Howard Fineman

Shame on You, Mr. Fineman
A one-act musical written after discovering that Howard Fineman, Newsweek’s Chief Political Correspondent, Senior Editor, and Deputy Washington Bureau Chief, had shamelessly stolen from my Unfit story from Sept. 28, “UNFIT for an Uncomplicated Strategy” (in which I postulate that Barack Obama is employing a rope-a-dope strategy to win the debate over health care reform), for his MSNBC editorial from Oct. 7, “Obama Channels Ali in Health Care Prize Fight” (in which he postulates that Barack Obama is employing a rope-a-dope strategy to win the debate over health care reform).

(Scene: A small cluttered home office in Austin, Texas. A YOUNG MAN sits at his desk, staring at a photograph of Howard Fineman. His mouth is open, his eyes are filled with tears, the palms of his hands are turned heavenward in a pose of infinite pain and disappointment. He has no pants on. On the wall behind him hangs a poster with the words “Ethics of Journalism” written in enormous type.  A MALE CHORUS sits around him, wearing fedoras and trench coats. They each hold a pad of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other. A slow dirge plays in the background, like something you’d hear at Yom Kippur services.)

YOUNG MAN (Speaking to the photograph): I can’t believe you did this to me. After all those hours I spent listening to you talk about the Iraq War. Fineman!

MALE CHORUS (Chanting soberly): Fineman! Fineman! Fineman!

YOUNG MAN: After I defended your position on the political viability of a public option to my friends. Like a fool! Fineman!

MALE CHORUS (Still chanting soberly): Fineman! Fineman! Fineman!

YOUNG MAN (Getting more agitated): After all that time I devoted to reading your damn columns. How could you do this to me? Fineman!

MALE CHORUS (Their chanting becomes more excitable with each word, as the music starts to build in intensity, volume, and rhythm): Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman! Fineman!

YOUNG MAN (Jumping to his feet and clutching the photo to his chest, he lets out a mighty wail): Oh, Fiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnemaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!!!

(The music transforms into an uptempo jaunt, complete with tambourines and trumpets. The YOUNG MAN leaps onto his desk. The MALE CHORUS jump from their chairs and gather around him, pencils and pads out, as if taking notes at a news conference. Ripping the photo to shreds and throwing them around the room like confetti, the YOUNG MAN begins to sing)

“I’m Indignant!”

YOUNG MAN:

Oh, Fineman!

MALE CHORUS:

Fineman!

YOUNG MAN:

Though your name rings out at MSNBC
As a man of ethical pedigree,
With your degree in Journalism from Columbia,
Still I’ll tell everyone from here to Northumbria
About your sinister reportorial calumny.
You stole from me!

MALE CHORUS:

You stole from him, you really did,
Oh, Mr. Fineman!

YOUNG MAN:

I am just a simple sort of man
I try to write the best I can
Then you come along with your Newsweek magazine
And distort my theory with your glossy sheen
Stealing from Unfit … what kind of man?!
You stole from me!

MALE CHORUS:

Stop, thief! Stop, thief! Stop, thief!
Oh, Mr. Fineman, you devil, you!

YOUNG MAN:

First I wrote, “Obama rope-a-dopes”
Then you replied, “Obama rope-a-dopes”
Then I wrote, “Health care’s on the way”
And you type, “Should be here any day”
You stole from me!
I’m indignant! Indignant, I say! And I demand satisfaction!

MALE CHORUS (Bending over and putting their hands on their knees, they whisper repeatedly to the music, which is more subdued now.):

He’s indignant. Indignant. And he demands satisfaction.
He’s indignant. Indignant. And he demands satisfaction.

YOUNG MAN (Turning to his computer, he reads from the screen): Look at this here: I wrote, “Now any Republicans who continued screaming and shouting about the danger the president’s health care plan posed to America’s social fabric would come off looking petty: They would be representatives of the ‘party of no,’ disagreeing just to be disagreeable in a time when insurance premiums kept rising, more and more Americans were losing their coverage, and the economy was sinking deeper into the tank.” And then you wrote, “The GOP and the Blue Dogs risk being accused of mere obstructionism on what everyone agrees — after listening to all the talk in recent months — is a deadly serious social and fiscal problem.” (He throws his hands in the air and shakes them like a preacher at an old-time revival church) Indignant!

