Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

A virus is growing like a pestilence.

There’s only one way to kill it.

Information is power.

Here goes.

In 1876, Mark Twain wrote a short story he called A Literary Nightmare about a virus-like jingle that occupied his mind for several days until he managed to “infect” another person and remove it from his mind.

The funny story was also published under the title Punch, Brothers, Punch.

The story is significant to note today because it is a fairly accurate description of what has become known as a communications meme, which I will define here as a bad piece of information that is repeated over and over again, replicating itself and causing all kinds of problems, like a mutated gene that leads to a biological virus, which results in sickness and ultimately death.

In 1976, biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins cited Twain’s story when he coined the term meme in his book The Selfish Gene.

He used a number of examples to illustrate his point, including tunes and catch-phrases.

The term was picked up by string theorists and others in science. But it was also picked up by communications scholars in the early days of studying how people use the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Some college professors used it in the early days to infect students with a sense that passing around information on the unedited Web could lead to bad information that could mislead the public. But what they did not realize, at least the one’s I met, was this. Just as a virus contains its own antidote, think flu shots, the Web can also be used to get good information out and thus “kill” the insidious virus.

The point I’m going to make is that enough bad information can lead to the death of democracy. It’s already out there and spreading. And like a plague, it may or may not be too late.

There are many examples of memes we could talk about. But for starters, let’s take the term “jackpot justice.”

I’m not sure who first coined the term, but I know it was used by Karl Rove in his first forays into Alabama politics in the 1990s to take over the Alabama Supreme Court.

And instead of being passed around over the Internet, that term is still being used by reporters working for Alabama newspapers as if they coined it themselves. I guess they find it funny to write, or maybe they know the Republican bosses like it.

That virus led to an Alabama Supreme Court ruling a couple of weeks ago that resulted in all but destroying the jury system that is set out in the U.S. Constitution, when a judge elected with Rove’s help using the meme overrode the jury’s verdict against the oil giant ExxonMobile.

The term was used to make the false claim that “run away jury verdicts” are bad for business and hold the state back in recruiting industries to the state, thus costing the people jobs.

But any serious analysis of the business climate in Alabama will show that businesses do not stay away from Alabama or anywhere else because of large jury verdicts. In fact, the reason industries locate here or anywhere is because of their global search for cheap, non-union labor (also true of Mexico and China, other third world countries).

Alabama has that in spades thanks to a compliant, under educated population that has been successfully conned into believing that unions are more corrupt than management of multi-national corporations. It’s a meme, I tell you. A virus.

The people have also been told over and over again that “big government” is bad, bad, bad. As if big corporations are not worse, worse, worse. You can look at the cost of private contractors in Iraq and see that they do a worse job than the U.S. military and cost the taxpayers 10 times more.

Privatization is a growing trend for everything from prisons to hospitals, but the evidence, and movies such as Michael Moore’s SICKO, show us that government health care systems are far more efficient and provide better health care for citizens than for-profit hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies.

Corporations are also interested in locating in places where there are no enforceable environmental regulations. Since Fob James first set up the Alabama Department of Environmental Management in the early 1980s as a “one stop (pollution) permitting agency” like the Waffle House, that’s what you have in Alabama.

Industries also like places where the press can be counted on to promote them without any so-called “liberal” skepticism. I know this from experience of working on the Gulf Coast back in the day when environmental reporting was new. I no doubt cost the state some business in those days by fighting developments. But I also saved the state business by helping to protect state waters and beaches from pollution.

In fact, I am a firm believer in the fact that democracy does not work without watchdog journalism, where the press plays the role of looking over the government’s shoulder and holding public officials accountable.

CNN and other news organizations now use various slogans to claim they are doing this.

“Holding them accountable for you” and such are simply other examples of memes.

The fact is they rarely if ever actually do anything more than quote two under-informed sources on two sides of an issue.

Now let’s take another meme from Alabama, this repeated by someone who should know better on a large e-mail list just this morning.

“Alabama is a Republican, red state.”

It’s a meme. It’s not true.

The latest poll from the Alabama Education Association’s Survey Research Center shows that 34 percent of likely Alabama voters identified themselves as Democrats, compared to 33 percent who said they were Republicans. The other 31 percent said they were independents, but even this number is misleading.

