After more than six months of posting four a week missives about a variety of people, places and issues, I will occasionally repeat a few of the Derelict Gunslinger’s greatest hits—at least in terms of google. The number of blog visitors has increased significantly. However, most viewers don’t have the time, nor inclination, to search through my archives.

This post first appeared February 19, 2010  

In 1986, notorious international drug smuggler/turned informant Barry Seal was assassinated in Baton Rouge by a Colombian hit team outside a Salvation Army halfway house. The Drug Enforcement Administration described Seal as the most important informant in the agency’s history. Yet, he had been stripped of armed bodyguards by an irate Louisiana federal judge, who was outraged that the smuggler avoided prison in a south Florida case because of his value as a witness against Colombia’s Medellin cocaine cartel. Seal had also plea bargained his way out of a prison sentence in an unrelated Baton Rouge case, prompting a revenge-tainted sentence by the angry judge—in effect, a death sentence. 

As part of Seal’s  probation, he was ordered to spend nights at the halfway house. Despite testimony by lawmen and prosecutors that Barry’s life was in danger, the judge put him on a predictable schedule. And three weeks later, Barry was dead.  

I was well-acquainted with the flamboyant smuggler—to close, according to many law enforcement officials. He contacted me in 1984, claiming to be caught in the midst of a turf battle between drug agents in Baton Rouge and and a DEA task force in Miami. Although skeptical at first, I soon established that he was, in fact, an informant whose undercover exploits in Central America were on the verge of disrupting the world’s biggest cocaine operation—the main source of 90% of the cocaine shipped into the United States.

While traveling with Seal to Miami and Mena, Arkansas, I secretly videotaped his meetings with drug agents. I also put together a paper trail that re-enforced his bona fides. Barry’s motives for working with the DEA were not altruistic. He had been caught smuggling drugs into south Florida and faced the prospect of a long prison term. So he cut a deal.

But rather than admit to me that he was a common drug smuggler, Seal tried to foist himself off to me as a spy working undercover for the CIA. However, I soon discovered that the extent of his spy activity was a single mission in which he secretly snapped pictures of cocaine being loaded onto his C-123 in Nicaragua during a DEA sting operation. The CIA’s only involving was the installationof a camera on the plane to gather evidence that Nicaragua had become a trans-shipment point for cocaine processed in Colombia.

Seal’s photographs were later be used by President Reagan in a nationally broadcast speech seeking funds for Nicaragun Contra rebels. By then, Barry was buried in Green Oaks Cemetery in Baton Rouge. But metaphorically, he was not dead. Instead, he became the star of the Mena myth—a conspiracy tale of a CIA guns-for-drugs plot centered at the Mena airport. I write about the origins of Seal fable in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.

The Mena Intermountain Regional Airport in the west Arkansas foothills of the Ouachita Mountains seems an unlikely locale for spy stories and conspiracy tales. Before the arrival of Barry Seal, Mena was best known for its proximity to the Jot ‘em Down Store in nearby Pine Ridge. The rural relic was made famous by Lum and Abner, popular 1940’s radio characters. The Jot ‘em Down Store was a fictional backdrop for dispensing homespun mountain observations about Washington politics and national affairs. It’s too bad that Lum and Abner were not around when Mena gained mythical notoriety. The zany stories would have provided them months of material for comical commentary. 

The yarn began in June, 1984, when a camouflage-painted C-123K transport plane piloted by Barry Seal landed at the airport with a full cargo of rumors and conjecture. Dubbed “The Fat Lady” in its Vietnam days, the retired military aircraft sat on a tarmac outside the hangar of an airport fabrication shop for six months. Before being sold, it left the ground twice—each time to circle the airport. But the simple presence of the mysterious plane triggered years of speculation that has never gone away. The dimwitted stories continue even today. What made the Mena fable so astonishing was the willingness of supposedly intelligent people to believe the myth. 

I feel partly responsible for giving early momentum to conspiracy theories. A few months after my introduction to Barry, I reported a one-hour investigative documentary giving details of his Nicaraguan undercover mission. Titled, Uncle Sam Wants You, the report criticized lawmen and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baton Rouge for jeopardizing a major south Florida investigation. In the wake of my exposé, I was accused of “taking up the banner of a drug smuggler.”

Actually, the main thrust of the documentary was not Seal’s innocence or guilt, but rather the ongoing turf battle between jurisdictions in Louisiana and Florida. Nonetheless, I have regrets about the documentary because I allowed Barry to strongly hint that he was spy. And for the benefit of cameras, he maximized his minor CIA role and minimized his activities as a drug smuggler. My skewed judgment in editing interviews was geared toward dramatic narrative. I should have stated explicitly that he was simply a spy wannabe. 

The previous paragraphs are the basic building blocks on which the Mena myth was built. A mysterious military transport plane  lands in Mena, Arkansas and remains there for several months. The pilot alludes to being a CIA operative on a television show, as well as in conversations with nearly everyone he comes in contact with. He is mowed down in a contract killing and the President of the United States soon after displays CIA photographs of the Nicaraguan sting operation. Lo and behold, Barry Seal’s C-123 is later shot down in Nicaragua during an honest-to-goodness CIA operation to assist Contra rebels.