MALE CHORUS: (Doing the same): Indignant!

(While the MALE CHORUS continues their chanting, the YOUNG MAN returns to reading aloud.)

YOUNG MAN: Let’s see, let’s see. Ahh, here we go: “Then you sit back and let people get used to the good that can come from government involvement in the health care industry – the reduced premiums, the fixed prices, the guaranteed coverage. ” That’s me. Now you: “But the drawn out process also has underscored the depth and seriousness of the problem. Few now would dispute the basic idea that we are spending too much money for not enough good, sensible health care.” (Hands in the air) Indignant!

MALE CHORUS (Throwing their hands up): Indignant! (They resume their chant.)

YOUNG MAN: Okay, let’s see. Right, right, right. Not that. Ahh, yes. (Clearing his throat like an orator) Me: “Now you have to get some version of health care reform passed (not a perfect bill, of course, but one that speaks to the issues you find most pressing), finding common ground among Democrats both left and centrist while leaving Republicans out in the wilderness, now both blindly contrarian and powerless.” And, once more, Mr. Fineman: “Turning the enterprise over to Congress has made for an agonizing process, but I get the sense that his Republican enemies and Blue Dog doubters may be on the verge of punching themselves out.” Indignant, I say!!!!

MALE CHORUS (Jumping up and down like the newly converted): Indignant!

(The music grows even more intense, still rhythmic but now vaguely atonal and primordial, like the climax of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” The YOUNG MAN points to a chalkboard on which are written the words “My Revenge.” He sings and kicks his legs furiously while the MALE CHORUS freezes in a tableau of fear and amazement.)

“Vengeance”

YOUNG MAN (Singing):

Here, sir, is what I plan to do
To exact my sweet revenge on you:
First things first, go to your house,
Find your laptop, grab your mouse,
With fervent animosity
Search your browser history
Prove that you’ve been to my site,
Vindication! Sweet delight!
Then put back on my shoes and socks
And take that laptop straight to Fox
Just in time for Hannity’s show.
And then, my friend, the world will know
That Fineman is a plagiarist
A stinkin’, low-down copyist,
Who read my piece and liked it so
He thought the whole wide world should know,
But better, he thought, to come from he
‘Cause no one’s ever heard of me.
Ha! Ha! Ha!

MALE CHORUS:

Ha! Ha! Ha!

(The YOUNG MAN considers for a moment.)

YOUNG MAN:

Then again, that may be true.
Who’s heard my name? Not you or you?
I mean, who am I to say what’s right?
This might drive traffic to my site.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Howard Fineman, steal away!
We’ve got new stories everyday.
“When you get too drunk to write
Visit Unfit Times. We’ll treat you right!”

(The YOUNG MAN and the MALE CHORUS spin wildly about the room, arms interlocked, as the music turns into a swinging, lewd burlesque number with crashing cymbals and wailing trombones. 15 VOLUPTUOUS FEMALE DANCERS come dancing onstage in a line, waving fans and winking suggestively to the audience. Balloons fall from the rafters. As the music climaxes, a nude HOWARD FINEMAN appears from offstage with a notebook in his hand to run around the stage copying from the notebooks of the MALE CHORUS.)

ALL (Singing):

Steal your stories here at Unfit Times!!!

(Exeunt.)

Man with a plan?

I remember reading an interview with Kevin Smith back in 1997 in which the trench-coat-wearing writer/director/Miramax poster boy admitted that his third film, Chasing Amy, which was getting a lot of positive critical attention at the time, was actually intended to be his second. Figuring there was bound to be backlash against him after the enormous success of his first, no-budget feature, Clerks, Smith decided that, rather than let a film he felt was actually worth something get unfairly torn apart by jealousy and bad press, better to send out a sacrificial lamb to take the hit – in this case, a movie he didn’t care too much about and that no one would ever mistake for a good film that had gotten a bad rap.

