[Unsung American heroes Abbie Hoffman, and Franklin Roosevelt, and Bad words that are really Good.]
This is The Rude Guy, Rich Zubaty. The Paul Harvey of podcasting. Unrepentant asshole. Cruise missile in the ear of corporate America.
Let’s kick off today’s show with: The Rude Guy Rules of Etiquette. Part Two. Bad words. Part One was, of course, The Rude Guy’s rules for fending off assholes. Show 26. The most downloaded show so far.
But today we’re gonna talk about bad words. We’re gonna talk about bad words that are REALLY, GOOD words. Words that people told us were bad, but are really good. How bout that boys and girls? Words we should use all the time, every day, to get people’s attention and change their minds and make them like us. So come on with me, let’s enlarge our vocabulary.
Ready for bad word number one? Here we go.
Bad word number one is: Socialist. So…cial…ist.
And it’s meaning? Socialist means, someone who’s social. Someone who cares about other people. Someone who would like to redistribute the wealth of society, so that poor people aren’t so poor, and rich people aren’t so fucking rich. Socialist.
Use in a sentence… Jesus was the first socialist. Can you say that boys and girls? Jesus was the first socialist. Jesus was NOT a capitalist. Jesus never once told us to buy low, and sell high. Jesus hated money, and money changers. He said that it is Impossible, to worship, both God, and Money. He told us to love each other, and help each other, and share what we have. Jesus was the first socialist.
Bad word number one. Socialist. Use it every day, boys and girls.
Bad word number two: Fuck.
Fuck is a tricky word. It has numerous, and often conflicting, meanings. Fuck is actually a passionate expression of emotion, rather than an exact definition of ANYthing.
Use in a sentence… Henry Kissinger liked to fuck young women, while he was fucking over the rest of the people on the planet. What a fucking asshole, was Henry fucking Kissinger.
Bad word number two: Fuck. Use it every day boys and girls, to make friends and influence people.
Bad word number three: impeach…im…peach
Boy that sounds yummy. Doesn’t it? Peachy. Like you’re getting your face smothered with peach pie or something. And indeed, impeachment IS peachy.
Definition: to impeach means to investigate. Especially to investigate high government officials. To impeach is a wonderful wonderful thing. It means that when guys we elected to high offices, shit on the Constitution, and try to stay in office forever, like dictators, we can simply impeach them. We don’t have to have a revolution. We don’t have to have a military coup. Three million peasants with pitchforks don’t have to march on Washington D.C. and shut it down. That’s all stuff from the old days, from South America or China or something. We don’t have to do that today. We’re MOdern. We just impeach the bastards. Get rid of them without a shot being fired. A very wonderful thing.
Use in sentence: If the Congress had any balls at all, it would impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney… and Alberto Gonzalez too. Sure, it’s late in their administration. But, to keep this from every happening again, we have to set a precedent for future generations, that presidents, who abuse the law and the Constitution, will be kicked in the ass and thrown out of office, and maybe even thrown in jail, just like any OTHER law breakers.
Bad word number three: impeach. Use it every day boys and girls. Impress teachers and friends alike, with your ever enlarging vocabulary of bad words, that are really GOOD words: Socialist, fuck, and impeach.
[bird or kookaburra]
Here’s a news bulletin. I just found out that Hillary Clinton used to be a Young Republican. A Young Republican, when she was growing up in the Democratic colossus, that was Mayor Daley’s Chicago. Suddenly everything fell into place. No wonder Hillary has never said anything GOOD about unions, or working people. She doesn’t know what unions or working people are. No wonder real wages and union membership plummeted during Bill Clinton’s administration. You don’t really think that dumb fuck was in charge do you? I’ve often said the only reason I won’t vote for Hillary, is that she’s already BEEN president for 8 years. If you can’t get your wife to give you a blow job, then you got marriage problems going back 30 years.
And… no wonder, attorney Hillary Clinton’s boss, when she lived in Arkansas, Sam Walton, swept across small town America like Genghis Khan, wiping out hundreds of thousands of family owned businesses. No wonder the only achievements of the Clinton administration were Rich Republican objectives: Welfare Reform, reducing the deficit, and NAFTA. No wonder Wall Street loves Hillary, and no wonder she moved to New York. Hillary is a Republican in Democrats clothing. Hillary is a Democrat who thinks the Democratic Party is about women’s rights and gay marriage, not workers rights and bread on the table. Bill and Hillary Clinton are Democrats of convenience. If Arkansas had been Republican, instead of Democratic, 30 years ago, governor William Jefferson Clinton would have been a Republican, not a Democrat.
