Homeless Heroes With No Name

Some thoughts about homeless Veterans, and a cartoon you absolutely must see. Today's "must read".

The Fourth of July has ended, the fireworks are over, the bands have gone home, the politicians have finished their campaign rounds, the tragedy of homeless American veterans remains unconscionably with us today.

Whether we support or oppose the policy in Iraq, can we agree on this? It is morally and patriotically wrong to have homeless and hungry American veterans in the hundreds of thousands, whom we walk past so casually on the street.

As one of our greatest would say, if he were with us today, sometimes we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. So I propose we saythis: We pledge ourselves that by hundredth day after the inaugural of our next President there will not be one homeless or hungry or hurting veteran of any war, from any time, any place in America, and that our real battle only begins on that hundredth day.

The VA has Domiciliary and other programs for homeless Vets, but they need to be greatly expanded. Also, there are outfits like USVets. I'm sure there are many other answers to the problem, but I don't have them.

Note to Vets: There are a lot of folks out here who will help you in big and little ways if they see your need. There are also bums claiming to be Veterans to scam them. Carry your DD214, your VA card, or some means of positively identifying yourself as a Vet. Also, if you look, act, or sound crazy or dangerous, don't expect anything from folks who are scared of you as they'll give you a wide berth. Check in with Vets' outfits wherever you find yourself, like the VFW or American Legion. Better yet, join one if you can. You can be a member-at-large not affiliated with a post, but you will be welcome at any post. The WWII tail-gunner posts that didn't welcome Vietnam Vets are pretty much a thing of the past, and the Viet Vets know what you're going through. They don't scare easy or tolerate crazy bullshit either. They'll do anything for you that they're capable of, a meal, roof, shower, clean clothes, a ride somewhere. They exist to help Vets as well as their communities, and they know how.

Note to bums: Try and scam Viet Vets and they'll take you up to see a nice view of the area and then unscrew the axle nuts on your wheelchair and leave you to get back down the hill on your own. Or maybe something clever. A lot of these guys still have issues about the way they were treated when they got back from war, and believe me, they'd love you to try and pull a con on 'em just for the release of getting to fuck you over!

The problem of homeless and disturbed Vets of Bush's War and the Occupation of Iraq has barely begun. We better start thinking about what to do about it.

While I was researching stuff, I ran across the following:

The number of homeless male and female Vietnam era veterans is greater than the number of service persons who died during that war -- and a small number of Desert Storm veterans are also appearing in the homeless population. Although many homeless veterans served in combat in Vietnam and suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), at this time, epidemiologic studies do not suggest that there is a causal connection between military service, service in Vietnam, or exposure to combat and homelessness among veterans. Family background, access to support from family and friends, and various personal characteristics (rather than military service) seem to be the stronger indicators of risk of homelessness.

Almost all homeless veterans are male (about 3% are female), the vast majority are single, and most come from poor, disadvantaged backgrounds. Homeless veterans tend to be older and more educated than homeless non-veterans. But similar to the general population of homeless adult males, about 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness and (with considerable overlap) slightly more than 70% suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems. Roughly 56% are African American or Hispanic.

Many of these Veterans are not currently enrolled in Veterans Administration (VA) or aware they are eligible for services. Resources have been provided by Congress to reach beyond currently enrolled veterans to identify homeless veterans and provide services to them. In FY 2003, VA provided services to approximately 100,000 homeless veterans, the majority through the auspices of its specialized homeless programs. VA specialized homeless services programs include the Health Care for Homeless Veterans program (HCHV) and its components (the Grant and Per Diem [GPD] program, the Supported Housing program, and the and the Housing and Urban Development - Veteran Affairs Supported Housing program [HUD-VASH]; the Domiciliary Care for Homeless Veterans program [DCHV]; and the Compensated Work Therapy / Transitional Residence program [CWT/TR]).

