Baron Dave Romm
Heartland Perverts 2
By Baron Dave Romm
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Note: Changes are coming to Bartcop Entertainment, but the pages will continue. Hooray!
Just a reminder: You can still read Baron Dave's commentary on LiveJournal and Facebook. I have BCE columns archived on Dave Romm's Portal, one of the oldest web sites in the world, though I'm woefully behind in archiving BCE columns, posting pictures and making links to interviews and Shockwave Radio Theater audio. You can read Political Links and essays, many of which are (and will be) these essays; and Baron Dave Romm's Recommended Music, mostly BCE columns.
Be sure to check in to rhetoric.com for columns on writing. A site we're just beginning to build.
And my suggestion for what to call this secular year: MMX, pronounced "MeMex".
Sphincter Conservatives live in glass houses
As I talked about last week in Heartland Perverts Part 1, people from all over the political spectrum manage to screw up their lives and hurt loved ones. But one circle of Hell is certainly reserved for those who claim to be pure and are dirty; another circle of Hell is reserved for those gullible enough believe the Holier Than Thou right wingers.
I've got more than a dozen of these, most of which were ignored by the conservative news media. Whether they deliberately ignored patterns of behavior or just let these fly under the radar while they zeroed in on non-stories like ACORM (see below) or what Obama's dog meant for his political future, I cannot say.
The right wing is cynical in its abuse of power, and hypocritical when they claim sole ownership of "values". I'm not letting anyone off the hook, but the scandals are juicier when they involve blatant moral relativism.
Evangelist Tony Alamo 'marries' 8 year old, claims God wanted him to
Prosecutors claim evangelist 'married' 8-year-old Texarkana, AR, ABC News 7/14/09:
Evangelist Tony Alamo preyed on his loyal followers' young daughters, once taking a girl as young as 8 as his bride and repeatedly sexually assaulting her, a federal prosecutor said Tuesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Fowlkes said that girl's story and others unwound an "elaborate facade" Alamo wove around himself. Lawyers for the 74-year-old Alamo, who is charged with taking underage girls across state lines for sex, argued that the alleged victims traveled across the country to further the outreach and business interests of a "bona fide religious group" that the government targeted out of its own prejudices.
..
Alamo summoned another 15-year-old girl to his home in 1994 by telephone, authorities said, then telling her parents that God instructed him to marry her. Fowlkes said the parents consented and Alamo repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl, taking her on trips to West Virginia and Tennessee as he prepared for a trial on federal tax-evasion charges.
Another similar call came in 1998, when Alamo married a 14-year-old girl, Fowlkes said. In 2002, Alamo summoned three underage girls into his bedroom and shut the door, telling them God wanted him to marry two of them, Fowlkes said. Alamo later sexually assaulted two of those girls he married, one 11, the other 14, the prosecutor said. Those girls also traveled on Alamo's orders to other states, Fowlkes said.
Evangelist Alamo sentenced to 175 years on sex charges CNN Justice 11/13/09:
Evangelist Tony Alamo is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison after an Arkansas judge sentenced him to 175 years Friday on charges that included taking minors across state lines for sex, according to prosecutors.
A jury convicted Alamo in July on 10 federal counts covering offenses that spanned 11 years and dated back to 1994, according to documents from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.
Alamo, the 75-year-old founder and leader of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, will serve the sentences on each count consecutively, for a total of 175 years in prison, prosecutors said.
In addition to his sentence, Alamo was fined $250,000, court documents showed.
And with all this, the conservative Christian simply doesn't think he did anything wrong. He insists, "They're just trying to make our church look evil ... by saying I'm a pornographer. Saying that I rape little children. ... I love children. I don't abuse them. Never have. Never will."
Heartland Pervert, media watch
Fox TV station's general manager arrested at adult video store, St. Petersburg Times, 5/18/08:
TAMPA The general manager of WTVT-Ch. 13 in Tampa was arrested Friday night at an adult video store on charges of exposure of a sexual organ and lewd and lascivious behavior.
Robert W. Linger, 49, was one of six men arrested by undercover officers inside the movie theater at Fantasy Land Adult Video Store, 4714 N Lois Ave., Tampa. According to the arrest reports, the six men formed a circle around the undercover officers inside the theater and began masturbating.
