The following essay was originally published in Scanlan's Monthly, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1970.

The text of this essay was taken from the book The Great Shark Hunt, Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1, Strange Tales from a Strange Time by Hunter S. Thompson (New York: Ballantine Books, 1979).


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I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands...big grins and a whoop here and there: "By God! You old bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good...and I mean it!"
In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other--"but just call me Jimbo"--and he was here to get it on. "I'm ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?" I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn't hear of it: "Naw, naw...what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What's wrong with you, boy?" He grinned and winked at the bartender. "Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey..."

I shrugged. "Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice." Jimbo nodded his approval.

"Look." He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. "I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I've learned--this is no town to be giving people the impression you're some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. ****, they'll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have."

I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. "Say," he said, "you look like you might be in the horse business...am I right?"

"No," I said. "I'm a photographer."

"Oh yeah?" He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. "Is that what you got there--cameras? Who you work for?"

"Playboy," I said.

He laughed. "Well, goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of--nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you'll be workin' pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That's a race just for fillies." He was laughing wildly. "Hell yes! And they'll all be nekkid too!"

I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. "There's going to be trouble," I said. "My assignment is to take pictures of the riot."

"What riot?"

I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. "At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers." I stared at him again. "Don't you read the newspapers?"

The grin on his face had collapsed. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"

"Well...maybe I shouldn't be telling you..." I shrugged. "But hell, everybody else seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They've warned us--all the press and photographers--to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting..."

"No!" he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he whacked his fist on the bar. "Those sons of *****es! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!" He kept shaking his head. "No! Jesus! That's almost too bad to believe!" Now he seemed to be sagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. "Why? Why here? Don't they respect anything?"

I shrugged again. "It's not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country--to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They'll be dressed like everybody else. You know--coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts...well, that's why the cops are so worried."

He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: "Oh...Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?"

"Not here," I said, picking up my bag. "Thanks for the drink...and good luck."

He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: "Nixon Sends GI's into Cambodia to Hit Reds"... "B-52's Raid, then 20,000 GI's Advance 20 Miles"..."4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest." At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her "stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom." The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of "student unrest." There was no mention of any trouble brewing at university in Ohio called Kent State.

I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn't have any. "You can't rent one anywhere," he assured me. "Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks." I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. "Maybe we'll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?"

I shrugged. "Where's the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people."

He sighed. "My friend, you're in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby."

I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: "Look, I'm from Playboy. How would you like a job?"

He backed off quickly. "What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?"

"Never mind," I said. "You just blew it." I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it--SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing--and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that says "Photog. Playboy Mag." I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. "Never mention Playboy until you're sure they've seen this thing first," he said. "Then, when you see them notice it, that's the time to strike. They'll go belly up ever time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic."

Well...maybe so. I'd used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a nineteenth-century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable "tradition." Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hadn't missed a Derby since 1954. "The little lady won't come anymore," he said. "She grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say 'loose' I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin' out of style! Horses, whiskey, women...****, there's women in this town that'll do anything for money."

Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, "If I had any money I'd invest it in the stock market." And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.


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The next day was heavy. With only thirty hours until post time I had no press credentials and--according to the sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal--no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two sets: one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States. And the more I pondered the fact, the more it gave me fear. How would he bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London and plunged into the drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegrass country around Lexington. My plan was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I'd rented from a used-car salesman name Colonel Quick, then whisk him off to some peaceful setting that might remind him of England.
Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan's was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. "Hell, you can't be serious," he said. "The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there's no more room...and what the hell is Scanlan's Monthly anyway?"

I uttered a painful groan. "Didn't the London office call you? They're flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He's Irish. I think. Very famous over there. Yes. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set."

He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds but the clubhouse itself and especially the press box were out of the question.

"That sounds a little weird," I said. "It's unacceptable. We must have access to everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don't think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we'll get inside. Maybe we'll have to bribe a guard--or even Mace somebody." (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor's box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good...)

By noon on Friday I was still without press credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he'd changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning--demanding only one pass now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance a Mr. Steadman had checked in.

The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar-looking; when I mentioned Steadman's name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, "You bet he did." Then she favored me with a big smile. "Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?"

I shook my head. "I'm supposed to be working with him, but I don't even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I'll have to find him in the mob at the track."

She chuckled. "You won't have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd."

"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with him? What does he look like?"

"Well..." she said, still grinning, "he's the funniest looking thing I've seen in a long time. He has this...ah...this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it's all over his head." She nodded. "You'll know him when you see him; don't worry about that."

Creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan's press packet. Well...what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the clubhouse grounds with bit sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn't think we're abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay; set up an easel with a big sign saying, "Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!"


