It’s 8:00 on Saturday night in Reno, and 2,500 of the most avid members of Safari
Club International—the sort of hunters
who target lions instead of, say, ducks–are packed into the Tuscany Ballroom at
the Peppermill Hotel and Casino, poking at their Chocolate Hazelnut Bombe with
Frangelico Cream. Some are dressed in tuxedos; others are sporting ankle-length
hides and Flintstone-style fang necklaces. In the world’s largest and most
active big-game hunting organization, “semi-formal” seems to have many meanings.
The assembled masses have reached that special part of the evening when the
filet mignon is finished, the awards have been awarded, and the green and blue
laser beams that periodically shoot from the stage are no longer as dazzling as
they were two hours ago. They are, put simply, getting bored.

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

But now, finally, is the moment most of them have been waiting for since
Wednesday morning, when SCI’s 39th annual convention began. As President Larry
Rudolph finishes introducing his keynote speaker–a figure he describes as
“truly one of us”–the crowd doesn’t wait to hear her name before leaping to its
feet. They know it fairly well already: former Alaska governor, former
Republican vice-presidential candidate, and once and future huntress of caribou
and clubber of halibut… the one and only Sarah
Palin.

Palin is all smiles as she strides on stage. The press has been barred from
tonight’s event, and she knows she won’t find a crowd this friendly again
anytime soon–especially in a key presidential caucus state. The audience is
even happier. For the past few days, powerless rank-and-file Safari Clubbers
have been fretting over what the government plans to do with their guns after January 8′s tragic shooting in Tucson. Now they’re about to
hear from someone who may potentially have the pull to prevent their worst
nightmares from coming true. The roar of the crowd is positively leonine.

“Beware of
what’s coming,” Palin told the crowd. “I really do believe that God has shed his
grace on thee. We can’t blow it. We can’t allow an atrophy of the foundation
that is America, that is so exceptional.”

Warm welcome or not, it still takes a few minutes for Palin to hit her
target. At first, she seems to address every topic except the aftermath of
Tucson. She admits that she “threw a little politics” into her recent TLC reality show by dragging the crew to the Alaska National
Wildlife Refuge on the pretense of hunting caribou. Her real purpose? Showing
viewers that ANWR is a “barren, desolate, less-than-pristine place”–perfect, in
other words, for lots of new oil drilling. “If a caribou needs to be sacrificed
for the sake of energy independence,” she adds, “I say, ‘Mr. Caribou, maybe you
need to take one for the team.’” She mentions how some media figures have
pledged not cover her at all in February, and says the boycott “sounds good” to
her: “because there’s a lot of chaos in Cairo, and I can’t wait to not get
blamed for it–at least for a month.” She even cites her children’s Christian
names as evidence of her outdoorswoman cred. “Piper was named after Todd’s
airplane, the Piper cub, which gets us to the hunting grounds,” she explains.
“Bristol, Bristol Bay fishing grounds. Willow, a local sport-fishing stream.
Trig, I pull the TRIG-ger. Track… I remember when we told my dad that his
grandson was named Track, he said, ‘Like TRACKing an elephant?’”

Medical humanitarian emergencies persisted throughout 2009 in several parts of Sudan. In addition to the ongoing crisis in Darfur, people in southern Sudan faced a deteriorating situation marked by escalating violence, disease outbreaks, and little or no access to health care.

Nearly five years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) ended a brutal, decades-long civil war, medical needs throughout southern Sudan remain at urgent levels, and escalating tensions are creating a precarious security situation. Violent inter-communal clashes in Jonglei, Upper Nile, Warrap and Lakes states throughout the year have left hundreds dead and thousands displaced. Sporadic attacks on villages by the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), near the Congolese border and also in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) itself, caused thousands of Sudanese people to flee their homes and Congolese refugees to cross the border and seek refuge in Western Equatoria state.

 

 

Special Report

Southern Sudan:
Facing Up to Reality

These increasing levels of violence in the south occur against a backdrop of people dealing with the devastating consequences of a civil war that ended in 2005. Today, almost three-quarters of the population have no access to even the most basic health care services. Throughout the year, MSF’s 1,200 field staff in southern Sudan treated thousands for malnutrition, malaria, and tuberculosis, and provided a wide range of obstetric-gynecological care in several parts of the country. Outbreaks of meningitis, measles, cholera, and malaria are common, and MSF teams responded in 2009 to cholera in Northern Bahr-el-Ghazal, Jonglei, and Warrap states, and in the capital Juba. MSF is also responding to an outbreak of kala azar—a fatal, if untreated, parasitic disease— in Jonglei and Upper Nile states.

People in Darfur also face a precarious situation. Millions of people remain internally displaced and require outside assistance, while sporadic war-related violence and clashes over resources continued to inflict a human toll throughout the year. Providing food, water, and health care for Darfuris became much more difficult following the expulsion by Sudanese authorities of 13 international aid agencies– including two sections of MSF—and three Sudanese organizations in the wake of the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since the creation of the ICC, all MSF sections have adopted a binding internal policy refraining from any cooperation with the ICC. This policy is based on the recognition that humanitarian activities must remain independent from risk of political and judicial pressure in order to be able to provide medical assistance to populations in situations of violence.

New U.N. estimates show that rape in Congo remains a
brutal threat—the region’s top envoy says that over 15,000
sexual attacks have occured in 2010 alone.

In a society that doesn’t even have a word for “rape,”
Chouchou Namegabe did the unthinkable—she aired graphic testimonies of rape survivors on the radio. Delphine Minoui profiles one of the world’s bravest journalists.

When Chouchou Namegabe launched a radio talk show to air the testimonies of
rape survivors, she knew it would provoke outrage across Congo. And sure enough,
as soon as the first interview aired, she was overwhelmed by criticism. People
would yell at her on the street: “How dare you talk about sex on the
airwaves?”

After all, this was a culture that didn’t even have a word for rape and had
to borrow one—ubakaji—from neighboring Tanzania.

But what Namegabe didn’t anticipate was the huge outpouring of support from
women who had been sexually brutalized. The day after her first show aired in
2001, three women knocked on the door of Maendeleo, the only radio station in
Congo brave enough to broadcast Namegabe’s interviews with rape victims. The
women were limping from pain, their eyes full of fear and tears.

Gang-raped by militia men who had killed their husbands in front of them,
their vaginas had been horrifically damaged. They were so scared, they refused
to give their names, or the name of their village.

“Still, they were desperate to share their secrets and suffering,” Namegabe
recently recalled in a phone interview with The Daily Beast.

Day after day, new visitors showed up at the station. They were mothers,
sisters, neighbors—companions in despair, all driven by the same pain and anger.
Most of them whispered their stories because they were too ashamed to speak out
loud. And amid unimaginable emotional and physical pain, many were also
distressed about having contracted sexually transmitted diseases.

A week after the first broadcast, a widow in her thirties came to the station
with her 12-year-old daughter. They had walked for two days to reach Bukavu, the
capital of Congo’s South Kivu province, where Namegabe is based. This young girl
agreed to give her name, Nzigire.

In her arms, she was carrying Ansima—the infant she had conceived with her
rapist.

She told Namegabe that after being kidnapped, she, her mother, and other
victims were marched to a forest. On the road, several women were killed, and
the others were forced to eat the dead women’s flesh. One night, after being
abused several times, the mother and daughter managed to escape in the dark, and
took refuge in a local hospital.

“It was the first time she was telling her story,” Namegabe says. “It was
like a burden she was getting rid of. To her, talking was like therapy.”

• To support Chouchou Namegabe’s non-profit,
the South Kivu Women’s Media Association, order the group’s tee-shirt for $40. