The P.U.-litzer Prizes were established a dozen years ago to provide special recognition for truly smelly media performances. As usual, I've conferred with Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watch group FAIR, to sift through the large volume of entries.

And now, the thirteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the foulest media performances of 2004:

MANDATE MANIA -- Too many winners to name

It became a media mantra. Two days after the election, the Los Angeles Times reported that "Bush can claim a solid mandate of 51 percent of the vote." Cox columnist Tom Teepen referred to Bush's vote margin as an "unquestionable mandate." Right-wing pundit Bill Kristol argued that Bush's "mandate" went beyond the 49-states-to-one landslides of Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984. Reality check: This was the narrowest win for an incumbent president since 1916. As Greg Mitchell wrote in Editor & Publisher: "Where I come from, 51 percent is considered a bare majority, not a comfortable margin. If only 51 percent of my family or my editorial staff think I am doing a good job, I might look to moderate my behavior, not repeat or enlarge it."

Opponents of a recount and revote in Ohio say the first won't change the election's outcome and the second is unwarranted.  But history demands them both. 

Lets deal with the recount first.  Various Republican minions complain that a full recount of the Ohio vote will cost upwards of $1.5 million and won't shift the state from George W. Bush to John Kerry.

But that money represents less than 0.1% of the $200 billion minimum figure the Bush Administration will spend to "bring democracy to Iraq."  The litany of fraud and manipulation that has surrounded the 2004 Ohio election is staggering ... and growing.  Its footprints are posted in part at http://freepress.org and numerous other web sites.   

The Ohio election, which will determine this most heavily contested of all US presidential campaigns, has no credibility with tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions the world over.

Simply put:  if this government can't spend $1.5 million to re-check its own presidential vote counts, it has no credibility as a proponent of global democracy.

Revised December 24, 2004

I give my heartfelt thanks to Ellis Goldberg for obtaining and abstracting the data from the Lucas County canvass records, and to Coleen Christensen for producing the spreadsheets, which made it possible for me to write this report in a timely manner.

The very first thing we all noticed when examining the precinct canvass records for Lucas County was the distribution of turnout.  The range is striking, and turnout is distinctly higher in the Bush precincts than in the Kerry precincts.  In some precincts the reported turnout is too high to be credible.

PRECINCTS WITH HIGHEST TURNOUT, TOLEDO SUBURBS
 
Precinct                 Turnout  Bush  Kerry
 
MONCLOVA TOWNSHIP 10      92.67    217    161

Racism is best known among white folks for the overt ways that bigotry chooses to abuse. This is what allows white liberals to excuse themselves from charges that they are racist, because (God bless 'em) they don't set out to hurt anybody. But Ralph Ellison titled his classic novel Invisible Man, because racism is a grim problem also of what white folks do not see. And this problem persists insufferably, right down to this morning's news.

On this day after the election-fraud hearings led by John Conyers and his Democratic colleagues at the Judiciary Committee, I am beginning to feel the effects of racism's one-two punch. On the overt side, we have the written testimony of Judith A. Browne, acting co-director of the Advancement Project in Washington, D.C.

For Browne, whose testimony to the Conyers committee is posted online, "voters of color" have been targets of Republican-led disenfranchisement in the elections of 2000 and 2004.

http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/brownevotestmt12804.pdf target=brown

A spectacular and emotionally devastating Miss Saigon has triumphed at the Palace Theater in a rich, brilliant production that underscores the tragedy of yet another American overseas war.

From the searing single shaft of light that introduces the powerful Jennifer Paz to the show's gut-wrenching finale, this is a not-to-be-missed musical x-ray of our catastrophic Vietnam excursion. 

Paz's lovely voice and heart-rending dramatic performance form the play's centerpiece.  She is utterly convincing as a rural waif who finds herself in a Saigon brothel, only to fall in love with her earnest American lover (Alan Gillespie).  The real male force in the show is the versatile, very impressive Johann Michael Camat, whose conniving, street smart Engineer gives the play its credibility and much of its depth.