Enter onto the scene the Christic Institute.  In the 1980’s, the  left-wing organization was obsessed with CIA operations in Central America. In fact, Christic propagated dozens of drugs-for-guns stories and other yarns about U.S. intelligence abuses. Some had a ring of truth. Most were vastly  exaggerated or downright wrong.

The Christic Institute was ultimately discredited in lawsuits and forced to declare bankruptcy. Even so, its version of the Barry Seal saga convinced an array of left-wing journalists to run the story. At the same time, the Iran-Contra scandal was unfolding  during the  Reagan  Admininistration. As a result of Seal’s undercover DEA work and one-time CIA activity, he was tied to the scandal—more by speculation than any hard facts.

In the beginning, Seal was linkedto President’s Reagan and George Herbert Bush. Following the election of Bill Clinton, right-wingers took possession of the saga. Without a shred of evidence, Clinton was accused of protecting Seal’s Mena drug operation as a favor for cocaine-snorting “Friends of Bill.” And so it went. No rumor was too ridiculous to be discounted. And it hasn’t stopped. I still receive calls from intrepid reporters, who have never bothered to review information contradicting the myth—including my book.

More than any reporter, I know the truth about Seal and his Mena activities. We remained in contact until a few days before his murder. Our last encounter occured when he came to my office to meet a Miami private investigator. I setr up the meeting for Wayne Black, a longtime friend.  The detective was hired by an attorney representing drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. He wanted Seal to identify Escobar photographs taken during the Nicaraguan sting operation. DEA agents in Miami gave Barry the green light to meet with Black. Nevertheless, U.S. prosecutors in Louisiana questioned me to determine if there was a connection between the meeting and Seal’s murder less than two weeks later. There wasn’t.

By then, the assassins had been arrested. They were subsequently  convicted and remain in prison. For me, there was disturbing trial testimony that my 1984 documentary had ended up in the hands of Pablo Escobar. He only knew Seal by an alias he used in dealing with the cartel. After watching my program, Escobar reportedly put out the contract on the Barry’s life.

I don’t know if I could have dissauded Seal to conceal his identity, even if I tried. He was a self-promoter from the get-go and wanted his face shown. He got the publicity he wanted—then and and ever since. I have a hunch that if I walk close enough to Barry’s Baton Rouge gravesite, the ground will quake from his laughter at the conspiracy legacy he left behind. I know I laugh loudly when reading crazy stories about his adventures.

In recent months, I’m reminded of Seal when reading and hearing the conspiracy tales propagated by “birthers” and other wing-nuts. At least I can feel secure that these people are keeping an eye out for black helicopters, flying saucers and and all the phantom enemies who are coming to take us away.

Ha, Ha! Ho, Ho! Hee, Hee!

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

There’s many people in the world just like our Henny-Penny,

They panic when they listen to the news,

They think the sky is falling and we’re all about to die,

I’d say they have the Henny-Penny-Blues.

The Lightnin’ Hopkins song should be adopted as the anthem of the Tea Party. “The sky is falling” iseems to be the mantra of the loudest folks at tea party demonstrations and other events. It is no wonder. Doomsday prophecies dominate the nation’s airwaves and cable news channels. And although the heaviest dose of negativism and uncivility penetrates the right ear, the left ear drum also takes a beating. Whine, bitch, complain. There seems to be no escape.

This certainly is not the best of times. Nor is it the worst of times. My IRA is proof. Unfortunately, though, our society lives on instant gratification. Patience? What the hell is that? President Obama promises a slow recovery of the economy. But he should have dealt with that problem yesterday. Worse, the President delivered on his campaign promises. Health care legislation and finance reform were passed by a Democrats in Congress, despite opposition from a party that votes no on bathroom breaks.

I recognize the contradiction in my vent. Whine, bitch, complain. But I duck when passing mirrors to avoid seeing myself as others might see me. Besides, I’m a journalist. That gives me a free pass to point fingers at other people, create conflict and act like I have good sense. These are God given journalistic privileges. If you don’t believe me, just watch television. Listen to the radio. Or—I know this is radical in the Internet age—read newspapers.

So where am I going with this rant? I’m not exactly sure where my fingers will take me. More than likely, it’s in the direction of politics, pollsters and journalists. One of the qualities I admire in Obama is his apparent tendency to ignore polls. At least, in the short-term. His knee seems to remain relatively still in the face of opposition to issues such as health reform, immigration, drilling moratoriums, etc. Unlike his predecessor who put on a flight suit to declare our victory in Iraq (some victory) Obama didn’t don a scuba outfit and dive into the Gulf of Mexico to plug the BP oil leak. Maybe he expected Louisiana Governor Smarty Pants to put his finger in the well head.  

I have no doubt that Obama reads the polls. Actually, he doesn’t need to. News reporters and pundits read them obsessively and pass along the results when questioning the President. Even if he doesn’t care that people believe he is the worst President since the one yesterday. Or the one tomorrow. Even though journalists comprising the Washington elite don’t cover a hurricanes, they still bend with the breeze—most of which is generated polls.

In a weird sort of way, Fox “News” is refreshing. Bet the readers of the blog never believed I would make such a statement. But like patients in mental asylums, Fox folks see the world differently than the norm. In my book, that is okay. It just gives me additional things to bitch about in the blog. Thirty seconds watching Glenn Beck provides enough material to last for days.

