Buy Martha, Sell Cheney

Okay, are we done frying Martha Stewart yet? If these fantastic financial scandals are indeed a sizzling summer media barbecue in the making–the Enron/Global Crossing/WorldCom/ Bristol-Myers Squibb/Tyco/ImClone/Harken/Halliburton BBQ–then isn’t Stewart a measly marshmallow while Vice President Dick Cheney is the fat side of beef we should now be hauling into the flaming pit?

Stewart may have had inside knowledge that gained her a bit over $200,000, but so far she’s not been charged with a crime, or proven to have done anything wrong. That, however, hasn’t stopped some tv talk show chatterers from pretty much deciding that she’ll be offering decorating tips from inside a cell at one of several cushy white-collar prisons. She’s done, put a fork in her–and her multimedia company–some say.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, with the help of Harken Energy, eventually made more than four times the amount Stewart made cashing in her shares of ImClone–$848,560, to be precise–in the kind of a shady loan schemes that the suddenly on-the-spot President now says should be outlawed. In Bush’s good vs. evil world, an activity that should be outlawed is a very bad thing indeed–evil, in fact. So Bush, by his own standards, has engaged in activity that he believes is very wrong and should be illegal, while Stewart denies any wrongdoing and hasn’t been proven to have engaged in any. While House flack Ari Fleischer likes to say that when Bush was involved in the questionable practices they were okay, but that they should now be outlawed because others have "abused" them. In other words, the President was more low-key about his sleazy business, but now that these practices are getting too much attention we need to stop them.

Then there’s the bit about Bush not having filed his 1990 sale of Harken stock with the SECon time–32 weeks late, prompting an SEC investigation. (The SEC–then under his father’s administration–took no action.) Years ago he said the reason for the delay in filing was that the SEC lost the paperwork, a claim proven false, so now he just expresses his bewilderment, saying, "I still haven’t figured it out completely." You’d think this was a mystery somewhere between the hunt for Big Foot and the search for the remains of Noah’s ark. What’s to figure out–unless you don’t want it figured out?

Dick Cheney, meanwhile, cashed in more than $20 million in stock from Halliburton, a company he once ran and which now is being investigated by the SEC for possibly having cooked its books under Cheney’s tenure. Cheney thus may have walked away with a whopping 100 times the amount of money that Martha Stewart may have. With that much money involved, you’d think he’d at least be getting his portly mug slapped on a New York tabloid, like Stewart endured for days on end. Stewart, who clawed her way to the top by smugly telling us all how perfect we needed to be, provides a juicy, easy diversion for everyone from the WorldCom executives to the NBC News producers who’d rather not focus on parent company GE’s latest woes, as the corporate scandals grow larger and larger. She’s become the unlikely fall gal in a weird time. But even her story, getting milked dry, is bound to run out of fresh angles (though the supermarket tabloids have now exposed her "gay scandal," discussing her broker’s "double life").

As the hot summer turns into the election season, the Bushies might not be able to rely on Martha as one of many diversions. Nor can they keep announcing terror alerts that amount to nothing–John Ashcroft’s overblown press conference from Russia last month pretty much neutralized that tactic. The Attorney General’s latest warnings, and the breathless reports last week that 5000 Al Qaeda operatives are hiding out in cities and towns across America, are seeming downright loony–and that’s the case, frighteningly, even if they are true.

Cheney and Halliburton were recently sued by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that’s driving the point home about those allegedly cooked books, and a promotional video has popped up showing Cheney hawking for the disgraced accounting firm Arthur Andersen. And let’s not forget those Enron papers–including a list of dates and names of Enron executives Cheney met with, and which he won’t release but which may come out one way or another. Barring another terrorist attack, or a pushed-up invasion of Iraq, which I wouldn’t put past the hawks in the administration, Cheney just may make it onto that grill before the sultry summer is over. If we’re lucky, he might even become too hot for the administration to hold onto. Barbecue sauce, anyone?

It’s been pretty depressing in recent weeks watching some Jewish groups and leaders cozying up with Christian conservatives who’ve offered their support of Israel–support that is often based in Christian fundamentalist religious ideology about the holy land–but who haven’t changed any of their antidemocratic positions on civil rights for many Americans. The Anti-Defamation League, which only a few years ago published a report called "The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism in America," is now breaking bread with former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed and using him in newspaper ads because he’s been vocally supportive of Israel. The ADL’s Abe Foxman recently said he was proud to have Reed as a friend. This past May the Israeli embassy held a prayer breakfast for prominent Christian leaders, including Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on feminists and gays and lesbians. Also present were Alonzo Short, board member of the Promise Keepers, and Michael Little, president of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

This is short-sighted and just plain stupid. Not only have some Christian conservative leaders expressed anti-Semitic views over the years–including Billy Graham, recently caught on the Nixon tapes–but their desire to strip away the rights of women, gays and others is well-known; any alliance with them is a legitimization of those efforts. More importantly, making deals with the devil often only results in your unknowingly working against yourself: as the Jewish groups are working with, and thus supporting and legitimizing, the Christian-right groups, the Christian-right groups have been quietly working at the UN with representatives of Islamic fundamentalist nations to suppress the rights of women, homosexuals and dissidents on a global scale, as was revealed in The Washington Post recently (and which I wrote about here two weeks ago). And many Islamic fundamentalists have certainly not been shy about their feelings about Jews, as we witnessed in the brutal extreme when Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped, taunted with anti-Semitic cant and murdered. So, the Jewish groups are working with the Christian groups, who are working with Islamic fundamentalists, who are often working against Jews. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is still your enemy.