I'm not sending this to you for any other reason than I thought it was interesting. It's an article RLJ wrote about the 'state of the nation,' and I found it to be surprisingly interesting; when you get used to hearing people 'sing stories' we often forget that they may, in fact, not BE the stories they're singing, but merely projecting a stage persona. That said, I found the writing to be articulate and pointed. I'll be seeing the evidence of liver damage live on Dec. 6th. I am watching a bad movie on the vaginal network - TV is just as addictive as everything else. They had a VH! Behind The Music marathon this afternoon, and I caught 5 of them. Cheers! -Chris. (article is pasted in below). In 1996 the American People showed the Republican party, in an unprecedented act of self-determination, that no amount of propaganda could actually effectively dissuade them when the time came to elect a president. After four years of innuendo, outright persecution of 'potential' witnesses, intimidation and ridicule of a standing president, and outright contempt for the American people, the Republicans were put, quite firmly, in their place by a vote of outstanding faith in a president that the opposing party had all but eviscerated. Faith we did not give wholeheartedly, but gave nonetheless, because the Republicans had behaved badly, and had no one worthwhile of their own to offer, and because, when it came right down to it, things were, after all, a lot better than they were four years before. In fact, things were getting pretty damn good. The mood of the country was up. People were working. People could buy homes, and the poor were not as poor. Parks were being protected. Dignity was being served. So. The next four years saw special funding by private interest groups of persecutors (yes, not prosecutors) and the additional spending of millions and millions of dollars - dollars that could have created a few more school programs, could have fed many thousands of hungry American children, given medicine to babies, built some roads, funded a few research grants, improved the horrendous conditions of many S.S.I housing units (these are special cheap apartments for the handicapped and unwed mothers, elderly people and poor families, my brother lives in one), and maybe had enough left over to buy lunch for everybody in Olympia, Washington on Christmas and New Years and Thanksgiving for the entire four-year term - to continue this personal attack on this president who, for some reason, really pissed them off. They corrupted the general policy of daily papers, at least an unspoken policy, I thought, not to print pornography, by dangling the disgusting details of President Clinton's disgusting sexual behavior for all of them to have access to and then to print, and then for the country to read in its leisure, which, to its shame, it did. People laughed at the embarrassment it felt for him, and for themselves at having their own country come to this petty and destructive politic. Bad playground behavior, who of us would teach our children to point the finger and laugh? And yet, we were being encouraged to do just that. This is not Christian, this is not nice, this is not ethical, where in our social etiquette did we learn to kick 'em when he's down? But he would not go down. And after that first week, he was still standing, and the next month, and you know what, the next month, too. And when the people began to tire of the republican onslaught, the republicans threw more, here is someone new, here is an even more insipid allegation, and it would fly for a few weeks, and the Americans tossed it aside. They grew weary. Their love of Watching, from too many years behind a television set, came back on them with a vengeance. They realized they were being taken advantage of. That in the end, this guy had done a great job in the office. That all his sex was his business, that he hurt no one, that all his accusers were as guilty as him. And after all the money and slander, not one allegation stuck. NOT ONE. The rhetoric Bush tries to throw now, that Gore stands in the shadow of Clinton, it cannot fly either. Gore should stand proudly in the shadow of Clinton. His mealy-mouthed behavior of wanting to take credit but not wanting to take the heat is his worse trait. But the fact is, no matter what personality deficits these men have, the point of it is -- what are they going to do? There is no contest here. Bush is a bumbling, inarticulate, undereducated good-old boy. The NRA has stated that if Bush was elected, they (the NRA) will work out of his office. I want you to tell this everywhere you go. I want every mother or every grandmother who watches her child walk into the school with the slight sliver of fear that he may not walk out again, because the NRA will not support the ban of automatic weapons in America, to raise her voice loud this week. Bush talks about leaks.The old life style which he blows off now, is not to be taken so lightly. He dismisses his alcoholism and his criminal record as the folly of his youth. Would he excuse the "youth" of east LA and south Texas as well? Is the behavior of gang-bangers to be considered less seriously because they are youth? Would