I relate to oddballs because my investigative reporting career was built on contrarianism. At times when all my colleagues were jumping on the bandwagon of conventional wisdom, I hung around to ask one more question about an issue and/or individual. One more question led to two, then three and so on. The results were often surprising. As evidence, check the journalism awards on the walls of my home office. But be sure to knock. Sometimes my hair is mussed.

In some respects, the only difference between the Fox folks and me is that I based my exposés on facts rather than politics. Sadly, facts are not much in vogue today. Especially on cable news networks. All three—I’m being generous in calling MSNBC a news network—are filled programming with talking heads. Fox provides forum for every known Republican politician. MSNBC’s format of all opinion, all the time caters to Democrats. CNN tries to play the middle ground by encouraging guests from the left and right to engae in fistfights. Instead, the conflicts are pissing matches. I fully expect CNN to raise the stakes by recruiting Jerry Springer. He could take the place of John King. 

By the way (notice that I didn’t use the shortcut btw to make me seem like I was a mod kind of guy), what’s with John King—no relation to the network’s mummy in residence, Larry King. John is CNN’s replacement for nutty Lou Dobbs. Although King the younger claims Massachussets as his birthplace, my suspicion is he was born in a taxicab on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House while his mother played video games. He is consumed with Presidential politics and digital devices that are designed to totally confuse viewers. I Tivo the show and use it as a cure for insomnia.

But enough of this rambling discourse. I warned you that I didn’t know where my fingers were going to take me. My dilemma now is coming up with a clever close to the post, something that relates to the title. I never attended journalsim school but I think there is supposed to be a bit of relevance between the opening and the finale.

How about this? I’ve rattled on today without any forethought given to what the hell I was going to say.

BTW (they years just peeled away), tomorrow is re-run day as I try to escape the dog days of summer by heading out of town.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

The release of more than 90,000 classified documents by Wikileak this week has opponents of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan peeing in their drawers. Journalists are also staining their britches. Nothing causes a reporter to get more excited than acquiring a document marked “Secret.”  Having spent three decades of my life in pursuit of secrets, I’m quite familiar with the loose bladder syndrome.

As an investigative reporter, most of the secrets I revealed were non-military—notable exceptions being my disclosures about the U.S. invasion of Panama to capture dictator Manuel Noriega, and my futile effort to uncover evidence to save the jobs of colleagues who produced a CNN segment accusing the American military of using a nerve chemical to kill enemy forces in Vietnam.

As an aside, what I found out in the aftermath of the nerve gas controversy makes interesting reading in my non-best selling memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger. (I’m getting damn good at sneaking in book plugs).

Anyway, uncovering secrets and secret documents is often a waste of time. But the sheer bulk of the Wikileak material suggests there is important information included that will shed new light on the Afghanistan war. Even so, the initial response by the Obama Administration and the Defense Department indicates much of the material is old news—information that has already been reported, or falls into the category of undocumented raw intelligence.

Regardless, the threshhold for causing controversy is low nowadays. Viral e-mail and video currently flooding the Internet is proof that proof is not required to spread to false information. Still, my guess is a thorough analysis of 90,000 classified documents will uncover a few revelations to embarrass people in both the current and past administrations.

After reading about the Wikipedia material, I decided to skim several thousand de-classified CIA documents that I acquired in my follow-up of CNN’s Vietnam nerve gas fiasco—stories stemming from a military operation called “Tailwind.”

http://www.aim.org/publications/special_reports/NewsStand06-07.html

While scanning the dated CIA material, I paused to read excerpts from a couple of documents that seemed eerily contemporary. They were cables distributed to top echelon military and diplomatic officials in April, 1968, shortly after President Lyndon Johnson announced his decision not to seek reelection.   

THE PRESIDENT SAID HE WAS SINCERE WHEN HE DECLARED IT WOULD PROBABLY BE POSSIBLE FOR THE ALLIES TO REMOVE SOME OF THEIR TROOPS BY THE END OF 1968. HE THOUGHT AT LEAST ”SEVERAL BATTALLIONS” SHOULD BE PHASED OUT AT THAT TIME AS A TOKEN INDICATION OF GVN (government of Vietnam) DETERMINATION TO PLAY A LARGER ROLE IN ITS OWN DEFENSE. 

HE (the South Vietnamese President) IS TAKING SOLACE IN THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT THAT THE U.S. HAS NEVER LOST A WAR AND IS NOT ABOUT TO LOSE THIS ONE.

These excerpts relate to an attempt by U.S. officials to assure the leadership of South Vietnam that the U.S. commitment to the war remained solid. In short, classifying a document as “Secret” or higher is not a testimonial to accuracy. The content is frequently propaganda. Indeed, secrets are in the eyes of the author. Consequently, much information under the label of confidentiality is relatively mundane. And plodding through stacks of classified material often raises the question, ”What is the big secret?”

Now for my secret. While serving in the Air Force many years ago in Okinawa, I was dispatched to mainland Japan as part of a two man team assigned to measure radar bomb scoring. Basically, we plotted the likely location of phantom bombs aimed at designated targets. Based on an array of factors—altitude, heading, wind drift, the point of “bombs away,” etc.—the score was calculated on a chart laminated to a flat 12-by-12 wood board. The chart was classified “Secret” because it allegedly mirrored the bombing approach to potential targets in the Soviet Union.

After 90 days on temporary duty in southern Japan, a plane was sent to return me to Okinawa’s Kadena Air Force Base. The aircraft was a B-25, which even then had been retired from strategic and/or combat use by the military (damn, I’m old). Unfortunately, the huge scoring chart was too big to fit into the bomb bay of plane. Following  after a few minutes of deep thought, everybody agreed that we throw the damn thing in the trash. Although I tried, I could not destroy the “secret” information on the chart. Thus with the acquiesence of the pilot, co-pilot and navigator—all of whom helped me haul it away—American secrets were stacked next to an air base trash pile. Given the fact that the U.S. never went to war with the Russians, I now feel comfortable revealing my secret.

I know the long ago tale is boring. I couldn’t even keep barroom pals interested in my drinking days. But in the future I promise to write about more intriguing secrets—like Elvis Presley’s income tax returns.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I don’t mean to abuse the 12-Step analogy, but CNN needs some sort of treatment for its obsessive coverage of “Breaking News.” The network’s reporting of the Shirley Sharrod scandal is a classic example of overkill. By the time the weekend rolled around, CNN viewers began losing interest in Sherrod. This is unfortunate because there are facets of the story that extend beyond her heroic personal story.

Although the Sharrod debacle is largely about race and racism, the humiliation heaped on the USDA official is also about journalism. Before I take cheap shots at Fox “News,” let me point out the shortcomings of my former place of employment. CNN exploited Sherrod for more sinister reasons than taking up the banner of a wronged person. And I’m referring to something more than its hope for increasing ratings. For the people who underwrote my IRA, it was an opportunity to dump on Fox by pointing the finger of blame to the people who gave the story momentum.

The real blame, of course, falls on the shoulders of Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing rumor-monger whose fantasies are published on his Internet news sites and repeated by the lunatic fringe ad nauseam. He distributed out-of-context remarks made by in a speech to an NAACP gathering in Sherrod’s native Georgia. The African American agriculture official— daughter of a farmer murdered by white men, who were never prosecuted—told the story of how years before a poor, elderly white couple on the verge of losing their farm helped her deal with underlying racial prejudice she harbored since childhood. The Breitbart video only showed the part of her speech about Sharrod’s early attitudes toward whites.

Libel litigation is a pet peeve of mine—mainly because I had to defend myself in eight cases that I can recall. The only one settled in favor of the plaintiff was the most trivial. The Boston TV station I worked for was in the process of being sold and lawyers recommended a few thousand dollars be paid to dispose of the case. But no matter how frivolous, defending against libel is a time-consuming distraction. In Breitbart’s instance, I hope Sharrod carves a big chunk out of his derriere. Thes distribution of the video clip was clearly done maliciously without regard for truth. And he will have a hard time defending the story as being opinion, which has broader protections under libel and defamation laws.

That brings me to the subject of stupid tricks by anchors. Unfortunately, technology has not been developed to stop the lips of news anchors from flapping when they deviate from the teleprompter. In the course of CNN’s saturation coverage of Sharrod, the two most enthusiastic supporters of the Agriculture Department bureaucrat—Kyra Phillips and John Roberts—agreed that it might be time for the government to consider a crackdown on irresponsible bloggers who spread hatred.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/alana-goodman/2010/07/23/cnn-host-calls-crackdown-bloggers-wake-sherrod-incident-something-s-g 

I’m reasonably certain that Phillips and Roberts have both heard of the First Amendment. It even protects people I don’t agree with. And like everyone else, I receive an abundance of viral e-mails filled with misinformation and/or varying levels of hate. It’s sad commentary on a segment of our society, although it is sometimes entertaining to be exposed to the ignorance of people responsible for spreading Internet rumors and speculation. But what the hell? Everybody is entitled to believe what they want to believe. And I know from talking to right-wing family members and friends that my blog posts and opinions are perceived as left-wing ranting. But writing about my version of the world is an American privilege I enjoy exercising.

It is the same privilege exercised by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and other escapees from the nation’s asylums. However, the line is crossed when malicious viral video is presented as legitimate news. The Breitbart segment aired on Fox “News” in the context of legitimacy (if that is even possible on the Republican Propaganda Network). Instead, the story was a personal attack on an obscure federal official in the Obama Administration.

I doubt that Fox will lose viewers because of the gaffe. Most people watching the network don’t really care about facts. The truth only confuses them. Nonetheless, the Sherrod story further revealed the close relationship between Fox and Breitbart—a marriage that had already exposed many times before.

Since Shirley Sharrod’s office is located in close proximity to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, it was a chance to bring her into the studios and engage in crusading journalism by defending an injustice—especially her idiotic treatment by Department of Agriculture officials who asked for her resignation based on a Fox “News” story. It doesn’t get any more stupid than believing Fox. 

Anyway, I admired CNN for taking up a crusade for justice. At least until I realized that instead of restoring the kind of reporting missing from contemporary television, the network was simply using Sherrod as a way to criticize the competition.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

I’m a half-full glass kind of guy. And when bad things happen to good people (or even bad people, for that matter), I look for the positives. In the case of fired Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod much has been gained this week.

Foremost is exposing low-life Andrew Breitbart’s as right-wing scum. Prior to releasing an out-of-context video segment of a speech Sherrod made to an NAACP gathering in Georgia, Breitbart’s Internet site was the source of much of the racist propaganda on Fox “News.” Most notorious was heavily edited undercover video of a Breitbart operative posing as a pimp while seeking financial help from ACORN to open new whorehouse. Fox repeatedly ran the video and it flooded the Internet. Although, the black activist political organization claimed the video failed to reflect what really happened, Breitbart refused to release the raw tape. ACORN has since disbanded, in large part because of the publicity given the right-wing manufactured scandal.

The simpleton Breitbart “investigative reporter” playing the pimp role subsequently stumbled over his idiocy when he tried to entrap Louisiana U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu by tampering with telephone lines in her New Orleans office. Accompanied by two equally moronic “undercover agents” dressed as telephone repairmen, the trio was arrested and ultimately cut a deal with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges.

Brietbart has also been involved in other unsavory schemes designed to embarrass the Obama Administration, Democrats and anyone else on his enemies list. What makes him dangerous is the fact that Fox “News” will spread any rumor he passes along. Breitbart receives frequent French kisses from Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. They in turn spread the germs to fans. The good news is that the Sherrod incident might cause a few people to use mouthwash after being exposed to the Republican Propaganda Network.

Actually, there was a minor miracle on Fox. Glenn Beck came to the defense of Sherrod. It is the first time to my knowledge that he has ever told the truth about anything dealing with the Obama Administration.

Before reporting other positives from the Sherrod incident, I need to explain what happened for the benefit of readers who may have been trapped in remote parts of the world during the the past 72 hours, or failed to pass within 100 yards of a television set carrying CNN. The network went wall-to-wall on coverage, trapping Sherrod in its Atlanta studios and refusing to allow her to leave until Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack dropped to his knees, begged forgiveness and offered her a big promotion to compensate for his stupid decision seeking the Georgia official’s resignation before viewing the full video of Sherrod’s inspiring speech about her transformation from judging farmers by the color of their skin. She told the audience that a white farm couple in south Georgia helped her realize that poverty was color blind. The elderly couple were the first to come to Sherrod’s defense, telling reporters that the Agriculture Department official went far beyond the call of duty to help them save their farm. The Breitbart video only showed a few seconds of Sherrod’s speech in which she gave background of her epiphany about race.

Another possible bright spot in the debacle is the embarrassment it caused the Obama Administration in what is tantamount to an admission that officials actually watched Fox “News” and give a shit about its distortions. Maybe they accidentally switched to Fox to get away from Rick Sanchez. If that is the case, Fox could pick-up Administration viewers in August when Sanchez temporarily replaces Campbell Brown in the 8:00 p.m. slot. That is like replacing a healthy diet with junk food. Brown was one of CNN’s better anchors and reporters. On the other hand, Sanchez only acts like he knows what he is talking about. He was in top form yesterday, treating the Sherrod story like it was a state funeral. Overreaction to overreaction is the best way to describe his reporting.

Despite going overboard yesterday in its Sherrod coverage, I was happy to see CNN mount a strong defense of the woman. Objectivity was cast aside, which is sometimes appropriate in journalism—though not to the extent of Sanchez’s often uninformed reporting. Fortunately, the Sherrod issue was so clearcut that CNN avoided an outbreak of shrinking testicles—a virus that has regularly swept the network in the past when dealing with controversy. Believe me, I know. Read all about it in my book. Can’t resist the chance for a quick plug.

Back to the half-full glass. The biggest positive to emerge in recent days is Shirley Sherrod. The daughter of a farmer murdered by white men never brought to justice, she has become a hero of millions of people this week. Instead of going quietly after being publicly humiliated by her bosses and the NAACP, she defended herself with the kind of dignity that exposed Andrew Breitbart, Fox “News” and right-wing hate-mongers as people devoid of moral consciences.

If Sherrod can resist exploiting the scandal and/or being exploited, not only will her glass be half-full, it will overflow.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Did you hear the one about the guy who feeds 5000 people with two fish and five loaves of bread? Read all about it in Mark 6: 30-44. I know this opening line makes me sound like a religious zealot. So I will analogize by referring to a more secular character—the guy planning to provide health coverage to 32-million uninsured Americans without raising taxes on middle-class folks. Are Jesus and Obama socialists, liberals, progressives, miracle workers, or all of the above? Whatever the label, I would rather be like them than the Party of No Conscience and Compassion.

Before you criticizze, be assured that I’m certainly not comparing myself with Jesus or anyone of note. I leave those comparisons to Sarah Palin and her self-proclaimed links to William Shakespeare, who she cited as a justification for making up words like “refudiate.” My references to Jesus and Obama is a ?clever? way of arriving at the central point of this missive. I try to answer the question of how an under-educated redneck like me drifted from right to left. It has been a strange transformation and I sometimes wonder why my politics are so different from family and friends. 

In the beginning (don’t you love my use of phrases from the bible), my daddy was a “yellow dog Democrat.” The characterization stems from an old southern expression, “I’d vote for a yellow dog before I’d vote for a Republican.” However, voting for Democrats in daddy’s day was a far cry from being a “liberal.”

In Alabama where I grew up and in my family, racism was rampant. Black people were expected to stay in their place at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. My family was only a few rungs above, separated from the bottom by a class called “poor white trash.” Still, the “N” word was part of my vocabulary, as well as that of every kid in the low income projects and neighborhoods where I lived.

