Roger Ebert, one the country’s most respected film critics, is a prolific writer with many interests, including politics (he is an outspoken liberal.)  Today, he weighed in on the Occupy Wall Street Movement which swept the country this fall. Whereas many liberals and progressives are relieved that a leftist movement has finally captured the public’s imagination during our Great Recession, Ebert is more ambivalent:

My hesitation all along has come with uneasiness about the Occupy tactics. The idea of physically occupying public spaces–parks, plazas, malls and so on–is a questionable strategy. The notion of pitching tents, running kitchens and maintaining libraries on a quasi-permanent basis would have Saul Alinsky tearing his hair out. If you set out to do something that will obviously not work, you’re setting yourself up for inevitable failure. Very few people are mentally or constitutionally able to live in a tent for long, especially with the approach of winter. Young and strong people can. Soldiers do. But the Occupy movement is intended to be populist, and a great many ordinary people have children, families and income requirements that make it inconvenient to camp out.

It was a different matter during the Great Depression, when tent cities named Hoovervilles sprang up on the National Mall and elsewhere. Their inhabitants were actually unemployed and homeless men and women who were forced to such extremes. A few of the Occupiers fit that description. I believe most do not.

His conclusions are well summed up by this cartoon, taken from Politico.  Ebert’s whole post is well worth a read, you’ll find it here.

“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death…They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

Those were the words of Frank Lunz, a master Republican pollster and strategist, when he spoke recently to the Republican Governors Association meeting.  Apparently, the popularity of Occupy Wall Street is a big concern for Lunz’s audience, and Chris Moody of Yahoo News reports, he was ready with some advice on how to talk about the movement:

1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’

“I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”

2. Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’

“If you talk about raising taxes on the rich,” the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But  ”if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no.Taxing, the public will say yes.”

3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.’

“They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”

4. Don’t talk about ‘jobs.’ Talk about ‘careers.’

“Everyone in this room talks about ‘jobs,’” Luntz said. “Watch this.”

He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a “job.” Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a “career.” Almost every hand was raised.

“So why are we talking about jobs?”

5. Don’t say ‘government spending.’ Call it ‘waste.’

“It’s not about ‘government spending.’ It’s about ‘waste.’ That’s what makes people angry.”

6. Don’t ever say you’re willing to ‘compromise.’

“If you talk about ‘compromise,’ they’ll say you’re selling out. Your side doesn’t want you to ‘compromise.’ What you use in that to replace it with is ‘cooperation.’ It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you’re selling out those principles.”

7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: ‘I get it.’

“First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ . . . ‘I get that you’re angry. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”

Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem.

8. Out: ‘Entrepreneur.’ In: ‘Job creator.’

Use the phrases “small business owners” and “job creators” instead of “entrepreneurs” and “innovators.”

9. Don’t ever ask anyone to ‘sacrifice.’

“There isn’t an American today in November of 2011 who doesn’t think they’ve already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to ‘sacrifice,’ they’re going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how ‘we’re all in this together.’ We either succeed together or we fail together.”

10. Always blame Washington.

Tell them, “You shouldn’t be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it’s the policies over the past few years that have created this problem.”

The entire report is well worth a read, you can find it here.

On November 21, Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School, was on a field trip to the Kansas state capitol with Youth in Government.  Listening to Governor Sam Brownback, whose conservative politics clash with her own, Emma tweeted to her 60 followers: “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot“

Someone in Gov. Brownback’s office noticed the irreverant quip – she had not, in fact, spoken with the Governor – and reported it to Youth In Government.  Pretty soon, Emma found herself, yes, called to the principal’s office.  The principal scolded her and demanded that she write a letter of apology.  Emma refused, the story leaked to the media, and suddenly she has 11,510 (and counting) Twitter followers and it is the Governor who is apologizing to her, saying “”My staff over-reacted to this tweet and for that I apologize. Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.”

Certainly the story has struck a nerve, since insulting politicians is a treasured American tradition, just as having our most mortifying off-hand comments broadcast and archived on the internet is becoming one.

Here is what Emma has to say about the whole incident, via email (she also spoke to CNN about it.)

Why the decision to tweet about the Governor? Were you hoping to get his attention?

It was a decision I made while joking around with friends, I didn’t ever think that it would get Governor Brownback’s attention and that wasn’t my intention. At the same time, I knew the tweet had the possibility of being viewed by my followers but at the time, I only had 60.

What did your principal say to you when he called you into his office? Had you ever been in trouble before?

I had never been in trouble before and when I got called down to his office, I had no idea that tweet was going to be the issue. The principle did not give me a chance to explain my side or my reasoning; he strictly spoke to me for about an hour. He mentioned that this was an embarrassment for the school and the school district and it would require him to do damage control. He also said that it did not matter that it was a private twitter account because I was on a school trip.

