VICTORY?
WHAT VICTORY?

The glint in the right wing's scuzzy sneer is blinding all reasoned discourse after it decided to declare a "coalition victory" in the oil war it hasn't won.

We put "coalition" in quotes for a reason. To hear the right-wing media tell it, you'd think the entire world except Iraq was helping to grease the gears of election-stealing rape defendant Bush's war machine. In reality, a vast majority of the war is the Bush regime's doing - and it had very little public support.

The warmongers' gloating doesn't even deserve to be dignified with a response except to say they're full of shit. After all, they're the same Republican Party that helped keep Saddam Hussein in power. It's as if they propped him up just so they could topple him and boast about it.

They don't call Saddam's army the Republican Guard for nothing!

And there really hasn't even been a real "victory". Since the war started, the press has repeatedly reported that Saddam Hussein has been killed or incapacitated - only to have this "fact" discredited each time. At the beginning of the conflict, they reported seeing the Iraqi dictator's dead body dragged out of his bunker on a stretcher - yet in a later TV broadcast he referred to events that had occurred after his supposed death, proving he was still alive. Finally the bombing of a restaurant was said to have killed him as he dined - but where's the proof?

We're kind of like the nickname of the state of Missouri or the title of a Pretenders hit: SHOW ME!

Contrary to the babblings of Bush's apologists - who insist that the most authoritarian regime ever to occupy the White House is a giant of human rights despite stealing the election - the war was not about human rights. We might believe that it was if not for the atrocious human rights record of the Bushes (George and George W.) at home. This was a war of imperialism and corporate greed. (Even the war's supposed purpose changed almost daily, it seems - from finding weapons, to overthrowing a regime, to "rescuing" Iraqis - so you know the real purpose isn't what government and media talking heads claim.)

And then they tell us Saddam Hussein - who Iraqis have been trying to dethrone since 1979 - suddenly popped out of his underground bunker and strolled down to McDonald's for a Big Mac alongside dozens of other customers?

Think about how silly that sounds.

Does the media really think we're dumb enough to believe he'd make such a casual appearance?

If he's dead, then prove it already. Don't expect us to believe he's out of commission once the restaurant tale is disproven and they later announce that he's been killed for the thousandth time.

Make no mistake about it. The Bushes and Saddam are cut from the same cloth in their approach to governing. They're the perfect match! Even AFTER the '91 war, the elder Bush's regime funded Saddam's campaign of ethnic persecution against the Kurds.

Conservatives' insincere flag-waving and attacks against the patriotism of everyone who dares to disagree with them serves not only as an expression of their imperialism and greed but also to distract from Little Georgie's many failures. Prepare yourself for an eternity of rightist grandstanding - just as they've done with 9/11, even though it was eventually discovered that Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened.

Sometimes we wonder if we're the only people left who will even notice, considering how it seems like everyone else has been numbed so much by the past 22 years of conservative lies.

UH, ISN'T THIS ILLEGAL?

The Last Word Surprise wants to know why Mojo 94.9 (WMOJ radio in Cincinnati) broadcasts cigarette commercials.

Uh, hasn't this been illegal since 1971?

Yet WE were the ones who got shut down by the FCC?!

TED TURNER ADMITS MEDIA IS FULL OF SHIT

What happens when a media boss tells his own industry that they're full of conservative bunkum?

In a speech in San Francisco on April 24, CNN founder Ted Turner blasted the media for its pro-war bias. He admitted that news outlets - a propaganda arm of the Bush regime - deliberately distorted Iraq war coverage.

Although Turner's own CNN has a shocking record of pro-war bias, the most vitriolic backers of the war were the hated Faux News Channel and the despicable Clear Channel radio empire.

In a separate event, the avidly neorightist San Francisco Chronicle fired technology columnist Henry Norr for daring to participate in an anti-war rally. Norr then announced his intent to file a grievance with the California State Labor Commission, as Section 1102 of the State Labor Code bans employers from meddling with employees' political activities. According to Section 1102: "No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."