As I write in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger and have mentioned in a previous blog post, my first memory of flinching at the word followed a brief encounter with Jackie Robinson.

I was thirteen years old and working as “roof boy” for the minor league Mobile Bears, retrieving foul balls that landed on top of the grandstand. A screen at the rear of the roof prevented them from going into the parking lot. Before and after games, I ran errands for players. I was paid fifty cents a night, plus tips, to watch baseball games and hang around professional athletes. It was great.

On trips north from Florida spring training in those days, major league teams played exhibition games in the cities of minor league farm clubs. The Bears were affiliated with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. And when the team bus arrived at Mobile’s Hartwell Field in 1949, I helped the Major League’s first black player carry his equipment bag to the clubhouse. When I excitedly told daddy, he was not impressed.

“Hey, Marie,” he called to mother. “Come and listen to Johnny brag about carrying a nigger’s suitcase.”  It was supposed to be a joke―a symptom of culturally ingrained Southern prejudices.

In dad’s defense, when I took up the civil rights banner years later, he bragged to friends about my support of the cause.

So what caused a radical change my in racial, societal and political attitudes? Actually, there was no sudden epiphany or single event that formed my views. Indeed, it was a gradual evolution that probably began in the military. For reasons I don’t recall, I became close friends while station in Okinawa with a young black airman from Washington D.C. In 1954, Jesse James White and I became the first mixed race roommates in our barracks. Although the military had been fully integrated for six years, we were considered oddballs—especially me, an 18 year old kid with southern redneck roots. J.J. and I didn’t hang around much outside the base, but we respected one another as equals and that was an important lesson for me.

I guess the next major step toward my enlightment occured in the early 1960’s during my tenure as a radio newsman in California at stations in the Sacramento Valley. Luckily, I have another opportunity to plug my book with an excerpt. 

I was influenced in large part by seeing societal ills first hand, such as migrant worker abuses and poverty. Nearby ghetto-like labor camps were the underbelly of agriculture. Already paid low wages, migrants were assessed outrageous rents for shacks with no running water or electricity.

I also saw first hand the gloom of farm workers in my daily stops at the Marysville Police Department. Because of the volume of arrests on skid row, a makeshift courtroom was set up inside the jail to avoid stinking up the courthouse. A judge conducted daily proceedings. He imposed sentences that were practical and compassionate. If a drunk showed symptoms of DT’s, he was sent to the county penal farm to get medical attention. If still able to navigate, he was usually cut loose after paying a small fine, which was determined by the amount of money in his pockets. Most were white male Americans, rather than blacks or Hispanics. Illegal immigration had not yet become a big issue in the country.

Simply seeing the plight of these people instilled in me a degree of compassion. I knew that they were victims of necessity and a lack of opportunity.

After leaving California in the mid-sixties to become News Director 0f a Baton Rouge radio station, my politics were already moving to the left of center. In Louisiana, I moved farther left during the civil rights era, especially after becoming a radio talk show host. For three years, race and poverty were regular topics on the show. My guests included civil rights leaders like John Lewis, then head of Voter Education Project and desciple of Martin Luther King. At the other extreme were the hate-mongers like David Duke and the late Judge Leander Perez. In addition to the talk show, I was covering civil rights, poverty and other societal ills on the street and becoming convinced of the need for radical changes in the country.

Adding an exclamation point to my political transformation was an “opportunity” to spend a year in a mostly black workplace—though it was not by choice. In 1971, my broadcast career almost ended as a result of booze. After landing on skid row in New Orleans, I was jobless and seemingly unemployable. My career was salvaged by a black programmed radio station in Baton Rouge that hired me to start its first news department.

Being a shameless self-promoter, I will add another excerpt to describe experiences that had a significant impact in shaping my politics.

It didn’t take me long at WXOK to realize that my “enlightened” understanding of discrimination was superficial at best. I had never been the victim of blatant bigotry. Nor had I experienced the humiliation of being turned away from a segregated school, public facility, or denied a job because of my skin color. I came close―an experience that was more comical than sinister.

In the course of building a news department, I had an ongoing dialogue with a black-owned syndicated news service that provided the station with national material for our newscasts. In turn, we fed Louisiana stories to the network. Since Louisiana was then a civil rights hotspot, there were plenty of stories to pass along. Indeed, my feeds became so frequent that the New York based company made a job overture.

“You realize I’m white,” I asked the recruiter. There was a long pause. I heard him take a deep breath. “Yes, of course,” he said unconvincingly. “We’ll be getting back to you real soon.” I’m still waiting.

Sadly, many young blacks faced the same wait from white-owned companies. Also disheartening was the ignorance and bigotry of friends. My barber once asked if the body odor of co-workers bothered me. Such misconceptions were deep-rooted in Baton Rouge and most parts of the South. Working at WXOK taught me lessons that I could only learn in predominately African-American surroundings.

It also helped me later on to empathize with a black high school girl I interviewed while producing a documentary on poverty in Baton Rouge. Breaking into tears, she told of missing the senior prom at her integrated school because her mother couldn’t afford a nice dress. In the same program, a teen-aged boy said his most memorable meals were leftovers momma brought home from her job as a maid at an LSU sorority house.

More tragic were the struggles of poor and elderly blacks in getting medical care. “I don’t know how I gonna breathe if the welfare don’t get me my medicine,” an asthmatic woman cried in the documentary. Six hours after the interview, she died of heart failure while waiting for a welfare worker to deliver the prescription. 