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I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.
But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and RAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman's description and he seemed puzzled. "Don't let it bother you," I said. "Just keep in mind for the next few days that we're in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You're lucky that mental defective at the motel didn't jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you." I laughed, but he looked worried.

"Just pretend you're visiting a huge outdoor loony bin," I said. "If the inmates get out of control we'll soak them down with Mace." I showed him the can of "Chemical Billy," resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management's Scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. "I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works."

By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections "F&G"...and I felt we needed that, to see the whiskey gentry in action. The governor, a swinish neo-Nazi hack named Louis Nunn, would be in "G," along with Barry Goldwater and Colonel Sanders. I felt we'd be legal in a box in "G" where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby's special vibrations.

The bars and dining rooms are also in "F&G," and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belles and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything at all within five hundred miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that's what they're in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.

Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the "walkaround" press passes to F&G were only good for thirty minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling the odd handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or Macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in heavy demand. And since it took about ten minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and ten more minutes to get back, that didn't leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn't give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.


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Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we were seeing today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I'd been to a Derby in ten years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. "That whole thing," I said, "will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It's a fantastic scene--thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We'll have to spend some time out there, but it's hard to move around, too many bodies."
"Is it safe out there?" Will we ever come back?"

"Sure," I said. "We'll just have to be careful not to step on anybody's stomach and start a fight." I shrugged. "Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they'll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomitting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It's hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up." He looked so nervous that I laughed. "I'm just kidding," I said. "Don't worry. At the first hint of trouble I'll start pumping this 'Chemical Billy' into the crowd."

He had done a few good sketches, but so far we hadn't seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for a lead drawing. It was a face I'd seen a thousand times at every Derby I'd ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry--a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient--to the parents--than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and in their own ways. ("Goddam, did you hear about Smitty's daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!")

So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is. On our way back to the motel after Friday's races I warned Steadman about some of the other problems we'd have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. "You should keep in mind," I said, "that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all." He nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I tried to cheer him up by inviting to dinner that night, with my brother.

Back at the motel we talked for awhile about America, the South, England--just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.

Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into--then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who'd seen or even heard about his work. He couldn't understand it. "It's sort of a joke," he kept saying. "Why, in England it's quite normal. People don't take offense. They understand that I'm just putting them on a bit."

"**** England," I said. "This is Middle America. These people regard what you're doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off."

Steadman shook his head sadly. "But I liked him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort."

"Look, Ralph," I said. "Let's not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly." I shrugged. "Why in hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?"

"I thought it was because of the Mace," he said.

"What Mace?"

He grinned. "When you shot it at the headwaiter, don't you remember?"

"Hell, that was nothing," I said. "I missed him...and we were leaving, anyway."

"But it got all over us," he said. "The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn't see to draw when we got back to the motel."

"That's right," I said. "The stuff got on her leg, didn't it?"

"She was angry," he said.

"Yeah...well, okay...Let's just figure we ****ed up about equally on that one," I said. "But from now on let's try to be careful when we're around people I know. You won't sketch them and I won't Mace them. We'll just try to relax and get drunk."

"Right," he said. "We'll go native."


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It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Fish-Meat Village. Our rooms were just across the road in the Brown Suburban Hotel. They had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn't handle it anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the "darkies" in the kitchen.
Steadman liked the Fish-Meat place because it had fish and chips. I preferred the "French toast," which was really pancake batter, fried to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter to resemble pieces of toast.

Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally, we decided to go ahead and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the next forty-eight hours. From that point on--almost from the very moment we started out to the track--we lost all control of events and spent the rest of the weekend churning around in a sea of drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat scrambled.

But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less what happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:


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Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of mud and madness...But no. By noon the sun burns through--perfect day, not even humid.
Steadman is now worried about fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig & Haig.

Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people's front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: PARK HERE, flagging cars in the yard. "That's fine, boy, never mind the tulips." Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds. Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in tight pink shorts, many blacks...black dudes in white felt hats with leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.

The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them nervously. "Why do they have those clubs?"

"Black Panthers," I said. Then I remembered good old "Jimbo" at the airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic League...they were all turned away. "Move on, fella, make way for the working press." We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went outside.


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Pink faces with a stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. "Mayblossom Senility" (Steadman's phrase)...burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in the faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not?
The grim reaper comes early in this league...banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he's the one who's screaming. Bad DT's and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around the big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.

Yale? Did you see today's paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers...I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why, they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby today.

I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and went off to place our bets on the fourth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a group of young men around a table not far away. "Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!" he whispered. "Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!" I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was sketching. The face he'd picked out to draw was the face of an old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him "Cat Man."