And hence Mallrats.

Well, with apologies to anyone who takes politics and high-minded social criticism seriously, I have come to the conclusion that President Obama is taking a similar tack with the public health care option.

I figure it this way: Obama had to know when he got elected that whatever goodwill he enjoyed during his first few months in office would eventually dry up. He and his advisors were sharp enough to realize that his high early poll numbers were soft and that, in our overheated political climate, eventually the Republican Party would figure out a way to go on the attack and knock him back down to Earth.

They also knew that the relative ease Obama had experienced in passing the financial bail-out bill in February was a honeymoon victory resulting from those high poll numbers and a desperate economic environment in which any strong action would be looked on positively by an American public driven to disbelief by Bush’s detachment.

They also knew that when it came time for the president to call his second big play, the Republicans would waiting in the tall grass for him.

So rather than put health care reform on the table straight and risk getting into an ugly dog-fight over issues he thought were vital (like lower premiums and guaranteed coverage), Obama put the public option out into the world as a sacrifice, a big piece of Democratic red-meat, with a slight tang of socialism, that he knew would drive the Right crazy and give them something to focus their vitriol on.

Then, just when things seemed to be getting irretrievably dark (like, say, early September, after a full month of town hall nonsense), Obama put the word out that he was willing to reach across the aisle. By doing this, he suddenly appeared munificent and bi-partisan in an environment of extreme ideological toxicity, willing to do whatever it took to get a bill passed. Now any Republicans who continued screaming and shouting about the danger the president’s health care plan posed to America’s social fabric would come off looking petty: They would be representatives of the “party of no,” disagreeing just to be disagreeable in a time when insurance premiums kept rising, more and more Americans were losing their coverage, and the economy was sinking deeper into the tank.

My friend Eliot Tretter, doctor of geography and apparent closet boxing fan, calls this approach the “rope-a-dope”: Obama lays back during the summer and lets the Right Wing have their effigy-burning, name-calling, Hitler-referencing fun, and then, just when it looks like the Democrats are getting their heads handed to them, he swoops in with a compromise only a mindless ideologue could truly hate. Suddenly health-care reform looks alive again, naysaying Republicans no longer look like the principled opposition party but a bunch of intransigent cranks, and the president comes off looking like a bipartisan rationalist.

So now what? Now that you’ve given a couple of speeches and gone on all the Sunday news programs and Late Night With David Letterman and told the American people what your plan is really all about?

Now you have to get some version of health care reform passed (not a perfect bill, of course, but one that speaks to the issues you find most pressing), finding common ground among Democrats both left and centrist while leaving Republicans out in the wilderness, now both blindly contrarian and powerless.

Then you sit back and let people get used to the good that can come from government involvement in the health care industry – the reduced premiums, the fixed prices, the guaranteed coverage. Never underestimate the American public’s capacity to change its ideological tune when it experiences firsthand the benefits of a policy they were once skeptical of.

Remember, when social security was being debated in the 1930s, opponents swore up and down that anyone supporting it was a socialist. Same with Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s. And now look: Social Security has become the great untouchable in American politics (just ask George Bush and the Republicans about the virtues of privatization); meanwhile Medicare – that shining example of government-run “socialized” medicine – is so sacred that even right-wing town hall crazies carry signs demanding the government stay out of it (and without a hint of irony, too).

(Medicaid, of course, is slightly less sacred to Americans because it benefits only the poor, and if there’s one thing the Right is good at, it’s screaming about the need for a national Christian morality while totally missing the point of Christianity.)

If this all happens, then you’ve built up enough political capital and public goodwill that maybe the voters will trust you and your party enough to keep you in power come 2010 and 2012, whether because of the good you did or the nothing the other side did. And then – after you’ve been re-elected and after you’ve established yourself and after the American people have grown accustomed to the idea of government involvement in health care and seen what it can do for them – then you spring the public option on them. Because by that point you will have softened them up to the idea. It’s a perfect demonstration of the old adage that politics is the art of the possible, achieved in increments.

