Psst... Hey Pogo, They Git You Yet?

“We have met the enemy and he is us”

After listening to Keith Olbermann’s Countdown (MSNBC) piece of August 30th, I am reminded of this quote from Walt Kelly’s popular, and more than a little political, comic strip Pogo, and uttered by Pogo hizself. Popular in the 50’s and 60’s, this strip about the simple life of Pogo Opossum and his his friends in Okefenokee Swamp gnawed at the ankles of the likes of Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew, Pat McCarran, and the John Birch Society. But more on that later.

Although MSNBC is usually a poster-child for ratings-driven “opinion” cable news, it actually allowed a cogent, blistering rebuttal to Donald Rumsfeld’s VFW speech of Tuesday, in which “Mr. Secretary” again reminded us that those not “with us” are, well, “agin us” and continued the official roll-out of the Bush Administration’s new and improved, easy-to-remember, all-purpose evil-in-a-can…Islamo-Fascism.

Keith Olbermann’s well-worded opinion is so honestly delivered (and obviously felt), that I can’t believe I heard it on a major television network. And he even channels Edward R. Murrow in framing Rumsfeld himself as a new-style fascist in the mold of Joseph McCarthy. Olbermann seems a man who has had his fill, and he sends Rumsfeld back to school (elementary school) for lessons in both civics and history while "re-gifting" the administration's well-worn package of vague fears, insinuations of disloyalty, and misdirected blame, right back to them. Even co-opts their own label--fascism. Rumsfeld was using the VFW speech to throw down the government's glove, but Olbermann picks it up and slaps him with it. A sample:

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

(So Don, who's your new daddy?)

You can hear (and really should see) Olbermann’s complete commentary at http://tinyurl.com/q4cdk .

Finally, some fightin’ words from a source other than bloggers.

Now back to Walt Kelly. As you might imagine, Kelly, who peppered the simple humor and everyman characters of Okefenokee Swamp with occassional characters from the outside the swamp, characters with a too-close-for-comfort resemblance to guys like McCarthy, McCarran, and Agnew, withstood constant attack and derision by supporters of those men, as well as predictable setbacks to his career. He of course paid, like Murrow and so many others, a high price for his intellectual honesty. And his was just a comic strip. (It's said that Hoover thought Kelly’s comic strips contained secret coded messages and had Government cryptographers trying to decipher them.) I believe were Pogo around today, he would remind us (in swamp-speak of course) that Democracy requires the light of truth for flowering, and that those were very dark days indeed. But, considering the secrecy of our current government, with it's minions of misinformation, and their open antagonism to (and revenge upon) anyone who would question them, were those days so different from today? Come to think of it, has anyone heard from Pogo lately?

Rumsfeld’s surprisingly audacious speech is a frightening flashback to those “dark days”. What makes it audacious is that it's such a blatant throwback to those very same tactics used by McCarthy and Nixon. What makes it frightening is that Bush/Rove/Cheney/Rumsfeld are getting away with it. And, to be clear, both the American people and the American media have let them get away with it. Why then blame only the Bush administration, or only the Republicans, when they are, in fact, still the minority party? Maybe the real culprit is our own collective complacency. Maybe the real enemy IS us. At least Keith Olbermann (with help from the spirit of Murrow) has stood up and called the beast by it's rightful name. How long will the rest of America wait? Whose lead is it that we are waiting to follow?

Thanks to Beverly Bander of DA Mexico for spotting this and posting it on the DemsAbroad@yahoogroups.com listserv. Thanks to Ron Andrews of DA Japan for providing the url. Thanks to Keith Olbermann for standing up, and to MSNBC for letting him. And very belated thanks to Walt Kelly. I’ll leave you with his words:

Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

"Forward!"

Bill McQueen
DA Luxembourg