One of the major goals of the VA's homeless veterans treatment programs is to provide treatment and assistance to homeless veterans who have been living on the streets or in emergency shelters. A primary indicator that support services have been successful is that veterans achieve a stable residence (independent housing or within a treatment setting) following residential treatment. The Health Care for Homeless Veterans (HCHV) Program is a specially funded program that provides extensive outreach, physical and psychiatric health exams, treatment, referrals, ongoing case management and contractual residential care to homeless veterans with mental health problems including substance abuse. HCHV program staff outreach to large numbers of homeless veterans; a subgroup with substantial psychiatric or substance abuse problems is placed in residential treatment programs provided through, i) local contracts with community based providers, ii) the VA GPD program, or iii) the VA Domiciliary Care for Homeless Veterans (DCHV) program. This performance measure applies to those veterans who have been placed in residential care within these three programs.

There's stuff out there, and it works. There just needs to be a Hell of a lot more of it. Soon. It ain't gonna happen under Bush and his Republicans as long as there are needy people to steal from to enrich themselves and their accomplices.

A peach of a scandal in Georgia

Garrison Keillor with a few characteristic mild-yet-scathing words about Ralph Reed.

If a preacher secretly accepts a bucket of money from a saloonkeeper to organize a temperance rally at a rival saloon and maybe send in a gang of church ladies to chop up the bar with their little hatchets, this would strike you and me as sleazy, but others are willing to make allowances, and so Ralph Reed's political career is still alive and breathing in Georgia. He has bathed himself in tomato juice and hopes to smile his way through the storm.

For those of you who may not know, tomato juice is used to get rid of skunk smell. Reed must have a vat of the stuff.

Mr. Reed left the Christian Coalition in 1997 as it was sinking, and he was paid by Jack Abramoff to organize opposition to a gambling bill in the Texas legislature, which would have opened the door to competition for Mr. Abramoff's client casinos in Louisiana.

So Mr. Reed got the good Christians of Texas to bombard the legislature with phone calls and letters denouncing gambling, for which Mr. Reed was paid millions of dollars in gambling money, by way of Mr. Abramoff's bagman, Grover Norquist.

Imagine if Ralph Nader had solicited money from Ford and Chrysler when he went after General Motors' Corvair. Or the Southern Baptists raising money from Sony and Universal to condemn movies by MGM.

Mr. Reed also argues that his stopping gambling in Texas and Alabama was a good thing in and of itself, even though he was hired by rival casinos to do it. Using the same reasoning, Lucky Luciano was on solid moral ground when he knocked off Dutch Schultz.

But the chutzpah of Mr. Reed in wheedling money from Mr. Abramoff to snooker Christians into an uproar against gambling is cold-hearted greed. And his work in behalf of the sweatshops and sex factories of the Marianas, arguing that the Chinese women imported there were being given the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, takes us to yet an entirely new level.

Mr. Reed is a Presbyterian, and the Westminster Confession says, "He that scandelizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended; who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him."

But Mr. Reed is running for office, and that's no time for repentance. Time to hunker down and hope that the prosecutors are occupied with other matters. Smile and shake hands and keep changing the subject. If a reporter mentions Mr. Abramoff, smile and say, "I've said as much as I'm going to about that, and now I want to talk about my plan to strengthen families in Georgia."

Gambling? "I've always been opposed to gambling."

Deceit? Greed? "No charges have been filed. I have been exonerated of wrongdoing."

Will it work? We shall soon see.

I hope enough of the folks in Georgia are smart enough to see through this hypocritical, lying bastard's bullshit and keep him out of office.

Update:

Reeds IRS Filing Comes Back to Haunt Him

Heh.

"Praise Jesus and pass the scotch..."

Good commentary on the remainder of Bush's term by Mark Morford at the EssEffChron.

It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers.

He forgot to mention the awful itching in places it's not nice to scratch in public...

Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly OK, to the point where you think it might finally be all gone and you allow yourself a hint of a whisper of a positive feeling, right up until you look in the mirror, and scream.

George W. Bush is just like that.

Which is just another way of saying we are currently stuck. We are swirling around the bottom of the drain, clinging on to anything that might hold us from going under for just a little while longer. We have to let the neocon disease run its course, and just pray that at the end of it all the scarring and the pain and damage will not be so permanent, and so hideous, that we can't be seen in public for a decade.

