JJ’s 36 favorite outrages of 2009
This began as one of those typical top ten lists you see popping up all over the political websites this time of year. But then I got to thinking about all that’s really happened this year and it became clear that this would have to be a much longer list. I mean, golly-gee, George Bush had such a long time in office in which to screw everything up, so it’s not surprising, then, that the first year we have a Democratic President after him – not to mention our first black President – is going to be one doozy of a year. (I know I feel a little bit dizzy, don’t you?) And that doesn’t include the surprises I’ve thrown in, that were unrelated to presidential politics, but an outrage all the same. Once I made peace with the fact that it would be a lengthy list, I was able to assemble a collection of all my favorite outrages of the past year.
I began with the least outrageous, least surprising, least interesting, least earth shattering and ended with my favorites – the ones that had me shouting obscenities and waving my arms. Now, I know that not everyone will agree with the content or order of this list. It may not contain all, or even the greatest [ahem] WORST outrages of 2009, but these are the ones that were highest on my radar; these are the ones that really stuck in my craw.
So, here it is. Remember and weep:
36. Colorado lowers the minimum wage: Sure, it was only a few cents and hour, but there’s something seriously wrong with a system that would allow this to happen during a recession. It’s the principal of the thing and, as someone who used to live there, I know that it’s a state where companies are so clever and adept at keeping salaries low to begin with, that I studied and learned their tricks while I lived there. As counterproductive as keeping salaries down is to the economy, I’m surprised there wasn’t more outrage.
35. Executive pay creates populist stir: Much was made of this in the news media, but what’s more outrageous are the bigger fish that were being ignored in lieu of this populist distraction. The real outrage wasn’t what the executives were getting paid, themselves, but that the pay was based on criteria that encouraged the very behavior that sunk our economy to begin with.
34. “Balloon Boy” preempts all other news even after it’s known that he wasn’t in the balloon: If the boy had actually been in the runaway balloon, that would have been one thing, but the media bonanza continued long after the boy was found to be safe. Even previously issue-focused programs like The Ed Show focused on Balloon Boy to the exclusion of all else (as an infuriated Arianna Huffington tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to focus on more pressing issues.) It’s an outrage that the news media would prefer to focus on even this non-story than news.
33. Glenn Beck, leader of the crazies: The man we used to think was crazy in a funny kind of way went off the deep end when Obama took office. Now, the only thing more frightening than Glenn Beck’s vitriol and propaganda is that so many people have come to worship him. The difference between Beck during the Bush Administration and Beck during the Obama Administration is that he went from loony to downright dangerously irresponsible. The conservative fringe in this country is a “ticking time bomb”, and when it goes off, no doubt, Glenn Beck will bear part of the responsibility.
32. Palin resigns as Governor of Alaska: What could better qualify a person to run for President of the United States than a failed attempt at running for Vice President of the United States? Well, that must be resigning from her current executive leadership position. Run, Sarah, run. Run, run, run.
31. The Kay Jewelers’ Storm commercial: Because everyone knows women are frightened by thunder, this commercial is an outrage:
I happen to know that women aren’t frightened so easily, but even if they were, I’m sure the way to calm such a frightened little bunny rabbit isn’t to arm her with a pretty diamond necklace, but a large frying pan, or perhaps pepper spray or a taser, or even one of these. (Why are they wearing bathing suits? Spent casings are really hot and can leave quite a mark.) I surfed around to see if anyone else shared my sentiment and found that Bitch Magazine agrees, but for different reasons.
30. “You lie!” Joe Wilson: We all knew that Republican incivility would reach a head, but who knew it would come so soon! More outrageous was that the incident turned Rep. Wilson into a hero among the Right; he even used the ordeal to raise campaign cash.
29. Joe Lieberman’s Health Care Bill filibuster threat: We knew Lieberman would piss off Progressives by opposing health care reform – it’s par for the course for him lately – which is why this is so low on the list. Still, he used to be a Democrat and nothing’s more fundamental to the Democratic Party platform than health care reform. What a schmuck!
