Sing it loud: MIA in the USA

Why won’t the little problem go away, as so many members of the political chattering class and mainstream media Bushie lapdogs say it should? We refer to President Flight Suit having gone AWOL while he was supposed to be doing his National Guard duty in Alabama during the Vietnam War. Nah, the strength of this issue isn’t about the blatant lies told by Dubya. Jesus, we’re used to how he’s incapable of telling the truth, even on a good day. Rather, it’s how Poor Little Rich Boy George got the elitist treatment that Poppy demanded for his now saber-rattling ("Bring ’em on," spoken from a very safe distance from the frontlines) progeny. This cost not only you, the taxpayer, mucho dinero for the flight training he walked away from, but it lost Dubya the respect of real Vietnam-era troops.

As to the former, the Boston Globe reported on February 12: "President Bush’s August 1972 suspension from flight status in the Texas Air National Guard — triggered by his failure to take a required annual flight physical — should have prompted an investigation by his commander, a written acknowledgement by Bush, and perhaps a written report to senior Air Force officials, according to Air Force regulations in effect at the time . . . . Two retired National Guard generals, in interviews yesterday, said they were surprised that Bush — or any military pilot — would forgo a required annual flight physical and take no apparent steps to rectify the problem and return to flying. ‘There is no excuse for that. Aviators just don’t miss their flight physicals,’ said Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon’s director of the Air National Guard, in an interview . . . . Brigadier General David L. McGinnis, a former top aide to the assistant secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, said in an interview that Bush’s failure to remain on flying status amounts to a violation of the signed pledge by Bush that he would fly for at least five years after he completed flight school in November 1969."

Hey, it was just a pledge! I was just kidding when I took that. That’s how Dubya has looked at the truth and credibility ever since.

Boy, will he like this. Dick Walton, our favorite lefty in the bullpen, recently brought to our attention an excerpt from Colin Powell’s 1995 book, My American Journey, about who served (often getting injured or dying) in Vietnam. Dick says this except was also recently cited in the Progressive Review and on NPR by Daniel Schorr: "I particularly condemn the way our political leaders supplied the manpower for that war. The policies — determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live — were an anti-democratic disgrace. I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well placed and so many professional athletes (who were probably healthier than any of us) managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country."

Well, this is why you don’t have to worry about any of our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan having "Bush," "Cheney," "Rumsfeld," "Perle," or "Wolfowitz" on their dog tags. (Then again, Powell may have managed to get his son, Michael, placed in the top slot at the FCC, where despite the big dog-and-pony hearing about Janet Jackson’s breast-baring PR stunt, he remains a lapdog for trust-defying communications companies.) So the next time that MIA in the USA Georgie Boy tries to make a big deal out of his National Guard service, just ask how he got bumped to the top of the list to vault into this safe haven. How did he get away with wasting costly flight training, and why wasn’t he pursued for skipping his physical and required duties? You know the pundits and mass media won’t ask these questions.

PICTURE THIS

Speaking of Donald Rumsfeld — and Phillipe and Jorge usually expectorate after doing so — more than one person (including a recent letter-writer to the Other Paper) is wondering why the media doesn’t offer comparable time to the undoctored photo of our defense secretary having fun and laughing with Saddam Hussein. After all, 30-year-old photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda being in the same zip code at the same time, and altered shots that insert Hanoi Jane into places she never was, have been getting plenty of play. Yes, folks, Rummy was chummy with our favorite madman back in the early 1980s, attaching his lips to Saddam’s buttocks even as the evildoer was using nerve gas on Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, as well as Kurdish rebels in Iraq. (How often have we heard the Bushies scream, "He killed his own people!" Yes, with tacit US approval, and Rummy horsing around with Saddam in Baghdad while it occurred.) Next time they roll out some photo that would embarrass even the Weekly World News, let’s throw that Rummy-Saddam tango from the ’80s in alongside it, eh, folks?

FOR JOYCE

Joyce Katzberg is familiar to most anyone who’s been around the peace-justice activist scene, the folk music-arts nexus, or just the Biggest Little’s cultural milieu for the past quarter-century or so. She was a founder of the Stone Soup Coffeehouse (one of the most eminent, and longest-running, venues for first-rate folk music in New England). Joyce also spent years coordinating the talent lineups for the equally excellent (though, regrettably, now-defunct) Rhode Island Labor and Ethnic Festival. And for years, she has been the driving force behind the carol-singing contingent that convenes outside the women’s prison in Cranston each holiday season.

