Sunday - Mesilla - Amy Goodman (or "Make Tacos Not War")

Sunday Mrs. Dada and I ventured up to (formerly sleepy) Mesilla, NM. It's a favorite place, a kind of 19th Century state of mind being laid siege by 21st Century reality, i.e., the encroachment of "civilization" and "progress," most often mistaken as partners rather than accomplices.

The occasion was Mesilla's 15th annual "Border Book Festival." Our goal was to catch their featured guest, Democracy Now's host, Amy Goodman. Amy is a member of our national news media, with one exception: no one owns her as they do the other members of that *club* on which so many, many Americans rely for objective, reality based, unbiased news. (Choke!)

The event was held at the La Mesilla Community Center and we were very fortunate to be joined by dear friends Border Explorer and "Tom and Brenda." The event was a great success, judging from the sell out and undoubted violation of local fire codes. (The Dadas arrived very early as you can tell by the missing crowd in the background. This assured very good seats.)

I snapped this picture of Amy shortly before she spoke. She is shown here applauding something her presenter, Steve Klinger -- publisher of the local independent Grass Roots Press -- had just said. Steve said a lot of good things, prepping the audience for Amy. His impressions of Amy's excellent talk are posted over on Grass Roots Press. I was going to report on some of what Amy said, but Steve did such a fine job, I find it unnecessary.

One point Amy made, however, I should like to mention here:

“Embedding has brought the media to an all-time low. Embedding reporters is trading truth for access.” In other words -- my own, not Amy's -- the asses of special interests are crammed full of the heads of mainstream media embedded "up in their nether regions."

photo courtesy of Doug Wagner (as updated by Dada)

No better illustration of embedding was the story yesterday from Glenn Greenwald, as picked up over on Information Clearing House, about David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize awarded this past Monday. But you won't hear his name or the subject of his stories on NBC, CNN, Fox or others about the Pentagon and its ass-sucking "news" network's whose military generals with their *expertise* propagandized us into war while many of those same generals were on the payrolls of war industry profiteers. And yet, it's an ongoing story that NBC and others would like you to just forget about by not reporting on it.

But so much for old news, new news, endless news. After her presentation, Amy signed books for admirers outside on the porch of the Community Center as the throng lingered, hesitant to depart the experience they had just intimately enjoyed.

I browsed around inside the Book Festival before adjourning to the High Desert Brewing Company with our friends for a debriefing of what we had all just experienced. As a souvenir, I went away with the following T-Shirt as memento of the occasion. It's just like the one Amy Goodman had been presented by this event's organizers.