This is where it stands: Bush can in no way risk alienating the ultra-right-wing bonk-job contingent that put him in office (they are, considering Bush's 32-percent approval rating, the only ones left even remotely supporting him -- even though, according to many estimates, they're starting to abandon him, too), and hence all policy and all agenda items from here on out will be even more vicious and desperate in an attempt to shore up the base. Hence trying to mutilate the Constitution to ban gay marriage. Hence attacking the New York Times and claiming newspapers are endangering American lives.

In other words, Bush's latest nasty, Rove-designed salvos and upcoming attacks to save a sliver of power and pride and sneering GOP control are just the beginning.

However -- praise Jesus and pass the scotch -- they are the beginning of the end.

Those quotes are from the beginning and the end. The meat's in the middle, like a sandwich.

Saturday Cartoons

Bob Geiger.

Montag.

Creature.

Command responsibility

We talk a lot about command responsibility and the Iraq Occupation here at the Brain because, as vets and former enlisted men, we've served under our share of good and bad officers. One, Colonel Bryant (who flew Jolly Greens in Vietnam with a search and rescue squadron), whom I've mentioned here many times, is/was (I haven't heard from him in 20 years) a man I respected. He knew when to let us run and when to use the 'iron hand', and he never let us forget our principles and honor. I've served under others who were little control freaks or lassez faire, either protecting their positions rabidly or not wanting to know anything unless the shit was about to splatter them. Guys who would always look to pin blame on someone else, rather than accept responsibility for those under them.

With that in mind, our friend Lurch has an excellent take on the need for command responsibility in light of the current situation in Iraq:

...

Preventing this sort of criminality during occupation is the responsibility of the leadership of the Army, from the highest military commander right down to the most junior squad leader. But unless there are strict guidelines, coupled with an energetic program of command guidance, individual lawlessness will occur in the best trained, most motivated army in the world. Violations of the laws of land warfare, atrocities like rape and murder, are more than just a secondary assault on the occupied population. They are an indictment of the military leadership and the civilian control of that leadership. To formulate and maintain the proper and honorable control of soldiers in an occupation requires leaders of principle and compassion.

...

After all that's gone on in Iraq since 'Mission Accomplished', there is no way, now, for us to 'win hearts and minds'. We have destroyed any chance that history will portray us as liberators.

Police states

A Brit tries to make a film in the U.S.

...

This, it turned out, was fine. He'd been told by his superiors to get a number. I'd given him a number. His job was done and so, just an hour or so later, I was on the streets of Los Angeles doing a piece to camera.

Except, of course, I wasn't. Technically you need a permit to film on every street in pretty well every corner of the world. But the only countries where this rule is enforced are Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea and the United States of America.

...

You need a permit to do everything in America. You even need a passport to buy a drink. But interestingly you don't need one if you wish to rent some guns and some bullets. I needed a 50 cal (very big) machinegun. "No problem," said the man at the shop. "But could you just sign this assuring us that the movie you're making is not anti-Bush or anti-war."

...

Anyway, back to the guns. I needed them because I wished to shoot a car in the Mojave desert. But you can't do that without the say-so of the local fire chief who turned up, with his haircut, to say that for reasons he couldn't explain, he had a red flag in his head.

You find this a lot in America. People way down the food chain are given the power to say yes or no to elaborately prepared plans, just so their bosses can't be sued. One expression that simply doesn't translate from English in these days of power without responsibility is "Ooh, I'm sure it'll be fine".

...

Didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Link via Blondie.

Come on ...

Did anybody take this seriously? Nobody in NYC did. I'll be back after a shower.

Link via Maru.

Update:

Our pal, and Brooklynite, Glen has thoughts about this as well:

...

Not that the right kind of bomb placed in one of our tunnels by brighter people couldn't cause death, destruction, panic, and chaos. It would. So, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the administration again for cutting New York's anti-terrorism funding by 40% a few weeks ago.

...

What the Hell Is Barbara Boxer Thinking?

