Kramergate

Editor's Note: Due to a combination of technical difficulties and a scarcity of hard drugs in the Beltway following the Democratic victroy in Congress, this story written by Howlin' Leroy Eenk critic Bonita Applebum was not filed in a timely manner. Once the mistake was noticed, instead of writing an update, Ms. Applebum did not return our calls to her mobile phone, so we tweaked the time element and ran it to fill the space between Christmas ads. Fuck it.

By Bonita Applebum
Howlin' Leroy Eenk Media Critic

WASHINGTON - The two unbelievably awkward and offensive moments that make up Kramergate - the rant and the apology - are just the tip of the screaming, racist iceberg.

First, of course, is Michael Richard's uncomedic and on-the-record KKK-informed temper tantrum at a Los Angeles comedy club Nov. 17, a spectacle of caucasoidal rage unseen since the LAPD contacted and cleared Rodney King in March 1991.

And like King's wooden shampooing, Kramergate was made possible by the availability of personal technology. Celebrities and government officials, beware: we hate you and he all have cameras.

Even more than fuck, nigger is the most forbidden word in America. And coupled with a clutch of words arranged in a brutal image, and coming out of a white man's mouth, and shown repeatedly on television, you got yourself the makings of a seriously pissed off black population, mister. Plus an embarrassed white population who presume that by not overtly reminding blacks that it's a racist country they are doing somebody, somewhere, a favor.

Second is the equally disturbing Jimmy Swaggart-esque "apology" led by Jerry Seinfeld on the Nov. 20 David Letterman show, where two stakeholders in a popular culture franchise that makes most of its money in the holiday shopping season, attempted to salvage the scraps of the career of one and the bank accounts of both.

Before he was introduced, Letterman plugged the latest DVD collection of episodes, which was tasteless, but that's just the beginning.

Richards said he tried to talk to everyone that was present, including those who bore the brunt of his tirade, to apologize. The audience giggled a little, and I don't blame them. We're used to laughing when we see him, and his big head on my television, via satelite, looked funny and unreal: there he is, Kramer, verging on tears, futilely shaking his lifeless career awake.

"Don't laugh, it's not funny," said Seinfeld, with not a little curt in his voice. (Seinfeld also declined to comment on the elections, which was a bitch-ass move, if ever there was one.)

It would have helped if Kramer didn't refer to blacks as Afro-Americans. Maybe it's an accurate term, depends on who you ask, but please, when you're playing "contrite" on national television following your Offensive Tirade of the Year entry, it's African-American, or black people.

Because, after all, it's white people that buy the DVDs and watch the syndicated reruns, and whites aren't comfortable with Afro-American.

Cynical? Ask yourself this: If his venom hadn't been repeatedly broadcast across the globe, would have felt so remorseful? What if he got away with it? What if it's not the first time? What if the hecklers had been Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, Middle Eastern, obviously homosexual, obese, or white men, like him? Would Richards have behaved differently, and if he didn't, would he have to go onto national television to explain himself?

And above all, how much do Seinfeld and Richards stand to lose, dollar wise?

He's not sorry, he's sorry he got caught.

Many questions were left unanswered during that historic segment on an otherwise bland celebrity platform. Letterman isn't a journalist, and he sure as hell didn't act like one.

It isn't shocking that a white person would think, or say, such things. It's a racist country, and to some degree, we're all racist (that includes me and you). It is shocking, however, that Kramer would say it. That's the last thing I expected to happen. Especially after learning later that he is an Evergreen State College alumni.

Richards denied being a racist, saying that it was rage. Just ... Only ... Mere rage. Is he a racist, or was he just enraged and knew what buttons to push? Does it matter? There isn't a good excuse for this kind of behavior, just like rage isn't an excuse for assault, rape, or murder.

However, those are crimes. This hurt feelings, enraged people, embarrassed people, possibly set back race relations closer to a time, as Richards said, when black people were lynched.

They were just words, no one got injured or killed or raped. Not counting all the black people who have been injured, killed or raped as a result of slavery and continued oppression encapsulated in the n-word.