You were asked to write the governor a formal apology.  Do you plan to? Why or why not?

I will not be writing a letter of apology, it would not be sincere and it is not the way that I want to go about approaching the situation. I think that letter would only give power to Brownback and reaffirm his strict control of speech in Kansas.

Did your principal describe what, if any, disciplinary action will be taken against you?

He has not stated what actions will be taken and I hope that this will be dropped by the school administration.

What has the reaction been like for you? Negative? Many supporters?

This experience has been surreal, overwhelming and exciting. When my sister contacted the media, I wanted it to get attention but I never imagined such a large, passionate response from the public. My followers are well over 4,000 now, I was on the AOL homepage, Associated Press, and I didn’t expect any of this. The support that has come from these stories has been fantastic, about 99% of emails, tweets and fb posts have been positive. I was expecting more dissent to my story, because there are always two sides but no one has had a constructive negative criticism.

You’re a senior.  What are your plans for college? Has this experience made you want to dip into politics or even law?

I’m planning to go to college next year and I applied early to the University of Arkansas but I have other schools that I will be applying to as the year progresses, I’m not sure which schools that will be though. I want to remain politically active and use this platform to voice my opinions but I still plan on a career in psychology.

If you could go back in time and knowing what you know now, would you still send the tweet?

Yes.

Is there anything you would like to say to Governor now?

Listen to the people of Kansas, they have a lot to say and there are a lot of them that are unhappy with your policies. Everyone in your state deserves equal treatment and opportunity; please start acting as a representative of them. People have called Kansas a ‘lost hope’ because of your policies in terms of abortion and the arts commission and your unwillingness to support the LGBT community. Show the nation that Kansas isn’t a lost hope, your people have potential to do great things and they deserve a government that supports them.

In the wake of the Iowa Republican Straw Poll, we’ve learned that “Freedomfest 2011,” the Tea Party Straw Poll planned for Kansas City, Kansas in October 2011 has been cancelled.

The organizers cited financial difficulties, and an alarming lack of interest from those who should have been the backbone of the event – Tea Party groups from across the country:

Our committee has speculated for the last month why registrations from the Tea Parties have been so low, with some emails and phone calls suggesting that the poor economy, national debt, high fuel prices, unemployment, double-dip recession, fear about the future (all the usual suspects), as well as political frustration with elected officials in both parties, and political burnout as principle reasons. Others have said that many groups just don’t want to do anything outside of their own states this year, and are in disagreement with other groups about what and who the Tea Party movement should support and represent. There is some disarray in the movement right now as to its next move. The fact is, the spirit intrinsic in 2009 has diminished nationwide, and some lethargy and weariness persists.

These factors combined with the failure of the national Tea Party umbrella groups, other than “Tea Party Nation,” to support or promote Freedom Jamboree was also sadly evident, especially after each group was individually invited to attend and work toward a “unified” movement going into the 2012 election season. The preoccupation with prospering their own organizations at the expense of the “grassroots” movement as a whole was also apparent; with one group even going so far recently as to place their own “convention” on the same days as Freedom Jamboree, inviting all the national candidates to a “straw poll” in the middle of the country, to speak on Sat., Oct. 1 (the same day as our event), while paying some of the same speakers that had already been invited to Freedom Jamboree. And yes, their event is a paid event for those participating. This is the kind of cynical, self-serving, and dis-unifying behavior that had already frustrated many in the movement by the end of 2010, and caused others to quit participating altogether.

You can read the entire statement here.

In October, Kansas City, KS will host “Freedom Fest 2011,” a National Tea Party Nominating Convention, which organizers are billing as “a Tea Party Woodstock.” But without all the “hippies, drugs and trash.”

The Kansas Health Institute reports on the announcment, held in Topeka:

The activists were greeted by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and State Rep. TerriLois Gregory, R-Baldwin City.

“It’s particularly appropriate that the Tea Party have such a momentous event in Kansas,” Kobach said. “Kansas was both the birthplace of populism and the starting place of the Civil War. You take those two important events in American history — the populist movement and the Civil War — and really the Tea Party of today is in some ways a combination of those same impulses. An uprising of common Americans saying that the power in this country is moving in the wrong direction.”

The Freedom Fest 2011 home page shows a partial list of scheduled musicians and speakers, and one announced candidate so far, Republican Mike McCallister of Florida.  Conservative talk-show host and pundit Rick Amato will emcee.

