Illustrator Jess Bachman diagrams Glenn Beck's shady links to Goldline in an accessible infographic. To summarize: Goldine is a sponsor of Beck's TV and radio shows. Beck tells his audience that they should buy gold as a hedge against inflation, but not just any gold. Beck says you should buy antique coins because there's this 1933 executive order that empowers the government to take all your gold except antique gold coins.
Beck tells his audience to go to Goldline and buy whatever they recommend. Serious investors buy bullion coins, which are standardized coin-shaped chunks of gold valued entirely for their metal content. Wouldn't you know it? Goldline is pushing collector coins instead of bullion. The value of these so-called numismatic coins depends heavily on their appeal to collectors, which in turn depends on their aesthetic and historical properties. Guess what? Goldine is selling old gold coins of minimal collector value. If you want to invest in gold, the worst place to keep it is inside a numismatic coin.
More to the point, Goldline is vastly overcharging its customers for these trinkets compared to its competitors. Ripping off your customers isn't necessarily illegal, however. All kinds of stuff is vastly overpriced in this great free market of ours. What did our ancestors fight and die for if not our right to pay through the nose for overpriced crap?
Beck has a conflict of interest regardless. He's using his show to steer his viewers towards a lousy investment. A congressional investigation found that the coins are so overpriced that they're useless as a hedge against inflation. The price of gold would have to nearly triple before the buyers of Goldline's American Eagle coin could even break even. Beck is helping his sponsor fleece his audience.
Click on the graphic to see the full-sized version.
Infographic by The Big Picture
BP/Transocean's concern for rig workers is touching. Key alarm systems on the Deepwater Horizon were disabled to "help workers sleep":
Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.
The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig.
Mike Williams, who was in charge of maintaining the rig's electronic systems, was giving evidence to the federal panel in New Orleans that is investigating the cause of the disaster on 20 April, which killed 11 people. [Guardian]
What was setting off the alarms so often that they were keeping the workers up at night? Was it that they were disabled because they were prone to false alarms and therefore useless, or because the alarms were continually triggered by unsafe conditions that management preferred to ignore?
[Photo credit: Flickr user H. is for Home, licensed under Creative Commons.]
Phoebe Prince hanged herself in her bedroom in South Hadley, Massachusetts at the age of 15. Six students from her high school are charged with hounding her to suicide. Emily Bazelon investigated the back story of the Phoebe Prince case for Slate as part of a series on cyber-bullying.
Like an anthropologist, Bazelon pieced together the complex social dynamics of South Hadley High through in-depth interviews with Phoebe's classmates, grand jury records, and police interviews. To make a long, sad, byzantine story short, Phoebe was ostracized because she was an immigrant freshman who tried to date two boys whom older girls had claimed as their own.
Bazelon raises credible doubts about whether all six defendants are equally guilty. Media reports invited the inference that all six colluded to terrorize Phoebe. Bazelon ultimately concluded that some of the incidents that led to charges actually stemmed from more isolated conflicts rather than a grand, sustained conspiracy. Furthermore, while some defendants are accused of serious crimes, others are charged for doing things that don't even sound illegal.
Flannery Mullins is charged because she allegedly made snarky allusions to "Irish sluts" on her facebook page, even though she never mentioned Phoebe by name, or said anything to her directly. The only corroborated face-to-face incident between Flannery and Phoebe involved the two girls pointedly not making eye contact in a school bathroom. Teachers warned the girls to stay away from each other and they did.
Flannery's friend Sharon Chanon Velazquez is facing charges because she publicly berated Phoebe for being a slut and encroaching on Flannery's boyfriend. She was suspended for doing it, and Bazelon found no evidence that she ever bothered Phoebe again.
Perhaps most disturbingly, 18-year-old Austin Renaud is charged with statutory rape even though he denies having sex with Phoebe. Clearly, he's being charged because prosecutors want to link him with the bullying but lack direct evidence. It's rare to prosecute consensual sex between teens so close in age, especially when nobody makes a complaint. Austin denies he ever slept with Phoebe. No one claims that he bullied her, either. On the contrary, sources told Bazelon that Austin was kind and sympathetic to Phoebe. His girlfriend Flannery was jealous, hence her snarky facebook updates.