Perhaps the most important question we Americans have to ask ourselves is if we, as white people, can ever enjoy watching white America's favorite situation comedy without seeing Kramer* and automatically thinking about a black person hanging from a tree with a fork up their ass?


________________
*It's probably worth mentioning that cruel and stupid people have produced many fine works of art, including Louis Ferdinand Celine, the author of "Journey to the End of the Night," who was a Nazi collaborator during the occupation of France.

What if they had a war and no babies got killed?

From the editors:

To hear some Vietnam veterans tell the story, the spit fell like April rains.

Housewives, financial executives, middle-schoolers and hospital orderlies regularly spat upon returning veterans and called them “baby killers.”

Whether or not most veterans truly encountered this kind of reproach simply because they participated in systematic genocide, or if they are apocryphal longings of damaged men trying to make sense of their lives, we don’t know. We weren't alive to see the spit fly.

It’s different nowadays, we’ve heard more than one vet say, referring to the surplus of American flags and yellow ribbon magnets and the absence of the emotionally charged, if not misleading, “baby killer.”

It is different in some ways, but we believe calling soldiers baby killers is still a good idea. But we don’t want to stop there.

Members of the state apparatus currently executing our invasions/occupations, unlike Vietnam, are all volunteer. At least at first.

And whether they hold a rifle, a computer keyboard, a wrench, a spatula, or a clipboard, each man and woman in uniform is actively participating in the war.

The U.S. hasn’t waged a just war in generations, and we believe this shameful chapter in our history to be an immoral, illegal, and utterly outrageous.

And, we must say it again, each and every member of the military, and their contractors, and the administration, and the blowhards that supported the war, they all volunteered.

It’s true a significant number of the military are not citizens, but are serving in a sort of foreign legion capacity, where their service could lead them toward citizenship, if they don’t get killed. It’s still voluntary, though, just like any other case when a desperate person commits murder.

(Military members are not without hope. As an Army lieutenant from Hawaii is doing, one can refuse to participate in murder and face the consequences, including several years in military prison. Ironic.)

It was unfair during Vietnam to emphasize the killing of babies when innocents of all ages were slaughtered by bombing, bullets, chemical weapons, and famine. However, in our age of personal responsibility, we feel compelled to suggest the term “baby killers” be applied to our fightin’ men and women in Iraq, that draining sink.

But, as we said before, let’s not stop there.

Unlike “fascist tool,” “baby killer” gets a gut-level reaction.

The problem with the mostly young men of the Vietnam war is that they didn’t have the brains, balls, or luck to dodge service. For their shortcomings they were summarily punished with 365 days in hell, if they were lucky. About 50,000 didn’t last that long. About four million southeast Asians perished during that war, many of them babies.

Things have changed. Iraq has seen mass murder (as opposed to the enemy casualties, collateral damage, and accidents), rape, torture, and the ineffectual government puts the number of Iraqi violent deaths, including babies, at about 150,000 since the invasion in 2003. Only ... Just ... A mere 2,800 or so Americans have died so far in Iraq, a fraction of the number maimed.

That’s a lot of death. It may not measure up to Vietnam’s body count, but once the numbers reach into the thousands, it becomes a landscape of corpses, and rotting flesh all smells the same.

More than Vietnam vets, those who planned the Iraqi adventure, touted it in the media, authorized it (including many Democrats, including John Kerry and Maria Cantwell), and, yes, executed it, deserve the pejorative “baby killer.”

Mothers and the media give us plenty reasons to “support the troops” (beyond, of course, paying taxes), including: they do not make decisions about where or when they become accomplices in mass murder; they want to do something good for their country; and they want to get a leg up in trying to make a productive, comfortable life for themselves and their families.

No doubt these are good reasons to sympathize with the troops. They are human beings, imperfect vessels, just like us.

However, none of these reasons justifies participating in the horror Iraq is going through today, or supporting the troops in creating that horror.

The war is morally and logically untenable on any scale, including individually.

