THE SCOOP for January 5, 1998 ___________________________ Race, Walk, Run, & Shout Some People Learn, Some People Don't © 1998 Bob Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] [] = italics There's nothing worse than guilt by association. OK, I suppose having your shoulder blades buffed with a power sander is worse. Or swallowing a sewing kit. That's a [lot]worse than guilt by association. So is sipping on a thumbtack daiquiri. Flossing with a nail gun. Bobbing for lobsters. Dating a fashion model. So to be exact, except for about a half-dozen things no one in their right mind would do, there's nothing worse than guilt by association. That's what McCarthyism was about. Somebody would merely say they saw you talking to a communist, and then next thing you know all the good writers in Hollywood get blacklisted, and pretty soon [The Waterboy] is number one at the box office. Oh the humanity. So guilt by association is bad. Not as bad as dating a model. But it's bad. But it's different if the person in question, say, actually chooses to attend communist party meetings, contributes a column to a communist journal, and lets his name be used to promote communist causes, all with full knowledge of what it's about. Then it's no more of a stretch to say he supports the communist party than it is to say that Castro supports the cigar industry, Casey Kasem supports pop music, and Pauly Shore supports comedy. None of them have anything directly to do with the enterprise, but their efforts suggest more than a passing interest, futile though it may be. With me so far? There's something just like that, but different, to talk about. There's a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens you might want to know about. They [call] themselves conservative, but check their website at www.cofcc.org, and you'll see that they're a direct descendant of the White Citizens groups who so bitterly fought against civil rights and equality for all Americans. One click from the CCC homepage brings you to screeds exposing the alleged dark secrets of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King and even calling for a second Civil War to preserve the white race. The page also maintains direct links to the National Front, an openly and unashamedly fascist group, and a bunch of white supremacist newsletters and organizations. Suppose for a minute that some prominent national leader, like say President Clinton, endorsed that group, had close family who belonged, spoke several times at their functions, and contributed to their newsletter. And suppose that the guy's spokesman misled the press to cover it up? Wouldn't you want to know? Suppose for a minute that the information was publicized in one of the biggest newspapers in America. Wouldn't you expect there to be a firestorm of protest from the "liberal" media? Wouldn't the decent people who make up most of this country demand a full explanation and possibly a resignation? You'd think, wouldn't you? OK. Trent Lott. The Senate Majority Leader. He's really tight with the Council of Conservative Citizens. That's every bit as newsworthy as who anybody is sleeping with, isn't it? I mean, [isn't it?] You want to know more? Check out the stories by Thomas Edsall online at http://www.washingtonpost.com. ___________________________ Some people would walk a mile for a Camel. An 89-year-old New Hampshire woman is walking 3000 miles so that Camel won't have that kind of influence anymore. Doris Haddock, who is no relation to the fish, will be spending 1999 walking all the way from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. in a one-woman crusade for campaign finance reform. In an effort to show Washington that the American people do indeed want to clean up the way campaigns are financed, Miz Haddock is walking ten miles a day, carrying everything she needs on her back, and spending the night wherever her sleeping bag hits the ground. And she's meeting with community groups and politicians at every stop along the way. She started her trip at the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Year's Day, and she's hoping to get to Washington by October. If you want more information, check out her website, at http://www.grannyd.com. There's a map of her route, a copy of the petition she's handing out, and a really cool picture of her with a knapsack. Y'know, Granny D here is trying to change the way we choose our politicians, but thinking about the effort she's putting into this at her age -- just because she gives a damn about our country -- maybe there's an even simpler solution: [Doris Haddock for President.] ___________________________ Thanks to the way Congress spends the educational budget, the three R's are apparently now Reading, 'Riting, and Re-Election campaigns. In a given year's federal budget, the federal Department of Education is only able to allocate about ten percent of its resources to discretionary stuff -- innovative programs, reforms, research on new teaching techniques, and so on. It's pretty obvious that really trying to figure out some new approaches in education wouldn't be a bad idea. I perform at colleges all the time, and I [swear] to you that more than half the time, the student introducing me is barely able to read my printed introduction. I get a little tired of performing before a roomful of people who think