Only three kids, only Phoebe's ex-boyfriend, his current girlfriend, and their mutual friend ganged up on Phoebe on the last day of her life. It was a classic bullying pattern. They showed up together in the library and tormented her at lunch, then they accosted her again after school, finally one of the girls sped past Phoebe in a car and threw an empty drink can at her.
Bazelon argues convincingly that three of the six defendants have been unfairly lumped in with the three hardcore tormentors. She also notes that Phoebe was psychologically unstable even before the bullying and had attempted suicide in the past.
My only reservation about the piece is that it veers dangerously close to victim blaming. Bazelon doesn't condone the abuse, but she flirts with the idea that some of the aggression towards Phoebe wasn't really bullying:
What actually happened, in the eyes of many of the students I've talked to, is that Phoebe got into separate conflicts with different kids. That doesn't excuse the other kids' bad behavior in response to Phoebe's actions. But it was one source of the trouble. Social scientists generally define bullying as repeated acts of abuse that involve a power imbalance. Is that what happened to Phoebe? "In the end you can call it bullying," says one adult at the school. "But to the other kids, Phoebe was the one with the power. She was attracting guys away from relationships." (Because of the hyper-publicity surrounding this case, I was able to talk to staff at the school only on condition of anonymity.) [Slate]
I understand the need to put Flannery and Sharon's behavior in context; but bullying over boys is still bullying. Slut-shaming is still bullying. The fact that Phoebe may have deliberately defied social norms doesn't make her fundamentally different from someone who is bullied for her weight, or her teeth, or any of the other bullshit pretexts kids use to torment their vulnerable peers. In fact, slut-shaming is an especially insidious and effective bullying tactic because it leverages preexisting social stigmas. If you make fun of a kid with a limp, you're the meany. Whereas, if you humiliate a girl for being "slutty," you're a guardian of public morals and traditional values.
Even the milder abuses Phoebe endured were clearly instances of bullying and/or social aggression. Girls joined forces to marginalize and humiliate a younger student, a newcomer with a serious mental illness. However, glaring at someone in a bathroom is not an issue for the criminal justice system; but throwing a projectile from a speeding car at a pedestrian clearly is. It doesn't matter whether the victim "stole" someone's boyfriend. Bazelon's otherwise excellent article is marred by this confusion.
I've been critiquing the Tea Party since its first stirrings in 2009. I've blogged, tweeted, reported, and even given public lectures about its roots in the socially conservative New Right, its wealthy backers in corporate America, its close ties to the GOP establishment, its racist and anti-immigrant tendencies, and so on. I'd be happy to come to speak to your group on the subject.
As a health care blogger for the Media Consortium, I was denouncing the antics of the town hall mobs on a weekly basis. National leaders of the movement were sending out talking points with tips on how to shout down pro reform politicians. That summer, a pro-reform rep was burned in effigy. Legislators got death threats.
That summer the anti-reform leaders did everything they could to whip their supporters into a frenzied rage, including circulating lies about how Obama's plan included "death panels" to bump off elderly relatives and free abortions for all. Remember the folks who made a point of toting their guns at peaceful protests? It was a calculated display of intimidation.
I was scandalized, but no one seemed scandalized by me. Little did I know that a shadowy private listserv would be my ticket to notoriety.
Luckily for my brand, I also repeated these sentiments on now-defunct private email group called Journo-list. You may have heard of j-list, which was a group of about 400 liberal reporters, bloggers, and academics. Recently someone leaked a substantial portion of list's archives to the right-wing Daily Caller, which is republishing them to illustrate some kind of left wing media conspiracy. The Caller has been dribbling out "revelations" in small doses. With each new installment I was disappointed that my radical comments didn't make the news.