From MFBTGR*

What the hell is Barbara Boxer thinking?

From the run up to Shock and Awe to last month's flurry of thrust-and-parry resolutions on Iraq, the junior senator from California has been one of the most consistent and vocal critics of the war. She voted no on the war in 2002 and co-sponsored the latest Kerry bill calling for our troops to be withdrawn by July 2007.

And she was one of only six Democrats to stand against the ambush vote orchestrated by Mitch McConnell and Bill Frist.

So what is she doing heading up to Connecticut to stump for pro-war Joe Lieberman and against his anti-war challenger Ned Lamont?

Look, I understand the you-scratch-my-primary-run-and-I'll-scratch-yours ethos of sticking up for your fellow Senator -- what Jane Hamsher called "the incumbency protection racket". And this isn't a progressive purity test, accompanied by the expectation of lockstep liberalism. This isn't about Lieberman's GOP-friendly positions on tax cuts, affirmative action, the bankruptcy bill, the energy bill, the privatization of some parts of Social Security, and the right to question the president.

At its core, the Lieberman-Lamont contest is about the war on Iraq. So how can Boxer strap on her Senate buddy blinders and jettison her deeply held beliefs on the defining issue of our time?

Compare Boxer's head-in-the-sands-of-Iraq stance with that of Jack Murtha. I recently called and asked him about Lieberman and whether he would ever campaign for him.

"How could I possibly support him?" Murtha told me. "I'd never campaign for him unless he changed his position on the war."

Period. End of discussion.

We need more Murtha Democrats, those unwilling to sacrifice their principles on the altar of Congressional comity, and fewer like Boxer, who has chosen to put the needs of her fellow member in the World's Most Exclusive Club above the interests of the country.

There is still time for Boxer to rethink her misguided decision to shill for Lieberman and reclaim her principles. If she needs a little nudge in the right direction, she can always call Jack Murtha.

I like Babs, but this time she's screwin' the pooch. Oops, that's a Republican deal, sorry.

These entrenched pols don't like anybody rockin' the boat, i.e. un-electing one of 'em, so they stick together. It's a choice: power v. principle, that each one of 'em has to make.

I think Babs chose poorly this time.

We'll see what she does after Joey loses the primary.

*My Favorite Big-Titted Greek Redhead

Lieberman Mulls Run As Evangelical Christian

The Satirical Political Report

Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, facing a serious primary challenge from Ned Lamont, is considering running not only as an Independent, but as a born-again Christian as well.

Lieberman, an orthodox Jew, has read the polling data indicating that he's pissing off the liberal Jews of Connecticut, and therefore is considering a religious conversion in order to tap into a new base of support.

Already, he has garnered the endorsement of Jews for Jesus, and ironically,the anti-Christ himself, FOX's Sean Hannity.

When asked by his rabbi why he was abandoning the Chosen People, Lieberman replied: "It is time for Jews who distrust Jesus to acknowledge that he will be the Son of God for at least three more Millenia, and that in matters of faith we undermine the Father, Son and Holy Ghost at our peril."

However, Lieberman insists that he'll still retain his cultural identity, by sporting a Gefilte Fish on the back of his station wagon, and taking his Sunday communion wafer with a shmear of cream cheese or chopped liver.

Although Lieberman, unlike Lamont, opposes same-sex marriage, he still has the support of some gay rights organizations, based not only on his infamous kiss from Bush, but on the fact that he seems to enjoy kissing Bush's ass.

Oy!

Fox? Henhouse?

Seth on corporate 'self-regulation'. I gotta go to work.

Transformation

From the world's premier fighting unit into thugs.

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

"We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. "That's a problem."

...

Back in 1985 thereabouts, the Air Force began their 'Quality Force Program'. They instituted mandatory drug testing (my failure of the THC part got me tossed off active duty and into the Reserves, go figure) and started cracking down on the 'mischief' we'd get into (they began to take 'borrowing' vehicles from the motor pool seriously, among other things).

