now back to Tennyson’s “Forgotten Dying Kings.”

Do we have the authority to remember a trusted friend? Do we have the right to claim what he’s seen and where he’s been? A man we trusted who had courage and was bold—even when we did not like what we were told?

CBS, the lost child of Murrow, this message is for you. Open the vault and let free a life you want to erase. Dan is part of history, one too perilous not to trace. Why hide his reports from lands near and far? What threat is it to you now that you’ve shown him the door?

Or perhaps in a news industry where entertainment reigns supreme, Viacom fears we’ll remember one of the last of our news broadcasting kings.

Getting closer to a vaccine for HIV

sfgate.com  and The Huffington Post - Sept 24

Dr. Don Francis, San Francisco’s scintillation vial-wielding version of Indiana Jones, is getting ever closer to finding the 21st Century’s Holy Grail.Today, Dr. Francis and his colleges at Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a non-profit in South San Francisco, announced they are close to creating a vaccine for HIV.

Working with an international team, GSID has discovered a “boosting vaccine regimen—a “prime boost combination” that appears to reduce HIV infection rate by more than 31 percent. If this works, imagine how many children will not become orphans, or how many family members will not have to grieve the loss of their loved ones. Apparently, San Francisco Jones, who helped discover HIV and AIDS is now determined to swash–buckle this Sybil-psycho, ever-morphing virus into submission for good.

For those of us who once attended several AIDS related funerals a day, this news, coming from a once-vilified savior is nothing short of Shakespearean, but then, drama always follows heroes. 

I was just a young cub reporter when I first witnessed Don Francis’ courage. He screamed from the mountaintops in a herculean effort to explain to anyone willing to listen—AIDS was becoming a deadly beast. He understood its nihilistic capacity long before others did. AIDS and its chameleon-like nature exhausted most epidemiologists, but Francis kept working and learning and chasing this most complicated and illusive retrovirus. As soon as scientists reached an “a-ha” moment, HIV morphed into some new and ever-more horrifying disease. 

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s Bay Area hospitals brimmed with once-vital young men who were quickly reduced to boil covered skeletons with dementia. It was brutal.

But, Dr. Francis fought on, warning those most vulnerable to awake from denial and stop covering their ears. He told them to cover other body parts with latex instead. Because of that warning, he was called a homophobe by some and forced to hire body guards to protect his family.

A critically acclaimed book called The Band Played On was written by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts, who died of complications of AIDS in 1994. The book describes what I witnessed at the time. Don Francis seemed to be taking on the entire world. He battled an indifferent government’s political posturing, a resistant medical community, greedy pharmaceutical companies and Pavlovian reactions from a Gay community who dismissed Francis as just another bigot telling them how to live.

I watched as he ignored it all and fought a good fight to save untold numbers of lives. And, apparently, Dr. Francis still has his bullwhip and tattered fedora hat at the ready. In a world ruled by greed and personal promotion it’s comforting to see “San Francisco Jones” still reaching for the Grail.

Everyone on the planet who is potentially at risk for HIV should thank Dr. Francis and his colleagues, including Carter Lee at Global Solutions. We should all wish for a world where integrity, selflessness, and concern for others are the ingredients that define our heroes. It should not go unnoticed that this and so many other hopeful findings today are discovered by non-profits.  

For anyone who has ever loved and lost someone with AIDS—for those who honor life over profit—it is a bright day indeed.

Weathered Channel

(First published at sfgate.com and The Huffington post August 26th, 2009) I certainly had no idea that two days after writing this Charlie Gibson would be fired. I wonder if editorial decisions such as the one I wrote about below had anything to do with his leaving? We will of course never know.

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The search for a fresh episode of Nurse Jackie left me looking down at my remote for a split second. It took no longer than that to get an injection of America's daily dose of Dick Cheney's patented fear mongering via talking knucklehead, ABC anchor, Charlie Gibson.

In television news everyone knows that the first words out of any anchor's pie-hole are the most crucial, most pertinent words of the newscast. Those verbs and nouns reflect what the editorial management considers to be the most important point to be made that day. ABC revealed much about itself last night.