Yesterday, I finally got my wish. The Daily Caller finally leaked some of my comments. As I recall, this was part of a discussion about whether there was a fascist undercurrent to the town hall rabble rousing last summer. Some people thought the protesters were coming across that way, what with the loaded guns, the incessant preening macho bullshit, the burning in effigy, the revolutionary pretensions, the constant comparisons between Hitler and Stalin (tyrants anyone could feel good about removing by force) and President Obama and Speaker Pelosi, the racially charged conspiracy theories, and so on:
“I’m not saying [the Town Hall mobs] are capital F-fascists,” added blogger Lindsay Beyerstein, “but they don’t want limited government. Their desired end looks more like a corporate state than a rugged individualist paradise. The rank and file wants a state that will reach into the intimate [lives] of citizens when it comes to sex, reproductive freedom, censorship, and rampant incarceration in the name of law and order.” [Daily Caller]
I wish the reporter, Jonathan Strong, had contacted me for comment because I would have liked to expand on the point I was making in that email. The Tea Party isn't new, it's the same old conservative movement re-energized by a black president and an economic crisis. Therefore the same old contradictions that have always plagued American conservatism are manifest within this amorphous group of pissed off people.
If the Tea Party policy agenda were ever enacted, you'd see a simple repeat of the domestic policies of George W. Bush: tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, bailouts, and heavy-handed religiously-motivated government interference in the lives of individuals from abortion to obscenity.
Obviously, the Tea Party movement isn't gunning for a totalitarian state. Why would a movement dominated by current and former Republican elected officials want to get rid of a system that serves them so well? These people are terrific at getting elected. It's their main talent in life.
What sets fascism apart from other authoritarian ideologies is the ideal of the corporate state: a nation run by a strong leader, a strong military, a strong church, and a handful of private mega-industries which have allied with the state to crush labor opposition.
American conservatives embrace both democracy and the corporate state. Democracy can coexist with the corporate state when individuals retain free votes and free speech but entrenched interests control most of the resources that we would need to shape public opinion in a mass society (i.e., campaign funds, lobbyists, the corporate media).
Skeptics often point out that there's nothing new about the so-called New Age. It's just a jumble of very old ideas that are continually remixed and repackaged to suit the prevailing market conditions. The same can be said of the Tea Party. Koch Industries was bragging about its role in nurturing the Tea Party just the other day. FreedomWorks is run by GOP royalty like former Rep. Dick Armey. I get Tea Party spam from conservative junk mail baron and godfather of the religious right Richard Viguerie, aka "Reagan's postmaster general," at least once a week. The key leaders and institutions haven't changed--they've just upped their visibility by tapping into popular anger and frustration. Think about how close our last several elections have been. The right wing didn't go anywhere, it just moved into opposition mode. Hence the Tea Party. The movement isn't new, it's just larger and more active.
It's ironic that the media portray the Tea Party as a movement of rugged individualists when their message is shaped by the likes of FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity--big business leagues whose members love subsidies, no-bid contracts, and bailouts. Even your average protester on the street couldn't seem to decide if s/he opposed health care reform because it would cut Medicare benefits or institute socialized medicine!
It's also ironic that the Tea Party is so often described as libertarian when its leading lights are arch social conservatives like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann who oppose abortion rights and want their religious beliefs imposed on everyone. Notice how many signs there are about God at your average Tea Party and think about what that code means.
[Photo credit: flickr user Amphis d'@illeurs, licensed under Creative Commons.]
Last week, the NAACP passed a resolution at its annual convention asking Tea Party leaders to condemn the racists in their ranks. The NAACP was right on the money. Regardless of whether you think the average Tea Party supporter is racist, overt racists regularly show up and make headlines at their events. Tea Party leaders would have you believe that they're a fringe element that is absolutely not representative of the core values of the Tea Party. So, the leaders should be only too eager to publicly distance themselves from the ugly fringe, right?
Wrong. Instead, one major Tea Party group doubled down, accusing the NAACP of racism.
The large and influential Tea Party Express withdrew from the National Tea Party Federation rather than rebuke TPE executive director Mark Williams for a satirical blog post in the voice of "Precious Benjamin Jealous", "Tom’s Nephew National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Head Colored Person"[sic]. (The current president of the NAACP is named Benjamin Todd Jealous.)