That’s how fucked up this country is. We hear all this whiny shit about liberal media and liberals in government. Fuck. We haven’t seen liberals in this country since Edward R Murrow and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To see a real live Socialist you have to go to Sweden or France for Christs sakes. It’s like going to see giraffes in Africa. The left/right debate in this country is as phony as Fox TV. It’s one ideology with two different pairs of shoes.
So go ahead you Democratic women. Go vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. Prove, in the public arena, what I’ve been saying for 20 years, in my books, that nobody reads. There is not now, and NEVER has been, anything progressive about the feminist movement. It’s only about more money for women. And worse, feminism has repeatedly sidetracked, marginalized and undermined American unions and American workers. Hillary is on record as saying she will not even conSIDER repealing NAFTA. Know why? It was her fucking idea to begin with. That smiling dick of a husband certainly had no informed opinion about what NAFTA would actually do to American workers, or even Mexican workers.
These people are Republicrats. Democratic sell-outs to Republican ideology.
[kookaburra]
Getting back to our continuing segments on unsung American heroes, I’ve had a few requests to do a segment on Abbie Hoffman, so here goes.
Abbie Hoffman, sixties radical, was the MOST influential revolutionary of the last half of the 20th Century. Moreso than Che Guevara.
His method of, “revolution for the hell of it”, or the politics of joy, Yippie, ended the Vietnam War, brought down Richard Nixon, brought down the Berlin Wall, and… reincarnated on the other side of the world, in the form of a Chinese guy in a white shirt, holding a shopping bag… it brought a Chinese tank, and the Chinese government, to a complete halt at Tiananmen Square.
Abbie Hoffman’s tactics were so effective, he has been scrupulously IGNORED by history books. They pretend he didn’t exist. But if he was alive today, we would NOT have been in Iraq for four years. Code Pink is a pale attempt to recreate his political style. So am I, The Rude Guy. Pale imitations. But the Brit Humes, on Fox TV, and the handlers for Clinton and Obama, in their thousand dollar suits, just glare at us, and smirk at us, and don’t let us get anywhere near their microphones. They don’t wanna hear what we have to say. They don’t wanna see a re-creation of the madcap political style of Abbie Hoffman, EVER again. They wanna be IN CONTROL. Just like Karl Rove.
It should be SO easy for me to find someone to vote for in 2008… besides my perennial favorite Dennis Kucinich. There should be a hundred Dennis Kucinich’s to choose from. I should be able to pick a leftist candidate based on his hobbies or his haircut. But the suits are still in control. The Republicrats. Larry King will make fun of Kucinich again, like he did four years ago. And once again Larry King will say, gee, I don’t understand how a candidate can win three debates and lose the election. These guys are as dumb as grasshoppers. That’s why they sit where they sit. At the top of CNN. People with brains were edited out of that pile decades ago. But it wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, there was Abbie Hoffman.
Abbie Hoffman, from Worcester Massachusetts, started out his political career as a Freedom Rider, going down to Mississippi and Alabama and risking his neck to register Southern Blacks to vote.
One day he was sitting around Central Park watching the hippies throw Frisbees, and he said to himself: these people are a political movement, and they don’t KNOW it yet. So he set out to tell them all about it.
He understood that the instant you start having a rational discussion with the powers that be, you’ve lost. They control the definitions, the sound bites, the school indoctrination, the statistics, the whole ball game. The only way to deal with them is through IRrational acts. Clowning, street theater. Like getting a hundred thousand hippies to surround the Pentagon, and levitate it. LEVITATE it. What can you say to a hundred thousand people who BELIEVE they’ve just levitated the Pentagon. It’s like trying to shout down a mob of a hundred thousand people who BELIEVE Jesus was resurrected. There’s no way for the authorities to stop that. Nothing they can say or do to “talk sense” into us. Abbie Hoffman created a revolution right in front of our eyes, inside a rip, or a tear, in our psyches, where it could not, BE expelled.
