Yet another day in the steamy New York City jungle (feels like 102 degrees today and it's excruciatingly humid). If your ignore Drudge's misleading headline of a tourist being shot on Broadway (it actually it happened on 29th/ Broadway...the Garment district and was a robbery gone bad), the crazy things have already started happening.
Here's some highlights of previous summers:
Last year the republicans came to town -the city was empty, and tons of demonstrations happened and were not covered by the media. The year before that that was the blackout, not covered well again my the media. Everyone was out in the streets, people started directing traffic, buses were crammed in hundreds of people, bars gave away drinks for free, the streets were full, and yet the chaos level was light to moderately light. The year before that everyone was scared shitless because of 9/11, followed by the November plane crash and an entire winter of seeing and smelling the charred remains of the Twin Towers. The year before that was much more quiet in comparison, the usual fights on the train and other deaths and homicides. Of Course the year before that was the Puerto Rican Day Parade's shenanigans (and the list of crazy summers goes on).
And so in this city-cesspool that everybody loves to hate and bash for fame (witness the racist, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-women John
Rocker claiming he would never play baseball for a NYC team because he would get AIDS while riding on the train, now plays for a NY team) there is room for one more........
Billy Graham is coming to town, he's doing a crusade at Flushing Meadows. His big media blitz is all about him ONLY talking about
Christ, Christ's love, and Graham's love of the Jews and the state of Israel (no talk on gay marriage, abortion rights, single parenthood
etc). This is the same guy who's friends with Jerry "blame the ACLU for 9/11" Fallwell, and Pat "terrorism is happening to us because god is lifting his finger of protection" Robertson. And then there's his sexism, he passed over his elder preacher daughter (Ann) to head his ministry, in favour of his son (who recently called Islam and "Very wrong and evil" religion), as reported by CBS's 60minutes, because she was a woman.
In the spirit of slick politicking straight out of the republican handbook, Graham managed to distance himself from his son's comments.
Much like how he has distanced himself from his anti-Semitic remarks taped by Richard Nixon (he maintains he does not remember saying what he said, and that he must have been caught up in the conversation, but then apologized for what he said -leaving plenty of room for him to keep his anti-Semitic views, while being sorry for what he said).
NYC bashing, hypocrisy, and the Bushworld/republican world where up-is-down-and-down-is-up, all aside; this idea of politically re-inventing yourself should be bottled and sold. Withness the Deep-throat drama where all the corrupt and jailed Nixon aids where doing the media round all last week condemning W. Mark Felts.
Then it all comes into perspective. The "sudden" obsession with "extreme makeovers," facelifts, ugly ducklings-turned into swans, and home improvements up the wazoo a.k.a "re-invent" Hollywood California style.
If this country isn't the land of the Phoenix (constantly rising from it "ashes") I dunno what is.