Duty to Warn

A new poll tells us that -- by a two-to-one margin -- Americans "use clearly positive words in their descriptions of the president." The Pew Research Center, releasing a nationwide survey on May 7, declared "there is little doubt ... that the war in Iraq has improved the president's image" in the United States.

Such assessments stand in sharp contrast to views of George W. Bush overseas. In mid-March, the Pew center put out survey results showing that "U.S. favorability ratings have plummeted in the past six months" -- not only in "countries actively opposing war" but also in "countries that are part of the 'coalition of the willing.'"

So, why do most Americans seem at least somewhat positive about Bush, while the figures indicating a "favorable view of the U.S." are low in one country after another -- only 48 percent in Britain, 31 percent in France, 28 percent in Russia, 25 percent in Germany, 14 percent in Spain and 12 percent in Turkey? In large measure, the answer can be summed up with one word: media.

AUSTIN, Texas -- "We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and be proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies, and say, 'Damn, we're Americans!'" -- Jay Garner, retired general and the man in charge of the American occupation of Iraq.

Thus it is with a sense of profound relief that one hears the news that Garner is about to be replaced by a civilian with nation-building experience. I realize we have all been too busy with the Laci Peterson affair to notice that we're still sitting on a powder keg in Iraq, but there it is. In case you missed it, a million Iraqi Shiites made pilgrimage to Karbala, screaming, "No to America!"

Funny how media attention slips just at the diciest moments. I doubt the United States was in this much danger at any point during the actual war. Whether this endeavor in Iraq will turn out to be worth the doing is now at a critical point, and the media have decided it's no longer a story. Boy, are we not being served well by American journalism.

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- In Pensacola, Fla., a crowd of pink, plastic flamingos on the lawn means someone is having a birthday. The flamingos are usually for a major, zero-ending birthday, so on the day you turn, say, 50, you walk out of the house, and there are 50 pink flamingos to greet you. I report this to prove that travel is culturally broadening.

Also on the Redneck Riviera, an annual sporting event I trust will soon attract national television coverage: the Mullet Toss. Kenny Stabler, formerly with the Oakland Raiders, throws out the first mullet in the yearly fish fling, and then, less famous mullet chuckers compete.

Near as I can tell from a quick visit, the major problem along the Florida Panhandle is rapid development. Same old same old, except that both the old-timers and the newcomers have a strong interest in preserving the natural beauty of the place. By now, everyone knows what happens if you don't control growth. The phenomenon known as "strip commercial" appears -- endless stretches of tacky, plastic, franchise food joints.

Eighteen months from now, citizens will vote for president. If the 2004 campaign is anything like the last one, the election returns will mark the culmination of a depressing media spectacle.

For news watchers, the candidates and the coverage can be hard to take. Appearances on television are apt to become tedious, nauseating or worse. Campaign ads often push the limits of slick pandering. Journalists routinely seem fixated on "horseracing" the contest instead of reporting about the huge financial interests that candidates have served.

Media-driven campaigns now dominate every presidential race, badly skewed in favor of big money. And while millions of progressive-minded Americans are eager to have an impact on the political process, they often face what appears to be a choice between severe compromise and marginalization.

Remarkable transitions occur during presidential campaigns. People who are usually forthright can become evasive or even downright dishonest -- in public anyway -- when they declare themselves to be fervent supporters of a particular contender. Nuances and mixed assessments tend to go out the window.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Don't worry about a thing! The Texas Legislature is riding to the rescue. Oh, sure, we still have a $10 billion deficit, but the House just outlawed gay marriage. At last, we're safe from the hideous threat of gay marriage, which would have directly ruined our entire lives.

