Edshugeo The GodMoor

I tuned in last night to Joe Scarborough's MSNBC show last night to watch my favorite radio talk show host, Lionel. I got home about quarter after the show began, but didn't miss anything. Lionel's appearance wasn't until the last ten minutes or so, and while somewhat amusing, not a big deal. He was doing it during his show, and it was interesting to hear the same exchanges from the other side when I listened to the podcast of last night's radio show, this morning, on the way to work.

An unexpected bonus was seeing one of my favorite bloggers, Grady Hendrix of Kaiju Shakedown on the show to "discuss" some ridiculous Turkish film which includes "Big Hollywood Stars", Gary Busey and Billy Zane cast as unsimpathetic Americans during the war in Iraq, or something. Busey is (from accounts) a Jewish doctor who harvests the organs of Iraqi casualties. Funny. He doesn't look Jewish. He kinda looks like Nick Nolte's mugshot, if Nolte would open his mouth a little bit and breath through it.

Anyway, it wasn't pretty. Hendrix was pit against that guy from The Catholic League whom you may've seen on other shows like this, and he (William Donohue) was in mad dog form. Hendrix managed to keep his wits about him, kinda, but the exchange and Scarborough's douchebaggery reminded me why I don't normally watch this crap. Not every day, anyway. You know, sometimes.

Click here to read Mr. Hendrix's account of the behind the scenes goings on at Scarborough Country. There's also a link to the video, if you scroll down on that page.

January 14th, 2008 - Those links are dead. Fortunately, I emailed the text to a friend which I still have, so here it is. Not the video, though.
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WHERE'S MY COOKIE?

They told me there’d be cookies. That’s what the producers promised me. “Oh, you’re in Media 3? We’ve got great cookies there.” But when I showed up what did I find? Three lone chocolate cjhip cookies on a paper plate sitting at the reception desk like something left out for Santa Claus. With only three cookies I couldn’t bring myself to take one, it would be like taking the last piece of cake. These cookies weren’t a yummy treat. These cookies were a trap for the unwary. Sort of like the show itself.

When a producer called me on Thursday morning and asked me to be on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” that night I figured “why not?” I’m a relentless whore for attention and the glamour of being on television has seduced weaker minds than mine. There was no pay involved but they would send a car to pick me up and bring me home like I was some kind of high-class call girl.

The segment was about a new Turkish movie, VALLEY OF THE WOLVES: IRAQ which is basically a Turkish Rambo where the bad guys are the Americans in Iraq, played by Gary Busey and Billy Zane. Zane plays an evil US soldier who sounds like a Christian version of Ron O’Neal’s Colonel Bella in RED DAWN. Gary Busey plays a doctor at Abu Ghraib listed on the movie’s official website as “a Jew” who harvests organs from dead Iraqis and sells them on the black market. For Busey this is a step up from his role in last year’s GINGERDEAD MAN and for Zane, well after he slapped around Kate Winslett in TITANIC doesn’t everyone think he’s evil anyways?

The day was spent being fattened up like a lamb for the slaughter. A producer called and told me that host Chuck Scarborough “responds well to facts” and that the other guest was going to be William Donahue, president of the Catholic League. The make-up woman told me my skin was very well moisturized and problem-free.

“Ooh,” she cooed. “It’s so rare to find a gentleman who is comfortable with skin care.”

While I waited I called every number in my cell phone to calm my nerves but no one was home, not even my mother. Actually I did talk to two of my sisters but I’m not sure it helped. I love my sisters but they’re way too smart for their own good.

“Keep your mouth closed so you don’t look like stupid,” said one. “Don’t touch your face or clear your throat. It’s called ‘respiratory avoidance’ and it makes it look like you’re lying.”

Great. Respiratory avoidance. Another thing to worry about. My other sister was even more encouraging. “Either it’s going to be really funny, or else you’re going to get destroyed on national TV. I can’t wait!”

I don’t have cable, not because I’m smart but because I would never get anything done if I had easy access to the Home Shopping Network, so sitting in the bathroom-sized lounge while I waited to go on the air was the first chance I had to see the show.

The host, Joe Scarborough, was talking about the Murder in Massachusetts but it wasn’t his intensity or his “power fingers” that riveted me, it was his vast, immobile forehead. How much willpower does it take to keep one’s forehead completely motionless? Was it Botox? An ancient martial arts technique? I still don’t know, but I do know that Joe Scarborough will never be trapped inside a burning building because he can always batter his way to safety with his mighty forehead.

The talking heads would finish their segments and then come back to the teeny weeny little lounge to get their coats. On TV they were all bug-eyes and weird teeth like some race of earnest goblins, but in person they looked completely normal. The camera was like a funhouse lens twisting their faces into caricatures. At that point I knew my goose was cooked since my face is already twisted into a caricature. To have it further distorted on TV would be like pouring gasoline on a roaring bonfire.

Before I could panic a producer bustled in and took me to a tiny broom closet. There were a few lights clipped to the ceiling and a pull-down backdrop of New York behind me. There wasn’t even a camera, just a lens on the wall. A long, dildo-like earpiece, covered in alcohol, was inserted into my right ear; an experience akin to getting a Wet Willie that just won’t stop. William Donahue was down the hall in another broom closet, and Joe Scarborough was in Washington DC presumably in a broom closet of his very own.