If this is all true, if Obama really is “rope-a-doping,” and if he manages to pull it off, then he very well may be a political genius, a thinking-man’s leader so patient he’s willing to bide his time (through one of the darker, more intellectually demeaning months in American history, no less) and suffer all kinds of indignities in order to get what he feels is best for the country. But if it’s not true, then Obama is stuck in neutral, a man both without a cause and without a plan. A moral and political lightweight.

And if that’s the case, then Eliot Tretter Ph.D. and I are the only political geniuses around. Us and the Republicans. And God help this country if that proves to be true.

Hugo Get 'Em: Chavez Stands to be the Big Winner in the Honduran Coup

This past Sunday, Hugo Chavez‘ weekly television broadcast featured a delightful condemnation of a coup that had unfolded against his ally, the now-former (or still current, depending on one’s perspective) President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. “There are some old troglodytes behind the troops, using them,” he said (according to one blogger, whose translation came from a post on Venezuelan National Radio’s web site). “You don’t see a single general in the streets. They’re in the barracks, well-protected….Now these soldiers are going to find out what a people is [sic]…the people have started coming out on to the streets. They (the coup leaders) made their move in the early hours of the morning, in a cowardly manner.”

Okay. So it’s pretty hard to put aside the revolutionary bluster. Not only is the stuff reminiscent of the best in really-it’s-cool denialism, but it’s totally fun for outsiders to bask in the glory of the words of a perturbed rhetorical master: “You know, they call us coupmongers for the military action of February 4th, which was a patriotic military action against the bourgeois.”

And so on.

Thing is that, as amusing as Chavez can be when he engages in his wonderful red-top-heaviness, he can, from time to time, bury some real gems in his bullshit. And this weekend he dropped what will certainly rank among the finer examples of his genius. “The Yankee Empire has a lot to do with this,” he told his audience, reminding them of what is widely perceived south of the Rio Grande as at least five decades’ worth of bad North American policy. “I will call the U.S. President so that he speaks on this issue in the same way as we do from the depths of our soul.”

Will Chavez call Obama? Probably. Will he demand a a strong U.S. response to the recent events in Honduras? Maybe. Will Obama issue some kind of statement condemning what’s unfolded there? He already has. But even if his reaction didn’t come thanks to pressure from a Socialist leader whose very handshake seems anathema to a big chunk of the U.S. voting population, still Chavez has here created the illusion that the U.S. President reacted to his demands — positively, no less. For even casual observers of the past five decades’ worth of inter-American politics, this is something more than a little bit remarkable; who did what thanks to who now?

And it gets better. Sunday morning, Reuters was reporting that Zelaya “told Spain’s El Pais that a planned attempt to wrest power [from] him was thwarted after the United States declined to back the move.” The quote? “Everything was in place for the coup and if the U.S. embassy had approved it, it would have happened. But they did not … I’m only still here in office thanks to the United States….” If true, this statement would represent a major policy decision on the part of the Obama White House: Faced with the opportunity to counteract a left-leaning Latin American leader, the United States seems to have said no thank you — a fact which would seem to signal reluctance on the part of the administration to get directly involved in Latin American politics.

If Obama did (and does) indeed keep his nose out of South America, and the Honduran coup is indeed — as Chavez and at least one english-language source claim (grain of salt here, sports fans; after all, Zelaya did engage in his very own Chavezian attempt to achieve less-limited power) — a move by the right to put a dent in the steadily growing Latin American leftist movement, then its leaders could be alone. Very alone. And their failure — which would presumably be brought about by resistance from the leftist populists that they threw out (though the Honduran Congress quickly appointed a new president, and elections there are still scheduled for November 29, it remains to be seen if the military will remain cooperative) — would lead by way of popular rejection to a crowning endorsement of the region’s political track.

And its most vital symbol. No wonder Chavez is so excited.

Update: As of Monday morning, the Honduran Coup leaders seem to be operating without much in the way of international assistance or recognition. We’ll see what happens next…