As we have already reported, the poll also shows that only 12 percent of the people in this state have confidence in the abilities of George W. Bush. Where’s the reporting that reflects this?

You can read about it in the Tuscaloosa News, in a column called Alabama Voters More Undecided Than Ever.

What that poll alone and that story will not tell you is why people identify themselves as independents.

According to an interview I conducted with former Alabama Secretary of State Nancy Worley in Birmingham last week, many people in Alabama are afraid to say they are Democrats and would not register as a Democrat because they are afraid their preachers or co-workers might find out. Better to say you are a Republican or an independent, since all the peer pressure for the past couple of decades has been toward “conservatism,” a trait that the Republican Party is supposed to own - sort of like the American flag and the ability to pray.

It’s mere poppycock. A meme. But it has been spread like a lethal virus and mucks up our political system like mucous from the flu clogs up your lungs.

Where is the outrage from Democrats? You can find it in e-mail if you are on the right list, but that’s about the only place (other than here).

The New York Times has another example worth pointing out in the Sunday paper. Mark Halperin says Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes about the 1988 battle for the White House influenced the way he covers political campaigns.

“If past is prologue,” he writes, describing the meme, “the winners of the major-party nominations will be those who demonstrate they have what it takes to win.”

And he suggests an antidote.

“But in the short time remaining voters and journalists alike should be focused on a deeper question: Do the candidates have what it takes to fill the most difficult job in the world?”

Book Inspires Bad Political Journalism

Alabama voters and others around the country will go to the polls on Feb. 5, a little more than three months from now, and vote for president on “Super Duper Tuesday.”

So who will you vote for? The person the pundits say is most likely to win? Or the person YOU THINK based on critical thinking might be best able to govern?

Nobody said saving democracy was going to be easy. But at least think about it. It’s part of the antidote. Seeing the medicine on the shelf is not enough. You have to buy it and swallow it - and go back to work.

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Political prognostication is a little like handicapping sports.

The difference is that politics and government matter.

Whether or not your favorite football team wins or loses is rarely a life or death issue.

Of course it is more popular and publicly acceptable in traditional medialand to talk about sports, to be provocative and even to use political analogies in sports commentary.

Political reporting is criticized for focusing on the so-called “horse race.” The idea is that the U.S. news media seems to focus more on who is up and who is down than on the important issues facing the world, the country and people in their daily lives.

But when political candidates on the right and left are largely in agreement with each other on most of the issues, what is a political columnist to do?

When I was able to predict the Kerry-Edwards ticket after the very first debate in the 2004 race, some people who lost that Turbo Dog bet thought I was the modern equivalent of Nostradamus.

But the fact is, that prediction was about as lucky as calling an interception while watching an Alabama football game on TV.

I used to do this all the time back in the day when I cared as much about football as I now care about politics.

Watching a game on TV in a crowd of friends, I would often say something like: “What Alabama needs now is an interception.”

As the ball was snapped, I would say, “Here it comes. INTERCEPTION!”

And every once in a while, in part thanks to the recruitment of great defensive backs by the UA coaching staff, I would be right - and come off looking like Nostradamus.

But this time around, all the surfing around the Web for good polling research and informed commentary leaves me at a loss to be able to predict who the next president will be. It is still not even clear who the major party nominees will be.

I suppose I could go ahead and say who I would like the nominees to be, but the fact is, while there are fine, qualified candidates running, none of them blows me away.

It is encouraging that most of the Democrats are against the Iraq war and for health coverage for all Americans, but I am not convinced that come November 2008, any of these candidates will blow away the Republican competition.

The Republicans are all running to the right of Bush the Hun, so you would think the American public would be turned off to all of them considering the progressive responses of the electorate on the issues.

But deep down in my gut, I worry that what the public ultimately wants is a strong quarterback. And I worry that the corrupt Republican machinery set up by Karl Rove over the past seven years will be able to steal any close election. Which means the Democrats need a candidate who can win hands down.

And none of the candidates on the stage now inspire overwhelming confidence.