Now, it seems, they'd be happy to have me back. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you break an army; when you have to settle for who you can get opposed to picking and choosing the best and brightest. You will see more abuses and crimes as time goes on and the standards fall even further. With these idiots in the ranks, the chance of war crimes being committed goes up exponentially. We can only hope Mother Nature and Darwin take a hand in the situation.

Link thanks to the most excellent Scout Prime.

Republicans

Roger Ailes, guesting at Jane's place:

...

Somerby says: It's bad to characterize [Newsweek's supposedly Liberal columnist Joe] Klein as a Republican because he sometimes says things critical of the Republican Party in general or specific Republicans in particular.

I say: When you become a serial purveyor of fraudlent talking points concerning Democrats which are indistingiushable from Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman's Greatest Fundraising Speeches, you deserve ridicule. And that includes the insult you earn from the content of your running commentary: Republican.

...

Note to Bob Somerby and Joe Klein, Joe Lieberman is a registered Democrat too.

Friday Cattle Dog London blogging

After 5 years, New York's pain is still palpable. We send our good wishes to the wonderful people of London a year after the tragedy of July 7.

Get back to work

N.J. lawmakers have a budget deal
Comes hours after Gov. Corzine urged lawmakers to compromise

Now, tell me again that Governor Corzine didn't do the right thing. That is how you get things done. By using the proper incentive.

Note to Bill Bennett: The casinos will be open tomorrow.

Top 50

Remember when the wingnuts gave themselves a sountrack? Well Pauly sat down and thought about it for a while and came up with his own list for us. It's obvious he put a lot more brain power into it than they did.

Even Ol' Gord might recognize one or two. Heh ...

Fort Apache, Iraq

Matt Taibi goes on a run with the 158th Field Artillery. Long article, but good.

To understand the war in Iraq, you first have to understand the people who are fighting it. And the way to do that isn't to burst in with your head in a point, bitching about WMDs and croaking passages from Arab-history books. Jump in the truck and shut your mouth; get on board, literally and figuratively. In America, everyone has an opinion about Iraq, even me -- but if you're going to take the step of actually going there, you've got to give it a chance.

"I love the president, he's my commander in chief," said one of the sergeants in our convoy. "But sometimes I wish he'd keep his fucking mouth shut."

That's right, motherfuckers, keep those hands up. America is driving by!

At home we deride every American soldier as a potential war criminal, we label them committers of massacres, we call them dumb and when we're really being nice, we say they're just dupes, field hands for the rich frat boys who got high on punch and drove us into this mess. But there's something beautiful about the way you can pluck fifteen American kids from the parking lots of the Midwest, drop them anywhere in the world, and you'll get the same thing every time: dip, dick jokes and 50,000 pounds of finely tuned convoy rumbling at top speed. Our kids may not be the best educated, they may not read many books, but in a fair fight, they will kick your ass.

Those are all off the first page, and there's five more! Enjoy.

Update:

I just had to add this:

[...]As a journalist in Iraq, you can't help but start to feel like what you are, which is a vermin and an outsider. In many ways, being embedded with U.S. troops in the liberal-media/Michael Moore age is sort of like being asked to march into Sunday services in a Lexington, Kentucky, megachurch wearing an assless biker-dominatrix costume: One is conscious of having been the subject of many past sermons. In the Army mind-set, the relative success and failure of the Iraq War is all a matter of perception, and if you follow that calculus far enough, which a certain unmistakable minority of soldiers will, all of the bombings are actually the media's fault.

Any journalist in Iraq who does not regularly feel the urge to puke his guts out from conscience-sickness is probably not in the right line of work, because increasingly, almost anything he does here is a gruesome betrayal of someone or other -- the soldiers and their mission if he tells too much of the truth, himself and the public if he does not.

Check back later. There may be more.

Update #2: My opinion...

...remains unchanged, even strengthened: Our GIs are doing the best they can, which is damn good, but we never had any business in Iraq, still don't, and it's not going to end well for us or the Iraqis. The only chance they have of getting well is if we leave, and it'll be painful for them. Mr. Taibbi makes the case very well.