David Bowie was killed at the Alamo. Especially when we all know he really died in front of Tin Machine. But anyway. But it turns out that precious little innovation is actually happening. Instead, according to a nice piece of work in last week's L.A. Times, most of the discretionary money in the national education budget is getting diverted into pork-barrel local stuff that serve only the interests of a few well-connected contributors or the members of one Senator's district. In the last year, you and I have had the privilege of helping to pay for the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in Carbondale, Illinois, and the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service in Lawrence, Kansas neither of which is probably going to change the way kids are taught to read in the 99.96% of America not located in these two throbbing metropoles. We've paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to assemble an oral history of labor unions in Iowa, the home state of Senator Tom Harkin, a ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, and about ten million for an exhibit on the Constitution in Philadelphia, the bailiwick of Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican. So what do we do about it? Well, before we can act and vote and raise a ruckus, the first thing we have to do is: educate ourselves. Which, if we don't do anything about it, is exactly what we'll all wind up doing anyway. ___________________________ The good news was: you're less likely to kill me than ever. The bad news is: you don't realize you're less likely to kill me. Last week, I told you about how the latest crime statistics from the Justice Department show that violent activity in the United States is at its lowest level in like a quarter-century. Which isn't surprising, since the national crime rate actually mirrors the record sales of the band Journey, and they haven't had a hit record in years. (And I'm not making that up about Journey and the crime rate. Look it up. The correlation isn't perfect, but it's close enough to joke about. It's really cool.) But the bad news is, according to polls, people's perception of the violent crime rate is still increasing. More than two-thirds of Americans believe that the crime rate is still going up, and in fact only one percent of us fully realize just how fast the streets are getting safer. Various op-ed writers have theorized as to why that would be: continued violence on TV, sensational news reporting of crime, and so on. And that's all well and good. But maybe there's another reason. No, Journey hasn't had a hit record in years, but that doesn't mean that there aren't singers just as godawful out there, on the radio every day, driving common people to the brink of violence and convincing us all we still live in a dangerous world. Michael Bolton, people. The menace that is Bryan Adams. [Cher.] [These] are the modern faces of crime in America. Only when these dark forces are stopped will peace truly have come to our land. ___________________________ Bob Harris is a radio commentator, political writer, and humorist who has spoken at almost 300 colleges nationwide. To receive a free email subscription to The Scoop, just send the word "subscribe" to mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]. ___________________________ Bob's Big Plug-O-Rama™ (updated 1/5/98): Beginning next week, this column will be sent out on Sunday nights, so that Mother Jones online (http://www.motherjones.com) can carry it fresh the next day. Enjoy. National radio syndication begins Jan. 25th. We're guessing we'll have about 100 stations from the get-go, and who knows how many thereafter. Feel free to call your favorite station and ask for the feature. They really pay attention to stuff like that. www.bobharris.com will be up by then, including station and schedule data, an archive of past columns, live appearance info, etc. We'll record at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills (http://www.mtr.org), which has kindly offered free use of their studios in exchange for gratuitous plugs, including this one. In L.A., you can already hear the stuff daily at 6:40 p.m. on KNX 1070 AM. The feature has recently received cool awards from the Press Club and the Associated Press. I'm allegedly supposed to finally appear on Politically Incorrect roughly around the same time. More info on that if and when it firms up. The Scoop is also available online in RealAudio at http://www.webactive.com/webactive/soapbox/monday.html The Scoop is also often carried in the following monthlies, which I vigorously endorse for the great articles written by everybody else: •The Funny Times, http://www.funnytimes.com/ •The Humanist, http://humanist.net/publications/humanist.html •The Progressive Populist, http://www.eden.com/~reporter/current.html •Z Magazine http://www.lbbs.org/zmag/ I'm still working on the dang memory book for Common Courage Press. If people like it, more will follow. Common Courage publishes some marvelous stuff. Check out their list at http://www.commoncouragepress.com And finally, do you ever wish there was some way to cast a real protest vote? Check out the homepage of Damian Hooters, America's only pro-crime, anti-family candidate, at http://home.dmv.com/~damien/ and enjoy. If you can't vote your conscience, vote unconscionably.