it be OK, then, if Al Gore smoked a little pot and got busted when he was 30, would the Governor of Texas forgive that? Is that your message, Mr. Bush? Rather liberal, I should think. Bush gets found out, and then he says, hey, I'm just like you, I make mistakes. A bit condescending? Well, I think his credibility is suspect. Is it as low as it should be? Who is running this propaganda, anyway? The entire Democratic tenure was besieged by leaks created by Republicans, yet they have the audacity to complain about "timely leaks"? Really! There is a growing misrepresentation of the meaning of capitalism in our country. The idea that every single person has the opportunity to make something of themselves is mutating into the single-celled aberration that every single person has the right -- even responsibility -- to be opportunistic, that money is the crown, and that what we say it is is what it is simply because we are rich and we say so. An educated oil man, Bush says we don't know all the facts about global warming...' in order to protect the interests of the companies destroying the planet right now as we sit in our little rooms in front of our little computers, in order to blow off doing something about it for another four years. The rest of the world is counting on our participation in a world agreement to stop pollution. Right now, if Bush is elected, American will not sign that agreement. The sun is seeping through a hole in the ozone above the arctic about the size of Greenland. For the first time in known history there are melting glaciers in the arctic, and in our own lifetimes we are watching whole eastern coastlines being washed away by an ever-rising sea, rising on both sides, because the ice is melting, because the planet is warming faster than anyone could have anticipated. It is easy to stop. But will the oil companies accept a fiscal loss rather than destroy much or all of the world we have known? Will they squeeze, until the last possible minute, every dime they can out of what's left of the environment? If Bush is elected you will see the European communities' resentment of America return in spades. Bush will wave the proverbial flag in a parade of rhetoric that will only exasperate torn and barely mended relations. Bush will give the great frontier of Alaska to oil, because these people have no love of land, of beauty, of animals. They see these things as child's-play, and they see money and profit as the game of adults, of boys. What do they care about trees, polar bears, music in schools, safe streets for those of us who don't drive around in limos everywhere, health care for people who don't have the money to buy groceries, let alone get a tooth fixed. And this, friends, is the truth. You could take them for a walk on the cliffs of Big Sur, and they would talk about it's potential as a development for oil or mining. They would not see the sea, or the horizon, or the great ancient trees. You could take them to a school and they would say, what programs will create the most money for us, not , what programs will enrich the lives of these children, because individuals matter. When individuals matter, the culture thrives, educated people mean nonviolent people. As long as they are undereducated, we can focus our money and efforts on programs that will see immediate fiscal returns. The republicans, you will remember, said children don't need to sing, they don't need to draw, and they don't need any lunch, either. Not on our dime. This is the Republican way. We are, after all, just a tribe who has gotten a little ahead of itself. I know we have not forgotten that our lives depend on our sustaining the planet we live on. The exchange of money is all well and good, but what good are these toys if our children are killers, our sky is deadly, and our men are waving their spears at - US? Because that is what their greed is doing. It is poised and aimed at the American people. So, though we are discouraged, we cannot turn away from this very crucial moment in history. If the republicans win, it means that their four years -- no -- eight years of intimidation and mudslinging paid off. We can't let that happen. We have to fight for the truth of things. This is not a personality contest, who cares if Gore is boring. He is the only choice politically. Nader cannot win, and his presence is a blessing for these cynical boys from Texas. Do not let this good time make you forget how horrible it was when Reagan was president. Tell it, talk about it. This should be no contest. Don't let people who are voting on a whim, like "I like Bush because Gore is boring...", be the lucky ones whose voices are heard. The Republicans are counting on the more liberal and freethinking people being so disillusioned in the political process that they do not vote, or they waste their votes on people who could not win, and would not really be prepared for the office, anyway. That, of course, was their intention all along. They have nearly destroyed all trust in the democratic process. So, then, it's just a little while before the process will be eliminated, isn't it? RICKIE LEE JONES singer, mother, American ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