Fox 13 News reported the arrest on its Web site, stating that it is "aware of the matter and is currently reviewing it."
Fantasy Land has a full-screen theater with couches. There is a sign inside the theater that states "no sexual acts allowed beyond this point," an employee said Saturday. The theater is considered a public place.
The men were each charged with exposure of sexual organs and lewd and lascivious acts, both misdemeanors. They were taken to the Orient Road Jail.
Barely work safe commentary and graphic: Fox News Mgr Caught In XXX Theatre Circle Jerk Next Thing 5/17/08.
Another Red State legislator is a perv, but off on a technicality
Hmm... another example of the conservative news media shoving an embarrassing story under the rug, or just poor archiving? The original report is not online, or linked from the blog, Scott Muschany indicted Political Fix with broken link to story in St. Louis Post=Dispatch 8/6/08:
State Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today on a charge of deviate sexual assault in connection with the reported abuse of a 14-year-old girl the morning after this years legislative session ended.However, Former Missouri lawmaker Muschany found not guilty on sex charges. The Missourian, 3/20/09:
Read Tony Messengers story here [but it isn't].
The case hinged on whether jurors believed the girl, who testified on Thursday that she thought she was experiencing a nightmare when she awoke one night to find Muschany forcing her to touch him.
A prosecutor and an attorney defending the former lawmaker agreed that on May 17, several hours after the 2008 legislative session ended, Muschany had sex with a mid-Missouri woman with whom the married Republican lawmaker had been having a two-year affair. Later, Muschany walked naked into the bedroom of the woman's daughter, who then was 14 years old.
From there, the accounts diverged.
Haar attempted to portray the girl as a confused teenager who has changed her story several times and might have added or edited out key details because of anger with her mother. Haar said the teen offered different accounts of whether Muschany was squatting or standing over her bed, whether she felt his hand grabbing hers and whether she heard other people in the room.
He warned jurors that the lack of physical evidence or witnesses increased the risk of convicting an innocent man.
"This is the textbook example of the failure of the state to prove these offenses with credible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt," Haar said in his closing remarks to jurors.
Okay, so the married Republican lawmaker had been having a two-year affair. In itself, shallow and self-serving but hardly a felony. No, what got him acquitted was his trial lawyer's argument, as quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (but the original article is not online, so I'm using this Goliath archive), "Standing naked next to a 14-year-old girl in bed is not a crime," Assuming I believe his version, I suppose it isn't a crime, but it certainly shows a lack of moral character. And... I don't believe his version. It seems he has stretched the truth on other occasions.
Bigger than usual Heartland Pervert story
Sex For Oil Scandal At Interior Department Inspector General Reports Accuse Government Employees Of Rigging Contracts In Exchange For Sex And Gifts. CBS News Sept. 10, 2008. I mentioned this before, so let me just quote a couple of paragraphs:
The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney. The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing the oil and gas that energy companies barter to the government instead of making cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such Royalty-in-Kind payments last year. The oil is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile.
That is, these romps and other barters cost taxpayers $4.3 billion. Makes standing naked next to the bed of a 14 year old girl seem so, so cheap.
And speaking of pointing fingers and not getting the story right, there's the coverage of ACORN
ACORN Report Finds No Illegal Conduct TPM analysis with link to pdf of full report by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger 12/7/09:
ACORN employees caught in those undercover videos advising a couple posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to break the law acted unprofessionally and inappropriately, but did nothing illegal, a report commissioned by ACORN and conducted by an independent investigator has found.
meanwhile The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.
ACORN has long been a bugaboo for the right. Once again, it's demonstrated that Republicans don't believe in Democracy and conservatives don't believe in America.
Vikings vs. New York Giants
Well geeze, that looked easy. 44-7. Now I get to root for the Cowboys (yike!) so the Vikes get a first round bye.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog maintains a Facebook Page, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Clark Morphew: POMPOUS CLERGY SPELL DOOM (morpheweb.com)
In the history of clergy, one of the biggest reasons for utter failure has been the history of pomposity.