28. Trash talk from the right about Bill Clinton getting journalists released from North Korea: I thought the Right had a perpetual woody for heroes? Apparently that’s only when the hero isn’t Bill Clinton. When Clinton went to North Korea and successfully negotiated the release of two female American journalists who were being held there, sentenced to 40 years of hard labor on espionage charges, Republicans wouldn’t give him credit, or worse.
27. Employers invent reasons to fire to avoid paying unemployment: Sure, employers have been trying to avoid paying unemployment for quite some time, but now ruthless new firing tactics are being employed (including making workplaces inhospitable in order to encourage people to quit) during this recession when companies want to lay people off but don’t want the unemployment costs or bad press that comes with doing layoffs.
26. Most audacious lie of the year: Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said, on the House floor, that it was actually Republicans that were responsible for passing the civil rights bills and it was Democrats who tried to stand in the way. Now that we have a black President, Republicans must think they live in Opposite World. But then again, Republicans have been living in Opposite World for at least as long as I’ve been paying attention.
25. Obama supports Specter’s party switch, re-election: Not only did Obama support Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party, but he promised to support Specter should he face a challenge from the Left during a future Primary. You gotta love it when a Democratic President tries to keep Democratic voters from trying to get a Democratic Senator who represents their values.
24. Employee Free Choice Act is forgotten: Did labor issues disappear off the face of the earth along with John Edwards’ political career? Remember the Employee Free Choice Act? Maybe Obama and Congress will be less pro-business in his second term – if the Democratic base doesn’t start staying home on Election Day.
23. Justice of the Peace blocks interracial marriage: A justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to grant a marriage license to an interracial couple because he personally feels interracial marriages are a bad idea. He even went as far as to speculate that it’s usually black men and white women. The only reason this one isn’t higher on the list is because the justice got a taste of… well… Justice and lost his job. For the record, he then went on to complain that everybody hates him.
22. Fox News switches gears after Inauguration: It used to be, according to Fox News, unpatriotic to criticize the President during a time of war or while he was over seas or during Christmastime or… well, that’s SOOO last administration because, in January of 2009, Fox News went from country-lovin’ flag wavers to anti-government, President haters faster than you can say “I solemnly swear.” Of course, we knew this would happen, but it still deserves to be on the list.
21. NOW opposes tax on boob jobs: Even this testicle possessing scribe knows that America’s fetish with fake breasts is far from a feminist fantasy world. Tell that to the National Organization for Women who are more concerned with a tax that affects only one sex than the idealistic and unrealistic image of womanhood that opportunistic plastic surgeons are peddling.
20. US Forest Service racially profiles Hispanics: The US Forest Service, in attempt to curb marijuana farms, employed a rather racist strategy. They told hikers in Colorado to be on the lookout for people who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and listen to Mexican music. The outrage was understated, and morning radio hosts all over the country found it way funnier than they should have.
19. John Stewart catches CNBC leading viewers off a cliff: How can a network that offers financial news and advice be as wrong as they were on so many things as they were as often as they were and still have the nerve to call themselves experts and remain on the air? It’s always sad when The Daily Show has to do a journalist’s work. It’s even sadder to see that CNBC and Jim Cramer are still doing what they do even after John Stewart embarrassed them in front of a national audience that was even larger than CNBC and Jim Cramer usually get.
18. Republicans experience glee over failed Olympic bid: Ever willing to utilize shallow and fake patriotism for their own ends, Republicans just couldn’t make themselves root for America when it came to Chicago hosting the Olympics. To them, this loss for America was a loss for Obama, and that was just more excitement than they could contain.
17. Health insurers consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition: We’ve long known that health insurers have sought out reasons to deny paying out benefits. This year their greed overpowered their sense of timing (and irony) when someone discovered, during the great national healthcare debate, that many insurance companies consider pregnancy an un-insurable pre-existing condition.
16. CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s [ahem] “populist” rant: CNBC’s Rick Santelli showed a shocking lack of objectivity in journalism when he launched into a so-called populist tirade in front of a room full of day traders. It was populist, I’m sure, to a bunch of stock traders, but amazingly tone deaf to the somewhat larger portion of America that lack the extra scratch to be playing the stock market. Boy, Santelli sure keyed right in on the plight of those poor, destitute day traders, I tell ya!
15. GOP embraces affirmative action, elects Steele as Chairman: In January of 2009, the GOP elected its first African American Party Chairman. What a coincidence!
14. Conservatives slam, skip Obama’s speech to schools: On September 8, 2009, students in parts of the South and most of Texas were hurried from their classrooms like they were experiencing a fire drill. Was it a terrorist attack? Bomb threat? Hurricane Evacuation? No, our President was giving a speech that would be broadcast to schools across the nation. Imagine the horrors! What could be more proof of partisan paranoia than accusing the President of brainwashing school children? They claimed to worry about Obama indoctrinating kids, but wasn’t it they who were indoctrinating their children by telling them they shouldn’t be listening to a Democratic President but were encouraged to worship a Republican one? How quickly they’ve forgotten where George W. Bush was, for far too long, while America was under attack on 9/11. The President gave a speech to schoolchildren with a message of responsibility, opportunity and the importance of education, but students who just happened to have rightwing ideologues for parents were forbidden to hear it. That’s an outrage.
13. The death of the universal healthcare dream: Despite the GOP lie that health care reform will be a “government takeover of the health care system”, anything that remotely resembled single payer or universal healthcare sailed off into the sunset sometime during the summer of 2009. Congress began with a compromise that left what we really needed off the radar, and the “Public Option”, something that has no hope of passing anyway, was a compromise on top of a compromise. The truth is that we’ll never know how much public support a government run health care system would have had because Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi gave up on the idea from the get-go, preventing it from even becoming part of the public debate. They ran on universal health care and when they had the opportunity to put it up for vote, they didn’t even give it the ole’ college try. With government healthcare out of the picture, no matter what type of “reform” healthcare gets, it will amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We’ll be left with a system that’s still primarily based on greed, as it has always been, controlled by corporations whose goal is to take in as much as possible in premiums and pay out as little in benefits as they can get away with. And, worse, isn’t it the antithesis of good customer service and controlling prices to tell companies that the entire country is now required to buy their products?
12. Republicans quick to blame Obama for Christmas terrorism attempt: Following a que that Dick Cheney had been setting up for a year, Republicans were quick to assign blame for the Christmas 2009 attempted terrorist attack to who else but Barack Hussein Obama. One wonders if they were disappointed the attempt wasn’t more successful.
11. Media take the side of Fox News in trumped up “War” between White House and Fox News: With Fox News making a mockery of journalism over the last 10 years, you’d think that the more responsible media outlets would be supportive of the White House when they called them on it. That turned out not to be the case.
10. Credit Card companies raise rates ahead of regulation: When faced with a tide of negative public opinion and an advancing credit card regulation bill, credit card companies raised rates on even their best customers to preemptively accommodate for the losses in revenue they’ll see when they’re forced to discontinue their corrupt yet profitable practices.
9. Missed opportunity on race: You know that frank conversation about race that everyone says they want but never have? We almost had it, and then blew it.
8. Republicans oppose Al Franken’s anti-rape law: Republicans actually voted in favor of rape. They really did. After a woman was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, she was prevented from bringing charges against KBR because her contract said that sexual assault allegations could only be taken to private arbitration (with arbiters paid by her employer) and she couldn’t bring her case to court. Senator Al Franken proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations Bill that would prevent the government from granting contracts to companies who forbade their employees from reporting sexual assault cases or taking them to court. Many Republicans, apparently caring more about their political donations from these contractors than justice for rape victims, voted against it. This is a clear case where political corruption and corporate money has trumped empathy toward real people.
7. Conservatives launch “Workers make too much money” campaign during recession: For the love of Pete! Have they no shame! Somebody needs to ask these people, if the American people aren’t making enough money, then who’s going to buy your products and services?