But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn't have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar on Derby Day...fat slanted eyes and a pimp's smile, blue silk suit and his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge... Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn't sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men's rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomitting in the urinals. "They'll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the front of their suits," I said. "But watch the shoes, that's the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomitting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes."

In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith, and several days prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach Hotel.

The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since none of the awful things I'd warned him about had happened so far--no race riots, firestorms or savage drunken attacks--he shrugged and said, "Right, let's do it."

To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. "God almighty!" Steadman muttered. "This is a...Jesus!" He plunged ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take notes.


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Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track...nobody cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.
Old blacks arguing about bets; "Hold on there, I'll handle this" (waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback, T-shirt says, "Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail." Thousands of teen-agers, group singing "Let the Sun Shine In," ten soldires guarding the American flag and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.

No booze sold out here, too dangerous...no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach...Woodstock...many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of a riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.


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We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd stood to face the flag and sing "My Old Kentucky Home," Steadman faced the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice screeched, "Turn around, you hairy freak!" The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power glasses, there was no way to see what really happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph's choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16-1 shot named Dust Commander.
Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day's Courier told of violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he'd "bagged a record tiger." The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann's glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was "retired contractor." And then he added, with a big grin, "I just retired."

The rest of the day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can't bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph was after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put his fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he'd been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pedennis


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometime around ten-thirty Monday morning I was awakened by a scratching sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the curtain back just far enough to see Steadman outside. "What the **** do you want?" I shouted.
"What about having breakfast?" he said.

I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn't cope with the chain! The thing wouldn't come out of the track--so I ripped it out of the wall with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn't blink. "Bad luck," he muttered.

I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45. "Christ," I said. "You're getting out of control." He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. "You know, this is really awful," he said finally. "I must get out of this place..." he shook his head nervously. "The plane leaves at three-thirty, but I don't know if I'll make it."

I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to foucs on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him--a model for that one special face we'd been looking for. There he was, by God--a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature...like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother's family photo album. It was the face we'd been looking for--and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible...

"Maybe I should sleep a while longer," I said. "Why don't you go on over to the Fish-Meat place and eat some of those rotten fish and chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the streets at this hour."

He shook his head. "No...no...I think I'll go back upstairs and work on those drawings for a while." He leaned down to fetch two more cans out of the beer bucket. "I tried to work earlier," he said, "but my hands kept trembling...It's teddible, teddible." "You've got to stop this drinking," I said.

He nodded. "I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason it makes me feel better..."

"Not for long," I said. "You'll probably collapse into some kind of hysterical DT's tonight--probably just about the time you get off the plane at Kennedy. They'll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you down to the Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with big sticks until you straighten out."

He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went back to bed for another hour or so, and later--after the daily grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart--we had our last meal at Fish-Meat Village: a fine lunch of dough and butcher's offal, fried in heavy grease.

By this time Ralph wouldn't order coffee; he kept asking for more water. "It's the only thing they have that's fit for human consumption," he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he'd caught the proper spirit of the thing...but we couldn't make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he'd drawn. "****," I said. "We both look worse than anything you've drawn here."

He smiled. "You know--I've been thinking about that," he said. "We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomitting on themselves and all that...and now, you know what? It's us..."


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Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway.
A radio news bulletin says the National Guard is massacring students at Kent State and Nixon is still bombing Cambodia. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild chocking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: "Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pig****er! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren't sick I'd kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green--you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you...We can do without your kind in Kentucky."
http://www.chrudat.com/derby.html

There is no shortage of "monsters" in america willing to adminsiter torture.

Not what I said at all andrew were did that come from? the only ignorant thing was what the republicans tried to sell as a candidate Pallin? come on they thought the american people were dumb enough to fall for that snake oil sales job

Amen Brother

in the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15886834

Olbermann presses Hannity on his waterboard offer

By David Bauder

NEW YORK (AP) — The debate over torture is getting personal for two of cable TV's prime-time hosts. After Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity made a seemingly impromptu offer last week to undergo waterboarding as a benefit for charity, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann leapt at it. He offered $1,000 to the families of U.S. troops for every second Hannity withstood the technique.

Olbermann repeated the offer on Monday's show and said in an interview Tuesday that he's heard no response. He said he'll continue to pursue it.

"I don't think he has the courage to even respond to this — let alone do it," Olbermann said.

Fox News Channel representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The two men are on opposite poles of a debate that has preoccupied the worlds of talk TV and radio. Hannity says waterboarding is a fair and necessary interrogation technique for suspected terrorists; Olbermann calls it torture, says it's ineffective and should not be done by Americans.

Charles Grodin was challenging Hannity on the issue on Fox last week, and asked whether he would consent to be waterboarded.

"Sure," Hannity said. "I'll do it for charity ... I'll do it for the troops' families."