Joyce has been there all along, bearing witness and/or performing, even when she wasn’t the key organizer of social justice events. We forgot to mention that she has also been one of the most beloved and celebrated folk singers in these parts for years, getting arrested and jailed for civil disobedience more times than we can remember. In short, Joyce is the real deal. She walks the walk and has done it daily for decades now. Unfortunately, however, Joyce has been forced into early retirement due to neurological Lyme disease and problems with environmental sensitivities.

There’s no easy solution, and Joyce’s health woes have taken a serious physical and financial toll on her. It’s a measure of the respect she commands that Pete Seeger, perhaps America’s most revered folksinger, will headline a benefit for Joyce at the First Baptist Church in America (75 North Main St., Providence) on Sunday, March 14. Bill Harley, the nationally celebrated, Grammy-nominated, singer-songwriter, children’s book author, raconteur and all-around good guy, will be master of ceremonies. Blues great Paul Geremia, storyteller Valerie Tutson, Celtic musical whiz Phil Edmonds, Otis Read, Tom Perrotti, Cathy Clasper-Torch, and Chris and Meredith Thompson will also perform.

The program runs from 3 to 5 p.m. Doors open at 2:30. Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis with a suggested $10 donation (more if you can, less if you can’t). Organizers request that attendees wear as few fragrances as possible.

GENIUS STRATEGIES

Much to our embarrassment, Phillipe & Jorge had to run out the other day and stock up on Depends. We blame the Bush Administration and its GOP pit bulls for compromising our sphincter muscles. It was the news that the Bushies were coordinating an attack on presumptive Democrat challenger John Kerry because of his involvement with "special interest money," after all, which made us lose our loads.

The idea of Bush criticizing Kerry for taking money from wealthy interests is sort of like Heidi Fleiss writing an op-ed twitting Paris Hilton for her promiscuous ways. No one, absolutely no one, is as knee deep in special interest money as Dubya. How many stories have we seen about his record-setting campaign fundraising operation? Kerry certainly rakes it in, but he’s a piker compared to the Republicans. Karl and Georgie would only want to make this a campaign issue if they think the voting public is completely clueless. Uh-oh, they might have a point there.

LANGUAGE ALERT

Just fair warning that anyone who uses the phrase "NASCAR dads" in front of Phillipe & Jorge will be beaten within an inch of their life with a sharpened bicycle chain wrapped inside a feather boa. This use of this as replacement jargon for "soccer moms," to identify a non-existent political voting bloc, should be a litmus test for any TV talking hairdo or ink-stained wretch who dares to call themselves a journalist.

While P&J have heard the term used for both Republicans who may vote Democrat in the presidential election, and, on the contrary, good ol’ boys who love Dubya the Dumb, we’d offer these questions to any NASCAR fans. How are you doing economically? Are you working this week? Like those tax cuts for the rich? Like getting your health benefits pulled back? Like the idea of your kids paying off a trillion dollar debt so the Enron president’s friends get fatter at the trough? We could go on. Got any relatives who got killed or injured in Iraq due to a war started by lies? Have you seen Dubya at any military funerals, or just out fundraising?

Thought so. "NASCAR dads," indeed.

KUDOS AND CONGRATS . . .

. . . to Shawn Fay and his wife, Beth, for realizing that the one thing Providence needs, now that the Bud-I is spending time in New Jersey at the pleasure of the federal government, is a reptile house. This is not to be confused with that large white, domed building on Smith Street, but certain similarities do exist. We learned that Regal Reptiles, the largest indoor reptile exhibit in New England, will make its grand opening on February 28 and 29 on Washington Street in Our Little Towne, featuring an alligator pond with seven-foot crocs. It will also include tortoises up to 65 pounds, along with their babies; hundreds of snakes ranging in size from six inches to those more than 12 feet; and one of the largest invertebrate exhibits in the United States, including tarantulas, scorpions, true spiders, millipedes, centipedes, Karl Rove, and Condoleezza Rice. (Well, we could be mistaken about the last two, but they would fit in with fellow slimy creatures anywhere in the world.)

Send reptile snacks and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com.