[Steven E. Webster]

Friends,

Tucker Carlson is listed in the index of David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine: Right Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy no less than ten different times. I'll do a little read-up on those entries, but I think it indicates what is going on. Mel's mistake, if he made one, was to grant an interview to a member of this "Noise Machine."

The whole Easter Egg Roll flap is essentially a "non-story" that has been latched on to by IRD which has been working hard to turn it into a newstory that benefits their agenda. The story is then spread about and "echoed" through the rest of the noise machine--Tucker is part of the echo.

Again, I want to see or read this interview with Tucker & Mel, but my impression from IRD's article is that there is nothing substantive to their attack on Soulforce and Mel. It's just like the charge that Soulforce is "nothing but publicity driven street theater." Remember the scene from the movie Gandhi where Gandhi's volunteers submit to systematic beatings by the authorities at a well-disciplined direct action while the press looks on from their own well-positioned and well-organized press tables with telephone lines directly to the media centers of the world (and Gandhi's media-savy friend close at hand). Mel has referred often to "publicity driven street theater" as an ironic, unintended compliment of what Soulforce does.

What we must not do is allow the "noise machine" to drown out the essential message that the Easter Egg Roll action is about--we are American families too, our children deserve to participate in civic events at OUR White House the same as other children. If we are allowed into the White House on the same basis as other families, there is no story--other than Bush looks like a fair man and a President of ALL AMERICANS. If the White House allows only "one man, one woman" families with children in, then the Religious Right gets to feel good, but Bush should then be seen as unfair and merely seeking to please "his base."

Is Soulforce "turning a family event into a political statement"? Not if LGBT people get included like everyone else. If LGBT people are rejected that is a right-wing political statement that we are not "real" families, and Soulforce has a legitimate public complaint to make.

Steven Webster