Mel Gibson and the Problem of Public Privacy

So Mel Gibson has been exposed (once again) as an intolerant, sexist, abusive person. A recording of a phone conversation with his former girlfriend is now Out There on the internet and one can listen to Mel spill molten verbiage into her earpiece while she calmly refutes his charges. All I can wonder is, So what? What business is this of ours? This is private stuff. People lose control. Between each other, with strangers, but more often with those closest, people have moments when the mouth ill-advisedly opens and vileness falls out. The question is, does this define us? Are we, in fact, only to be defined by our worst moments? That would seem to be the case for people like Gibson. The reason, I think, is that for most of us, the Mel Gibsons of the world have no business having shitty days and acting like this. For most of us, there is just cause for having these kinds of days and attitudes, because for most of us the world is not our oyster and we do not have the luxury of squandering time, friends, and money. Mel Gibson is wealthy and famous and, at one time, admired. He ate at the best restaurants, appeared on television, gave interviews, has his picture on the covers of magazines. Is seen with other people, regularly, who fall into that category of Those Who Have It Made.

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Fair Elections Act gets a push

This push to fair elections should be the only issue, until it is passed. We can't even have political conversations anymore, certainly not in Congress, and the dysfunction is largely driven by huge sums of private money from large organizations that are corrupting our law-makers. Thus, it was good news to hear of a new push to campaign finance reform:

In a push to implement a publicly-financed election system and curb moneyed interests in politics, a pair of good-government groups is launching a television ad campaign with a noteworthy price tag. Common Cause and Public Campaign, two organizations known for exposing the murkier influences on legislative and electoral processes, are staking $8 million to try and burnish Congress with the willpower to pass the Fair Elections Now Act. And they're willing to spend as much as $15 million on their campaign-season gambit.
What is the essence of meaningful campaign finance reform? Bill Moyers explains: Dick Durbin gives the insider's point of view.

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BP now controls federal, state and local law enforcement

This headline sounds absurd. It MUST be hyperbole, right? Wrong. Glenn Greenwald has the details. There is a war against the press and BP is operating a police state, thanks to BP largess and government acquiescence.

Obviously, the U.S. Government and BP share the same interest -- preventing the public from knowing the magnitude of the spill and the inadequacy of the clean-up efforts -- but this creepy police state behavior is intolerable.
Greenwald links to Raw Story for more details and a video featuring Anderson Cooper.

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Apathy as enabler

The status quo of the United States depends on mass apathy, as argued by Steven Weber:

So sated with high-tech addictions, so soldered to their screens, so disconnected from the tactile reality of the world their bodies inhabit but their minds avoid, the American people give lip service to that Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It!" spirit but have none of the actual desire to drive a rivet, let alone participate in their democracy. And the folks who have pulled strings, made gas prices fluctuate, tell you of the boogie men with beards and turbans; the folks who make policy, who steer the herd----they are regularly gauging the responses of the American public to further hone their future schemes, schemes which depend on mass apathy.
Weber's post ends on a pessimistic note. That's my mood all too often. But I suspect that this mess is going to continue damaging the finances and freedoms of Americans, and we are going to stand up in ever greater numbers and demand the readily available fixes to problems created by people (e.g., real and meaningful conservation will greatly lessen our energy crisis). On the other hand, I can't help but think that we will not see any meaningful fix to any major problem we face until we directly address campaign finance reform and media reform. Again, these are big but fixable problems.

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