The cops beat him up over and over again. Dozens of times he went to jail cracked and bleeding. He wrote that the main thing for him to conquer was the fear. Once he had taken the edge off the fear, he could hit the streets and do anything that came into his mind. Like most of us back then, he took drugs to calm the fear, and like most of us, eventually the drugs caught up with him.
And here’s a little known fact. … Abbie Hoffman invented the sound bite.
He ran a pig for president, and threatened to put LSD in the Chicago water supply, during the 1968 Democratic convention there. He was the lightning rod for the 1968 police riots in Chicago, charging around stoned, fomenting chaos in his American flag shirt… which shirt, at the time, caused the World War Two generation, the GREEDiest generation, to foam at the mouth and spit blood.
And whenever the microphones asked him why he was doing all this crazy shit, Abbie always said the same thing: Stop the Vietnam War. Stop the Vietnam War. Stop… the Vietnam War.
His best trick ever — the best political stunt of all time — was throwing away 10,000 dollars, in single dollar bills, from the balcony of the New York Stock Exchange, bringing trading to a complete halt, as gluttonous stock traders, bent over to grab free bills. It was a media shot heard, and seen, round the world.
And why did he do it? Stop the Vietnam War.
Nixon flashing the “V” sign as he stepped into the Presidential helicopter for the last time… evacuating the Saigon embassy… the Berlin Wall reduced to rubble… and a lone man facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square. Every one of these political high tides of history, had Abbie Hoffman’s fingerprints all over it.
And yes, there was a downside.
It has been said, that if Abbie and the Yippies had stayed away from Chicago in 1968, and IF Hubert Humphrey had won the 1968 presidential race, instead of Richard Nixon, the Supreme Court today would have a left wing, instead of a right wing, bias. George Bush would NEVER have been appointed president by a Leftist Supreme Court, after his Florida vote stealing shenanigans. Never.
And, just as important, it’s possible that Humphrey would have followed in Lyndon Johnson’s footsteps, to enact Franklin Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights. The idea that, in the richest country in the world, people have a right to decent jobs and adequate food and housing, and basic medical care.
Here’s how Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the biggest forgotten hero of all, spelled out his Second Bill of Rights, also called his Economic Bill of Rights, in his in his January 11th, 1944 State of the Union address, to the nation… right at the end of World War Two. No one wanted to go through that kind of bloodbath again. Everyone was looking for better ways to insure peace and prosperity than the free fucking market, which had crashed in 1929, and then let bankers and corporations run wild and create this worldwide holocaust. For profit.
FDR…Quote… “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Needy people are not free people.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a Second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all. Regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition, and DOMINATION by monopolies [that means BIG corporations] freedom from unfair competition, and DOMINATION by monopolies, at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won… [he was talking about World War Two]… And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world, depends in large part upon how fully these, and similar rights, have been carried into practice for our citizens.” Unquote
Of course FDR is the one who enacted Social Security. Do ya think Hillary Clinton is gonna risk her neck on this kind of political vision. Fuck. She and Bill reduced help to people, and increased help to corporations, during their first presidency. Last year the automatic cost of living adjustment for Social security was 3 per cent. That’s what the sell out economists tell us inflation was. Three per cent. Meanwhile, the cost of gas was up thirty per cent. Food up thirty per cent. Housing thirty per cent. And they raised Social Security three percent. It’s ten times too little ten times too late. Do we hear Hillary or Barack talking about that?
What’s missing here is an entire ethos. An entire worldview. A worldview that takes account of the little people.
And here’s what Franklin Roosevelt thought about Social Security:
Social Security is not intended ONLY as an old age pension. It is meant to assure Americans of Freedom from Fear. So they can get up every morning, and go about their work without stress and panic… and thereby be healthy, happy and productive. So let’s go back and listen to what FDR was saying at the END of World War Two.
Quote: We look forward to a world founded upon the Four ESSENTIAL Freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings, which will secure to every nation, a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments, to such a point, and in such a thorough fashion, that NO NATION will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world. Unquote.
What a sad fucking joke it is, on us, that the Second Bill of Rights, the Economic Bill of Rights, was never enacted – in America. The richest nation in history. But only in the downtrodden nations of Europe, who had just beat each other to shit during the war, and who, after the dust cleared, looked around and said to themselves: we have to do this better.
