It’s still too early to know how this will all play out, but it’s nice to even envision the possibility that catering to the wackiest fringe elements of your base for short-term political gain may have negative consequences: “Some Republicans are worried that an anti-government surge among conservatives will lead to lower participation in the U.S. census, which they fear could reduce the number of Republican seats in Congress and state legislatures.” Again, who knows if it’s going to actually come together, but the idea that Republicans may spend the next decade being underrepresented because they’ve catered to their crazies would indeed represent a certain sort of poetic justice. It would also be pretty toxic for our system of government, in that not having a voice in state and federal legislatures commensurate to your actual numbers does provide a valid grievance, but that doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone on that side before.

Issues about photography aside, I really enjoyed the “gay animals” story in this weekend’s Times Magazine. It was an even-handed and fairly informative look at, among other things, how our tendency to anthropomorphize animal behaviors obscures what we can actually learn from research. Anyway, if you skipped it, it’s worth saving for your ride home.

This weekend’s quake, located in northern Mexico, pretty much due south of the Salton Sea, resulted in a thousand and one slightly sloshy swimming pools in the greater Los Angeles area. (See the above for the average representative on YouTube, narrated by what is apparently a slightly younger Sharon Stone.) I had to wonder: when we eventually lose parts or most of lower California, will we think about it ever again when it’s gone? (Mexico, yes, that we would miss.) But given just how strongly those of us who grew up in the lower California expected it not to be around forever anyway, in a way it’s like it’s already been gone for decades. Southern California already acts as if it doesn’t really exist, so what real difference (besides some mayhem and death) will it make?

The 4th annual Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest was won by a clever take on the movie Up-but the winner should clearly have been entry #33, a genius Peep reenactment of the infamous D.C. snowball fight that ended with a police officer drawing a gun.

It’s sunny! Go outside! Have a great Easter, if that’s your thing, and if not, just have a great weekend! Let’s all pretend there’s an Otter Heaven and two old pals are doing fun otter things together in it right now!

Last week, prompted by the, oh, let’s call it “strange tenor of modern American public discourse,” I sought out a website that allowed me to peruse some RTLM transcripts. (RTLM, or Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines, was the “news” station that broadcast anti-Tutsi propaganda during the Rwandan genocide.) I wasn’t sure what I’d find, but I thought it might be interesting to read some historic vitriolic hatred while living in a time of other, newer vitriolic hatred-it was sort of like how people sip decades-old wine to help them better appreciate their veal.

After browsing around for a few minutes, I did what any thinking person would do: I went to Glenn Beck’s website, where, as you might imagine, I discovered that many of Beck’s declarations were jarringly, frighteningly, stupidly similar to the RTLM’s.

I wrote about this in a blog post here. But because that’s a small blog, I thought I’d give the original post some traction by cross-posting it at HuffPo, everyone’s favorite non-paying, Pete Wentz-publishing, liberal media titan. Not two minutes after pressing “Publish,” I got this:

Hi Cord,

Thanks for your most recent post, “Beck’s Fearmongering Mimics Rwandan Genocide Propaganda.” Unfortunately, we had to move this post to draft as we do not allow comparisons between public officials and Hitler, genocidaires, fascists, etc. We just wanted to let you know why the peice was unpublished. Thanks for your understanding.

Best,
[Redacted]

“But Glenn Beck’s not a public official!” I said. And it’s an affront to logic to compare what I’ve written-something that points out the similarities between two propagandists-to someone saying the health care bill is like Nazism. Right? Wrong:

Hi Cord,

I misspoke, I meant “public figure” when I said “public official.” Agreed, Beck is not a public official.

However, we do not accept juxtapositions between genocidaires and anyone.

Best ,
[Redacted]

So, yeah, there’s your progressive media giant, which, by the way, just ran a post that asks: “What if Fox News actually wants mob violence?” WHAT ARE YOU SUGGESTING, SIR?!

Whatever though, at least it’s better than Glenn Beck, who seriously sounds like a damn Hutu warmonger out to incite a massive wave of disgusting ethnic cleansing.