While I would be more than willing to vote for a woman or a black candidate for president myself, I just don’t think a majority of American voters will actually pull the Hillary or Obama lever come next November.

And the prospects of a Giuliani presidency leaves me cold and desperate for an alternative. Plus, Giuliani is only down on Hillary three points in a head-to-head matchup, a number that is within the dangerous margin of error. Not good.

A lot of independents, libertarians and progressives are pulling for Ron Paul as an alternative, but considering his radical libertarian views on the Federal Reserve and the IRS and other things, I doubt he has a real chance to win the Republican nomination.

Feds Raid Ron Paul Coin Company

So what is a liberaltarian to do?

I just don’t understand how anyone can think that Hillary Clinton is the most electable Democrat, but that seems to be the current sentiment. Maybe the American people are so mad at the Republicans that they would be willing to elect the first woman president in our history. It could happen, but I have my doubts.

I have no information about how John Edwards and Barack Obama get along, but I think together, they might make a winnable ticket. Obama is young and as vice president for four or eight years, he might be able to make history and become the first African-American president in our history. I just have my doubts that he could carry the country next November from the top of the ticket.

For some of the best commentary on the candidates, turn to a special series of columns by The Nation magazine: Time to Choose.

In the magazine’s online poll, Dennis Kucinich is winning with 34 percent of the vote. There’s no doubt he is the bravest candidate on the stage who has moved articles of impeachment against Cheney in the House. He is educated and smart and has a handle on the issues, but he is such a leftist that it is hard to imagine the American masses handing him the keys to the White House.

I wish I could say it could be so of Joe Q. Public, but the U.S. education system lags too far behind the rest of the world to even dream of a radical, liberal president.

So we will continue watching the game and see who emerges as the voting starts in a couple of months in Iowa and New Hampshire and elsewhere.

The one prediction we can make with some certainty concerns John Edwards. It is likely he will post strong showings in some of the caucuses and primaries, so the Democratic Party presidential contest is likely to be a three-way race by February.

When that happens, the media coverage of this race will take on a different cast. And depending on fund raising and performance, Edwards could emerge from the pack and win by a nose. We will see…

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

The air has cooled off in Alabamaland and it appears the 2007 global warming heat wave has finally waned. And according to the birding experts, migrants are on the move South. So I may have to get back on the chase after breakfast.

Even The Bunker is finally cooling off enough to break out one of my half-Cherokee grandmother’s quilts for the big brass bed. She has been in her grave now for 30 years, but her fine quilts are still an inspiration to me, along with the copies of Mark Twain’s books she gave me from her library in St. Clair County before her passing.

You may recall that I recently quoted from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Today I want to talk a little bit about another author, a famous columnist named Walter Lippmann, especially to debunk a label that has been pinned on me of late by a local used car salesman. As you will see from this essay, I am no “elitist.”

I hope the bad students down at the Big Mule Press are listening, but I do not have much hope since they are passing off another piece of manufactured GOP propaganda as news even today, with no documentary evidence and a key source who, of course, could not be reached for comment. You know who I am talking about. I refuse to link to their bullshit.

But to prove that I am a truly independent scholar ruled by no political party or ideology, I am also going to publicly quibble with a couple of liberal writers who I otherwise respect. That is still allowed under the First Amendment, I presume.

Scott Horton at Harpers.org has written a blurb about the re-release of Lippmann’s book Liberty and the News and linked to a column by Sidney Blumenthal about it. Both of these men are incredibly educated and brilliant, and Lippmann’s book is worth reading to be sure.

The problem is, the book was written in 1920 and Lippmann changed his mind about some things about the public by 1925 that guided him through the next half a century as one of the most widely circulated columnists in American newspaper history. I know this because I spent a considerable amount of time reading up on this debate in the 1990s as a graduate student at the University of Alabama and Tennessee.

One of my professors at Alabama had been trying for years to finish and publish a book about some of this. I’m not sure if he ever did, but I still have the early manuscript and do recall having a problem even with his analysis.

This part is true, although it would be difficult to find anyone who would admit it.