Despite similar laws in other states, however, at least one media giant has paradoxically argued that the First Amendment gives them the right to fire employees because of their political activities that take place off the job.

What about the Thirteenth Amendment? Anyone with a firm grasp of American history and constitutional law should comprehend the legal arguments against employers regulating off-duty behavior. Telling workers what they're allowed to do off the job is like owning a worker - and that's called slavery. This principle yanks the argumentum rug out from under apologists for mandatory drug testing for occupations that don't involve operating motorized vehicles. It also dashes to smithereens another attempt by despicable retail giant Wal-Mart to own its employees: its "anti-fraternization" policy that was challenged in the mid-'90s because it illegally barred employees from dating each other off the job.

Is controlling an employee's off-duty political activities any different from restricting who they choose as a romantic partner?

Earth and the heavens may someday collapse, but conservatives will still be crying about the "liberal" media.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To The Editor Of The Last Word:

LOVE OR LEAVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Editor's note: "Love or leave" what? Conservatives need to take their own advice - like when they kept babbling about how they all wanted to move to Singapore during the '94 hostage crisis and caning. The next time some rightist nut accuses someone who disagrees with them of being unpatriotic, think back to how conservatives badmouthed America in '94.]

BROSSART CULT HIDES BEHIND DRUG WAR

For 10 years The Last Word has been known as a thorn in the side of the hated and laughed-at Bishop Brossart High School. Our "Brossart Wit & Wisdom" feature milked dry the many madcap sayings that were spoken by instructors and administrators at the embattled Catholic high school in Alexandria.

When I was a student at Bro$$art from 1987-90, I almost immediately became aware of the school's mind-numbing greed. In my years of recovery from the school's extreme emotional abuse I've discovered Brossart to be far more sinister than merely greedy.

Paradoxically, as greedy as Brossart is, it is also quite wasteful. In the early 19th Century a European prince became known as the most wasteful human being in history - even bragging about ruining a priceless painting by using it to line his coat. Brossart is just as uneconomical as this prince was.

Brossart is as much of a right-wing cult as it is a school. And if you think this is an exaggeration, then how come in 30 years I've never heaped nearly as much criticism on any of the many other organizations or individuals I've encountered in life?

We've guffawed uncontrollably at Brossart's greed and waste. Our sense of humor about this very evil institution helped keep us from losing our sanity. But when you get down to the heart of Brossart's gluttonous ways, you can no longer laugh.

Recently a discussion in an Internet forum that I use brang back a very painful memory of an event that occurred in high school. This is as much of an indictment of the War on Drugs as it is of Brossart - for the War on Drugs is largely a cover for school harassment. In addition to driving up the price of illegal drugs to reap greater revenues for the reaganbush narcorepublic, part of the purpose of the War on Drugs has been to shift attention away from the right-wing practice of schoolmongering. Not only has this caused a mind-boggling spike in the rate of school harassment in the past two decades - but it's also led people to equate marijuana with hard drugs. Schools and TV ads preach against drugs so loudly and vehemently, to the exclusion of all other topics, that folks rebel by using any substance that's illegal - whether it's safe or not.

One day during my later years at Brossfart, all students were assembled together in the bingo room upstairs from the gym to hear a guest speaker deliver what was alleged to be an anti-drug talk. (Brossart had a bingo hall even though this form of gambling was illegal in Kentucky until a few years later.) Despite the fact that the school passed it off as an anti-drug presentation, it is now clear they were using the anti-drug cliche to mask something very sinister, for the presentation itself actually had nothing whatsoever to do with drugs - much like how the War on Drugs is really a War on People.

Think what Jackass: The Movie would be like if all the humor and R-rated bits were removed. Jackass is a fine motion picture because it is so uproarious. The presentation in Brossart's bingo hall wasn't comical in the least bit - but it resembled Jackass in that most parts of the event had nothing to do with any other part.

Unlike Jackass, however, the presentation was actually a pep rally to degrade students who did not conform to Brossart's mold.