Governor Sam Brownback will also address the convention.  Certainly the Tea Party Patriots are likely to receive a friendly reception in Kansas, which is looking for ways to attract more tourism.

What will Obama say in tonight’s State of the Union speech?

If history is any guide, nothing particularly surprising or interesting.

Nothing that will change the public’s very low opinion of government, according a recent Gallup Poll.

Thomas Frank and his colleagues at Harpers have an idea:  can the long speeches, stick to a 30-second spot, and run it during the Super Bowl. Rebrand government.

Last September, when the pollsters at Gallup asked Americans to “describe the federal government in one word or phrase,” 72 percent of the responses were pejorative. The federal government was a “constipated,” “obese,” “crappy” “bureaucracy” run by a “bunch of yahoos,” or by a “bunch of [profanity deleted].” We may be more politically polarized than ever, but when it comes to the federal government, we stand united in our disgust.

One often hears that we should run government like a business. What would a business do if it saw brand loyalty give way to such brand hostility? Wouldn’t its executives summon the alchemists of advertising? The day after last November’s midterm elections, Harper’s Magazine gathered creatives from four ad agencies—Saatchi & Saatchi, Goody Silverstein, Grey Group, and Weiden+Kennedy—and assigned them a daunting task: to develop a television spot for the federal government. And not just any television spot. We wanted one both memorable enough and entertaining enough to compete in the most expensive televised-marketing event of the year—the Super Bowl.

The conversation that followed, which can be read in our February issue, touched on government’s image problem and the recipe for the perfect Super Bowl ad. All four agencies created storyboards for Super Bowl spots, which also appear in the issue. One of them, Goodby Silverstein, took the task a step further and created areal website as a companion to their fake ad below.

When Jared Loughner shot and very nearly killed Arizona Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the U.S. media had an overwhelming, immediate response:  fiery right-wing anti-government rhetoric has finally prompted a political murder.  Paul Krugman stated it most succinctly in the New York Times, two days after the shooting:

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Of course, then we learned that the shooter acted alone based on no comprehensible political philosophy.  (Just try and decipher his YouTube rant if you have any doubt about this.)

Kansans have a recent, painful memory to harken back to:  the May 31, 2009 assassination of Dr. George Tiller, also by a lone man, but one with a more coherent political agenda.  Shooter Scott Roeder testified in court as to why he did it, never once invoking the importance of proper grammar or a desire to return America to the gold standard.

At that time, many accused the Pro-Life movement of inciting Roeder’s crime through their violent, apocalyptic rhetoric.  Operation Rescue proudly describes abortion as a a “holocaust” and its allies called Tiller a mass murderer or “Tiller the baby killer.” As Thomas Frank pointed out at the time, did Roeder not get the memo that he wasn’t supposed to take any of this rhetoric seriously?

Predictably, almost no one rushed to support Roeder’s actions.  Operation Rescue President Troy Newman claimed not to know Roeder, and joined with Pro-Lifers across Kansas to condemned Tiller’s murder.

It’s been a while since anyone shot a politician in America, and for many Loughner fits the profile of someone who would do it:  he’s a jobless, dispirited, impressionable white man in a part of the country rife with conservative rage and easily available weapons.

So are politicians and talkers on the right — Palin, with her infamous map putting Gifford’s district in crosshairs, Sharron Angle, who suggested “Second Amendment remedies” to a liberal Congress, and Michele Bachman, who called for violent revolt against Obama’s government – partly to blame for what happened last weekend in Tuscon?

Jonathan Chait in the New Republic says “no”:

I don’t believe that analogizing politics to combat encourages anybody, even the mentally ill, to take up violence. People use metaphors like this in all aspects of daily life—sports, business, dating, and on and on.

The second form is to lump together all sorts of extremism under the broad rubric of “anger” or “hate.” The New York Times news story posits “a wrenching process of soul-searching about the tone of political discourse and wondered aloud if a lack of civility had somehow contributed to the bloodshed in Tucson.” NBC’s Mark Murray writes, “If one word summed up the past two years in American politics, it was this: anger.”

This category is far too broad. Strong feelings are a part of political discourse. This is serious business. Important things are at stake, including, at times, life and death. People have a right to get angry.

Well put.  But, as Chait himself also states, political violence is in the air these days, not just in words.  As Frank Rich notes in his column in today’s New York Times:

This isn’t about angry blog posts or verbal fisticuffs. Since Obama’s ascension, we’ve seen repeated incidents of political violence. Just a short list would include the 2009 killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a neo-Nazi Obama-hater; last year’s murder-suicide kamikaze attack on an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex.; and the California police shootout with an assailant plotting to attack an obscure liberal foundation obsessively vilified by Beck.