“Everywhere today, men are conscious that somehow they must deal with questions more intricate than any that church or school had prepared them to understand,” Lippmann wrote. “Increasingly they know that they cannot understand them if the facts are not quickly and steadily available. Increasingly they are baffled because the facts are not available; and they are wondering whether government by consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of consent is an unregulated private enterprise.”

Does this not remind you of the ongoing debate about the Alabama monopoly press coverage of the case of Don Siegelman?

“Lippmann had witnessed firsthand how the ‘manufacture of consent’ had deranged democracy,” Blumenthal writes. “But he did not hold those in government solely responsible. He also described how the press corps was carried away on the wave of patriotism and became self-censors, enforcers, and sheer propagandists. Their careerism, cynicism, and error made them destroyers of ‘liberty of opinion’ and agents of intolerance, who subverted the American constitutional system of self-government.”

Even the great newspaper owners, Lippman wrote, “believe that edification is more important than veracity. They believe it profoundly, violently, relentlessly. They preen themselves upon it. To patriotism, as they define it from day to day, all other considerations must yield.”

That seems to be as true today as it was in 1920, to be sure, and it is certainly the primariy reason for the ratings success of Fox News. It was Lippmann who first identified the tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas, what he called “stereotypes,” coining the phrase often used today. Lippmann argued that people - including journalists - are more apt to believe “the pictures in their heads” than come to judgment by critical thinking.

Humans condense ideas in to symbols, he wrote, and journalism, a force quickly becoming the “mass media” in his day, could be an effective method of educating the public if they took their charge seriously, Lippmann argued in another book, his 1922 classic Public Opinion.

In that work, a more definitive book than Liberty and the News, Lippman argued that twentieth century advances in the technology of “the manufacture of consent” amounts to “a revolution” in “the practice of democracy” because this allows the control over public opinion about the world and about the public’s interests in that world. Control of public opinion, he said, was a means of controlling public behavior.

All of this came out of the early days of mass propaganda, when many scholars in America worried about the manipulation of the public already going on from Germany during the first World War.

Lippmann was optimistic about American democracy and the Jeffersonian ideal early on, along with the role of the press in educating the public to be informed citizens.

But later on he gave up on the press and the public, writing in his 1925 book The Phantom Public that a governing class of elites “must rise to face the new challenges.” He came to see the public as Plato did, a great beast or a bewildered herd – floundering in the “chaos of local opinions.”

Leftist scholar Noam Chomsky in his day came to be seen as Lippmann’s intellectual antithesis after he co-wrote a book about the media called Manufacturing Consent, borrowing Lippmann’s term, in 1979. But Lippman actually had a critic in his own time, the philosopher John Dewey, who may have agreed with Lippmann’s assertions that the modern world was becoming too complex for every citizen to grasp all its aspects, but Dewey believed that the mass public could form a “Great Community” that could become educated about issues, come to judgments and arrive at solutions to societal problems, especially with the help of an “objective” press.

But much of that debate has been lost today, in part because Dewey was a lousy writer whose work is so dense that it is nearly impossible to read today. Lippmann’s caving in on that issue, I believe to further his own publishing career with the new class of media moguls, contributed to a new, non-scientific, capitalist definition of objectivity that came to dominate our stereotypical thinking about the press.

Who can deny that Rush Limbaugh’s bashing of “the liberal press” came to dominate our discussions? It permeates the debate on cable television news today, and it is a perfect example of what Lippmann was worried about in his early years. Most of the uneducated masses in this country hold a picture in their heads of a “liberal press,” and the word liberal has been demonized to be seen as something just as bad as Communism or Socialism - or eating spinach.

Popeye tried to make eating spinach a good thing, but somehow it didn’t work.

But Limbaugh’s bashing of the “liberal media” did work. It was taken up by conservative commentators everywhere, and so the publishers of newspapers used it as an excuse to march steadily rightward, starting in earnest in the 1980s just as I was embarking on a career with aspirations of becoming an “investigative reporter.”

Even in those days, the glow of the Washington Post’s grand achievement in Watergate had faded, and in the American South, the only investigative reporting allowed was the kind that served corporate, Republican interests.