It wasn't exactly clear how serious the conversation was, since Grodin joked, "Are you busy on Sunday?" and Hannity laughed.

"I'll let you do it," Hannity said.

"I wouldn't do it," Grodin said. "I'll hand you a towel when you come out of the shower."

Olbermann's offer was quick. Besides the $1,000 per second, Olbermann said he'd double it if Hannity acknowledges he feared for his life and admits that waterboarding is torture.

"The idea of putting somebody in a position they have volunteered for, for charity, to respond to their own unsupportable claims, is in many ways priceless," Olbermann said.

Olbermann, who hasn't missed any chance to criticize his ideological enemies at Fox, concedes TV competition plays a part in his offer. But he said it was sincere, because he believes Hannity has had a damaging role in the debate.

"If you expose people to reality, even with someone who is denying reality, that can have a powerful and important impact," he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jADf7Acwh1ozkVvkjNQ9dkk7GQuQD97RPCCO0

I bet given enough water and a big enough board and time I could make you confess to being a witch, so you say torture works?

I suppose if you cant sell yourself then you have no business running a country.

I am sorry driven but the last election cycle pretty much stated that the left is more intune with what the people wish for despite the fox news promoted tea parties. I will agree though that people do need to be informed and get involved and I tip my hat for you doing that. I also agree its a game the dems and repubs two parties of the capitalistic system. The country realy isnt all that divided right now we have a majority of the people who hope for a better world and a stubbern 33% who cling to the past.

I find it to be a refreshing dose of reality and could help cure some people of the brainwashing they recieve from fox news, etc etc, and its even funny. I couldnt help but laugh at this.........." My favorite bit from the coverage of the tea parties was the inadvertent reality intrusion episode, where some smart-ass got up at one of the rallies, got the crowd all excited about taxes and deficits, and then asked them to applaud Barack Obama for cutting their taxes. That little bit of cognitive dissonance produced a long, pregnant, troubled pause, and you could almost hear the rusty gears in their brains jamming into one another, screeching like a subway train, and ultimately shattering from sheer lack of prior use, as the attendees decided to stick with their advance programming after all, booing the mention of the shifty Negro in the White House despite the fact that he is cutting their taxes, just like they claim to want him to."


Sorry you didnt enjoy it as much as I did maybe next time.

Huh?

by David Michael Green

Is it possible that the regressive right has, given its electoral unraveling of late, decided to swap the whole politics thing for vaudeville?

‘Cause if it hasn't, I'm really having a hell of a hard time explaining what's going on with these guys.

I mean, I've seen circus acts that were less hilarious. So I'm assuming that the right has simply decided to become a sort of public service provider in this most depressing at times. Presumably, they got together and concluded that if they couldn't win elections, at least they could make themselves useful by treating the public to a hearty laugh. Or six.

What else can you make of last week's tea party hysteria, for example? I suppose you could find a less spontaneous, less authentic expression of public sentiment if you looked really hard - perhaps by going to the latest Hannah Montana movie, for example - but I don't think it would be very easy. Fox (Hardly Any) News literally ran about a hundred segments on the tea parties in advance of the magical date, a promotional tsunami masquerading as news reporting that would've made any Soviet minister of propaganda blush.

I suppose you could also find political elements more incoherent and less grounded in reality if you tried really hard - perhaps by attending services at some new age mega-church, for example - but that would also be pretty difficult. If the low rent, low IQ, low on laundry detergent (non) masses attending these events looked familiar, it was because we saw them on the campaign trail last year, angrily spouting utter fabrications and fulminating their vaguely anti-government screeds at Sarah Palin rallies. What they lack in quality dental care or concern about the health effects of obesity, they fully make up for in sheer gullibility and lumpen selfishness masquerading as vulgar capitalism.

My favorite bit from the coverage of the tea parties was the inadvertent reality intrusion episode, where some smart-ass got up at one of the rallies, got the crowd all excited about taxes and deficits, and then asked them to applaud Barack Obama for cutting their taxes. That little bit of cognitive dissonance produced a long, pregnant, troubled pause, and you could almost hear the rusty gears in their brains jamming into one another, screeching like a subway train, and ultimately shattering from sheer lack of prior use, as the attendees decided to stick with their advance programming after all, booing the mention of the shifty Negro in the White House despite the fact that he is cutting their taxes, just like they claim to want him to.

On the other hand, perhaps the most amazing sight of all was the Republican governor of Texas, successor to George W. Bush, and would-be successor again in Washington, not so vaguely hinting at the possibility that Texas might secede from the union, and falsely claiming that the state had a special legal right to do so. Golly, I thought we had settled that matter a century and a half ago, but then I'm one of those odd people who always thought Lincoln got it wrong. He should have let the backward, racist, theist, regressive South go its own way.

