'Go stuff it, George'

Bruce S. Ticker: 'Go stuff it, George'
Posted on Monday, April 07 @ 09:57:11 EDT
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By Bruce S. Ticker

George W. Bush has tried to cut into the profits of the Dixie Chicks after they criticized him. An attorney was arrested after being caught in a suburban Albany mall wearing a shirt with a message urging peace.

In the past week, Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman Peter Arnett was fired from NBC after he pronounced Bush's initial Iraq war plan as a failure.

Originally, NBC backed up Arnett on grounds that he was speaking in an analytical context and not in any partisan or ideological sense. Put another way: He was telling the truth. Then NBC execs changed their minds and dumped him.

Wanna bet that someone placed a threatening call to NBC in the interim?



These right-wingers can sure dish it out, but they seem to be proving each day that they can't take it -- so much so that they try to bully any critic who exercises their First Amendment rights.

Perhaps their next step will be to impeach Martin Sheen and defrock Susan Sarandon, the actors who have respectively portrayed a president and a nun. Maybe Sheen and Sarandon -- who haven't clamored for tax breaks -- don't appreciate having their tax revenues pay for a senseless war while the needs of less fortunate Americans are ignored.

Sheen, Sarandon, Arnett, the Dixie Chicks and a growing list of people are victims of a modern-day form of McCarthyism. If you oppose the war in Iraq, it doesn't matter if you're a veteran, a physician or a draft-age student -- you're sending the troops a demoralizing message. You're un-American and unpatriotic.

I personally got a taste of this treatment a year ago when I got a letter published criticizing a senator for voting in favor of Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut. A spokeswoman for Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who was then up for re-election, responded with a follow-up letter in The Bangor Daily News notifying Mainers that I had urged Bush's impeachment while our military members were in the field fighting in Afghanistan.

The senator's spokeswoman, Felicia Knight, ignored the original issue regarding tax cuts and neglected to mention that calling for a president's impeachment in a time of war is hardly a crime. At least one of Collins' constituents was photographed holding a sign urging Bush's impeachment during an anti-war protest in Portland in mid-February. Of course, many people throughout the nation are seeking this president's impeachment -- especially because of the Iraqi war.

The two most flagrant examples of this McCarthyism were executed by a lapdog Republican congressman who bullied a 17-year-old student in suburban Philadelphia, and a former governor who contributed to the 9-11attacks and now treats Canadian lawmakers like witnesses hauled before the old witch-hunt congressional committees of Sen. Joe McCarthy's day.

Philadelphia Inquirer editor Bob Martin penned a column describing how Rep. James Greenwood in mid-February acted the schoolyard bully's part at Pennsbury High School in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia. From Martin's piece:

"Student Jeff Heinbach questioned Greenwood's assertions that the Bush administration had many humanitarian reasons for going to war. Heinbach then contended that the administration was ‘whitewashing' information and that the current embargo and impending war were not the proper solution...

"He (Greenwood) said Heinbach was essentially calling the administration liars. He called him a cynic, and said, ‘It is not good for you or anybody around you to be cynical.' He declared, ‘To me, you sound like someone whose opinions might exceed your knowledge base...'

"When Heimbach introduced a comment by saying that he didn't expect to ever become a congressman, Greenwood interjected, ‘No, I don't think that's going to happen, either."

Among readers taking Greenwood to task, Calcina del Vecchio of Yardley (a Greenwood constituent) said it best in her March 4 letter: "As a mother of four, a grandmother of four and a professional educator, I am shocked by Jim Greenwood's bullying of a local high school student after the young man questioned the Bush administration's drive to war.

"How would this politician have felt if another official had treated one of his own kids this way? Haven't we in this country been taking steps to clamp down on bullying in our schools?

"Many Americans, including lawmakers, as well as many world leaders have expressed the same concerns as this high school student. Would Greenwood say that we all lack information?"

Before he became America's Canada-basher-in-chief, Paul Cellucci ran Logan International Airport, if indirectly, as lieutenant governor and then governor of Massachusetts. Logan is not only one of the most confusing airports in the country but also the embarkation point for the two passenger planes that slammed into the World Trade Center towers.

Cellucci has a strange way of acting his role as ambassador to Canada. On March 25, he slammed Canadians for refusing to support the war in Iraq and tolerating critics of our president.

"There is no security threat to Canada that the United States would not be ready, willing and able to help with," Cellucci said, as quoted in the Toronto-based National Post. "...We would be there for Canada, part of our family. And that is why so many in the United States are disappointed and upset that Canada is not fully supporting us now."

Canada's American guest then dumped on his hosts because some of their political associates called our president "a moron," "very trigger-happy" and "not a statesman," and one Parliament member said, "Damn Americans. I hate those bastards."

"The remarks of Carolyn Parrish ("bastards") get played up, the comments of Mr. (Herb) Dhaliwal ("not a statesman") get played up," Cellucci said. "When Mr. Dhaliwal makes totally inappropriate remarks about the president of the United States, they kind of ignore it."

Calling Bush "not a statesman" is inappropriate? I only take issue with the Canadians because they are telling us nothing us Americans don't know already.

Should I ever become important enough to Bush or one of his lackeys again to play the McCarthy game with me, my response will be short and to the point: f**k off, George.
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