RTLM: “It is not only today that the [Tutsis] want to take and monopolize power in order to oppress the Hutus and cast democracy out of the window; the Batutsis’ superiority complex has been around for a very long time. … It is this superiority complex which set the Tutsis apart because, even today, many of them are still convinced of their intellectual superiority to the rest of the Rwandans.”
Glenn Beck: “Isn’t that exactly the thing that we used to like about America, that the average Joe could have a voice? That’s what [progressives] don’t like about Sarah Palin, and listen to the vitriol. … They don’t like Sarah Palin, they don’t like Joe the Plumber because they’re average people, and if you’re an average person, well, you’re just not good enough.”

RTLM: “The [Tutsis] … are wicked and a wicked person always finds a way of performing evil arts.”
Glenn Beck: “I know who our czars are now. And this collection of these czars, these are evil people. These are wicked, crazy, frightening people.”

RTLM: “When you look at them, you wonder what kind of people they are. In any case, let us simply stand firm and exterminate them…”
Glenn Beck: “There’s a time for everything. To every purpose, there is a season. And let me tell you, today the season is clubbing people over the head with shovels.”

RTLM: From Salon: “Radio Democracy, the voice of Hutu rebel forces fighting Burundi’s Tutsi-controlled national army from neighboring Zaire, routinely brands government soldiers as ‘bloodthirsty vampires.’”
Glenn Beck: “I think this is a sign that the government won’t think twice before they jam their fangs into your neck. … These bloodsucker vampires are not going to be satisfied with just sucking the blood out of GM’s top guy, the AIG executives or any other business or businessperson. Their thirst for power and control is unquenchable. They will not stop. There’s only two ways for this movie to end: Either the economy becomes like the walking dead, or you drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers.”

RTLM: “We then ask you seriously to help us and work with us on discovering and protesting against anyone who would still have evil plans of bringing us back to a worse situation. … give information to the soldiers, and all those who are in charge of security…
Glenn Beck: “I beg you, America, I beg you. Great and powerful evil is on our doorstep. Great and powerful evil is here. I beg you, read about the progressives.”

RTLM: “This has been diffused by journalists of Radio France Internationale, who serve as [Tutsi] tools. The wish of these white men is that the preferred race, by God, must rule Rwanda.
Glenn Beck: “[Van Jones] is yet another community organizer. This is yet another black nationalist in the same way that Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a black nationalist. … And America, you need to wake up, because this country is being transformed, and if you don’t think-it’s way beyond socialism. It is way beyond socialism. It is into black nationalism.”

RTLM: “[P]eople from Uganda, Burundi and elsewhere … instead of coming in peace, they steal our country, they destroy it. Therefore, let us get up and fight for Rwanda.
Glenn Beck: “Your country is being hijacked. They are using things like green jobs as a front. They are using healthcare as a front. In the context of Obama style reparations, that’s what they’re doing.”

RTLM: “Another thing is that so far, the RTLM radio station has told the whole truth. And what it said happened. It has been proving what it said. … It will never be discouraged. It will never stop its transmissions.”
Glenn Beck: “As for Fox, they only seem biased compared to the one-sided reporting of NBC, ABC, CBS and especially MSNBC. The fact is, I don’t know of ANY lies Fox News has told. Fox gives both sides of the argument of virtually every issue.”

[All RTLM transcripts via. Unless otherwise noted, all Glenn Beck transcripts via.]

Cord Jefferson is a writer-editor living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in National Geographic, GOOD, The Root and on MTV.

Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, said today in a Good Friday service that an unnamed Jewish friend” had compared the “attacks” on the Church for its handling of sexual molestation cases to “the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” Okay! It is important not to keep quiet about injustice when you see it!

by Abe Sauer

Maybe you’ve heard of Andrew Breitbart. The former Drudge #2 and Huffington pal has been on an absolute tear recently, exposing anti-Tea Party demonstrators as “thugs” and insisting that this group of patriots is “on the receiving end (of threats and intimidation) every single day, but haven’t made anything of it because they know that the press isn’t going to be sympathetic to their cause.”

Breitbart’s real bugaboo is the false accusations of racism against the patriotic Americans in the tea party. In his March 25 column “2010: A Race Odyssey,” he writes:

“As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist’ in a crowded country…. Are we going to allow the left to use its despicable acts of lies and intimidation to shut up legitimate dissent on a subject that has nothing to do with race?”