Classmates who did not habitually question authority adjusted much better to Brossart than I did. I, however, was a rebellious teenager because of physical abuse and discrimination I had experienced or witnessed in schools prior to Brossart, and because of the fact that authority figures in the school system supported these injustices. I was also an outsider to the community, since I had only attended Catholic schools in Campbell County for a little over a year before starting high school. For these reasons the school had kept a special eye on me - and whenever something went awry at the school, guess who one of the first students they'd blame was?

This so-called anti-drug rally didn't really have much content. It was mostly just a series of catchphrases. It's difficult to describe the rally to anyone who wasn't there. I pretended to go along with it. But it escalated until many of the other students were riled into a frenzy not against drugs but against ME - because I was the student who the school most wanted to break.

It was positively the most nerve-racking thing you might imagine - like so much else at Brossart.

This occurs in the presence of the entire student body, and the school acts like it was all about fighting drugs?

The wise course of action: RUN!!! But I stayed. Brossart is a cult, and the false promise of a decent education kept me chained to their yoke of oppression. In reality, one cannot learn in the environment of violence and degradation that defines Brossart - but I didn't know that.

I could have fought back, but not without fear of thunderous retribution. (I had learned long ago that if I fought a schoolmate who started a confrontation with me, they were not the one to be punished.) So the only real option at my disposal was to cower and try to shut it out.

It would have been much more beneficial to simply be slugged in the eye rather than subjected to the sheer psychological terror I experienced that day and on many other occasions at Brossart.

The suburban leisure caste of today complains of being "traumatized" by having to pay capital gains taxes or finding a tiny acne scar. In my opinion, they are chronic whiners. What I endured at Brossart was far worse than death. Brossart doesn't make educated young adults out of rebellious youths. Brossart makes walking dead people. Whoever said time heals all wounds never attended Bishop Brossart High School.

If Brossart had used to the so-called anti-drug rally to victimize a student who was suicidal, then the event could have easily had the opposite effect that it claimed by causing the student to overdose. But Brossart was not trying to quickly kill dissenters. The school's aim was to break our spirits and kill us slowly.

I had become so immersed in the constant grandstanding about drugs at Brossart and other schools that it didn't dawn on me for another two years that the rally was part of a pattern where schools would use the anti-drug facade to cloak their vendettas against students who were either too smart or too rebellious or both.

Words of advice for today's Brossart victims: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!! Brossart isn't some writer's creation that just goes away when you put the book back on the shelf or shut the TV off. It is all too real. LEAVE NOW!!! If you flee from the Brossart cult early enough, that's when you should THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS that you escaped when you did!

Help expose the criminal cult that Bishop Brossart High School has become.

MONTHLY MORON MOTORIST

Since we weren't able to put out a new ish in April - despite it being the 10th anniversary of the first edition of The Last Word - we need to select a Monthly Moron Motorist for both March and April!

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood one day in March, so we decided to take our trusty Extremist for a spin out US 52 to Lunken Airport. The roadway of US 52 from downtown Cincinnati to Lunken Airport is of course unbikeable due to the traffic volume.

Of course.

The sidewalk is little better, since it is littered with broken glass and often disappears on one side of the road, so that some parts of US 52 have a sidewalk only on the south side and other parts only on the north side. But we braved this treacherous path, and it was at the intersection with Congress Street (suitably enough) that we met the Monthly Moron Motorist for March. We crossed the entrance to a used car lot, and a white car began pulling out of the lot in reverse, prompting bystanders to yell at it.

The Monthly Moron Motorist for April was less interesting though. We were in a car traveling north on I-471 one night when some beezweezer going about 100 MPH passed us on the right.

BLOG BLOG BLOGGA BLOG BLOGGA...

List of funny words:

Hear that, everyone?

I said...

Yes, I just spoke the magic word!

You know what another funny word is? "Blog"!

When I first heard the word "blog" I thought it had something to do with toilets. In fact I think it does in some dialects. But it's actually short for "web log" - an online diary!

Now I have my own blog where you can read about the latest doings of the Bathroom Bandit. Visit bandit73.pitas.com before my wrath engulfs me!