Froma Harrop: We'd Be Happy to Do This 'Strip Tease' (creators.com)
U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz proudly championed a measure last spring that bans whole-body imaging as a primary screening technique at airports. "You don't have to look at my wife and 8-year-old daughter naked to secure an airplane," the Utah Republican said. As a matter of fact, you do.
Connie Schultz: Amazing Grac(ie) (creators.com)
For the 12th year in a row, I have hung Gracie's Christmas stocking on the mantel. How many more times, I wonder, will she be here to lean against my leg when I do that?
Paul Constant: You Could See It Coming from a Mile Away (thestranger.com)
On the Infinitely Avoidable Regrets of the Publishing Industry (2000-2009 Edition).
Barbara Ehrenreich: Smile! You've got cancer (guardian.co.uk)
Cancer is not an illness - it's a gift. Or so Barbara Ehrenreich was told repeatedly after her diagnosis. But the positive thinkers are wrong, she says.
GREGORY SUMNER: Slaughterhouse-Five at Forty (inthesetimes.com)
Why Vonnegut's classic novel transcends the '60s.
Ben Wener: "RIP: Vic Chesnutt, 1964-2009" (The Orange County Register)
There was sad news for indie- and folk-rock followers over the long Christmas weekend: Vic Chesnutt, the plainspoken but poetic singer-songwriter from Athens, Ga., who battled longtime paralysis to become one of the most beloved cult figures of his generation, died on Christmas Day. He was 45.
Wiley: 'If I'd stuck to the script, I'd be millionaired up' (guardian.co.uk)
Wiley built the sound of grime, and found the way to make hits out of it. He could be the British Timbaland by now. So why isn't he, asks Alex Macpherson.
Grady Hendrix: World's Greatest Dad (slate.com)
And nine other great movies you didn't see this year.
Andy Serkis: From Gollum to Ian Dury (guardian.co.uk)
He's very good at playing bad guys, so how will he handle a punk poet turned posthumous national treasure? Simon Hattenstone asks him.
Dawn C. Chmielewski: "A new Disney Channel niche: adults" (latimes.com)
The cable network hopes to widen its demographic with its new family-centric sitcom 'Good Luck Charlie.'
Rosanna Greenstreet: "Q&A: Viggo Mortensen" (guardian.co.uk)
'If I could go back in time, I'd go to the first Viking ship to land in America.'
Hubert's Poetry Corner
"From the Edge of Stupidity"
noted:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Big thanks to the 27 readers who responded - 4 even responded twice!
The e-page will survive, but with some changes.
The changes will revolve around "f I have time, I don't have money. If I don't have time, I have money".
This house, built in 1937, still has the original plumbing, and it can't be repaired any more.
Then there's the furnace and a bunch of other stuff that can't be allowed to slide any longer.
Gonna take it a day at a time and see how it all works out.
Spat With Scripps
Cablevision
The spat over a fee increase between Cablevision Systems Corp. and Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. heated up Sunday with cable TV viewers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut still caught in the crossfire.
About 3.1 million subscribers lost access to HGTV and the Food Network on Friday after Scripps pulled its programming while negotiating a new contract with the cable provider.
In a statement Sunday, Cablevision said Scripps is demanding a 200 percent fee increase, which would drive up customer rates if accepted. For 2010, the average rate increase for subscribers is 3.7 percent, Cablevision spokesman Jim Maiella said.
Scripps said earlier Sunday that it has received an "outpouring" of viewer support, citing 80,000 e-cards from its ilovefoodnetwork.com and ilovehgtv.com Web sites. Cablevision's Maiella called the customer outrage "modest" and mostly manufactured by Scripps.
Cablevision
Donates Olympic Torch
Shania Twain
The Shania Twain Centre has a new addition to its exhibits, thanks to its namesake.
The singer donated her Olympic torch and clothing to the centre in Timmins, Ont., on Saturday.
Twain says one addition makes her torch unique - she put hockey tape on the base of her torch so she wouldn't drop it.
Twain carried the Olympic torch through Timmins on New Year's Day.
Shania Twain
Integrity? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Integrity!
