Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

I’m tired of hearing every other Sarah Palin fanatic compare her in terms of experience to Barack Obama. It seems a so obviously contrived and absurd tactic that even the blindly faithful should be able to see through it at a glance. Bottom-line, there’s as much comparison between the careers of Obama and Palin as there is between that of Ted Kennedy and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Experience isn’t limited to any one particular aspect of a person’s life such as, in this case, time spent in public office and the responsibilities of one particular job over another. Experience includes personal history, educational background, and basic intelligence.

Education-wise, Obama has a law degree. Not just any law degree, mind you, Harvard Law. Call it elitist if you will, but any Joe-Undergrad student with an eye on law school can tell you that anyone who gets into Harvard is bloody smart and make no mistake about it. Whilst at Harvard Obama gained notoriety as editor of the Harvard Law Review and was later elected president of the Law Review, yep, you guessed it, first black man to do so.
He wrote a book, he practiced law, he made a difference working with community organizations (as referred to mockingly by former NYC mayor and drag queen Rudolf Giuliani at the Republican National Convention). He was elected to the US Senate. He wrote another book. The list of his accomplishments are stunningly and endlessly impressive.

Obama’s political career officially began in 1997 in Illinois when he was elected to represent the state’s 13th District and its 800,000 residents. Illinois subsequently elected him to the US Senate in 2004. This year he was ranked as the 11th most powerful senator by Congress.org.

Sarah Palin? She graduated high school in Wasilla, Alaska then made a valiant effort to cram college in around her demanding beauty pageant schedule, finally earning her bachelor’s degree in communications on a Miss Congeniality scholarship 5 years later. That’s it on education.

After college Sarah was a part-time sports reporter and had other part-time jobs including working for her secessionist husband in-between giving birth to lots of Palins. Her political career started when she served on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996 at which time she was elected mayor of the same town of about 6,000 people. Palin termed-out as mayor in 2002 and ran unsuccessfully for a few state offices in Alaska until being appointed by the governor to the Alaska energy commission in 2003. She resigned from this post less than a year later on ethics principles. Subsequently, she worked for convicted felon Ted Stevens for 2 years and by all accounts had no ethics issues with that job. In 2007 Palin took up residence… well, at home, mostly, but she was officially allowed to sleep at the governor’s mansion in Juneau as Alaska’s governor.

All told, Palin’s experience as an elected official amounts to about 4.5 years so even by a strict time definition, Obama has 5.5 years on her. Add to that the disparity in population (yes, it’s absurd to compare Wasilla’s 6000 people to the Illinois 13th District’s 800,000, but how about to the entire state of Alaska at 700,000?)

But forget about quantity. It’s really all about quality. Presumably Palin’s been trying her best, but there really seems little focus or much intention to her haphazard political career. Obama hasn’t just been trying, he’s been doing, and doing a lot. An overachiever to be certain, he shoots for the moon and hits the stars so, frankly, a comparison between the two is really unfair.

Then why do her supporters keep making the claim that these two are on a par experience-wise? It makes little sense and I’m sure the outcry from Palinheads would be loud and fierce were anyone from the Obama camp to even attempt an apples-to-apples analysis with any seriousness. Keeping it vague, as they have, makes the weak talking-point they’re looking for. Unfortunately for them, even a broad-strokes examination reveals Obama as a man of rich experience, high intelligence and great substance while just a little peeling-back reveals Palin’s intellect, background, and political career to be the hollow onion that it is.

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Thursday, October 9th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

The guys in the white hats aka “the good guys,” live by a code that cannot be violated. Barack Obama represents a hero to many in this country right now, and though he repeatedly has denied desiring such beatification, favoring a we’re-all-gonna-do-this-together mantra, it may be his mantle to wear whether he likes it or not. In that, he will be required to accept a great deal of responsibility and, to the frustration of his take-off-the-gloves supporters, continue to demonstrate restraint in the face of  the most egregious attacks I’ve seen in a presidential election since the Bush camp went after McCain in 2000.

In the story-telling game we learn early-on that there are some very reliable structures inherent in the art that allow the writer to construct the basic characters and storyline, the bones of the story if you will, early in the process and with little effort. For example, to use a couple of extremely popular Good versus Evil films by way of illustration (yes, I could reference Aristotle and Shakespeare, but not today) we find the protagonist (Batman/Luke) and antagonist (The Joker/Darth Vader), aka, the Hero and the Villain.

Much storytelling throughout time has stuck to this very basic structure. It continues today and will outlive the Ages. George Lucas has been criticized for the simplicity of the original Star Wars as nothing more than a standard Greek classic in space. To his credit, Lucas knew his Jung and executed Campbell’s hero-myth brilliantly. Thirty-three years later, the Nolan Brothers and David Goyer have been lauded by fans and critics alike for taking that same basic story and twisting it into something new and thrilling: This year’s outrageously successful, The Dark Knight.