As a clumsy finger accidentally punched up ABC World News Tonight, my painful, ongoing education in the recklessness of television news broadcasting graduated to a new low.

The long overdue release of CIA torture documents was the lead . . . well, sort of. In advance of the breaking the news, Mr. Gibson offered a pre-lead caveat. It was a quote from the nation's ubiquitous former Vice President and foremost king of national hysteria - Dick Cheney.

This story, about newly released CIA documents, is crucial to maintaining a democratic, transparent, open, accountable government . . . one in which the press is truly free to tell its citizens what the government's doing in their name. It cannot be interpreted by logical minds as anything but an attempt to become wiser, more knowledgeable and, therefore, more free.

But, as usual, up was down and down was up and in walked the unrelenting, omnipresent, Mr. Cheney. He was allowed to speak on the merits of the CIA story before it ran. His words were the first to set the context of the subject and, therefore, the most memorable and powerful.

As always, Mr. Cheney told Americans they were "less safe" now that the torture documents were released. It was no surprise that our national fear monger and professional pot-stirrer told Americans what he always has . . . that we should be shaking in our boots, paralyzed and afraid.

I'd like to refer Mr. Cheney to a quote from one of my favorite Civil War movies, and dedicate these words to his ongoing performance.

"They call this war a cloud over the land. But, they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining.'"

It's raining alright. And Mr. Cheney seeded the clouds and helped deliver the downpour. Now he baits us still . . . with fear of biological and nuclear war.

What Mr. Cheney is really afraid of is prison. If we count the lies he's told, it's nothing less than reckless unprofessionalism to let this man deliver a pre-emptive lecture on any network at any time. Let's count the duplicity, shall we? Although it may be redundant to point out, we cannot allow these facts to swirl down some memory hole. This is particularly true when the masters of news seem to be caught in the hole's gravity.

Mr. Cheney lied to Congress and got Americans into an illegal, self- serving war. He's dodging his own prison cell by screaming "fire" in our crowded, national movie theatre.

As he tells this nation's citizens over and over that they are on the verge of being attacked by Weapons of Mass Destruction, we should ask him if those frightening, silence-inducing WMDs are the real kind or the imagined ones he told us we'd find in Iraq.

And while I am at it, this is a man who committed grievous offenses against his own nation by promoting the outing of a CIA operative whose job was, ironically, but not coincidentally, to look for WMDs!!!

As we finally see a modicum of effort by the mainstream media to focus on stories that shed light on the past nine years of dark secrets . . . why in the world would the one who gets to speak first be the person who made the rain in the first place?!

Charlie Gibson, it seems, should be demoted to weatherman. He certainly knows how to show us . . . even if by accident . . . which way his network sees the wind blowing.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/griffith/detail?entry_id=46298#ixzz0PbiXovO2

Man in the Mirror - How death becomes us

first published in USAToday.com, The Huffington Post and SFgate "City Brites."

 

 

Michael Jackson is dead. Now we love him?

Farrah Fawcett’s dead. Now we love her? And, finally, in death, a death bed proposal!

Death just brings out the best in us all! Aren’t we special?

And, if one is terminally ill and at death’s door…that’s really sweet. People look up from their Palm Pilots and stop Twittering, or tweeting, or whatever it is they are doing…if only for a moment. In the final hours, perhaps one even gets to communicate with their loved ones by spoken word! Holy trifecta! It’s almost worth dying for!

Perhaps it is easy to get worked up about all this celebri-tainment. But, this fascination with other people’s train wrecks has got to stop distracting us from connecting to each other. Think about it people. If we “social network” with actual conversations and exchange ideas, perhaps we can create a government afraid of the people instead of the other way around. As we spiral into a third world country…how exactly do we tweet our way out of that?  

News producers…can you hear me?

I had the misfortune of traveling cross country over the weekend. That meant waiting for hours in airports with nothing to do but watch our corporate-owned mass media spin out of control over Jackson’s death and, like a carnival freak show, work the public into an absolute manic frenzy.    

