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Today's
Stories
February 14/15, 2004
Stan Goff
Beloved Haiti
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
February 14 / 15, 2004
Gold, Gold, Gold
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
By TRACY MCLELLAN
Another instance of the gruel that passes for
culture in the United States was Oprah's fiftieth birthday celebration,
an orgy of conspicuous consumption, unbridled greed, and insatiable
hunger. It's been almost a week now that I saw it and I still
can't get it out of my mind, nor get away from the nausea it
engenders. Just as the crony capitalists probably write off on
their taxes the bribes they pay to our politicians as charitable
contributions, the birthday bash is probably also a tax deduction.
The party resulted in two one-hour shows.
The first was before a live studio audience. The second was a
weekend-long, behind the scenes look at a post-taping party,
dinner for 50 close friends atop the Sears Tower, and a weekend
gala at an estate in Santa Barbara.
The primary hosts were her friend, Gayle,
at her sycophantic and saccharine best, and John Travolta, of
Scientology fame. That religion's only apparent functions are
to take psychological profiles of random passers-by on the streets,
and sponsor $5000, one-night luxury cruises, probably also another
tax dodge. Travolta opened the ceremony with a toast worthy of
Shakespeare. Oprah hung on every word, teary-eyed and trembling,
and softly moaned Travolta's first name.
Entertainment ought to be put in its
compartment next to others in a rich cultural life. Being engaged
in the political process as a handful of thieves and crooks loot
the country, and the world teeters on the brink of apocalypse
comes to mind. Instead, ours has become a society that reveres
entertainers and celebrities above and to the exclusion of all
else.
I kept my eyes peeled for the celebs
there to beware a future emotional investment in their art or
craft, such as they are. It was a disgusting display of avarice
and cupidity. It's not worth naming them all, but special mention
ought to go to Diane Sawyer, "Di" to Oprah, former
Nixon speechwriter and Henry Kissinger consort, Arnold Schwarzenegger
and Maria Shriver, and Toni Morrison
If it was just an excuse, I give props
to Maya Angelou for begging off sick. She did however send a
poem, which was read aloud by a succession of the hoity-toity.
The whole thing was not read on the air, unfortunately, so it
was difficult to ascertain the context of the line that essentially
extolled Oprah as being "able to swim effortlessly in an
ocean of substance." Jay Leno arrived in a stretch-limo.
Celine Dion sang in Santa Barbara, as did Tina Turner in Chicago.
Since the broadcast I have heard that Oprah gave Stevie Wonder
a $400,000 Rolls Royce for attending.
The amenities and party favors were worthy
of Dennis Kozlowski. Ten thousand flowers were flown in, from
all over the world. A four hundred-pound cake was flown in from
California. Invitations were made of handmade imported silk,
with individually inscribed calligraphy, and stuffed with "historic"
photos of Oprah. With not a trace of narcissism, when Oprah received
hers, she ordered one hundred more for family and fiends.
Wolfgang Puck too arrived by airplane
to cater a dinner from a kitchen built especially for the occasion
in the building that houses Oprah's studio. Thirty more chefs
were also employed. More guests and trinkets also arrived by
airplane, including lobsters straight from the ocean the day
before.
I didn't know there were other kinds,
but a master party planner saw to every last detail, scurrying
around like a construction foreman, and when she was around,
attending to Oprah like a drone to a queen bee. He oversaw party
preparations, left fist tucked against the back of his left hip,
right hand in the air, with pinkie protruding as if a fish caught
on a hook. Among other fabulous perks was a rare, satin table
skirt, festooned with a cover made of silk, hand-adorned with
100,000 beads, imported from India. Dinner menus were hand inscribed
with calligraphy.
A construction crew of 400 "bettered"
an already opulent Santa Barbara estate for the party, themed
"gold, gold, gold." Chandeliers were imported from
Europe. More flowers were imported from Holland, Ecuador, and
Hawaii. The walls were decorated with TVs made to appear as rare
paintings. Upon seeing the dinner table, Oprah exclaimed, "it
looks like it was set for Louis XIV himself." In a toast
to her Santa Barbara hosts over her birthday cake, Oprah lauded
them as deep, wise, and strong, apparently three synonyms for
fantastically wealthy.
The coup d'gras was a club assembled,
please God tell me this isn't true, over a huge swimming pool.
Apparently so big they didn't want to drain it, scuba divers
were deployed to cobble and weld together a foundation of girders,
posts, and poles for a dance floor, finished with laminate flooring.
My guess is that the floor was in the garbage within a week.
Perhaps you could ignore this gluttony
in a more perfect world. But half the world's population, three
billion people, exists on two dollars a day. Twenty-five thousand
children die daily of hunger and related easily preventable causes.
There's plenty of food to feed earth's six billion inhabitants,
it is rather a problem of distribution, and an unequal distribution
of the world's wealth and resources. It is precisely that some
have way too much, and most way too little, that is most responsible
for engendering wars, strife, and bloodshed. In light of the
unimaginable destructiveness of modern weaponry, the earth can
simply not tolerate war anywhere.
These parties occurred simultaneously
as the United States is waging and funding wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Colombia, the Occupied Territories of Palestine, and who knows
where all else. Not one word, not even a gesture of acknowledgement
of these crises was uttered, as is typical of Oprah's shows.
About a month earlier, Oprah had taken
her entourage to South Africa to bestow on some of its destitute,
shoes, clothes and other Christmas gifts. I was very moved by
the show and thought that shows like that could redeem the soap
operas, the home remodelings, the particulars of cosmetic surgery,
in a word, the distraction that is typically the moral, spiritual,
and cultural heft of her show. Now I know that the South Africa
show was about Oprah, and not the desperate in South Africa.
Oprah thinks she does well to occasionally condescend to the
wretched in charity. She would do well better by exercising justice
and divest and strip herself of ninety percent of her wealth.
This then is the state of American democracy--ever
vigilant, with perfect equality, justice, and peace for all.
Tracy McLellan
can be reached at: tracymacl@yahoo.com
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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