Finally, Ms. Giffords herself had been targeted with violence repeatedly, ever since she voted for Health Care Reform bill.  So were other Democratic lawmakers across the country.

So we circle back to Krugman’s point:  a black man sits in the White House, and Democrats have enacted a slew of comparatively liberal legislation.  Conservatives are angry, and extremists on the right, who are numerous, armed, egged on by media outlets and, to an alarming degree, embraced by the Republican establishment, are acting out their rage.

Loughner is part of nobody’s army, but chances are his shots fired against liberals won’t be the last.

U.S. House Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)

In his regular “Easy Chair” column for Harper’s, Thomas Frank says liberals should appreciate at least one thing about the Tea Party movement:

It has been three years now since the statistical beginning of the recession, and the tide of unemployment is still near full flood. Business investors have taken shelter on higher ground. The housing market, built on imaginary sands, has pretty much washed away.

Throughout it all, I have waited for some grand enactment of economic suffering: for a “petition in boots” to make its way across the country, like in 1894; for Iowa farmers to blockade highways, like they did in 1932; or for a “tractorcade” to lay siege to Washington, like in 1979. Instead there came a caravan of comfortable people equipped with lawn chairs and tricorn hats, inveighing against totalitarianism.

Should you happen to have been outraged by the Wall Street bailout—who wasn’t?—and should you have wished to make your indignation known, just about the only choice you have had was to let your snake flag fly. Say what you like about the Tea Party movement, but at least they showed up. They’ve been out there in the park in your town, every couple of weeks since the Obama presidency began, and they have pretty much had that park to themselves.

Read the rest in the latest issue of Harper’s Magazine.

Right after Obama’s inauguration, Tom wasted no time critiquing the President’s pre-emptive bipartisanship, in an essay that seems more relevant today than when it was originally published–the week before President Obama’s inauguration.  Be prepared for some whiplash, though:  eighty Senate votes for the stimulus package? Rick Warren at the inauguration?

As Tom reminds us, “Centrism is a chump’s game.”

Christopher Hitchens, writing in the January issue of Vanity Fair, is gravely concerned that radical Tea Party rhetoric may sink in and undermine meaningful debate about the real problems our nation faces:

There is an old Republican saying that “a government strong enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have.” This statement contains an essential truth that liberals have no right to overlook. But it is negated, not amplified, if it comes festooned with racism and superstition. In the recent past, government-sponsored policies of social engineering have led to surprising success in reducing the welfare rolls and the crime figures. This came partly from the adoption by many Democrats of policies that had once been called Republican. But not a word about that from Beck and his followers, because it isn’t exciting and doesn’t present any opportunity for rabble-rousing. Far sexier to say that health care—actually another product of bipartisanship—is a step toward Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ten percent unemployment, on the other hand, is rather a disgrace to a midterm Democratic administration. But does anybody believe that unemployment would have gone down if the hated bailout had not occurred and GM had been permitted to go bankrupt? Why not avoid the question altogether and mutter about a secret plan to proclaim a socialist (or Nazi, or Jew-controlled: take your pick) dictatorship?

Again, there is a real debate about the pace and rhythm of global warming, and about the degree to which it has been caused (or can be slowed) by human activity. But at the first Tea Party rally I attended, at the Washington Monument earlier this year, the crowd—bristling with placards about the Second Amendment’s being the correction—was treated to an arm-waving speech by a caricature English peer named Lord Monckton, who led them in the edifying call-and-response: “All together. Global warming is?” “Bullshit.” “Obama cannot hear you. Global warming is?” “bullshit.” “That’s bettah.” I don’t remember ever seeing grown-ups behave less seriously, at least in an election season.

Especially as it comes from a writer who eschews anything that smacks of liberal orthodoxy – the entire essay is well worth a read.

Answers in Genesis, the organization which designed and built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY, has launched a new project for Kentucky:  Ark Encounter.

Slated to open in 2014, this $150 million Biblical Theme Park seeks to re-create Noah’s Ark and “show its feasibility.”  The ark will be 500 feet long and include live animals (though apparently it’s not clear how many, or whether there will be two of each.)  The park will also feature a Tower of Babel and a First-Century Middle Eastern village.

Governor Steve Beshear is seeking $37 million worth of tax incentives for the project, which should create 900 jobs.  Opponents have been, understandably, quite scathing, posing some uncomfortable questions at a recent press conference:

You can see more of the Press Conference here (scroll down.)

We visited the Creation Museum shortly after its opening in 2007, and it’s seen in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” from the vantage point of its supporters.  We can attest to the excellent quality and showmanship of its exhibits, and expect nothing less from Ark Encounter.