Meanwhile, the House has:

-- Eliminated 10,810 state jobs;

-- Cut 250,000 poor children off the Children's Health Insurance Program and about 365,000 from health insurance through Medicaid;

-- Cut prenatal care and delivery for 17,000 pregnant women and services for 366 women with breast and cervical cancer;

-- Closed one state school for the mentally retarded and one state mental hospital;

-- (This one's my favorite) Cut $22 million from a criminal justice program that provides medication and treatment for mentally impaired offenders who are out on probation or parole. (Isn't that nice? They'll be wandering around the state without their meds.)

AUSTIN, Texas -- The sour joke is: "Of course we know the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. We have the receipts." At this point, the administration would probably be delighted if it could find the WMDs the Reagan administration gave Saddam Hussein. At least it could point to some WMDs.

This is a "what if ..." column, since I have no idea whether Saddam Hussein was or was not sitting on great caches of chemical and biological weapons. What is clear is that not finding the WMDs is getting to be a problem -- and if we don't find any, it's going to be a bigger problem. And if we do find some, we'd better make plenty sure they come with a chain-of-evidence pedigree, or no one is going to believe us.

You don't have to be an expert on WMDs in the Middle East to know that when the administration starts spreading the word that "it wouldn't really make any difference if there were WMDs or not," it's worried about not finding any.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Boy, there is no shortage of creatively terrible ideas from the Republican Party these days. Those folks are just full of notions about how to make people's lives worse -- one horrible idea after another bursting out like popcorn -- and all of them with these sickeningly cute names attached to them.

Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act (Senate version) and the Family Time Flexibility Act (House version). The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.

To hear the Republicans tell it, you'd think these were family-friendly bills, something like Clinton's Family Leave Act, designed to help you balance the difficult combined demands of work and family. With such a smarm of butter over their visages do the Republicans go on about the joys of "flexibility" and "freedom of choice" that you would have to read the bills for maybe 30 seconds before figuring out they're about repealing the 40-hour workweek and ending overtime.

The only reason George W. Bush is president today – unleashing the dogs of war and pushing the U.S. into becoming a hard right, authoritarian and militaristic state – is the unconscionable “War on Drugs.”. Like Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, drug wars are usually the harbinger of encroaching authoritarianism, as the state utilizes its police forces to disenfranchise voters and silence dissent.

A February 23, 2000 USA Today article summed up the impending impact of the drug war on the 2000 election complete with the usual bar graphic. The key figure, of course, was that 31% of Florida's black male population was prevented from voting due to felony convictions. Florida, and eleven other states of the former Confederacy, disenfranchise felons for life, rather than restoring their voting rights after they are released from prison.

With U.S. troops occupying Iraq and the Bush administration making bellicose noises about Syria, let's consider some rarely mentioned words from the most revered writer in American history.

Mark Twain was painfully aware of many people's inclinations to go along with prevailing evils. When slavery was lawful, he recalled, abolitionists were "despised and ostracized, and insulted" -- by "patriots." As far as Twain was concerned, "Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."

With chiseled precision, he wielded language as a hard-edged tool. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word," he once commented, "is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Here are a few volts of Twain's lightning that you probably never saw before:

* "Who are the oppressors? The few: the king, the capitalist and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat."

In times of war, journalists can serve as vital witnesses for the people of the world. So it's especially sinister when governments take aim at reporters and photographers.

A few weeks ago, when I was talking with a CNN cameraman, he recalled an overseas stint to cover events in the West Bank. Anger was evident in his voice: "The Israelis were shooting at us."

When military forces are assaulting civilians, commanders often try to prevent media from telling true stories with pictures and words. Governments that maim and kill civilians are routinely eager to stop journalists from getting too close to the action. Those who persist are vulnerable to retribution.

For a long time now, the U.S. government has been hostile toward the Al-Jazeera television network. Widely watched in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera's coverage of the war on Iraq has been in sharp contrast to the coverage on American television. As Time magazine observed: "On U.S. TV it means press conferences with soldiers who have hand and foot injuries and interviews with POWs' families, but little blood. On Arab and Muslim TV it means dead bodies and mourning."