Of course, only if deceit happens to be a moral problem need one worry about the hypocrisy of all these red states *****ing about taxes and the oppressive federal government while simultaneously receiving far more dollars from Washington than they kick in. But if they do check out, I only hope that Obama doesn't make the same mistake Lincoln did. Imagine the last several decades without names like Bush, DeLay, Gingrich, McConnell, Armey, Lott and other fine specimens of Southern hospitality running the country into the ground. Let them have their little experiment in trying to form a more perfect union within their breakaway Confederacy. Maybe they'll put Bobby Jindal in charge. You want to have a good laugh? Come back a generation later and see what it looks like. My guess is something like a crystal meth theme park, with nice colored folk to clean up after the revival meetings. "LeeLand", perhaps?

You know who else showed up at tea parties, besides Rick Perry, the sesesh governor of Texas? That's right! Joe the Plumber! And, just to make sure that no political sophistication of any sort whatsoever inadvertently crept into the crowd, Ted Nugent came as well. With head-liners like this, it's hard to figure how these guys aren't winning elections, eh? On the other hand, I can name at least one guy more clownish and more scary who was president of the United States and leader of the Free World for eight years running. And just recently too. Ironically, the explanation for the odd fact that the exact same stuff that seemed so great to Americans in 2002 seemed so awful in 2008 was of course George W. Bush himself. Yep, politics is truly weird sometimes, but it's on the right were the weird absolutely turn professional.

All of this is emblematic, of course, of a political movement in utter free fall, and completely lacking any sense whatsoever of what to do about it. This week it was tea parties. Before that, he was Obama bowing to the Saudi king. Before that, it was the president giving the Queen of England an iPod. Or was it the fact that he uses Teleprompters when he speaks? Or was it the connection to Rod Blagojevich that was sure to be exposed any minute now?

Seriously, though. Where's the outrage? Is there a surer mark of the end of Western civilization than that the American public is indifferent about the fact that its president - like every modern president - uses a Teleprompter when he gives speeches? Remember the burning anger on the right, when Ronald Reagan would use his ubiquitous 3 x 5 note cards at every meeting or event, even for small talk about the weather, and sometimes absentmindedly using the wrong set of cards for the wrong gathering of people? Talk about your Armageddon! It's weird, though. I guess I need to lay off the drugs for a while, because I don't remember any conservative umbrage about any of that. You'd almost think they were being ridiculously hypocritical in attacking Obama for using a Teleprompter, given what Reagan did...

And how about that business with the Saudi king? Doesn't that represent Obama selling out America? Or apologizing for something United States did? He probably didn't even have a flag pin in his lapel when he bowed to the king. He probably didn't even thank Jesus for his falafel, before breaking bread with the monarch. Not George Bush, though. He would never do that. His family would never have close relations with the House of Saud, that's for sure. He would never be photographed, say, holding hands with the old man, ‘cause that would disrespectful to America. And kinda gay, too. And, for sure, Bush would never inform Prince Bandar, lifetime buddy and Saudi ambassador to the US at the time, that the United States was invading Iraq, before he informed his own Secretary of State. And you know why? Because the right wing in America would be outraged if that ever happened. You can take that one to the bank.

Except, of course, that we don't really have much in the way of banks anymore, after the right wing's deregulatory religion got through with them. Which I guess explains why all those things did happen, and the same people who are now foaming at the mouth over Obama's simple gesture of courtesy were completely silent during the Bush years.

These antics only prove how deeply sunk into it regressivism now is. I assure you, if the right had a better way to attack Democrats and the Obama administration then this pathetic garbage, you'd be seeing it. These guys aren't exactly famous for playing to lose. What we're seeing, instead, is a political movement that is utterly bankrupt, literally and figuratively, and is desperately searching for any sort of remotely plausible line of attack, but only managing to make itself look absurd in the process, at least outside of Appalachia.

Today's conservatives remind me of nothing so much as an elderly lab chicken, used in countless undergrad psychology experiments, but now abandoned in its dotage. Over and over again, it keeps pecking the red bar, even though the last time a food pellet actually appeared was in 2004. Peck! Let's play the race card! Peck! Let's play the taxes card! Peck! Let's play the deficits card! Peck! Let's play the gay card! Peck! Let's play the foreign bogeyman card! Peck! Peck! Peck!

****! No food pellets! The red bar is in tatters, the chicken's beak is worn down to a nub, but still it pecks, and still no food pellets.

The frustration and anger you see among regressive politicians and their cheerleaders comes from fifty years of operant conditioning all of a sudden gone massively awry. It's like they fell into some parallel universe or something. Every step forward leaves them two steps backward. Up is down, down is up. White is black, and black is now president. What the hell is going on?

