Fashion Notes for Insurgents; Jesse's Still for Sale?; Jeb's Pal; More Hate-Crimes Nonsense

Noting that Jesse Jackson took a powder on any counter-inaugural activities as soon as the Wall Street backers for Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH operation, "The Project," told him to cool it, the Village Voice asked, "Is Jesse for Sale?" Of course he is. What does the VV deem the function of Operation PUSH to be? Here's an example. Some years ago black GM dealers sued the auto giant on grounds of discrimination. Jackson made a well-publicized entry into the case, proclaiming that he would seek justice for the dealers. What actually happened was that Jackson colluded with GM in attempting to push through a settlement that left many of the dealers seething with fury at what they saw as Jackson's betrayal.

Jackson pulled a similar routine with Nike. First he went to Jakarta and paraded up and down outside a Nike factory, holding a prayer vigil in front of CNN's cameras. Just weeks later, the Reverend fell silent. Then Nike began making contributions to Operation PUSH. More recently Jackson's Rainbow Sports Organization gave an award to Nike's chief flack, Vada Manager. Jesse Jackson Jr. also showed up about a year ago at the opening of a Nike basketball museum in Chicago.

After the Wall Street arm-twisting reported by the VV's Peter Noel, Jackson swiftly sold out his disenfranchised brothers and sisters in Florida, phoning Bush on Dec. 14 with the usual claptrap about healing and reconciliation.

With Jackson's defection, the organizers of the counter-inaugural have been showering Arianna Huffington with requests for her to preside as Mistress of Ceremonies. Thus far their efforts have been rebuffed, with no answer from Huff HQ in Los Angeles. Come on, Arianna! What's your problem? Is it not logical to progress from counter-convention to counter-inaugural?

Jeb's Pal Among those loyally cheering Bush's coronation will no doubt be Florida's electors, among them the Cuban American National Foundation's treasurer, Feliciano M. Foyo, who happens to be a good friend of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. As Jane Franklin reminds us in a useful piece in the Dec. 22 issue of the Cuban newspaper Granma, Foyo has another friend, named Luis Posada Carriles, one of the most notorious terrorists among Cuban expatriates. In an autobiography published in Honduras in 1994, Posada names Feliciano Foyo as one of his financial backers. Franklin asks, "What does it mean to be one of Posada's financiers?" and gives us some of Posada's bloodstained resume, which most recently features his detention by Panamanian authorities, along with three other well-known terrorists, on Nov. 17 for an alleged plan to assassinate President Fidel Castro while the Cuban leader addressed thousands of students at the University of Panama. According to Franklin, "If the plastic explosive discovered in Panama had been used, hundreds of people could have been killed or injured."

This is not the first time Posada has tried to kill Castro, with previous efforts occurring in Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Peru. A sales representative for Firestone Tire and Rubber in Cuba, Posada started working for the CIA at least by 1960. In June 1976, while George H.W. Bush (the elder) was head of the CIA, a CIA operative, Cuban expatriate Orlando Bosch, founded and led the Commanders of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). Posada was one of those "commanders." Franklin cites FBI and CIA documents, showing CORU was involved in more than 50 bombings and, quite likely, political assassinations. This reign of terror culminated in October 1976 when a Cubana passenger plane was blown up after it took off from Barbados headed for Cuba, killing all 73 people aboard, including 57 Cubans.

Posada and Bosch were imprisoned in Venezuela for this, but Posada later claimed that Miami money helped him bribe his way out. Felix Rodriguez, a CIA buddy of G.H.W. Bush, secured his services in the arms supply operation for the Nicaraguan contras. In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said the American people "deserve a full accounting of [then Vice President] Bush and the Vice President's office and its knowledge of Luis Posada's role in the secret contra supply operation." Sen. Harkin wondered "why Bush never bothered to use his good offices to investigate charges of Posada's links with the supply operation and Felix Rodriguez even after the press reported them in late 1986."