6. Wimpy credit card bill: You gotta hate it when you have public opinion on your side and still can’t come down hard on a bunch of crooked bastards who need the lash. There was a lot of press surrounding this before it happened because it was abundantly clear that credit card companies had been treating their customers more like prey. The American people had had it and were crying out for Congress to act. Even then, what we got was a watered-down bill that doesn’t protect people and still allows credit companies to raise rates as high as they want (on money that the banks borrowed from tax payers at 0.25%), change terms anytime they want, not to mention new deceptive practices they’re inventing even now, and doesn’t allow customers to sue.
5. Obama jinxes healthcare debate by refusing to call insurance companies corrupt, greedy: In the poorest piece of political marketing of the decade, Obama attempted to sell one of the biggest pieces of legislation the Democratic Party has ever known without stating the true reason why it’s needed: that insurance companies are greedy and crooked. As a result, everything that came after was much, much more difficult than it had it be. He apparently thought the insurance companies would get on board and work with him on this whole reform thing. They didn’t. Huh. Go figure. All he had to say was, “our healthcare system is the way it is because it’s based on greed. Insurance companies wish to take in as much in premiums as possible, and pay out as little in benefits as possible. Someone else’s profit shouldn’t stand between you and your health.” Instead, he said too little too late and the propagandists controlled the conversation.
4. “Death Panels” and other health care lies:.
I understand the GOP lies because they’re basically being paid to lie with political donations by the insurance industry, but the regular Joe’s in the tea party crowds? Why didn’t anyone (see #5) tell them they were protesting in favor of greedy corporations who would (and do) allow them to die in the name of profit? I don’t know what’s worse, the people who were suckered into parroting corporate propaganda or the ones who knew and did it anyway. The lies were creative. That so many allowed themselves to be suckered into repeating them is an outrage.
3. Wimpy stimulus package: The biggest lie out there during the lead up to the stimulus package was that giving tax breaks to big business creates jobs, yet 40% of the stimulus did exactly that – it was a giveaway to the corporate world who will, as they always do, spend it in self-serving ways, like investing in robots and automation technologies, that allow them to do more work with less people – in other words, the exact opposite of what that money was supposed to do. Consequently, the stimulus was, is and will be less effective than it should have been, and we needed another one.
2. The dixie chicking of Carrie Prejean: OK, so she had an unpopular opinion on gay marriage. So? What did you expect? It’s not as if beauty pageants are bastions of progressive values. Let me get this straight, you set up a beauty contestant by asking a question that had only one acceptable answer? Why is a beauty contest judge playing gotcha journalism? And wasn’t the judge who asked it gay? Could you be any less objective, Mr. Perez? And if you’re going to ask someone a question, you should expect that they may give you one of a variety of answers. Besides, who do you think you’re fooling? You weren’t judging her based on her political opinions anyway. So, half of America hates someone based on an answer she gave that wasn’t half as important as how she looked while she was giving it. Were any of the other contestants asked loaded questions? “Miss… could you please tell us… how do you feel about taxing fake breasts?”
1. Trawling for assassins: Number one, and deservedly so, is the rightwing behavior that one pundit recently referred to as “trawling for assassins”. I’m referring to the not so subtle incitement of violence by leaders in the GOP and conservative news media personalities as well as insinuations of violence by members of the Republican base. At times many things that have been said could easily be interpreted, without much of a reach at all, as thinly veiled calls for the assassination of our President or members of Congress. The threat level against Barack Obama has been as historic as his Presidency ever since his campaign first began. He was given a Secret Service detail earlier than any other candidate in history and, since his election, has faced an unprecedented number of threats as reported by the Secret Service. Yet, a surprising amount of loonies on the rightwing fringe have thought it funny to insinuate about violence toward this President. Ever opportunists in using international terrorism for political gain, Republicans are openly tinkering with a domestic terrorism threat that is very real. They’re setting themselves up for a whole lot of trouble and heartache should any of their threats come to fruition. As unstable as some members of the Republican base seem to be, it’s not far fetched at all to think one might act on these not too subtle messages. Clearly, that makes this the greatest outrage we’ve seen in quite some time.