I believe Obama is the hero in this play of passion we’re witnessing on the national stage right now. How do I know?  All one need do is observe the actions and apparent motivations of both sides. The Obama campaign has primarily stayed on its message of change and hope for the future. They have responded in-kind on occasion, but for the most part he has stuck with his working formula in the form of  rousing speeches of hope and vision for the future, and the job of reversing the crimes and missteps of the past eight years. As everyone knows by now, the negative ads playing loose with the truth and rabble-rousing speeches on the stump, especially from Palin, are largely the message from the McCain campaign. As Bush did 8 years ago, in the face of weak poll numbers and general deficit of new ideas for the nation’s problems, they have decided to tread on the dark road of character assassination.

Now please don’t misunderstand me here. In saying that Barack Obama is the hero I am not casting either John McCain or Sarah Palin as the villain. Neither of them are capable of true villainy. Especially not John McCain who has shown himself to be a true hero and not just in the Vietnam War. McCain was a man I admired throughout his congressional career. I always said John McCain was the GOP’s Bill Clinton. It takes talent to equally piss-off people on both sides of the aisle and still get things done. Both of these men were masters of walking the centrist tightrope and I applaud them for their courage and determination.

In fact, I believe that if the GOP had bestowed the nomination on McCain in 2000 instead of Bush, he would have beaten Al Gore handily. No recounts, no hanging chads, just a clean victory.  Remember, Al Gore was not the Oscar winning, Nobel laureate, righteous dude you see today. He was just ol’ “Lockbox Al” trying to put as much distance between himself and Bill Clinton’s sullied reputation as possible.

As for Palin, even though she’s no former hero like her running mate, she’s no villain either. Contrary to her current venom-spewing persona, she’s really nothing more than a dim-witted puppet who’s strings will be cut as soon as the landslide sends her back to her home office in the semi-frozen North. Though no villainess, Palin’s particular brand of hate-mongering is frightening in particular because it incites and brings forth the old “angry mob” mentality that can only lead to disaster if left unchecked. Palin’s words and crowd-firing theatrics, combined with no effort on the part of either her or McCain to temper the crowd’s overreaction, do constitute evil in action, but of the kind that is born of desperation on McCain’s part and ignorance, misguided self-promotion, and unforgivable irresponsibilty on Palin’s.

So where’s the villain? McCain, Palin and many who work side-by-side with them were seduced by the Dark Side just as was Anakin Skywalker. Just as the Joker tried to do to Batman. The GOP collectively,  in the guise of people like Carl Rove and Steve Schmidt (though I’m sure that behind even those two tools stands a creepy little guy in a black hooded robe or a psychotic sociopath in smeared clown white), in the unbalanced rantings of Fox News “journalists” like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and now, Mike Huckabee, along with random right-wingers like The View’s Hasselbeck and Rush Limbaugh. But all the villainy doesn’t rest with their ilk. The rabid crowds of true-believers they stir up must accept their responsibility both for giving audience to fear-mongering and hate speech and for adding to hit with racial epithets and dissemination of disinformation.

Remember way back when Obama used the old saw “lipstick on a pig?”  The cries of outrage from the right were deafening even though the likelihood that he meant it as a slam against Palin was a pretty big stretch. Over the past few weeks the McCain camp has thrown everything plus the kitchen sink in negative campaigning at Obama. The villain can get away with things the hero can’t even consider. In this light, it would seem that  even his opponents see Obama as the hero of the piece.

In storytelling if the hero takes an action that is un-heroic and like that of his enemy, if he dissembles villainous, and/or, most importantly, proceeds against his own moral code of honor, he is instantly and for all time judged to be fatally flawed and no longer worthy to wear the white hat. Once this occurs, no matter his track record, his assets or attributes, he must, and he will, fall.

As the finish line fast approaches, it’s obvious that Obama beat them at their game by sticking to the high road and keeping his white hat out of the dirt.

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Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 by Bill Swadley.

First published in The Huffington Post on October 7, 2008

“I’m at Fox now.” That’s what I used to tell people when I first started working for my current employer, after a strategic move from the world of the small independent studio to mega-corporate entertainment where I now spend my 9-5’s. A colleague of mine, when I told him of the general consternation and dirty looks I was getting as a result of that statement, set me straight. “I tell people I work for 20th Century Fox. It’s much less inflammatory.”