But despite my self-proclaimed empathy for those deprived of the American dream, I was a phony. My outsized ego had been severely damaged by the tumble from News Director, ace reporter and talk show host at Baton Rouge’s leading radio station to my job as WXOK’s token white boy. And instead of feeling gratitude for a career reprieve, I began fabricating an excuse for my presence at the station. I would tell former colleagues that the job was an assertion of my commitment to civil rights―foisting myself off as a self-sacrificing Peace Corps journalist.

The opportunity to promulgate the fiction presented itself at an NAACP news conference. For the first time since my failed attempt to succeed as a skid row bum I was about to come face-to-face with reporters that I had avoided since my day of reckoning. The prospect of seeing them at a Baton Rouge hotel was so unnerving that I sat in the parking lot for several minutes trying to summon the courage to go inside. Entering the lobby, I immediately ran into Louisiana’s Associated Press bureau chief, Charles Layton. He greeted me with a smile and a handshake.

“Where have you been, John?” he asked. “I haven’t seen you for awhile.” My answer was so stunning I thought it was the voice of another person.

“WJBO fired me for being a drunk,” I blurted out. “I’m working at WXOK, trying to get things back together.” Had I actually made this humbling admission to someone? I could not believe my own words. Charlie took the sting out of my confession.

“That’s great. I knew you were having problems. I hope things work out.” It was no big deal to him. Like most Baton Rouge reporters, he knew about my drinking. Acknowledging my alcoholism outside of AA meetings was an important step in maintaining sobriety. 

It was significant in seeing my deep-rooted hypocrisy and seeing myself as others saw me. For anyone who has read this far, my apologies for the length of the post. At least you will know the experiences that are the basis of my political views and opinions.

I wish I could say my rants fall within the realm of WWJD. But I’m certain that is not the case. By the same token, observing the actions of the Party of No Conscience and Compassion—aka Republicans and tea partiers—I have a strong sense they represent what Jesus would not do.   

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

There is no getting around the fact that Bill O’Reilly must be one smart guy. Just ask him. He is a Harvard graduate with a couple of Masters Degrees, plus extensive training in the art of assholism (I know there’s no such word, but in explaining the use of the word, “refudiate,” Sarah Palin assured fans that it is okay to make up words because William Shakespeare made up words. And speaking of masterful writers, I made up assholism in my masterpiece, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger. Indeed, I’m adding another contribution to literature by composing long parenthetical digressions).

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/07/19/sarah-palin-refudiate/ 

Getting back to Bill O’Reilly finally, I am fascinated by his remarks regarding the influence and impact of Fox “News” on television viewers—more influential he claims than other networks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/20/bill-oreilly-fox-news-bet_n_652477.html

O’Reilly is correct in believing that the Republican propaganda network gives viewers the news they want to hear, which is basically what he is saying. However, the comment makes me wonder if he really received a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University. After all, O’Reilly once falsely claimed that he was awarded a Peabody. If he’s telling the truth about his Masters, I want be recommending the journalism school to fledgling reporters. The role of news is to report the truth and give people information they need to know. My old employer, CNN, at least tries. But Fox fails miserably as a legitimate news organization. The network so slanted to the right that discerning truth is a formidable test for viewers—even if they cared.

I concede that Fox “News” has considerable influence on its viewers. On a regular basis, I encounter Fox folks who take the attitude of “Don’t confuse me with facts.” Some are simply too lazy to think for themselves. Others are angry, unhappy people facing economic setbacks and other difficulties they don’t understand. O’Reilly and his right-wing comrades provide viewers targets to assign blame. Primarily Democrats. 

But lets face it, monkeys in a room filled with typewriters (are any left?) will compose one word that is comprehensible. And even though God may punish me for this, I’m going to give Fox ”News,” Bill O’Reilly and Megyn (this is hard to spit out) Kelly an A+ for criticizing Bob Scheiffer, the CBS host of Face the Nation. Crazy Megyn’s point……

Attorney General Eric Holder sit downs with CBS’ “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer for a half hour, a one-on-one interview. And not one question about the now-infamous New Black Panther voter intimidation case….

I’m telling you one of two things happened. You tell me if I’m wrong. Number one, Schieffer doesn’t care about the story and just decided to punt on it, even though you can find facts about it on CBS.com. So, the Web site over there is doing its job, but Schieffer apparently isn’t interested in the story. Or, number two, the DOJ sent guidelines for this interview and told him you can’t ask about that.

In reality, the Black Panther case is a non-story stemming from a decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to drop a civil case regarding allegations of voter harrassment at precincts in Philadelphia during the November, 2008 Presidential election. Critics of Eric Holder—wing-nuts mostly—have accused the Attorney General of showing favoritism in cases involving African Americans. In this instance, there is no monetary value in pursuing a case against individuals without assets.

The so-called scandal has been conjured by Megyn Kelly and other Fox loonies. But it received enough publicity to a warrant question by Scheiffer during Holder’s appearance on the Sunday program. In an interview with Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, Scheiffer pleaded ignorance. The veteran CBS newsman said he had been on vacation and was unaware of the Holder “scandal.” Shame on Scheiffer. Unless he was trapped in the remote jungles of Borneo fighting for his life against headhunters, he must have been in contact with the rest of the world. Most reporters maintain a casual interest in public affairs while on vacation. And besides, news shows like Face the Nation employ producers and researchers to provide questions and background. So O’Reilly wins one.