Poor regressives. For half a century they got an entire country full of people to suspend disbelief, and nod their heads in all the right places whenever they were poked with the appropriate stimulus. For half a century, they continued to win elections by fooling people into voting against their own interests. For half a century, they could turn lead into gold. But the alchemy no longer works. Suddenly, precipitously, none of the responses appear anymore when all the old stimuli are trotted out. And it all disappeared so fast. In 2003 they could sell any kind of bull**** imaginable. Three years later, they were handing over control of both houses of Congress to the evil, socialist Democrats.

The great news is that, as bad as it now is, these are still the golden days of the regressive movement. It's gonna get a lot worse from here. As they continue their antics, they only look more and more foolish, while President Obama looks more and more statesmanlike, less and less like his predecessor, and better and better in the polls.

The logical move for the Republican Party would be to abandon the insanity of the last three decades and returned to the days of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, when people like Ronald Reagan were rightly (very rightly) considered to be the lunatic fringe. But this is impossible today. Indeed, the GOP will be lucky if it is able to even stay where it is ideologically, as opposed to being pulled even further to the hysterical right.

Arlen Specter will provide the archetypical case for the Republican conundrum as he runs for reelection to his Pennsylvania US Senate seat this year and next. As an established, long-standing moderate figure from a swing state, normally someone like Specter should have no problem as an incumbent retaining his seat. In fact, the opposite is now the case. Specter is being challenged from his right in the primary election, and there is no indication that the Republican establishment will come to his aid, while every indication suggests that he's in deep trouble. One recent poll had him fourteen points down among Republican voters behind his primary challenger. Specter will have to tack to the hard right to have a prayer of obtaining the nomination. But even if that make-over can possibly succeed, he will then be stuck in the general election trying to defend the monster he became during the primary in order to placate his party's voters, in a state that is trending the other direction.

Watch and see if the few remaining moderate Republicans don't learn from this experience, and abandon the party. This will leave the GOP in excellent position to succeed everywhere that Jefferson Davis remains a hero, and pretty much nowhere else. Even the governor of Utah, arguably the reddest of red states, has come out in support of gay marriage.

If Republicans want to form themselves into a permanent minority at the national level, I suppose that's just fine with me. But even that isn't terribly sustainable. Situations like these tend toward becoming self-reinforcing cycles, in this case far more virtuous than vicious. Over time, a party that cannot compete at the national level will not attract voters or candidates even within its stronghold. And a party that cannot bring home the bacon because it has been relegated to a permanent minority status in Congress will also drive away voters. A party that is unable to change its stripes because of the viciousness and narrow-mindedness of its base is also a party unable to change its electoral fortunes.

When you see the supporters of the GOP saying, as they often do, that they would rather stick to principle than win elections, they're not kidding. And when you see them describe the likes of George W. Bush as insufficiently conservative, they're not kidding either.

Rather, they're on a suicide mission.

All I can say is: "Hey, works for me!"

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/25

That is the additude that put Obama in the white house andrew and I am glad republicans are exposed for the heartless people they are. Be glad some people can swing hammers or repair power lines do all the necessary things that make society possible. We democrats are far more compasionate and that is why we had a landslide victory with more to come.

what a long winded line of propaganda I expected better from you no games. unfortunatly their are no jobs at the moment take a good look around able bodied men ready and willing to work cannot find it would you have them starve? I agree times were far better for our g randparents and our parents our standerd of liveing has been erodeing for decades yet you blame the victims? each year the gap between the haves and have nots grows the rich are gettting riher and the poor are getting poorer why do you think that is?

Brew ha ha: Tea-baggers stand up for, well, nobody quite knows
Conservatives and the Right
by Alan Bisbort | April 23, 2009 - 12:07pm

Tea-baggers stand up for, well, nobody quite knows

Nobody loves a protest as much as I do, but could someone please tell me what this tea-bag brew-ha-ha was all about?

I've read as many accounts as I can about protests around the state and country — most of which were peaceful, commendably — and I'm still confused. As far as I can tell, the protests were mostly about giving Fox News a chance to fulminate and to allow those Americans who've been brainwashed into doing the bidding of "overtaxed" millionaires a chance to blow off steam without the use of their "legal" cache of weaponry.

The take-away that I got from reading the tea leaves was twofold:

1) Protests, any protests, are good for Americans, even when they're weird or wrongheaded, like this one; it's good for young people to be reminded that they have the right to assembly. Just remember that the next time people are assembling for a cause with which you disagree.

2) Right-wingers love simple imagery. Think about it: tea bags. Everyone has them. You can rip them off at some fast food joints, if you're quick about it. They are easy to carry and they have that visceral exoticism that offers a contact high (just sniff those leaves and you are transported...).