The crusader has even gone so far as to offer a $10,000 reward for proof that Capital Hill tea partiers used racial slurs prior to the health care vote.

Indeed. No racism anywhere near Breitbart and his crew.

Breitbart’s wire services network, wittily named Breitbart, which also hubs his original content sites, recently ran an Associated Press story from New Jersey of a 15-year-old girl who prostituted herself and the 7-year-old stepsister she was responsible for watching:

“Trenton police Capt. Joseph Juniak said Wednesday that the older girl started by taking money to have sex with several men at the party of a high-rise apartment. The teen then gave some of the money she had collected to the younger girl to let the men start touching her, Juniak said. ‘It went from touching to straight out assault and rape,’ Juniak said. ‘They threatened to kill her if she screamed or told anyone.’”

Heartbreaking.

Remembering that nowhere in the report was the race of anyone involved mentioned, let’s look at the edifying comments from Breitbart’s (racist-free) readership:

Wow. That guy got +13 Breitbart patriot thumbs for his (her?) bit of genius political punditry. Wonder what some of the others had to say?

Oh, my.

But hope! Here is a brave someone wading in to talk some non-racist sense into the not-at-all-racist discussion.

Ha ha ha! Stupid rape victim. Negative one Breitbart Patriot Thumb for you!

How come no one told me Band of Horses had a new recording coming out? This pleases me greatly! Anyway, here’s the first single from Infinite Arms, out next month.

I have seen the last four Paul Greengrass movies and the latest, “Green Zone,” which I’ve finally watched, made me want to give up consuming fiction entirely. This is a story that in its key points intentionally sticks close up front to some very real, very serious issues-the great political lie of the invasion of Iraq, the falsification or at least very extreme inaccuracy of military intelligence regarding the Hussein regime’s weapons and also the outrageously damaging involvement of major newspapers in spreading that misinformation. One of the most important topics of our time, right? And Paul Greengrass took those facts and made a lone hero cowboy shoot-em-up.

As one of the real soldier-consultant-actors in the film wrote: “Paul wanted to create an action thriller that would not only make the audience feel like they were with us in Iraq but also take them on an adventure filled with political conspiracy and a hero against all odds. After talking with Paul I felt less anticipation that this would be an accurate portrayal of the MET teams and more of an action-packed thriller set in Iraq…. Since this film, my friends and family have all been asking me the same question, ‘How much of ‘Green Zone’ was true?’ The short answer is very little.”

Then what purpose is the film? The film is simply an action thriller tarted up with gravitas, and people’s lives. He used these topics to make what he thought would be a blockbuster. It’s a thriller: he wanted to inflame people’s lusts to see someone shoot people. I’m sure Greengrass feels very strongly about the political topics, though! I do too! Ideally, I’d like someone to make sense of it, and convey information about it! Why wouldn’t he want that?

When Tony Scott reviewed the movie in the Times, he wrote, of the patented night vision, low-light, shaky faux documentary camera style that makes the two Greengrass Bourne movies indistinguishable from Green Zone: “Mr. Greengrass has never been interested in technique for its own sake.” Right! He’s interested in this technique for a reason: to convey the lie of “this is real” and “you are there.” This is fake. This is pornography. This is, really, total bullshit. And I would seriously stop consuming fiction right now, in protest, for real-except I’m in the middle of a pretty decent Alastair Reynolds book and that I don’t want to give up! It’s about a team of people searching for terrible weapons in the middle of an endless war? Except it’s set in the year 2605 and it’s NOT AN ALLEGORY. It’s.. made up! Fiction! Just like United 93 and Green Zone really are.

I did not think I could be more offended by a movie than I was by United 93, Greengrass’ historically based (obviously) death porno film about 9/11. His made-up narrative about the (real) terrible things that happened on that flight was about as realistic as Snakes on a Plane. And his “style” was pornography then and it’s even more foul now. Why do we want to have works of art that make up lies about important things? Why could that possibly be a good thing? It’s a deep and senseless blurring of the historical record, for starters. Tony Scott concluded this: “it has the rough authority of novelistic truth.” Well, that’s nuts. Authority is what Greengrass is grasping for, sure. And he conveys it, with his tricks and his incredible recreations of Baghdad and all that. But truth, no matter what James Frey says, doesn’t have gradations.