Who can forget how the Birmingham News sent a photographer (who I have known all my life) to hide in the bushes in 1986 and spy on Bill Baxley? The news trumped up a scandal against George Wallace’s heir apparent Democrat and reported that Baxley was using a state car to run for governor against Charlie “fry ‘em ’till their eyes pop out” Graddick, a Republican from Mobile masquerading as a Democrat so he could get elected. It turned out not to be a state car after all, but the damage had been done.

In walks old chicken farmer, Amway salesman and Primitive Baptist preacher Guy Hunt, who should have been indicted instead of elected for using a federal office to run for governor. Of course, he was never investigated by the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery at that time, a Reagan appointee. Sound familiar? And he was never investigated by the Birmingham Ruse.

You can read all about it in David Burnham’s book, in which I am quoted, on the Justice Department, comparing the Hunt case to the investigation of former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington.

There is another newspaper publisher who should be mentioned here, even though I’ve not had the time or resources to fully investigate it.

Adolph Ochs, the former publisher of a paper in Chattanooga, Tennessee who went on to buy out and transform the New York Times into a great objective newspaper starting in 1898, had some ideas about objectivity in his day that transcended merely making a lot of money by printing both sides of stories. I am not aware of any scholar who has fully investigated this, but one day I would like to get into his papers, and the papers of other publishers of the time when Charles Darwin was still alive, and see just what they were thinking about using the press as a vehicle for educating the public, especially as it concerned science.

That is the strain of intellectual thought that most interests me, and I think it has been lost. As a result, the very idea of Democracy is in grave peril.

And I don’t give a hoot what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd says about how Democracy and the Republic and the New York Times will always be around. I’m sure it honestly looks that way if you are living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan making $1.2 million a year to write two measly newspaper columns a week.

Come on down to Alabama, Ms. Dowd, and I will show you a totalitarian system right here in the good old US of A. I can introduce you to poor people living in the woods who would just like something to eat, a warm (or cool) place to sleep and maybe some health care for their children. Try telling them Democracy is alive and working in Bush’s America.

Now to wrap up this tale with a local example of why I think people basically get it without too much help from elites. They do need real political leadership, but it doesn’t take much to convince them - if the press would just try.

After the hearing on selective prosecutions by the House Judiciary Committee the other day, a friend of mine (and a member of the focus group for this independant news site) took a trip to Tennessee. While there, she ended up in a little country store and overheard a conversation by a group of old men. They had only read the AP that day on the hearing and the controversy over Don Siegelman, but they understood it without a lot of editorial analysis.

She overheard them talking about all the good things Siegelman had done for the poor people of Alabama, locating auto plants out in the country with all those good paying jobs. And, they had no doubt the prosecution of Siegelman was done for political reasons by the Bush Justice Department. They got it.

It’s the management of papers like the Birmingham Snooze that don’t get it. Do you think that may be why they are losing readers and subscrbers? They like to blame bloggers.

But just maybe it’s that we are more willing to tell the truth and write wide open, interesting stuff, stories worth reading.

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Rain is falling in the hood, which is a good thing considering the heat wave and drought we’re in. But since it is keeping me from something I want to do this morning, I am going to unload one hell of a rant instead.

Let me apologize in advance if this sounds bitter and let me assure you it is not bitterness or even simple anger. To fully understand it, this should be read aloud in the thundering voice of an uncompromising statesman. If I could find such a person alive in American politics I would go to work for them and write their speeches.

As I read the headlines this morning on the best damn (yes) liberal online newspaper in America, I just want to grab some Dumbocrats by the nape of the neck and shake some sense into them.

President George W. Bush is without a doubt the dumbest and worst president at least in our lifetime, probably in American history, and his approval ratings now hover around 24 percent, according to the most recent poll on the subject.

Yet the Democrats in Congress continue to cave in to the Bush administration on one issue after another, which is why their approval ratings are right down there with Bush, the traditional, corporate news media and used car salesmen.

This morning I read that the Senate Democrats plan to cave in to Bush on the bill authorizing unlimited spying on American citizens by the telephone companies, and they are about to approve a measure that would give the phone giants immunity from lawsuits for using their networks to engage in spying on every kind of American, not just those suspected of being engaged in talking to terrorists overseas.

(The Dumbocrats are also not standing up against a plan by the F.C.C. to ease restrictions on media ownership).