Networks
Policies forbidding payment for news interviews increasingly seem like the network television equivalent of the 55 mph speed limit: a rule often winked at unless you're heading into a speed trap.
Three of the past month's accidental celebrities - Jasper Schuringa, who helped thwart an attack on a Detroit-bound plane; David Goldman, who took a custody fight for his son to Brazil; and the White House party-crashing Salahis - have either sought or received goodies from TV networks eager to hear their stories.
Policies against paying for interviews are in place to avoid distorting the news. The concern is that news subjects will change their stories to make them more valuable or please those who paid them.
Evasion efforts seem centered primarily on ultra-competitive morning news shows and prime-time magazines. These outlets now fight for stories that might have been considered tabloid fodder years ago, often against Web sites or other outlets that won't hesitate to pay for an interview or information.
Networks
On The Trail
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The red canyons and parched planes surrounding the new Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid Memorial Museum might make you think you're in the Old West. But the electrical wiring and a searing altitude headache tell you this is not California circa 1900, but high-up the mountains in present day Bolivia. Here in the tiny town of San Vicente (population 800), the world's most famous outlaws are supposed to have been gunned down 101 years ago, days after robbing the payroll of a Bolivian mine. Offing the bandits would seem to have been sufficient revenge but area residents still think the dead gringos have to pay. How? As tourist bait.
"We want people to visit and see the history this town holds," says the museum's part-time curator Carlos Ventura, 25, who works three days a week as a public transport operator. The museum was opened in early November by Pan American Silver, the Canadian mining company that now operates the town's main source of income. With plans for guided tours and more, residents hope to bring much needed income into southern Bolivia, the country's poorest region. The small one-room adobe building is adorned with antique guns, enlarged newspaper clippings and black and white photos - a mix of historical images and publicity shots from the 1969 Paul Newman and Robert Redford classic, though Ventura has a hard time distinguishing between the two groups.
Bolivia might be famous for its majestic salt flats and Andean peaks, but it also has a firm hold on "death trail" tourism. Thousands come annually to retrace leftist revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara's final footsteps in south central Bolivia. Butch and Sundance tours have been around a while too. "Since 1992, we've provided tourists with the unique opportunity to follow the outlaws' last days," says Fabiola Mitru, founder of Tupiza Tours. For under $150, you get a private one-to-two day guided tour in a jeep of the era's historic mining mansions, the site of the hold-up and San Vicente, plus meals and lodging.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Wants Tougher Controls
Bono
Irish rock star Bono called Sunday for tougher controls over the spread of intellectual property over the Internet, arguing that file swiping and sharing hurt creators of cultural products.
"The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files," the lead singer of the band U2 wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.
He pointed out that "the immutable laws of bandwidth" indicate that technology is just a few years from allowing viewers to download entire movies in just a few seconds.
The singer pointed out that the US effort to stop child pornography and China's effort to suppress online dissent indicate that it is "perfectly possible to track" Internet content.
Bono
Weekend Lessons
Health Care
Out in the dark, the Hursts have plenty of company. Even before 10 p.m. on this Friday in late fall, nearly 50 cars ring the lot. By 6 a.m. Saturday, more than 400 men and women stand tightlipped and bleary-eyed under the Big Dipper.
By day's end, as long as they keep tempers in check and sleep from their eyes, they will win the privilege of care from a dentist or a doctor.
In a country convulsed over health care, the scene is alarming. But it is always the same, Stan Brock says. For 17 years, Brock has piloted a nonprofit called Remote Area Medical, offering free health care to the uninsured, the underinsured and the desperate.
Brock has seen so many crowds like the one outside Union County High School he chides himself for losing track of whether this is RAM's 578th expedition or its 587th. Yet in every crowd, there are hundreds of Hannah Hursts, each a unique testament to the nation's ragged pursuit of health care answers.
Lawmakers debating reform could almost certainly learn something here in the trenches.
Health Care
Iraq To Support U.S. Lawsuit
Blackwater
Iraq will help victims of the 2007 shooting of civilians in Baghdad to file a U.S. lawsuit against employees of security firm Blackwater, an incident that turned a spotlight on the United States' use of private contractors mercenaries in war zones.