CNN news, once an internationally-recognized source of information, has devolved into Entertainment Tonight  periodically juxtaposed with feeble efforts to convince us otherwise. How does that work? So glad you asked. It works like this: Hours upon hours of talking about M.J’s tragic life interspersed with promotional video showing a correspondent with a Hijab on her head. Note to reader: Hijab is not the same as jib-jab.

Here’s the real news flash: CNN is no longer serious news. No matter how many reporters wear an Islamic head-dress.

Our brains are being hijacked and our memories are shorter than the lifespan of a Med fly. The mass media is Anna Nicole Smithing us into a coma. And here’s another news flash for ya’: The mass media loves death because it’s cheap. Let me be more specific. It cost little or nothing to send reporters to Los Angeles and stand outside a dead celebrity’s home.

But, putting boots on the ground reporters in places where U.S. bombs are killing civilians? To cover a drone-strike that leaves behind dead Afghani children? No one wants to see that. We like celebrity death. We ignore all those other deaths. Not to mention the “cost-ineffective” expense of sending unbiased correspondents (Dahr Jamail proves that’s not always an oxymoron) to places like Afghanistan and Iraq .

No way Jose! Instead, America ’s mass media shows the world what it thinks the American people care about most…Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Laundry.”

“We can do the innuendo.

We can dance and sing.

When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing.

We all know that crap is King

Give us dirty laundry!”

From the scathing words of Don Henley to the sweet innocent words of Michael Jackson’s hit song, Man in the Mirror:

“If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change!”

In Jackson ’s honor, let’s look into the mirror of our national psyche and make a change by turning off the television, putting down our micro-blogging devices and actually speak to one another out loud and face to face. Perhaps then a word could lead to a desire to listen, then listening could lead to open hearts, then open hearts could lead to….well, dare I say it …perhaps a kind word or even a hug.

One good honest caress is more powerful than all the oxycontin in Michael Jackson’s body…and that simple act certainly would have done him a world of good.

Will the Real Melissa Huckaby Please Stand Up?

The woman on the left is from Manteca, California. That’s very near Tracy, California where the woman on the right, also named Melissa Huckaby, was arrested in the maddeningly hard-to-believe rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl.

Both are single moms, and both around the same age.  One key difference is that the Melissa on the left, although publicly accused of the same crime as the Melissa on the right, is the victim of mistaken identity.

Herein lies a multi-layered problem in journalism, one that could have led to a rush to judgment. But the person writing this now has watched this metastasizing and malignant metamorphosis first hand and learned--- never rush to judgment in the rush to air.

Melissa Huckaby on the left was mistakenly identified as the suspect by a local Bay Area television station. An employee in a television newsroom got the name of the suspect and then, apparently, found a picture of a woman with the same name living close to where the killing took place. Proximity her only crime, the Melissa Huckaby on the left used the social networking site—MySpace. Her picture was found there, then put on the air.

The falsely identified woman’s MySpace account is now closed, and she and her family no doubt wonder if or when they can walk Manteca streets safely again.

What the free and likely disillusioned Melissa Huckaby learned in this cruelest of ways is when journalists don’t do their jobs well, lives get broken and innocents harmed. What she likely does not understand is how endemic this problem is in newsrooms across the country, where life altering mistakes happen every day—mistakes that often damage much more than reputations. Some “mistakes” have the power to bring democracy to its knees, leaving citizens without access to diligently checked, thoroughly vetted information from various sources—so they can decide for themselves what to believe.

Hoisted on its own petard, mass-produced corporate media is an animal in a trap willing to chew through its own flesh to survive. But survival is at great expense. Corporate greed, with sales people essentially in charge of newsrooms and the profit motive directing the news, has crippled the Fourth Estate.  Still, citizens limp on—looking for nuggets of truth on-line, in a television news story or the local paper. They often find journalism is collateral damage. Those who dare to practice it in corporate media conduits are often labeled “resistant to change”—the death knell.

Over the last ten years, massive lay-offs damaged journalism’s most important collateral—the people who believe in getting the story straight.

