Bad American

Another group of real American heroes

I don’t know whether my headline makes any sense in the bridge world (to me bridge is the card game equivalent of calculus) but I wanted to at least give someone at the Pain Dealer credit for a good column so today’s bouquets go to Connie Schultz for bringing the bridge controversy to the attention of Cleveland readers.

From the column:

Debbie Rosenberg didn’t want to be anybody’s hero.

She didn’t want to be a martyr, either.

She just wanted, in her own small way, to let others know she was an American uncomfortable with her country’s role in the world.

And so, when the 39-year-old mother joined her six teammates onstage to accept the women’s World Bridge Championship trophy in Shanghai last month, she held up a small sign. It was the back of a menu, and on it, one of them had scrawled:

“We did not vote for Bush.”

That was it. No calls for impeachment. No profanities or insults against the commander in chief. Just six words from seven women who do not support the policies of the current president.

It was a protest on a whim.

“We were expected to stand on the stage while they played the national anthem,” Rosenberg said in a telephone interview from her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. “And we started talking about how we could make a simple statement to our international friends that we don’t support what our country is doing in the world right now.“

Yeah, just like the Dixie Chicks. Except this time, three years later, overall public opinion is against George W. Bush and his idiotic war. But that doesn’t matter, of course. Its not the people who lead, as Hermann Goering once famously said, its the small group(s) in power who cow public opinion.

The federation wants to suspend them from competition for a year, followed by another year of probation. The board also wants Rosenberg and her teammates to perform 200 hours of community service “that furthers the interests of organized bridge” and offer an apology to be drafted by a federation lawyer. A hearing is scheduled for this month.

The board of the federation also apologized for the women’s behavior to their counterpart in China — where they imprison and torture their dissidents.

Touche Connie. Wonder if the folks at the High and Mighty Bridge Board get the irony. Probably not. One thing not really stressed in this column that appears in the writeup on the incident in The New York Times is that these people actually make a living playing bridge (if I could make a living playing computer solitaire and mah jongg I’d be there). So before you pass judgment on these (apparently all) women, admit you’d do it too if you could.

So the tinhorn satraps at the United States Bridge Federation want to really, really make these people hurt. Why? According to the Times:

By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”

“This isn’t a free-speech issue,” said Jan Martel, president of the United States Bridge Federation, the nonprofit group that selects teams for international tournaments. “There isn’t any question that private organizations can control the speech of people who represent them.”

Not so, said Danny Kleinman, a professional bridge player, teacher and columnist. “If the U.S.B.F. wants to impose conditions of membership that involve curtailment of free speech, then it cannot claim to represent our country in international competition,” he said by e-mail.

Ms. Martel said the action by the team, which had won the Venice Cup, the women’s title, at the Shanghai event, could cost the federation corporate sponsors.

Gee we really are getting quite loose in this country throwing around terms like ’sedition’ and ‘treason’ for a little sign, eh? These same people would probably have no problem adding ‘concentration camp’ and ‘forced labor’ to the punishments they’d like to see these women suffer for the audaciousness of expressing an opinion.

So we have a small but vocal and powerful minority of neo-fascists who bay for blood when anyone publicly doesn’t toe the American triumphalist line.

And then we have the second part of the one-two punch - the loss of corporate sponsors (with corporations of course run by conservative people). Again a small, but very powerful group of people can wield outsize influence, well, because the Supreme Court gave them personhood under the law back in the 1880’s and, frankly, most Americans feel their jobs and livelihoods are held hostage through fealty to the corporate state.

Which brings us to the most important line in Schultz’s column:

At moments such as this, it seems that a bitter and mean-spirited minority is trying to hijack our country.

Give that lady a cigar. That’s is exactly it in a nutshell with one respectfully submitted correction: there is no ’seems’ here - it is real and it is happening.

Again, what we need to do about it, as a collective group of progressives and as a collective society is grow a pair. I admire the Dixie Chicks for releasing “I’m Not Ready to Make Nice” but notice they only did it when public opinion swung their way.

Now if I were one of these ladies, my first (and perhaps only) reaction would be to tell the United States Bridge Federation to go f#% themselves, but again that’s just me. Of course, a lawsuit would also be forthcoming as well and I would expect one here too. More diplomatic people might take a different tack but in my mind, its way, way past the time to be diplomatic about these situations.

Either we are a nation that respects freedom of speech or let’s introduce a bill in Congress to revoke the First Amendment so we can stop teaching our children official lies. And please don’t hand me the crap about private (corporate) speech here. American corporatism is fast closing off many avenues of free speech and free expression and something needs to be done to break their power very soon. We could start by revisiting Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company and take legal personhood away from corporation before they take legal personhood away from us.

This little bridge incident is not little. It represents a despicable trend away from the values we said we held dear as Americans and fosters a society where we start using ‘the German look’ (over both shoulders) before speaking about non-approved political thought.

Its time to stop apologizing and cowering and start standing and shouting.

Thanks again to Connie Schultz for this column.

See, its not all bad at the PD!