‘Needy people are not free people.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
We have to care about each other, not just fuck with each other. And that’s the attitude one encounters in Europe today. Not belligerence, but generosity and cooperation. Not equal opportunity, but equal result. Not sprinters running against club foots. Not Social Darwinism. No bums sleeping under bridges. No starving people. No people without basic health care. ‘Needy people are not free people.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. FDR.
But… Let’s face it. It’s impossible to rewrite history. We don’t know what Humphrey would have done or not done. The people who hated Abbie Hoffman then are the same ones who hate Ralph Nader today. They want a squeaky clean corporate Democratic Party, that flies the banners of abortion and gay marriage, while it advances the Wall Street Agenda of global corporate domination. Steal from the poor. Give to the rich.
Me, I’ll take Abbie Hoffman or Ralph Nader every time. Liars like Nixon and Bush should BE impeached. Walls like the Berlin Wall should be torn down. And once in awhile someone with a shopping bag needs to stare down a tank, just to make all of us feel really alive. Really really ALIVE.
God bless Abbie Hoffman. May his spirit never die.
Remember boys and girls: socialist, fuck and impeach.
[kookaburra]
This is The Rude Guy, and we need money. If you’ve made a donation then don’t even listen to what I say next. This is a word to all you slackers out there. You pay 30,000 dollars as year to go to college and won’t send me ten bucks. Or you pay 30,000 dollars for a fucking car, and won’t send me ten bucks. What a fucked up country. No wonder the free market doesn’t work, when the dominant institutions suck everybody dry, and don’t leave enough left over for a taco, or a tip to a barefoot philosopher.
You slackers have slithered through this long enough without coughing up. If you don’t wanna send me ten bucks, don’t listen to the show. That’ll be less bandwidth I have to pay for. I’m not talking about the guys who’ve sent something in. Those’re the guys who’ve kept me going. Mentally, spiritually, creatively… AND economically. And let me not hesitate to add, that not ONE of the donors has been a woman. No Paypal donation from a woman. They call this equality. I see how many downloads I pay for, and I see how many donations I get, and there’s a Grand Canyon between them. So go to therudeguy.com, or happyfool.orG, and pony up, click on make a donation… or else go listen to Randi Rhodes or Ed Shultz say the same shit over and over again. They’re not bad people. But they’re only amusing personalities who read one book every ten years, and have nothing to bring to the debate besides their opinions. Fuck opinions. This is the show about ideas. Not about what some poltical fuckwad said yesterday in the Senate. And what you think about that. If you’re not willing to support street philosophy and the proliferation of new ideas then, fuck off. I don’t’ care. I don’t need more people to tell me they like my show. I already know that. I need them to help me MAKE the show. Corporate media is certainly not gonna sign up for this. And 100 years from now archivists are gonna be listening to this show. Not Ed Schultz or Randi Rhodes.
You think I’m partying my ass off out here, lounging around in the South of France. Happy not to be living in my truck anymore. Well that ain’t it. The reality is that I’m wet and cold and living a hand to mouth existence on credit cards in foreign countries where I’m not even ALLOWed to work… and I have to depend on the charity of others. I stay in houses being rehabbed, with broken windows and peeling paint and lights that don’t work. I’m flying around the globe on a paper airplane, and there’s no safety net. And no parachute. Thank God for the charity of good people. Thank GOD for them. But they’re not so much paying the way for me, as they’re paying the way for YOU. Slackers. They’re keeping ME going, so you can listen to my shows for free. How fucked up is that? Huh? I’ll tell ya. It sucks… and you should feel guilty about it. Not shamed. Not worthless or hopeless. Not stupid. Just guilty. Like there’s something you’re supposed to be doing and you’re NOT doing it. You’re supposed to walk the dog so it doesn’t shit on the rug. And you’re supposed to send ten or twenty bucks to the Rude Guy. So do the right thing. And if you really really ARE broke, forget everything I just said. I’m not ranting at you either.
This is The Rude Guy. We’ll be back. Stay strong. Don’t let anybody intimidate you. Don’t let anybody shame you. But… IFyou FEEL guilty about something, DEAL with whatever it is, that’s making you feel the guilt. Ha ha ha ha No more bullshit. That’s our motto…. No more BULLssshhhiiittt.
Ahhhh, feels a little better already.