Don't Touch Sherry On Nov. 21 the Sacramento Bee carried a good story by Sam Stanton about collusion between the L.A.-based Investigative News Network and cops in the California town of Davis, a few miles southwest down I-80 from Sacramento. INN's reporter Jennifer Hersey is 24, but can pass for a 13-year-old, which was the undoing of Michael Alan Hirsch, a 60-year-old Davis shrink. Hersey went on the Internet and posed as a 13-year-old named "Sherry." Soon she was in communication with Hirsch, with the latter expounding his fantasies and not long thereafter allegedly masturbating in front of a computer video camera in his office between patient visits while looking at "Sherry"'s picture. "Sherry" suggested a meeting, to which Hirsch assented. INN then alerted the Davis cops on Nov. 7. A rendezvous was set up in Simi Valley, 300 miles farther south. Didn't Hirsch wonder what "Sherry" was doing, gadding about California in this manner?

Their meeting was covertly bugged and filmed by INN. When Hirsch finally suggested to "Sherry," wearing her concealed microphone, that they repair to a motel for sex, the cops moved in and busted him for sex crimes against a minor. INN will furnish its videotapes of that encounter and of Hirsch masturbating in front of his computer cam to the prosecution. Hirsch is out on $50,000 bail and, Stanton reports, his interactions with "Sherry" are "expected to be a featured segment of a future network broadcast show and part of a new investigative news channel."

Investigative News Network is a five-year-old Sherman Oaks-based news operation that specializes in undercover operations. Most of its cases have come from its work for the Fox Network's Stalking the Stalker program. Hersey has been the entrapper in more than 20 such stings.

It sure sounds like entrapment to me, though juries don't look kindly upon would-be child molesters. I thought pedophile crimes start when molesters hang hungrily around kids, not the other way round. I hope Hirsch gets a decent lawyer. As a shrink he can probably afford one.

Where will this all end? Next we'll be having tv shows doing the same stunt in reverse, hiring 13-year-olds who look as though they're 24, and getting their pedophile raps that way. Everyone knows that the Bush presidential campaign started as a "sting" for Fox, designed to see whether Americans would be gullible enough to install a dumb Texas governor as president. Then Rupert Murdoch realized he could get away with it. Meanwhile the Chinese commies are laughing up their sleeves against the sting they pulled on Murdoch, setting him up with his current Chinese companion.

Those "Hate Crimes" An Albuquerque Journal news story on Dec. 11 reports that a coalition of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual groups will seek protected status for both gender identification and sexual orientation in a civil rights bill they hope to push through the 2001 session of the New Mexico legislature. The coalition will also offer a new hate-crimes bill, somewhat revised from the one that Gov. Gary Johnson vetoed in 1999. It includes sexual orientation as a protected classification. Robert Adams, a lobbyist for the Coalition for Equality, says that instead of calling for enhanced penalties for people convicted of committing a crime because of a "hate" motive, the new bill will seek sentencing alternatives that would provide "options for modifying behavior." "What does that mean?" my old friend Bill Dobbs, the radical gay constitutionalist, asks. "What is this behavior modification stuff about? Don't those gays remember the ugly history of psychiatric quackery in the name of behavior modification?on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people? Despite reforms, this sort of stuff is still practiced."

Then Dobbs warmed to one of his favorite themes, the whole outrageous liberal push for "hate crimes" as a legal category. "Is it not enough to get a gay basher or killer arrested and prosecuted? Apparently not. Enhanced penalties destroy the whole concept of equal protection under the law. Hate-crime laws create a nightmare of double standards. If my jaw is broken by someone who yells fag?they face more prison time than if they yell my name or call me a creep. Punishing the injury was once the order of the day."

We've gotten into the surreal with sentence inflation. Just what does two consecutive life terms mean, for instance? Back to NM, is it not enough just to pay a penalty for a wrong?will we now require essays as part of a "behavior modification" effort? On the whole though, there's good news on the hate front issue. Dobbs tells me that there is a growing chorus of dissent from progressive GLBT people about hate-crimes legislation. According to Dobbs, an historic moment came when several recent national gay political conferences had panels that featured critics of such laws. The push for hate-crimes laws blinds us to the death penalty and much more.

The NAACP ran an ad that had Renee Mullins describing how her father, James Byrd Jr., was killed, saying that when Bush "refused to support [Texas] hate-crime legislation, it was like my father was killed all over again." The Byrd killing shocks the conscience. But Democratic Party subsidiaries like the NAACP might just as well buy stock in Corrections Corporation of America. The ad diverts attention from one of the NAACP's primary issues, elimination of capital punishment.