So much political hay is made these days over “illegal immigration” and what it means to be an American, as though in itself being an American is something to guard and be proud of. We Americans reject readings of holy Islamic texts that justify killing and reject violent cults that act in the name of God, yet our country allowed a cheap huckster to start a world war and then re-elected him.

Put that next to the American people’s support for the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, and there is so much baby blood to go around, the soldiers, the politicians, and the pundits are covered in red. However, it’s time the others who are responsible be drenched.

Those who drive their cars and pay their taxes - like us - and support this crusade - not like us - are baby killers too. Like President Bush said, state allies of terrorists will be considered terrorists, our policy here is to hold ourselves to the same standard we hold others, including the troops whose lives are abstract GI Joe dolls to most of us.

Yes, it’s about time the pejorative “baby killer” be shared by the people truly responsible for the death and destruction: the American people.

Violence is not a solution for violence, and each individual, each bureaucrat, each media blowhard, and each soldier is unique and has the inherent right to not get jumped by a van full of assholes in Tacoma, Washington. Of all the guilty parties, the troops are the only ones who deserve leniency.

They do not deserve this leniency because, as the Nazi camp guards said, they were just following orders. We owe them this leniency because they “paid the ultimate price” for the ignorant and cruel fancy of the American people.

We’re all baby killers, that’s why the world hates us.

Comeuppance

By Dolores Hazen
Howlin' Leroy Eenk Staff Writer

WASHINGTON - Muhammad Ali doesn't have anything on Democrats, whose Rope-a-Dope strategy initiated Sept. 12, 2001 ended Tuesday night when the Party of Jefferson proved that Americans would vote them into power only after Republicans ran into the ground the world's most hated republican democracy.

The Nov. 7 elections have yet to be certified, but Democrats have unofficially claimed the U.S. House of Representatives by a healthy margin, and are verging on stealing the U.S. Senate with a majority of one. But now that their liberal base has taken the Democrats out to Red Lobster and a Will Ferrell movie, they're expecting something in return.

For the first time in six years Democrats may control a branch of the government. The GOP holds a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, and the White House is still occupied by Bush, who is shrinking faster than an anorexic on a four-day methamphetamine bender.

Although Democrats will presumably control Congress and conduct the ever-important business of sculpting a budget, their majority is not great enough to override a veto from President Bush, who appeared shocked Wednesday after the results were counted, calling the election a "thumpin.'"

In order to govern, Democrats will have to first stop congratulating themselves, then assess the situation.

Democrats have inherited a civil war ignited by an illegal war, a budget deficit that is larger than most of the world's GDPs, a teetering economy, a porous border, a population whose hubris is rivaled only by its ignorance, a marginally literate president with a raging case of IBDS (Itty-Bitty Dick Syndrome), and thousands of lunatic assholes who want to dirty bomb the Great Satan before they end up on the business end of a water board.

The task is daunting, admits Heustis Boagard, executive director of Elite Homosexual Abortionists for Interracial Socialism, a staunch Democratic ally in the 2006 campaign and a high ranking member of the Liberal Media Conspiracy. But he doesn't care.

"The country is definitely in trouble, and I have faith the Democrats will solve all of our problems, but their first order of business has to be raking Bush over the coals," Boagard said Wednesday. "We didn't give them all that money, published all those crappy books, started a Goddamn radio station, fucked up our cars with bumper stickers, just to see him get a pass. We want blood."

Nancy Pelosi, the heir apparent to the most spacious office in the House, has said she will not impeach Bush.

"That's fine to say before the election," said Deborah Ishkabob, a field manager for Satanists Against the War, which supported five Massachusetts Statehouse races. "Say what you have to say to get elected, I don't care. But I want his fucking head on a pike."

Ishkabob understands that an unlikely impeachment in the House, and an even more unlikely conviction in the Senate, would likely deliver justice for the Bush Administration's crimes against humanity while at the same time tearing the country in half and possibly provoking the final death blow to the already fragile democracy.

"Fuck it," she said, exhaling a mighty bong toke. "Impeach the motherfucker."

For their part, the stunning victory has made most Democrats incapable of more than sentence fragments and an occasional tear of joy.