Fact checkers were often the first to go—or the first to quit in protest as newscasts across the country multiplied like gerbils.

“All news all the time” is the new motto of television news: “Quantity over quality.”  Helicopter shots of traffic jams replace reporters with years of experience, and reporters once given time and encouragement to walk the beat with “boots on the ground” in an effort to find truth are now forced to do so many other jobs, it’s humanly impossible not to makes mistakes when compromises are demanded.

Those who stayed for the pension and the health insurance and the paycheck are filled with cold acquiescence. Marching, marching, marching—in conforming stupors. The spirit of a good reporter, the spirit of a revolutionary who questions both the corporate media itself and the government it’s beholden to, are mostly just shadows of their former selves. The owners of most corporate media are too far lost to understand by quelling the spirit of the town criers, they are destroying themselves in a perversely fascinating lemmings-off–a-cliff sort of way.

The internet now makes it possible to ruin a person’s life in seconds, not just locally but across the country.  Newspapers, web sites,  MySpace, Facebook and a myriad of other conduits have the potential of posting the same inaccurate information in the wink of an eye—or a “Poke” in it.

If those attempting to find reliable information are tempted to scream, “That damn so and so media corporation is so irresponsible I’ll never watch, or read or listen to it again!” Good, that’s certainly a start, but misinformation and out and out lies are so pervasive now, it’s not that simple.

About the same time Melissa Huckaby was misidentified in local media, the national media was called on the carpet for a headline that was pejorative, provocative and either a lie or a mistake.  Unfortunately, mistakes are not exclusive to television. Information is now so loose and people have such short, easily forgotten spurts of outrage, the mistakes flow down an ever-widening, ever-darker memory hole. The Fourth Estate in some cases has become a trash compactor, crushing stories into smaller blocks of garbage.

Recently the following conversation took place with a trusted reporter who not too long ago was allowed to help the citizens she serves put stories into perspective with some degree of context and sense of proportion. Now her corporate media company tells her viewers are too stupid to understand hard issues. Now she is told to tell her stories in 20 seconds and write twice as many stories to fill the never-ending newscasts.

My question: “How do you do that? My fingers would have whiplash!”

My friend paused, issued a sarcastic nose snort and said, “I write the story the way I used to, explaining all sides—then I take out the facts.”

To quote a lovely, young, bright, promising television producer who quit in protest over the inability to do her job, “I thought I was going to work for Chez Panisse and I ended up at McDonalds.”

No nutrition, just filler…and sometimes they can’t even get that right. Just ask the Melissa Huckaby on the left.

22 May 09: Leslie writing on this issue caught the attentsion of the Columbia Journalism Review

Deliverance from the Fox in the Hen House

SFGate  and The Huffington Post

The verge of bankruptcy brought me to California . Spurred by a boom and bust cycle in western Colorado, packing up the kids and the trailer and moving further West was the only way to survive.

Looking back now, dueling banjos play the tune from “Deliverance” in my head, providing levity—for a brief moment. But the parallels between then and now are no laughing matter.

Time: Western Colorado , early 1980s.

Political situation: Arab oil embargo, President Jimmy Carter initiated the Synfuels Corporation—a publicly-funded investment bank designed to free Americans of dependence on Middle East oil.

Plan: Pump 88 Billion dollars of tax payer’s money into Synfuels to encourage domestic fuel production. In Colorado, it was oil shale—a sedimentary rock that can be heated to release hydrocarbons that can be distilled into synthetic oil. 

Problem:  Heads of major oil companies flooded into Grand Junction with joy abundant, an implausible plan, and both hands held out.  Trusting those in the oil industry to find alternative forms of domestic fuel was not a good idea. Jimmy Carter trusted the fox to guard the to    hen house.

Thus, the oil shale industry was born, bringing tens of thousands of people and hundreds of businesses to western Colorado . By golly, it was a boom! Towns with names such as Rangeley and Rifle were born—prosperity for all! Reporters were silent.

But this is where the Rorschach test pattern, which looked like a picture of progress and hope at first, began morphing into demonic ink blots painting a long-term picture of despair. We reporters had not put the pixels together…yet.