By all means we need to spy on anyone who would help radical extremists kill our citizens, but that is not what is happening. The Bush administration is using the phone companies to spy on the enemies of the Republican Party, including peace groups and environmental groups and little old ladies who like Hillary Clinton but hate Bush.

And what does Hillary Clinton do about it? She compromises, trying to appear reasonable.

Well if that’s how she plans on running her presidential campaign, she will not get my vote and she will not be the next president. I will bet an entire case of Yuengling Black and Tan on that.

I got a phone call last night from a prominent Alabama Democrat who is a regular reader of this site who is now working for Hillary. And I’ve got one simple message for her and her campaign. If she wants to be the next president, she needs to go into the practice booth and work on a new, thundering voice that shows she has the courage to stand up to the corrupt fake-Christian Republicans.

Since the Dumbocrats took control of Congress in 2006, they have compromised on one issue after another, including continuing to fund the war in Iraq, which is the main reason enough swing voters swung their way to hand them that election. Now they are pissed off and may swing back in 2008.

The facts about the phone companies

My father worked his ass off for the old Southern Bell telephone company. In the end, it killed him at the age of 47.

I was not in favor of the federal breakup of the old AT&T empire in the early 1980s, since it is obvious there are certain utility industries that would simply work better for people with quasi-government monopolies.

The corrupt Southern Company has that now, including its subsidiary Alabama Power Company, and you don’t ever hear one squeak about that from Republicans, libertarians or consumers.

But once the federal courts did break up the phone companies, under the auspices of an unfair trade monopoly, what happened to phone service and phone rates? Sure, other companies entered the market and new phone products were developed. But at what price?

Is phone service any better? Is it cheaper for consumers? Is the customer service better or worse?

If you are old enough to remember Southern Bell, you remember making a phone call for a dime, the ability to get change from a quarter in a pay phone and friendly southern ladies working as operators.

Have you tried calling the phone companies lately? Not many people use pay phones anymore due to the proliferation of cell phones, but have you tried to use a pay phone lately? Why do they even keep making the phones with the change slot? It doesn’t work.

A note about lawyers

I tried to get a prominent (formerly) liberal law firm in Birmingham to sue BellSouth two years ago when the spying story first broke. This is a law firm that I used to sue a corrupt newspaper many years ago.

In those days, it was a kick ass labor law firm and truly part of the “liberal” Democratic Party establishment in the days when George Wallace was still alive, if not well.

Now, the same firm represents HealthSouth clients in Mountain Brook who lost some of their wealth when Richard Scrushy cashed in his stock options. And I’ve learning recently that they are working for the administration of Republican Governor Bob Riley.

The Dumbocrats in Washington are compromising with Bush on the issue because the new AT&T and the others are saying it will cost them millions in jury awards in civil suits. But they are making billions, and billions, and billions of dollars for charging way too much for phone service and Internet access. What’s a few million for engaging in illegal spying on innocent American citizens?

And let’s not forget. Anyone who sued the phone companies would have to prove they were being spied on and not engaged in terrorist activity.

The lawyers I talked to would not sue the phone companies, for reasons only they know, even though I can prove the spying in my case. It would be an interesting case, and just maybe we could use it to clarify some things that the American people should understand:

Criticizing the president is not terrorism.

Favoring a clean environment is not terrorism.

Now, if Hillary Clinton wants my vote or this independent media company’s endorsement, let’s see her make a speech saying that. In a thundering voice.

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Where are the super heroes worthy of legend in our world today?

Greece and Rome had Hercules.

America had Superman. Lest we forget, he was by day the mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet Clark Kent.

Hercules is the Roman name for the mythical Greek hero Heracles, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmena. He was made to perform 1200 great tasks to cleanse himself - after he went temporarily insane and killed his wife and kids, along with his entire village, an oft forgotten part of his heroic tale.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Hercules at The Met

While he was a champion and a great warrior, Hercules was not above cheating and using any unfair trick to his advantage, historians say. Later, Hercules went mad with rage and slaughtered cows.

So much for the foibles of heroes.