The irony about using tea bags as a symbol, however, seems to have been missed by the protesters. Almost all the tea that we drink is grown in countries that have been recipients of America's outsourced jobs: China, India, Korea, Myanmar, Sri Lanka. Tea is also grown, increasingly, in Central and South America, with which we've not been on the best terms the past few years. It's true that American tea companies blend and package their products here, but the actual tea comes from other countries. So, a sudden purchase of a billion tea bags, to use as a right-wing protest tool, only pumps up the bottom lines of other countries.

But I digress. Here in Connecticut, a few thousand people showed up in New Haven, New London and at the state Capitol to hold tea parties on Tax Day. Some guy named "Ziggy" from Waterbury, dressed head to toe in American flags and, in case you missed the motif, waving a huge American flag, demonstrated his patriotism by comparing the duly elected president of the United States to Marshal Tito and Slobodan Milosevic. (Dare I say it?: If you don't like it here, Ziggy, Serbia is calling you home). Another guy was going on about the "fiat currency" of the dollar, the "usurped" U.S. Constitution, and surveillance cameras, which are turning the U.S. into a what Michel Foucault calls a "panopticon." That's a mixed message if there ever was one — citing a snobby French philosopher to augment your American super patriotism.

In short, the tea-baggers' message of dissent was all over the map, but it seemed to have a common theme: Barack Obama. This protest was not about taxes — if it was, then nobody seems willing to admit that Obama has lowered taxes for the vast majority of Americans. This protest was about Obama. Period. Most of the quoted protestors singled him out. For what, it's not clear. For winning the election? "This administration is unconstitutional" was a recurrent motif (as opposed to the last one?), as was the use of terms like "socialist" and "fascist" to describe him.

In Texas, the Republican governor (Rick Perry), after taking part in the Pledge of Allegiance, vowed that his "republic" would secede if things got worse. (Oh please make this happen, Perry! It's downright cruel to tease us like this!).

One comment in the New London Day's coverage summed it up: "Where were these tea party folks when Bush started us on this adventure without a way to pay for it?"
_______
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21429

My feelings on the disenfranchised are if they do not get foodstamps or unemployment or some type of aid they will simply turn to crime rather than see their children starve. We can pay to put them in jail after they leave a wake of victims or we can give them temporary aid, it seems though the republicans prefer to incarcerate being the prisons are being privatised by for profit enterprizes who then can make political contributions at election time.

Organic I am far more than a union thug I am a single father with sole custody of two wonderfull kids who are active in sports and have alot to be proud of. I own a home in the country so they have room to breath these boards are simply a pass time for me. Anyhow these silly little tea parties are laughable as stated by the author of the original post to wich a link was provided if you missed it, sorry if you were confused as to whome the author was. as I stated above these silly little things are simply a propaganda effort by the right to grasp some kind of grass roots movement being they are out of power and will be for a long long time. Had the Neocons done their jobs for the last 8 years none of Obamas stimulas would not be needed but the facts are the country has been so broken by 8 years of republicans that desperate measures are needed to stave of a world wide depresion. Do you realy think people are so ignorant as to swallow the same BS twice? Look what they did the first time.

I dont think most people are trash in fact the differance between you and a millionair is a million dollars. Some people are born to poverty and raised like animals and end up in jail or whatnot but do a classic role reversal with a blue blood and see what you get.

I have to agree that the government has been run by big business for many many years for their benefit and not the peoples. One only need to look at the history of who is appointed to what when a new election cycle brings in another puppet. I will grant that Obama is at least trying a trickle up theory by attempting to create jobs that hopfully will be the foundation for the creation of more jobs by consumers who will actauly be able to spend money they earn by either building bridges or schools or other projects.

On 8 April, a gang of Somali teenagers with more nerve than brains challenged the might of the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet by kidnapping and holding for ransom the captain of the American container vessel, `Maersk Alabama.'

The pirates were shot dead in a rescue operation by US Navy Seals. This veteran war correspondent suspects the official Pentagon version of the rescue has obscured many of the more interesting details of this successful mission.

The US media reacted with flag waving and patriotic hoopla that seemed somewhat exaggerated given that the youngest pirate was only 16 years old. One of the teenage would-be buccaneers was brought to New York City for trial.

Nations around the globe are struggling to figure out what to do about the surging tide of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean, a vast area through which 20,000 vessels and 25% of the world's oil pass annually.

Somali pirates currently hold 15 merchant ships and 300 crewmen hostage. Piracy, goat herding, and growing the narcotic shrub, qat, are the only businesses in Somalia. Last year, Somalia's pirates attacked 130 vessels and captured fifty. International commerce is in an uproar; marine insurance rates are soaring at a time when many shipping firms are losing money because of slackening world trade.