War Not Lieberman's Only Problem at Home

Following up on Fixer's post, Real Clear Politics sums it up pretty good:

Joe Lieberman may need more than another political party. He may need another state, as well.

The received wisdom is often wrong. Polls showing Lieberman with a commanding lead in the general election were taken at a time when his opponent was called "Ned Lamont who?" The gap continually narrows as voters learn that Lamont is a serious alternative.

The contest has been framed as a vote on the Bush administration's conduct of the Iraq war, which Lieberman has slavishly defended -- more than some of his Republican colleagues, notably Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. And while the war is highly unpopular in Connecticut, that's not Lieberman's only rift with his electorate. On social issues, Lieberman plays to a Bible Belt audience, which his voters are not. That would include many of the state's generally moderate Republicans.

No, Lieberman doesn't have a lock on the Republican and independent voters of Connecticut. An election, after all, boils down to making a choice. The more people see that they have a reasonable alternative in Lamont -- that there's someone they can vote for, not just against -- the worse it will be for Lieberman.

Much more. Go read.

Lamont v. Holy Joe

Here's everything you need to know about tonight's debate.

The real fun will be afterward, and tomorrow when the gasbags have had time for their staffs to analyze it and tell them what to think and say about it!

More on that lefty rag...

Gene Lyons chimes in on the Repub smear of the NYTimes and its larger implications in NWANews, and no, I didn't find this op-ed while looking for hip-hop info.

The New York Times arrogant? Goodness, yes. Condescending, too. During the decade the newspaper devoted to its farcical coverage of the Whitewater hoax, feeding out of Kenneth Starr's soft little hand like a Shetland pony, I experienced that condescension firsthand. Even confronted with dispositive documentary evidence that its Whitewater stories were bunk, its basic response never varied: We're The New York Times and you're not.

But left wing? Well, the Times, along with The Washington Post, led the 2000 "war on Gore" that basically gave Bush the presidency. Then-columnist and now executive editor Bill Keller actually quoted his 3-year-old daughter's opinion that the Democratic nominee was a stiff.

After 9 / 11, the Times, along with the rest of the newspaper consortium, buried its finding that had all the legal votes in Florida been counted in 2000, Al Gore would have been president.

Lest we forget, it was reporter Judith Miller's series of leaked, single-source "exclusives" touting Saddam Hussein's imaginary nuclear weapons accompanied by TV appearances by Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney carefully coordinated with Times publication dates that helped stampede the nation to war. Columnist Keller thought invading Iraq was a terrific idea.

Now the Times has its reward. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll thinks he knows why.

"Many members of the president's base consider 'New York' to be a nifty code word for 'Jewish,'" he writes. "It is very nice for the president to be able to campaign against the Jews without (a ) actually saying the word 'Jew' and (b ) without irritating the Israelis."

Actually, that's wishful thinking. Anti-Semitism, as such, is old hat among True Believers on the extreme right. For years, the idea's been percolating through the right's well-organized propaganda apparatus that Democrats aren't loyal Americans.

Regarding Ann Coulter's ludicrous book, "Slander," I once wrote that "the 'liberal' sins [she(?-G) ] caricatures - atheism, cosmopolitanism, sexual license, moral relativism, communism, disloyalty and treason - are basically identical to the crimes of the Jews as Hitler saw them." Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and others peddle the same sterilized American update of an ancient slur. Limbaugh recently called 80 percent of Times subscribers "jihadists." Now the Bush White House, desperate to prevail in 2006 congressional elections, has taken up the cry. Reasonable people never want to believe that extremists believe their own rhetoric. But quit kidding yourselves. This is mass psychosis. The next terrorist strike, should it happen, will be blamed on the enemy within: treasonous "liberals" who dissent from the glorious reign of George W. Bush(my em). Unless confronted, it's through such strategems that democracies fail and constitutional republics become dictatorships.

Let's make sure our "terrorist strike" is at the polls this November.

Quote of the Day

2 today (yes, I know I'm late).

Gordon:

Too many in the media answer to 'Fifi' and not enough to 'Killer'.

Gilliard:

People take TV way too seriously. Way too seriously.