He was right. Oddly enough, most people don’t make the connection between 20th Century Fox Filmed Entertainment (the company I work for) and Fox News, home of the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, neo-con true believers who use their positions at the cable-news outlet to further the cause of the far-right wing. (When I’m speaking to young people, I usually leave out the F-word altogether, and just say I work for the company that does the X-Men movies and The Simpsons.)

But now, after watching the vice-presidential debate and becoming even more terrified at the thought that this half-wit from Alaska could actually ascend to the presidency one day, I must come out of the closet. Everyone knows that Fox News is, to put it mildly, slanted right. Their producers and on-air personalities are culpable in their fiery promotion of the Bush agenda for the past eight years no matter how flawed. Since the current election cycle began they’ve been “spinning” what the McCain/Palin ticket really stands for (i.e. more of the same), often to the point of absurdity. (If you haven’t noticed the contrast of the anchors’ sunny demeanor when they mention the names of McCain or Palin versus the dark seriousness with which they utter the surname “Obama,” you aren’t paying attention.)

A while back you may recall that Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot” in one of her speeches during the primaries. The negative reaction against this Medusa was (finally and about time) swift and condemning from just about every corner of the political and cultural landscape. Except for Fox News, that is, which as most know was one of Coulter’s primary delivery outlets for her hatred and bigotry at the time. Rather than condemning her use of the derogatory term, censuring her, and banning her from the channel, the producers at Fox News had Coulter on the air the next morning. No, not to apologize, but to defend herself!

I was so distraught that my company would actually give this harpy more air time after such bad behavior that I wrote a letter to one of the very high-up executives of the organization expressing my outrage. I received no response, but at least I felt that I had made my voice heard.

But now internal action just doesn’t seem enough. This Fox employee can hold his silence no longer. Call it a self-serving cleansing if you will, but I must speak. (The following are the views solely of my independent writer persona. I’ve composed this on my own time, and the following content in no way represents the views of my employer or anyone other than myself.)

Hear me now! Many employees, and we number in the thousands, who work for the entertainment arm of News Corporation, the parent company of pretty much all entertainment entities with “Fox” in its moniker, often feel embarrassed, ashamed, and angry at the blatant, one-sided, dis-informational tactics of the producers, staff, and on-air “talent” at Fox News. In their efforts to swing this election in favor of McCain, their usual crimes of unfair and unbalanced journalism have become startlingly egregious.

Fox News put together a “focus group” during the Biden/Palin debate. This obviously hand-picked group of “common voters,” touted to be 50-50 for the two tickets, was obviously screened, staged, coached, and almost entirely one-sided (the Palin side). I was not only outraged at yet another example of Fox News manipulating the perception of its viewers for the political benefit of the GOP, but that we, 20th Century Fox, home of American Idol & Fox Reality Channel, would be associated with such a lame-ass attempt at fake reality television. To top it all off, the focus group was sponsored by Budweiser! (In case you didn’t know, Cindy McCain’s day job is Chairwoman of an Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona.) How can Fox News present such fabricated crap with a straight face? I honestly don’t know, and I don’t even know whom to ask.

Trust me in this, except for the above-mentioned Fox News staffers, most of us in the other subsidiaries of the company have no idea who these people are, where they work, how they get their marching orders, or how they sleep at night. I can only tell you that the Fox I work for is a fantastic company. We are treated with respect and generosity. We are afforded opportunities to expand our careers and promote social concerns. We are diverse and inclusive. We tolerate and are tolerated in all shapes, colors, religions, and sexual orientation. Our individual politics span the range of ultra-liberal, to hard-line conservative, and everything in-between. And we, all of News Corp, its subsidiaries, and employees are very very green.

On that last point, in the approximate six years total that I have been with this company, the only pressure outside of our job descriptions News Corp. has ever passed down to us is a demand that we participate as fully as possible in the fight against global warming. In the last two plus years, News Corp. has stood as a penultimate example of the difference businesses large and small can make by becoming more aware of, and responsible for, its carbon footprint. This alone is enough to make me proud to say that I am an employee of News Corp. and 20th Century Fox.

So it’s no wonder that many of us Murdoch’s minions watch with dismay and confusion the daily neo-conservative drumbeat emanating from the Fox News Channel. They don’t represent all of us. We’ve never gotten a memo telling us to be sure to vote Republican. We don’t get e-mails from Sean Hannity bragging about the latest Democrat he reduced to tears on his show. Bill O’Reilly doesn’t invite us to his book signings. We are completely out of the loop.

So the next time someone tells you, “I work for Fox,” cut them some slack. Fox News is an enigma even to us. We don’t get it any more than you do. It’s like that uncle in jail who nobody knows what he did to get there and is never spoken of even inside the family. We just pretend he’s out of town, and hope he doesn’t come to visit if he ever gets paroled.

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