Photo by Keith May On Dec. 13, the Reverend Lou Sheldon of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition urged all Americans to condemn the Reverend Jesse Jackson's “irresponsible” vow to take to the streets over irregularities concerning the African-American vote in Florida. “There will be nonviolent, disciplined protests if the scheme to disenfranchise voters is successful,” Jackson told the Washington Times the day before a reporter at the Moonie paper went to his Rolodex, looked under “Hatemongers Wrapped in Religiosity” and pulled out his Sheldon card. “Jackson is very close to inciting a race riot over this election,” blathered Sheldon, whom the Times credited with being the shepherd over “43,000 church members.” Really? Where? Added Lou-Lou, “Jackson said blacks will take to the streets to do whatever it takes to discredit George W. Bush.” The nerve! Say, wasn't that Sheldon in the streets of Santa Ana this past year doing whatever it took to discredit gay civil-rights legislation?
SEASON OF GIVING Arthur Carmona, the Costa Mesa teen who was robbed of his high school graduation and two years of his life— thanks to cavalier Irvine cops and county prosecutors who wrongfully convicted him of holding up a juice store—filed suit against all involved on Dec. 11. But besides thinking about his own payback this holiday season, Carmona is focusing on paying something back to the community. Along with his aunt, Santa Ana Police Officer Mona Ruiz, Carmona is soliciting donations for the department's Operation Santa Claus, which gives Christmas baskets to the less fortunate. It's something the teen, his sister and mother helped out with even before his incarceration. Want to help them? Call Ruiz at (714) 245-8769 or Carmona at (714) 297-7038.
RED ALL OVER Hot on the heels of the irresponsible report expelled from the bowels of the congressional committee throned by Newport Beach Republican Christopher Cox (see . . . hell, just about anything the Weekly's R. Scott Moxley wrote on Cox this year) and right on cue to give Bush White House II a red foil, the Pentagon's top general warned on Dec. 14 that China may emerge as a Soviet-like superpower. These are the same guys who, history shows, vastly overestimated Soviet forces right up to the collapse of the Red Empire. But forget that. Chinese commies “are aggressively modernizing their military forces, both conventional as well as nuclear,” General Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told National Press Clubbers. Add that to an expanding, “capitalist-style economy,” and Shelton said there is only once choice for George Dubya Bush: boost defense spending by $60 billion to $100 billion. That woulda given Dick Cheney a boner were it not bad for his heart.
IN-N-OUTING Another status-quo mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal, just put out one of those cute little “what's in, what's out” lists that says Babs Bush is in, Babs Streisand is out, the Gipper is in, Tipper is out, denim jackets are in, stained dresses are out, blah-blah-blah. Here are some the Journal missed: election rigging is in, popularly elected presidents are out, death warrants are in, peace missions are out, sublimidableness is in, sanity is out . . . Hey, this is fun!
1-800-LIAR-LIAR-PANTS-ON-FIRE One thing Dubya had better hope never takes off in the United States is something being hawked in Turkey: a lie-detecting telephone. “This is a phone that enables you to tell whether someone is telling the truth or not on the other end of the line,” a shopkeeper in the western city of Izmir told Reuters Television on Dec. 14. The $159 phones have an electronic device that notes voice-frequency changes undetected by the human ear. A flashing red light tells you if you're being lied to, a yellow light suggests exaggeration and a green light means you can believe the caller. Which means we can pretty much kiss the phone-sex industry goodbye. And should they ever affix them to TVs, there goes Fox's cable news channel.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.