The post purports to be a letter from the president of the NAACP to President Abraham Lincoln accusing Lincoln of being "a racist" for freeing the slaves because the slaves "never had it so good." The narrator denounces the Tea Party for being the "old time abolitionist movement."
Let's parse the "logic" of Williams' "satire": The NAACP accuses the Tea Party of having some racist supporters, therefore the NAACP loves slavery and hates Lincoln for emancipating the slaves. You see, taxes are slavery that redistribute the wealth of white workers to black layabouts--just like under actual slavery where white slave owners paid for "three squares a day" for slaves out of their own pockets. Today, according to the fictional Jealous, taxpayers somehow fund "wide-screen TVs" for "coloreds" who long for the good old days of slavery when "massa" made all their decisions for them. (Read the whole thing at Ta-Nehesi's place.)
Williams later tried to defend himself by saying that the piece was satirical, that he was using the absurd to illustrate the absurd. Satire to underscore an offensive point is still offensive. The point Williams was trying to drive home with all the juicy stereotypes about "coloreds" and their "wide screen TVs" is that anyone who thinks the Tea Party is racist is the real racist for wanting to perpetuate slavery.
This is the kind of bizarro hall-of-mirrors logic that typifies the Tea Party rhetoric around race. Their favorite language game is "Who's the Real Racist"? Whenever anyone accuses the Tea Party of racism, they accuse the accuser of racism.
The simple move is to cite the charge as proof of the accuser's implacable hatred of white men. A more sophisticated strategy is to allude to racist stereotypes in your rhetoric, confident that everyone who lives in this culture will get the reference, and then accuse anyone who complains of being racist for picking up on the reference.
A classic example of this strategy was a sign at the 9/12 DC Tea Party protest that showed Obama as Robin Hood with the headline "Robbin' for the Hood." If that seems like race-baiting to you, as opposed to a clever allusion to a beloved children's fable about the redistribution of wealth, that's because you know about that stereotype of black men as criminals. You might also be aware of long-running right wing paranoia that social programs are a plot to siphon the money of white taxpayers to indolent black people. So, if you think the choice of iconography has anything to do with the president being black, then you're the real racist.
Birtherism is fertile ground for "Who's the Real Racist?" The birthers claim that they have proof that our president isn't really the president because he's a from Africa. That sounds kind of racist doesn't it? Well, officially, Barack Obama isn't really the president because the Constitution says that no foreign-born person can hold the office, it's nothing personal. If you detect any ulterior motives for a conspiracy theory that paints Barack Obama as an African Muslim, then you've obviously got a problem with Africans and Muslims. So, if the NAACP takes issue with a Tea Party sign bearing the slogan "There's an African lion in the zoo and a lyin' African in the White House", they're the real racists.
The graphic accompanying today's post came from the newsletter of TeaParty.org, one of the many groups claiming the mantle of the Tea Party movement. Somehow I got on their spam list. It shows President Obama busking for change on the sidewalk with an accordion flanked by bottles of liquor and a campaign sign bearing the slogan "Change We Can Believe In." The headline reads "President Obama Goes Fundraising." It's a pun on the change slogan. But you can tell the creator of this image got a thrill from depicting the black president as a derelict minstrel swilling liquor on a sidewalk. (If you suspect the artist might be milking some widely-held negative stereotypes about African Americans, you'd better wash your cranium out with soap, racist!) Earlier this year TeaParty.org spammed me with an image of Obama in a sombrero to communicate their distaste for his immigration policies.
Self-proclaimed Tea Party groups vary in size and influence. The Tea Party Express is one of the largest and best-funded and one of the most closely connected to the Republican Party. Sarah Palin has spoken at TPE events, which puts them squarely in the stratosphere of the Tea Party movement.
Mark Williams precipitated a major schism within the Tea Party and national leaders like Sarah Palin are going to have to take sides. Will they denounce the racists in their midst or will they continue to coddle them? The longer they wait and the more they equivocate the more credence they give to the suspicion that racism in the Tea Party extends well beyond the radical fringe.
Focal Point is a blog about politics, ideas, photography, and feminism. It began in 2004 as the independent blog Majikthise. (Majikthise archives are available here.)
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