Episode #400: It Just Takes A Little Effort
First Broadcast: 12/26/05
Repeated: 2/20/06; 2/5/07; 12/10/07; 11/17/08
With tonight's program, Free New York surpasses almost every weekly series you can think of in terms of sheer number of episodes. For comparison, there are only five weekly prime-time fiction series that have had a longer run than us (according to the "Longest Running TV Shows" web site):
| Series | Number of Episodes |
|---|---|
| Gunsmoke | 633 |
| Lassie | 588 |
| Death Valley Days | 452 |
| Ozzie and Harriett | 435 |
| Bonanza | 430 |
Of course, this is nothing compared to something like Meet The Press, which has been running almost every week since 1947 with over 2600 episodes under its belt, but it's pretty good, considering that we probably have only a fraction of the budget of any of the above!
For the recipes in tonight's episode, visit here, and you too can enjoy the same dinner that we did to celebrate the occasion. On to episode #800, more or less!
So, what is Free New York anyway? The simple answer is that it's a
this neat little
public access TV show on
Manhattan Neighborhood Network which I co-produce with the
tremendous help of my camerawoman/editor/everything else,
Kim. The complicated answer
is that it's a project of mine to broadcast opinions and events which
don't always appear within "the mainstream media" (like The New York Times,
the major networks, local radio, etc.), and so far I think it's been working.
If you think I'm doing a good job--or not--and you feel
like sending me snail mail, the address is:
Free New York
P.O. Box 20945
Tompkins Square Station
New York, NY 10009
You can also email me at fny@freenewyork.net, which should get to me a lot faster than the snail mail.
On November 30, 2005, I received an email from Senator Hillary Clinton that appeared to be an attempt to appease both supporters and opponents of the Iraq war. Upon reading this latest example of the Clintonese desire to have one's cake and eat it too, I felt compelled to respond:
Dear Ms. Clinton,
After reading your message, I am still left with some simple questions:
1. Are you sorry that you voted for "the resolution to authorize the Administration to use force in Iraq"--a resolution which actually only authorized the President to "defend the national security of the United States," and "enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq"? A resolution that said nothing about launching a first strike, a belligerent attack, or a Declaration of War--the first two being what Bush committed against Iraq; the third being the only way those first two can be authorized under the Constitution? You "take responsibility" for your vote, but do you regret voting the way you did? You say that "if Congress had been asked, based on what we know now, we never would have agreed" "to give the President authority to use force against Iraq"; but does that "we" include you? Are you a member of Congress who would have voted differently? Are you now against the war and for the peace? Are you sorry for your vote?
2. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you took "the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a U.N. resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible"? You believed that, even though he staffed his cabinet with people who urged your husband to launch a full-scale attack against Iraq back in 1998? Did you really think Bush was not going to use that authorization as an excuse to start his war, even though millions of people around the world were astute enough to protest the war before it began, based on that very same suspicion? Did you really not notice all the various authors, officials, and ordinary citizens who questioned the Administration's claims before, during, and after the beginning of the war? Would you still take George W. Bush at his word now? Are you sorry for your vote?
3. Doesn't "a plan for finishing this war with success and honor" sound an awful lot like Nixon's plan to seek "peace with honor" during the Vietnam war--a war that he continued and expanded throughout his entire first term, even though he campaigned on ending the war in 1968? Would Nixon have ended that war if people had not protested it every single day while he was in office? Will Bush ever end this war if people don't protest it as long as American troops are still in Iraq? Is the solution for Bush to have him act more like Nixon? Isn't Bush already just as criminal as Nixon, having waged an illegal war on another nation in violation of the U.N. Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Constitution? Can such an illegal war ever have "honor"? Are you sorry for your vote?
4. Suppose Bush did have an "adequate plan" for invading and conquering Iraq: would that make the war any less illegal? Suppose Bush did have a "strategy for success" in Iraq: would that somehow justify the deaths of 2000 Americans and 30,000 Iraqis? Would that change how he and his staff lied to the people of America and the world about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction? Would that be enough of an excuse for the lies that implied Iraq was somehow behind the crimes of September 11, 2001? Would that be enough to forgive the lie that Iraq was somehow an "imminent" threat to the United States? Instead of begging for a "plan" from Mr. Bush, shouldn't Senators like yourself be designing articles of Impeachment for him for breaking the law by violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, when he took part in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by lying to the people of this country to justify his war against Iraq (it being a conspiracy because more than one person in his administration publicly agreed to spread those lies, and it being fraud because those same people knew they did not have adequate proof to back up their accusations yet insisted they were true anyway)? Are you going to hope that Bush comes to his senses eventually, or are you going to work to fulfill the wishes of 52% of the American public and 67% of your own party and get American troops out of Iraq before the end of 2006, if not sooner? Are you finally sorry for your vote?
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reply.
Sincerely,
Christopher Flaherty
Sadness Is A World With No Peanuts
SOME INTERVIEWS ABOUT SUCKING INTERNS DON'T SUCK
Read all about my letter, which was published in the New York Press on July 9, 1997.
Here you can view an op-ed I sent to the New York Times, which they never printed. Maybe I'll add an even larger essay in the future.
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last updated November 17, 2008
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