[Mb-civic] WORTH A LOOK: Our Pious Babylon - Harold Meyerson - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Our Pious Babylon
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By Harold Meyerson
The Washington Post
Thursday, April 6, 2006; A29

Let us not think that Tom DeLay's decision not to seek reelection was 
prompted by merely temporal concerns. The Rev. Rick Scarborough, DeLay's 
sometime pastor, told the New York Times that The Hammer confided in him 
last Saturday that "God wanted him to get out of that race."

DeLay's apparently is the most obliging of Lords. He stuck with the 
embattled incumbent long enough for DeLay to give a "Texas whuppin' " to 
those infidels who ran against him in the Republican primary, only to 
counsel withdrawal when the polling made clear that a Democrat could 
still beat The Hammer in the fall.

The broader question is whether such a deity still rules in Washington. 
As gods go, He was surely more ethically flexible than most. Lesser gods 
might frown upon bribery, fraud, greed and the abrogation of the 
democratic process, but this one was willing to overlook such trifles if 
they strengthened the Republicans' hold on the House and were performed 
in a spirit of piety.

The latest in the litany of outrageous acts by pious men was revealed in 
Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, where reporters Tom Hamburger and Ken 
Silverstein documented the efforts of lobbyist Jack Abramoff to sell his 
services to the Sudanese government in 2001. Quoting both the Sudanese 
ambassador and an unidentified former Abramoff associate, they recount 
how Abramoff offered to improve the image of the quasi-genocidal regime 
among Christian evangelicals in return for a retainer of $16 million to 
$18 million. An Abramoff spokesman rebutted the account, insisting that 
Abramoff merely told the ambassador of his objections to the Sudanese 
government's war on its Christian population. But the very setting of 
this encounter -- Abramoff's skybox at FedEx Field during a Redskins 
game -- casts some doubt on the spokesman's account.

"This persecution has got to stop and -- say, check out that second 
cheerleader from the right!"

Is it even possible, in the age of DeLay and Karl Rove and the K Street 
Project, to satirize Washington? Doesn't reality outrun apprehension 
here and exceed the satirical imagination? A fine new comic film, "Thank 
You for Smoking," written and directed by Jason Reitman from a novel by 
Christopher Buckley, is putting this question to the happiest of tests 
in theaters this month. In the spirit of the immortal Billy Wilder, the 
picture recounts the exploits of a bright young spinmeister for the 
tobacco industry whose modus operandi is to besmirch tobacco's critics 
and hire scientists to blow smoke around all actual data. His only two 
friends are lobbyists for the gun and alcohol industries; they lunch 
regularly and call themselves the MOD Squad -- MOD being an acronym for 
Merchants of Death.

But even the MOD Squad is a pale imitation of the reality of the 
Beltway's most outrageous advocate, who goes by the name of Rick Berman. 
In recent months Berman has been in the news for placing full-page ads 
in major newspapers (funding sources unidentified) that gently compare 
America's union leaders to Fidel Castro and like authoritarians. The 
unionists' sin, Berman argues, is their support for allowing workers to 
join unions simply by signing affiliation cards rather than subjecting 
themselves to a National Labor Relations Act election process in which 
pro-union workers are frequently fired.

But Berman's salvos against unions are just the latest in a line of 
attacks he's leveled against drunk-driving laws, anti- smoking statutes, 
food safety ordinances and minimum-wage standards. He is, broadly 
speaking, the lobbyist for the Hobbesian state of nature.

Working chiefly under the aegis of his Center for Consumer Freedom, 
Berman has accused Mothers Against Drunk Driving and kindred groups (in 
the words of one of his Web sites) of "junk science, intimidation 
tactics, and even threats of violence to push their radical agenda." 
Another Berman Web site was devoted to dismissing the dangers of mercury 
levels in fish.

Berman's center was jump-started in 1995 with money from Philip Morris, 
and, thanks to memos that were made public in the discovery process 
during the lawsuits against Big Tobacco, his strategic vision is now 
plain for all to see. "The concept," he wrote Philip Morris at the time, 
"is to unite the restaurant and hospitality industries in a campaign to 
defend their consumers and marketing programs against attacks from 
anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-meat, etc. activists." The industries 
apparently have appreciated Berman's work. According to the Center for 
Media and Democracy, a former Berman associate has produced documents 
showing that Coca-Cola, Wendy's, Tyson Foods, Cargill and Outback 
Steakhouse are among Berman's largest donors.

The law may have hauled Abramoff off the stage, and DeLay may be 
huddling with his counsel and his Creator to plan his next move. But 
Rick Berman rolls merrily along, an inexhaustible source of material for 
the Reitmans, Buckleys and all who aspire to chronicle our depravities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040501956.html
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