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FELTS: No escape from summertime ‘boos’
By TOMMY FELTS, Voices From The News
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Temperatures are rising as summer begins its sweltering end, the Olympic games wait just around the corner and the Democratic and Republican national conventions loom on the horizon. For athletes, politicians and the audience at home, the heat is on.
To catch as many news tidbits as I can, I’m turning to “kudos” and “boos.”
The familiar formula is simple: Kudos for the good guys (like everyone’s favorite gold-winning dreamboat, swimmer Michael Phelps); Boos for the bad guys (like all the people e-mailing me hateful forwards about our presidential candidates).
The torch is lit. Let’s go.
• Boos to China. Under the spotlight as Olympic hosts, Chinese officials have made numerous headlines in recent weeks with their ongoing suppression of freedoms for the Chinese people and foreign visitors alike. Now the rigidly-restricted country has denied a visa to Joey Cheek, an American Olympic speedskating gold medalist hoping to watch the games. Cheek’s ban from China is because of his activism with Team Darfur — a group that raises awareness about brutal atrocities that have claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Africans in the Darfur region of Sudan. It’s an embarrassing topic for China. The conflict has been supported by the Communist government’s bloody military and economic ties to genocidal Sudanese officials and their killing squads. So much for the peaceful, welcoming arms of Olympic spirit.
• Kudos to the U.S. Olympic Committee. The American squad has chosen former Sudanese refugee Lopez Lomong, a 23-year-old runner and now-U.S. citizen, to carry their flag at the Olympics’ opening ceremony Friday. The move likely is meant as a slap back at Chinese censors hoping to quash protests or even discussion about war-torn Sudan and China’s involvement with it.
• Boos to John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate seems to have strayed far from his independent roots and issue-based campaign tactics. In two video attack ads last week, the McCain camp made opponent Barack Obama’s celebrity status and messianic self-importance the key focus of the Arizona senator’s campaign. While an effective way to utilize negative campaigning, many supporters of the one-time maverick would rather McCain left such MoveOn.org-style attacks to activists, commentators and pundits not associated with his campaign.
• Kudos to the Associated Press. In an increasingly rare non-partisan moment, the wire service took a small step back Tuesday from its blind praise of the Democratic presidential nominee. After Obama slammed McCain for taking a page out of ‘‘the Cheney playbook’’ on energy, the AP reported on Obama’s hypocrisy. It seems Obama himself voted for a 2005 energy bill — largely dictated by Vice President Dick Cheney — that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. McCain opposed the bill, according to the AP, saying at the time that it included billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry.
• Boos to those desperate to find racism in every GOP sound byte. When the aforementioned “Obama is merely a celebrity” ad debuted, it was quickly denounced by many as McCain’s desperate, pathetic attempt to smear his Democratic adversary. After a few days, however, some critics decided there was more to the ad than met the eye. It also was racist (of course). They claimed the anti-Obama video, which featured images of celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, as well as clips of Obama speaking on his July world tour, contained a message hidden underneath. In the ad, their delusional minds saw two highly sexualized white women and strategically placed phallic symbols — undeniably a cenutries-old warning used by racists to scare the white population into believing black men would rape their snow-white womenfolk, they said. There’s one word for such critics’ racism-behind-every-corner mentality: Disgusting.
• Kudos to “Morning Joe.” Hosted by former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough, along with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist, the MSNBC morning news show has proven an entertaining successor to “Imus in the Morning,” which was pulled from the cable news channel in 2007 after jokes by host Don Imus ignited a racial controversy. Though it started its run cold, “Morning Joe” spent the last year percolating. The show since hit its stride with well-balanced election coverage, witty — often bizarre — banter between Scarborough and Brzezinski, and top-notch guests ... especially notable since the show begins live at 5 a.m. in the nation’s capital (6 a.m. locally). For early birds, it’s a charmingly off-beat way to move from summer into the last months of the presidential race.
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Casualty update: At least 4,134 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 496 have died as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.
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Tommy Felts is design editor for The Ottawa Herald. E-mail him at tfelts@ottawaherald.com.
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