Ronald Reagan got elected proclaiming big government the problem, not the solution, and some key government subsidies were, according to Mr. Reagan, part of that problem. By 1986, the Synfuels program was terminated and the flow of money stopped.

But it was too late. Mountains were bombed and giant grain mill-sized distilleries were filled with shale rocks containing precious fossil fuel.

I witnessed it all as a very green cub reporter. Just 24 years-old when the Synfuels program was peaking, I found myself gazing up at the skyscraping retort with breathless awe other reporters/cheerleaders openly shared.  

We hoped it would work.  People in Grand Junction were happy and buying lots of everything, including advertising on radio and television.

The retorts roared and shook from the intense heat “experts” assured us would easily seduce the fuel from the shale. What came out you ask? Well to be proper, it was the sound of deflating tires. To be Colorado Crude, it sounded like a wet fart.

Those who speculated on the rapid boom, those who built the buildings and homes and businesses supporting tens of thousands of newcomers to western Colorado went suddenly, and shockingly, bust.

One acquaintance, who built a high-rise to house oil company executives, took the elevator to the top of his boom-time building and threw himself off.  A temporary millionaire; he died a pauper.  Does this sound familiar?  At this point, the boom was in the rear-view mirror and the only things in demand were a U-Haul trailer and an on-ramp to Interstate 80. The housing market collapsed, jobs evaporated, and my girls and I hit the road—arriving in the Bay Area which , thankfully, was BOOMING.

Lesson learned: Had reporters done some research and reporting, we might not have lifted our pom-poms with so much enthusiasm when the oil companies came to call. We did not have Google’s library at our fingertips, and Grand Junction ’s Mesa County library did not have books explaining the particulars of oil shale. Oil shale was never a promising source of crude and it was used mostly at that time by backwards Eastern European countries with dictators—places Like Romania—where, if one was lucky enough to have a fire place, the shale rocks were used like coal.

If only I had known then what I know now…that corporate greed is insatiable and when coupled with a little collusion from the government, the little guys paying taxes get a good butt kicking.

Today, those working to get Wall Street out of trouble are the same people who used to run it.  They cannot conceive of any plan other than shoring up an already broken—corrupt—inadequate—unpatriotic—“every man for himself” system.

Putting Wall Street “experts” in charge of changing Wall Street is much like putting oil company CEOs in charge of finding alternatives to fossil fuels. Is the fox loose in the hen house again?

Concerned and cautious of those who criticize without offering potential solutions, here are two from a gal who’s seen one too many booms turn into boondoggles.

Most Americans work for corporations. Most corporations require employees to invest their retirement money in the stock market. That should stop. (I hear you gasping!) It’s the employee’s money; let them do what they want to with it. We now know—even giants fall.

On the housing front, empower average, regular workers, the real worker-bees of this top-heavy management world. Challenge the workers of this country to put their rage and sense of impotence aside and help. How, you ask? Here’s one plan.

Why not give those willing to buy repossessed homes at bargain basement prices a one-time pass on capital gains taxes? Construction workers now drawing unemployment checks could do their magic on fixer-uppers and, without paying capital gains, they might be able to sell them and make a few bucks. It’s a lot like the formula the “go to guys” who started this mess are using.

Finally, here’s my most defining boom and bust cycle lesson. The size of the government has doubled since 1995 and the number of investigative journalists watching over that government has – well let’s just say – dwindled. That’s a formula for more greed and corruption.

Warnings need special delivery from reporters before the tsunami hits and the strumming of the banjos delivers us to despondency. Reporters cannot be government and corporate mouthpieces. 

As I write this, down the block from my home sit two repossessed homes. A wonderful, older couple—both former hippies—built the homes with their own hands. Strangled by mortgage payments they could not make, they threw the keys on the banker’s desk, packed up the U-haul, hugged the neighbor’s goodbye, and pulled out the driveway looking for the nearest freeway on-ramp. Waving goodbye, I heard the banjo play.

Painfully Ironic P.S: There is talk of reviving the oil shale industry.