Let me tally the scorecard. He is correct that Fox distorts the news to fit an audience, wrong to suggest this is good journalism, right that Fox has influence on its viewers, wrong in believing they have good sense, correct in saying Scheiffer screwed-up, and wrong in considering the Black Panther case worthy of Scheiffer’s attention. According to my Tuscaloosa High School math skills, O’Reilly has three rights and three wrongs. That comes out to 50 percent—a miserable grade.

Hey, Bill. How the hell did you ever get into Harvard? On an assholism scholarship?  

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.

Since the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous 75 years ago and the beginning of Alanon for spouses and families of alcoholics shortly thereafter, the “anonymous” label has been attached to a multitude of 12-step recovery programs. Spin-offs are designed to deal with an array chemical, physical and emotional problems—gambling, sex, eating disorders, addictions to illegal and/or prescription drugs, and an array of struggles that part of the human condition.

Regardless of the ailments, the underlying principles of all the different 12-step programs are pretty much the same. The steps put into practice a value system that is unknown to many—the basics of which include universal tenets of faith, trust, honesty, courage and humility. In AA lingo, incorporating the principles in one’s life leads to a “spiritual awakening.” Not to be confused with a sudden epiphany that is often described as a ”spiritual experience.” Twelve step programs gradually bring about a level of self-honesty. That is why so-called tea partiers need to form a recovery program called, ”Deniers Anonymous.”

From inception, Tea Party members and its candidates have been in a state of denial in responding to any and all criticism. The most recent instance of self-deception is the refusal to acknowledge the NAACP’s claim that the loosely formed organization have been invaded by racists, bigots and hate groups. The denials must be coming from blind and deaf spokespersons. How could they miss an inflammatory road sign in Iowa comparing the President to Hitler and Lenin, or fail to see placards at rallies that are clearly racist, or not accept the word of credible sources that epithets were directed at black congressmen as they walked through a crowd of Tea Party demonstrators? That is the equivalent of my years of denial that alcoholism caused my drunken episodes, delirum tremens, nights in jail, an emotionally abused broken family and eventually led me a failed skid-row audition. 

Vice President Biden refused yesterday to label the Tea Party as racist. And I agree. However, that does not mean the absence of racism among many of its members—a subtle form of which is sometimes more sinister than outward bigotry. Indeed, it is often difficult for people—me included—to detect underlying prejudices. Our failure to see deep-rooted personal bias is troublesome for African Americans. At least they know where they stand with the Klan mentality.

Deniers Anonymous would be particularly helpful for Tea Party candidates, some of whom have denied saying or believing they made statements in radio, television and newspaper interviews. Sharron Angle is an exception. The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada simply avoids mainstream media interviews. She answers only to God, Fox “News” and right-wing reporters in her home state. God apparently is not satisfied with her answers. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has been resurrected from the graveyard of politically dead incumbents.

Meantime, God has smiled down on Democrats in Kentucky by delivering a Tea Party-supported candidate whose mouth has gotten him in so much trouble that he is no longer a a sure-fire Republican successor to slightly deranged incumbent Jim Bunning. Dr. Rand Paul stumbled in the race coming out of the gate by making 1960’s era comments about civil rights. Like Sharron Angle, he now avoids interviews that could expose him as under-qualified to occupy Bunning’s Senate seat—a level of incompetence that is probably impossible to achieve. Nonetheless, Dr. Paul’s gaffes have made the Kentucky race competitive. Given his explanations that previous statements are not a real reflection of his position on civil rights, Deniers Anonymous would be helpful in allowing Paul to get in touch with his true views.

Former Presidential candidate Ross Perot is the best example of my own experience of encountering political candidates living in a state of denial. Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger provides all of the gritty details. If interested, buy the book and be entertained by my journey to a vast fantasy land. In short, my one hour in-depth confrontation with Perot during the 1992 Presidential campaign was his final sit-down interview with an investigative reporter .

I had flashbacks of the Perot debacle sixteen years later while watching Katie Couric interview Sarah Palin—another political figure who defines accountability as being a personal attack. She has become a role model for refusing to do interviews with anyone but the Fox “News” bunch and their ilk. She and all her cohorts at the Republican propaganda networks are excellent candidates for Deniers Anonymous. Especially Glenn Beck.

In AA, we sometimes classify a category of alcoholics as “low bottom drunks.” Having spent time with my feet planted in a gutter, I fit the label. Glenn Beck is a low bottom denier. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he consistently denies his racially charged and anti-semitic rants. Washington Post poltical reporter Dana Milbank wrote a column last week that provided astonishing statistics about Beck’s hate-filled lunacy and his influence as a self-proclaimed leader of the Tea Party movement.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071602855.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

If the day comes that someone decides to start a Deniers Anonymous program, Glenn Beck should be among the first recruits. He should have some vague knowledge of recovery based on his past disclosure that he joined AA many years ago. I presume he is still sober today. Outwardly, though, he does not fulfill AA’s promise of restoring its members to sanity. 

That is not surprising. Anyone listening to Beck can easily discern that he knows nothing about the principles that form the basis of 12-step recovery.

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.