In Roman works of art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance art that adapts Roman iconography, Hercules can be identified as an example of action and masculinity. He embodies great strength, courage - and great appetites, including erotic adventures with both women and boys.

So much for the foibles of heroes.

Hercules was renowned for making “the world safe for mankind” since he supposedly destroyed many terrible beasts, including the snake-headed Medusa. His “self-sacrifice” obtained his welcome from the gods, as the half-son of Zeus, into Olympia, the Greek version of heaven.

Wiki Hercules

Superman, on the other hand, was born on another planet but became the savior of Metropolis and was known to stand for quaint things such as, “Truth, Justice and the American way.” Of course he would tell Louis Lane this right before taking her out for a late night flight around the city, and then back to her place for some super sex.

So much for the foibles of heroes.

Wiki Superman

I’ve never been one to put that much stock in heroes anyway, myself, as more than fantasy.

Even the biggest Superhero of them all for Christians, Jesus, who would save them all for their sins and assure them a nice seat on the grass in heaven, always struck me as lacking in ultimate authenticity.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve never met a real hero in person.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Jesus on the cross depicted in centuries-old art at The Met

Oh, I’ve interviewed a few who drew the title, for saving kids from burning buildings, being wounded for their country in a war. But even most wars seem of questionable validity when you look closely at their political genesis.

In today’s pop culture, we often refer to rock stars as our heroes, along with football players, race car drivers and movie actors. But some of us seem to bitch like hell when an actor comments on the state of the world or politics.

I mean, look at the Dixie Chicks? Natalie Main is my hero, for saying what she did and taking the heat and coming back to win the big Grammy.

What about politicians? Do you know of a politician you would call a hero? I don’t, and I’ve been covering politics for almost 30 years.

John McCain was a bona fide war hero, serving years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Until recently, when he decided to run for president, he was seen as a maverick, tell it like it is statesman. But no more.

John Kerry is a larger than life kind of character, all rich and smart from Massachusetts, with that big face and his own Vietnam bona fides. But nobody in the American South saw him that way in the 2004 race, because the old Wallace anti-Ivy League Yankee liberal label still works for the likes of Karl Rove, George Bush and the GOP.

Maybe he should have shot his duck hunting companion back during that campaign. It would have made him seem more manly, like Dick Cheney.

I certainly don’t know of any heroes alive from my home state of Alabama, with the possible exception of E.O. Wilson, and he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts now too.

Where are the media heroes?

Now that’s where the story gets interesting.

Scott Horton is the last of the crusading New York lawyers with an interest in justice and the South, specifically Alabama and the case of railroaded former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

The folks over at The Nation Institute seem genuinely interested in what’s going on down here, and have a long-term project going on all about “purple America,” where the liberals and conservatives are mixed in all over the place, even here in Alabamaland.

It’s sort of nice to be back in the bunker with my computer wall working, although I would trade it all in, in a New York heartbeat, for a loft in the West Village or SoHo. That is if I didn’t have familial responsibilities here - and if someone would pay me enough to live and work there.

I suspect I could write and drink with the best of them. I did it in New Orleans, and never had to publish one correction in four years.

You see, I’m sort of like Superboy. I take this American journalism shit seriously, maybe too seriously at times. I’ve been called a “true believer” right up there with Jill Simpson.

Maybe if we had a few more true believers - who were willing to do what it takes to be a superhero - we could straiten this old world out.

Hey, it’s not like I’m countin’ on it. Yet I have no choice but to fight. It’s in my genes.

If I have to do that living on the road cowboying out of a van, so much the better. It’s a great way to actually see the country.

Most people in New York, Washington and LA only see it from the air, which means they don’t see it at all.

The good news is they need someone down here on the ground to tell them what is up in the South. As it turns out, that’s my specialty.

So, for now I can definitely report that global warming is real and happening now in the American South.

See that red sun in the photo below? It was as hot as it looked coming down out of the Appalachians and into the foothills around Ft. Payne, Alabama, just northeast of Rainsville.

It was a nice two week break up the East Coast. Maybe fall will hit here soon and we can spot some migrating birds.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

The final sunset on our Washington, New York trip, looking out over Ft. Payne, Alabama, in the foothills of the Applachian Mountains.