“Look into the lens,” the producer said. “Don't ever look away from the lens. And try not to let them bulldoze you.” And then I was shut in. My only connection to the show was the Wet Willie, which was barking instructions at me: “Don’t look away from the lens. Sit up!” In the background I could hear Scarborough’s voice talking about anti-American extremists and that’s when I realized what I was: the designated extremist.

Suddenly he was talking to me. Between not slouching, trying to keep my hands away from my face, avoiding clearing my throat and staring directly into the lens I barely heard what he was saying. But it was exactly what I had figured: they were out to crucify Gary Busey and Billy Zane. They “had a problem” with Zane and Busey’s career choices. I’m sure Gary Busey’s agent can empathize.

The first thing I said was that as a patriotic American I believed in freedom of speech and of association and that these guys could do whatever they wanted as long as it wasn’t illegal even if I didn’t agree with it. Then Bill Donohue launched into a tirade and I interrupted him.

“I think it’s important for the viewers to know that none of us have actually seen this movie,” I said.

“Shut up, pal,” Donohue snarled. Then he said that most actors would sodomize their mothers to get a paycheck. Trust the Catholic to bring up sodomy right off the bat, the less charitable side of my nature thought. Then they sprung the trap. The movie was anti-Semitic. How could I defend anti-Semites?

To hear William Donahue, the man who had appeared on this very same show a while back to say, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular,” getting upset about anti-Semitism was like getting punched so hard by Superman that I had ripped through the fabric of space and time and landed in Bizarro World. My wife is Jewish and if she’s representative of Jews in general, I think they’re more than capable of defending themselves.

Then Scarborough brought the end game. “So you’re telling me that if Errol Flynn made a movie in the 30’s that was pro-Nazi you wouldn’t have a problem with that?” Nazis are to debate what the atom bomb was to World War II: the end. When Nazism comes up in a conversation a bell should ding and everybody should be allowed to go home. If the only way to defend your position is to resort to the Nazi analogy then you need to accept that you can't actually defend your position.

But I failed. I was weak. I answered him. “No, I wouldn’t. I think he has a right to do what he wants no matter how objectionable I find it.” Then Scarborough said it. The other conversation killer. “Whatever.” I was stunned. This was a political debate and he had just said “Whatever”? The word that makes parents see red. The word that is the conversational nuclear option for tweens?

“Whatever? What are you guys?” I asked “A couple of teenage girls?” I began to laugh and threw the “whatever” W but the camera had cut away and the conversation was over. I would like to take this moment to apologize to teenage girls. I know teenage girls and Donahue and Scarborough are no teenage girls. The producer dashed into the room, “That was great, that was great,” she said, sponging blood from the walls. “Look, you should know that Bill Donohue is in these same offices so you might run into him. I’m just warning you.”

I scrammed. A friend called my cell phone and as we chatted the elevator door opened and I was confronted with an impassable wall of garbage. Bill Donahue sprung up behind me and I froze.

“That’s the service elevator,” he said. “The one you want is around the corner.”

I hung up and went and waited for the elevator with him.

“That was fun,” I told him. “Next time they should just dig a pit and let us wrestle for it.” He laughed and shook my hand.

“Usually I’m the one they tell to shut up. I almost never have to tell the other guy to shut up. You just have to start yelling and get in there first.”

And then we had a very nice elevator ride, both of us pumped up on adrenaline and laughing and chatting. And I have to say that he was a very decent fellow, offering some tips and saying that he thought it went well. And that’s when I realized: this was professional wrestling. Public discourse has become a sport where everyone takes on a personality and acts outrageously because they want to be invited back. It wasn’t about debating the topics, it was about making yourself the best guest possible.

Who knows if Bill Donahue believes the things he says? But they’re good TV and that’s why he says them. Even if he responds to this post who knows if it’s how he really feels or if he’s merely maintaining his public image? And realizing this makes me depressed. It depresses me for the same reason the “Would you have a problem with Errol Flynn in a pro-Nazi movie” question depresses me.

What do they mean “would I have a problem”? Would I lose sleep over it? I don’t know. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were both Nazi sympathizers and I don’t stay awake at night because I’m tormented by that thought. I find Nazi-ism reprehensible, but if “having a problem” means that I have to accuse Errol Flynn of incestual sodomy and scream about his career choices then no, I don’t have a problem. An individual vocally condemning racism, or any of the other isms, is making a meaningless gesture. Racism is something you choose not to paricipate in, or you choose not to encourage, it's not something you dust off your soapbox and stand on to denounce. That's like proclaiming that ice cream is yummy: it's a "duh" argument. It makes you feel righteous and gives you the illusion of being moral, but it doesn't accomplish the American ideal of bringing people together despite their differences. So within the context of the show I didn't have “a problem" with Errol Flynn in a pro-Nazi movie because "having a problem" is meaningless. That's like asking someone if they'd “have a problem" with someone who killed their parents. Of course they would, but there are people who seek to forgive those who've done them harm and engage them in a dialogue despite their personal pain and I find those individuals far more worthy of praise and far more admirable than people who begin and end with "having a problem".

But because I don’t “have a problem” I’m the one with a problem. It means I’ll never be invited back to “Scarborough Country”. And if I never get invited back, I’ll never get my cookie.

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