ExxonMobil comes alive!
This Supreme Court decision today opening the door for unlimited campaign contributions by corporations (as protected freedom of political speech) is about to damage our political system possibly beyond the people's ability to repair. The ruling will likely stand for some extended period of time (decades?) as the definitive ass-rape of the American people by the corporate state.The bizarro-concept of corporate personhood is as terrifying in its implications as it is inexplicable in its logic, with its roots in the legal code back not to the United States Constitution, but only to a court ruling in 1886 during the height of the Gilded Age, one that has been overruled twice before, but that has been strangely adopted now by the self-described strict originalists of the bench like Antonin Scalia, and its Chief Justice, John Roberts.
I fear that it's now all over but for the shouting. Campaign finance reform is the #1 issue in American politics because it gets to the gut of each of the other issues. With this decision, you and I have been effectively dismissed from our democracy by five "(indeed)-activist" judges and a group of Frankenstein corporations that have the size and reach of many nation-states-- They the People-- and possessing, as Justice John Paul Stevens described today, "no consciences, no beliefs, no thoughts, no desires."
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On the upside, it will be fun to watch the Tea-Bag movement rush to oppose the ruling, as they purport to stand on the side of Main Street against the might of Wall Street. We are going to see this, right?
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From the structural annihilation of the state to the theater of the living arts, a potentially-fascinating new production has reached the Broadway stage. Muhammad Ali has been conjoined in fiction with another real-life figure from history, Stepin Fetchit, an African-American entertainment personality who has fallen deeply out of step with the modern standards of presenting the Black Experience since his hey day in the public eye of the 1920s. Portrayed by Ben Vereen in this new show, "Fetch Clay, Make Man," Fetchit was the stage name of Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, and as the widely-advertised "Laziest Man in the World," the character has come to represent some of the most degrading stereotypes of African-Americans that exist in the culture.
I'm fascinated by Fetchit's career, and I'm a passionate defender of Perry's efforts in the context of his time, and of the Fetchit creation's important place in the evolution of cultural standards. (In fact, Perry actually became close friends with the militant activist Ali during the 1960s.) A terrific parallel would be the "Amos & Andy" characters that followed in the wake of Fetchit on radio and television. Modern audiences cringe at the offensiveness, even grotesquerie, of some of these caricatures, but we take a clumsy step backward if we fail to offer pardon for the difficult choices an individual such as Perry was forced to make during his career and refuse to recognize the social contribution Perry made by "opening the doors" he did.
These characters and their presentations need to be explored in unvarnished detail, and by large swaths of the general public, not hidden away to protect fragile sensibilities. There's a rumor that Bill Cosby is the person who made the well-intentioned and successful effort during the 1990s to purchase the rights to the original Amos & Andy television episodes so that they could be kept from the airwaves. (As well-intentioned as is possible, anyway, for a multi-millionaire who's buying up a cultural artifact for the purpose of destroying it.) This is a cultural loss that should be lamented the same way that we lament the looting of historical objects during war. To paraphrase an impassioned and determined Indiana Jones, "They should be in a museum!"
posted by CM @ 8:29 PM
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