Frank Culpepper, Illegal Contribution Director for House Democrats, said liberals were bound to feel betrayed, and they'd get over it in time to elect Hillary Clinton second place in 2008.

"We'll deal with that later," Culpepper said. "Now it's time for hookers and cocaine."

Tuesday's initiatives and referendums proved to be a mixed bag for liberals. Gays won in Arizona, a Muslim from Minnesota became the House's first non-infidel, Rumsefeld resigned, but marijuana legalization lost in Nevada.

Stop, you're killing me

By Miles Greenteeth
Special to Howlin’ Leroy Eenk

I’m from a middle class neighborhood, and a friend of mine who has lived there his whole life is trying to join the Army.

He didn’t do well in school and got a girl pregnant. The girl ended up suffering from mental health problems, and he has been raising his son for the past four years, living with his father, who is an abusive prick, as far as I can tell.

I don’t agree with my friend on everything, especially politics, but I love him. He’s a good person and he loves his son. We’re from the same neighborhood, he’s like a brother, or a cousin. We went to the same schools, had a lot of the same teachers, and are more alike than we are different.

He was working overtime for years, six days a week as a construction worker, and he kind of lost it, got strung out on crack, traded his truck for dope, and disappeared for a couple weeks, sleeping under bridges, too ashamed to show his face to his family and friends, who were in tears worrying about him.

When he returned home his job was gone, and his parents were on his back, and the only future he could see for him, and his boy, was to join the Army.

Not a new idea, lots of young men and women who saw no other options have opted for military service. There happens to be a couple wars going on, though, and a third one possibly on its way. He understands this and says — repeatedly when he’s been drinking — that he would be “proud to die for his country” in Iraq.

I don’t want him to die, or get hurt, or hurt anybody else, and I don’t want his young son to be orphaned, but then again, I don’t know what it’s like for him: he’s in a corner.

I have parents who were nice to me and a college degree. In fact I have a few degrees — plus $30,000 in college loans. If I tried to join the Army they would stick me in public affairs or some other place safe.

For him, he’s going to Iraq, maybe Afghanistan, possibly Iran. And he just might get the chance to die in one of Bush’s wars.

I have another friend, we’ll call him Jay, and he joined the Army out of high school during the Clinton era, served three or four uneventful years and got out. He used the GI Bill to attend massage school, and now is a pacifist, vegetarian massage therapist. The Army isn’t always a bad thing for a young person, especially one from a middle-class family that can’t afford college. However, when Jay served, there was a Democrat in the White House. Jay was safe. “I wouldn’t do it again, but I’m glad I did it,” he said of his experience as an infantryman.

Back to my first friend. The recruiter told him the Army would love to have him, except he had the matter of an arrest warrant for misdemeanor possession of marijuana.

So my friend dutifully showed up for district court and served a day in jail. Since, he has been working to repay thousands of dollars in fines to the court. After that, the Army says they will take him.

The chances of him being killed are not as great as the chances of him killing somebody else, or getting wounded, possible maimed for life. The chance that he could be emotionally maimed from the experience is pretty good. None of his friends like the idea, and his older brother, who spent five years in the Navy, is adamant he not join.

But in the end, it’s his choice. The only thing I asked of him was to be able to see him before he ships out, to get drunk with everybody, and blare the rock music, and not talk about politics or Civil War revisionism (his fave). The thing is, my friend is freaking hilarious, unless he’s talking about the War of Northern Aggression. He’s good natured, trusting, and generous. I’d hate to see him go.

President Bush and his Republican supporters and Kerry’s Democratic rivals say they are offended by Kerry’s remark, which the gonadless war veteran tried to explain as a “botched” joke. Bonus, Republicans can also use Kerry’s comments against Democrats in the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

However, from where I’m standing, what Kerry said was the truth. All the things said by the right-wing about his comments, that it was offensive or shameful, I would say about the fact that young people in this country see no other alternative than to join pharaoh’s army. Kerry said it was a joke. It is.

Birth of irony

"Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words." (AP)
Nov. 2, 2006
From an interview with conservative talk-radio personality Rush Limbaugh. 11-2-06