Last week, a U.S. judge threw out charges against five guards mercs accused of killing 14 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle, saying the defendants' constitutional rights had been violated.
Iraq called that decision "unacceptable and unjust" and, as well as supporting a lawsuit brought by Iraqis wounded in the shooting and families of those killed, it will ask the U.S. Justice Department to review the criminal case, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said on Sunday.
The guards from Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe Services (R-WWJD), say they shot across a crowded intersection in self-defense after hearing an explosion and gunfire.
Blackwater
Eye Warning
Tarantulas
Here's some advice stemming from the unusual case of a man who had spider hairs stuck in his cornea: Be sure to cover your eyes when hanging around with your pet tarantula.
Ophthalmologists at St. James's University Hospital in Leeds, England, used high magnification lenses to find out what made the man's eye red, watery and light-sensitive, according to a study reported in the British medical journal The Lancet on Thursday.
They discovered hair-like projections stuck in the man's cornea.
It was a light bulb moment for the patient, who remembered that three weeks earlier he had been cleaning a stubborn stain on the glass tank of his pet, a Chilean Rose tarantula.
Tarantulas
Great Basin Range Riders
Rustlers
Cruising down a two-lane blacktop where the Catlow Rim drops down into a broad valley of sagebrush and bunchgrass, ranch manager Stacy Davies pulls his pickup over to let pass a herd of young bulls being trailed along the road by a couple of his buckaroos, as ranch hands are called here.
Arriving at the corrals at Three Mile Creek, Davies opens the tailgate on the gooseneck trailer hitched to his pickup, leads his horse into the cold hard sunshine, and swings up into the saddle to cut out cattle destined for shipment to market.
Two springs ago, Davies pulled up to these same corrals to find that dozens of weaned calves were gone, rustled, with truck tracks half-stomped by the remaining cattle the only clue to what had happened.
Out of pride and a reluctance to point a finger at neighbors, ranchers in the vast Great Basin outback where Oregon, Idaho and Nevada come together have been slow to admit that someone in their midst, perhaps even someone they know from barbecues and brandings, has been stealing cattle. Just who is doing it, and how they have gotten away with it for at least three years, remains a mystery.
Rustlers
Spirit Stuck
Mars Rover
Spirit has always been the unluckier of NASA's twin Mars rovers.
Just weeks after landing in a Martian crater in 2004, it went haywire and transmitted gibberish to Earth. Engineers eventually nursed it back to health.
As if the near-death experience wasn't enough, Spirit was upstaged early on by its twin Opportunity, which landed in a geologic gold mine and was the first to determine that the frigid, dusty planet possessed a wetter past.
Bad luck has fallen again on Spirit. As the workhorse rover marks its sixth year on the red planet on Sunday, it finds itself stuck in a sand trap, perhaps forever. The six-wheel robot geologist has been in jams before, but this is the worst predicament yet.
With Martian winter arriving in several months, Spirit may not have enough power to keep going unless scientists can point the solar-powered rover toward the sun.
Mars Rover
Weekend Box Office
`Avatar'
James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" had another stellar weekend with $68.3 million domestically, shooting past $1 billion worldwide, only the fifth movie ever to hit that mark.
No. 1 for the third-straight weekend, 20th Century Fox's "Avatar" raised its domestic total to $352.1 million after just 17 days. The film added $133 million overseas to lift its international haul to $670 million, for a worldwide gross of $1.02 billion.
Finishing at No. 2 for the weekend was Robert Downey Jr.'s crime caper "Sherlock Holmes" with $38.4 million. The Warner Bros. film lifted its domestic total to $140.7 million after 10 days in theaters.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Avatar," $68.3 million.
2. "Sherlock Holmes," $38.4 million.
3. "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel," $36.6 million.
4. "It's Complicated," $18.7 million.
5. "The Blind Side," $12.7 million.
6. "Up in the Air," $11.4 million.
7. "The Princess and the Frog," $10 million.
8. "Did You Hear About the Morgans?", $5.2 million.
9. "Nine," $4.3 million.
10. "Invictus," $4.1 million.
`Avatar'
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