CHOCOLATE-GATE

CNN has really been laying heavy on the anti-democrat propaganda recently. ("Recently?", you ask? "Sheesh!") I was outraged by the questions posed for days during and after the Alito hearings. "Alito's wife left the hearing in tears. Have the democrats gone too far?" Well, it wasn't clarfiied until Sunday, when Suzanne Malveaux finally admitted the truth. The dem's may have been asking some tough questions, but the Martha-Ann started sobbing after a republican Senator Lindsey Graham, not a democrat, asked Alito if he was a "closet bigot."

Chicago Tribune:

Her eyes full of tears and pain, her left hand with the wedding ring covering her trembling mouth, a woman weeping for a husband who was being condemned by politicians on national television as a bigot.

"Are you really a closet bigot?" asked a sympathetic Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Wednesday, apologizing to Alito for the way he'd been treated by Democratic colleagues.

"I'm not any kind of bigot," Alito said, as his wife, who was seated behind him, started crying and then left the room, a tissue crumpled in her hand.

What I think was odd is that she started crying during her hubby's response, not during the pointed question. This almost indicates that Alito's negative response was what upset her. As if the truth was that she and Alito sat around making evil racist, anti-semitic and homophobic comments all day, and Alito's lying that he didn't made her confront the truth about their lives together under the gigantic microscope of the press. Ok, so I'm not so inhuman as to suggest that the gruelling grilling of her husband couldn't have had a cumulative effect on her nerves, especially since it was her first national exposure and she desperately needed lip-liner to plump up those razor-sharp, snapping turtle lips, typically associated with a mean, tight-lipped personality. But was this planned to make dem's look mean-spirited? Were the tears fake? Find that kerchief and test it for DNA tears! Certainly there was no emotion emanating from Alito. The effect of repeating "Did democrats go too far in upsetting Martha-Ann?" all week long outweighs the one time that Suzanne set 'em straight on Sunday, when of course anyone who's anyone is in a church, not watching TV! So a misleading statement which makes dems look mean-spirited, because of the frequency of it's repetition a la Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, becomes fact in most people's minds.

I fully understand those whose eyes gloss over during these long Supreme Court hearings in legalese. At a younger age, mine probably would have too. But just remember, if elected, Alito will put a conservative spin on every ruling from abortion to gay marriage to stem cell research for thirty or more years. So it is worth sifting through at least the report summaries. You don't have to sift too hard to find blatant misrepresentations like this one from CNN, the supposedly "liberal cable news channel."

Well, CNN "liberally" covered New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's foolish remarks at a Martin Luther King gathering. More ridiculous than claiming that god was mad at the US because of the false pretenses of our Iraq-attack, Nagin also claimed that N'Awlin's would become a "chocolate city." Asked that meant, Nagin first offered an explanation of chocolate being white milk mixed with dark chocolate and the two subsist together. (One resident thought that Neapolitan would be a better descrip of N.O.'s colorful racial mix.) But he also noted that New Orleans was 67% black before Katrina, and was probably playing to the blacks in his audience, since there's a perception among blacks that they aren't being welcomed back by the new developers. I would also imagine some timidity among blacks and whites who were forced out by Katrina. If their poverty prevented them from getting out in time to avert Katrina and her aftermath, why would they return now, with less money and no home or job? And with only half a year to repair the levees before the next hurricane season? I'm not sure that I even understand the rebuliding efforts? Are they getting the global warming memos about record ice break-ups in the Arctic and the unpredictable currents it may cause? Including this year's record-breaking hurricanes? Oh, that's right. Bush won't acknowledge global warming because it's too expensive for his financial backers to cut back on greenhouse gases.

At any rate, Nagin's comments, by day 2, were inexplicably dubbed Chocolate-Gate by CNN. Uhm, Watergate was a high level White House scandal that rocked the nation for years. Are Nagin's unfortunate comments, which seemed to annoy both blacks and whites, of similar significance to the fiasco which unseated a president? Hardly. But Ray is awfully sexy. Unfortunately, he was a republican before becoming a democrat in 2002 before his election, known during one campaign as Ray "Reagan." So I may have to pass on blowing him. Throw in an airline ticket and some beignets and I'll consider it.

Gore was on the campaign trail, too, claiming that the president was repeatedly breaking the law with a his new forceful voice and body language. Perhaps he got a good response, because Hillary, who'd been siding with repubs like McCain and Newt Gingrich, spoke harshly at a Harlem church on MLK day. She claimed that Bush was the worst president ever--I'm with ya there, girl!--and that the House was being run "like a plantation, and you know what I'm talkin' about." Immediately, the press growled that her comments were "out of bounds"--in other words, "true", and "over the top"--read "accurate." I found it was more telling that she was trying to rev up her dem base with strong words, and using a little slang to appeal to her black audience: "and you know what I'm talkin' about." She has been hanging with Oprah, but I dout she'd say "talkin'" on Capitol Hill. As far as the use of "plantation" reference, in the past she's used "fiefdom" to describe the corrupt corralling of the House by repubs, but I don't think the medival term "fiefdom" is a word that rings much of a bell to any race today, though Lypsinka recalls it's use from her childhood. Plantations abused slaves, and there's an obvious connection between black's civil rights, MLK and a plantation reference. But I don't think it's inappropriate. With the republican-dominated House, repubs are abusing their power to squash the rights of the minority dems.

I think filling the airwaves with manufactured outrage over what democrats are saying is one method with which the conservative TV media elevates mispeaks into mini-scandals not only to discredit dems, but also to distract us from what's really going on, like the real scandal brewing over Bush's spying and the fact that many republicans are scrambling to distance themselves from the far-reaching Abramoff scandal. You know the republicans are doing some serious damage control when they haul out Lady Laura, the sweeter side of the assholes, twice in one week!

HUFFINGTON POST blogger John Leo calls it the manufactured outrage "Synthetic Shock Syndrome."

Click here to read his take on Hillary using the P-word:

HUFFPO