Demands for action are mounting. France has taken the lead in fighting Somalia's pirates. Just before the `Maersk Alabama' incident, a French hostage was killed in a rescue mission mounted by French naval commandos.

International naval patrols off the Horn of Africa are being increased, including a flotilla of warships from NATO, Russia, China, Japan, and India. But the sea area is vast; Somali buccaneers are determined and, apparently, fearless.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just laughably called for seizure of assets of Somali pirates. She seems unaware the Somali fisherman turned pirates don't own Swiss bank accounts or New York apartments. Somalia is one of the world's poorest nations. The pirate's biggest assets are old outboard motors that power their wooden fishing boats.

The US, Britain and France are considering attacking pirate lairs on Somalia's long coast, a traditional method of suppressing piracy that the young American republic used in the early 1800's against the Barbary pirates of North Africa. Military action could include air strikes, naval bombardment, and commando raids. Mercenary firms expect a bonanza from renting armed guards for ships.

Still, caution is well advised. Somali piracy is caused by two principal factors: the dire poverty and desperation of this failed state, which has endured chaos, civil war and famine since 1991. Somalia has split into three or four autonomous mini-states. A northern one, self-styled Puntland is the base of many Somali pirates. Ironically, many of Puntland's pirate chiefs are in cahoots with Ethiopia, a key US ally. Ethiopia's interest is to keep neighbor Somalia divided, and at least some of its constituent parts under western and Ethiopian influence.

The UN says hunger, starvation and human misery in Somalia are even worse than in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region. Somalia is now the world's most urgent humanitarian crisis. A third of its 9.8 million people are reported to have become refugees.

The second cause of piracy has to do with fishing, the mainstay of Somalia's coastal inhabitants. Chaotic Somalia has been unable since 1991 to monitor or police its extensive coastal waters. Somalia has no navy or coast guard. Its waters have become a major illegal dumping ground for toxic waste from around the globe.

This lack of protection has allowed factory fishing vessels from around the globe to come and strip mine Somalia's once rich waters, leaving very little for Somalia fishermen. Eighteen years of ruthless, uncontrolled fishing has depleted all major fish stocks in Somalia waters.

I saw precisely the same thing happen off Angola's coast during that nation's long civil war. Factory fishing vessels from Poland, Portugal, the Soviet Union, China and Japan plundered Angola's famously rich waters, leaving its fishermen destitute and fish stocks wiped out. But unlike Somalis, Angolans did not resort to piracy. Angola at least had oil and, later, US aid. Somalia has nothing but sand and scorpions.

Piracy is unlikely to end until Somalia is restored as a functioning state. its people saved from misery, and its waters protected from plunder. But doing so will be exceedingly difficult as the notoriously fractious, warlike Somalis are split into bitterly feuding tribes, clans, and sub-clans with little sense of national unity. Tribalism has always been the curse of Somalia - not to mention much of the Arab world.

Somalia did achieve a somewhat stable, popular government in 2006 when a moderate movement, the Islamic Courts Union, took power and managed to restore a semblance of order and commerce.

But the bitterly anti-Muslim Bush administration quickly engineered an invasion of Somalia by its old foe, Ethiopia, aided by US warplanes and special forces, and overthrew the Islamic-light government, which was backed by Ethiopia's blood enemy, Eritrea. Ethiopia received generous cash rewards from Washington for its invasion.

Since then, anarchy has reigned. Efforts by the US and Ethiopia to impose a puppet regime on Somalia failed miserably as Somalis, led by a militant Islamic youth group called Shebab, battled Ethiopian occupation forces and their local Somalia collaborators. Ethiopia finally withdrew from Somalia, leaving a complete mess behind.

So the US bears a good deal of responsibility for Somalia's current chaos. Putting this African Humpty-Dumpty back together will make reassembling Iraq look easy.

Somalis are a warlike, proud people who fiercely cherish their independence to the point of anarchy. In the 1920's, British forces slaughtered 30% of northern Somalia's population who were resisting British colonialism. Fascist Italy also killed large numbers of Somalis.

It would be more cost effective to discreetly buy off the pirates than continue hugely expensive naval patrols in the region, or, worse, consider invading Somalia. Why not try to cut off deliveries of the fuel that powers their outboard motors?

Somalia, at least so far, has not fallen under the influence of al-Qaida, as some neocons in the Bush administration claimed. But we should not forget that Osama bin Laden promised that after sucking the US into Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, he would then lure it into yet another debilitating conflict in Somalia.
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About author
Eric Margolis is a columnist for the Toronto Sun. His web site is foreigncorrespondent.com.
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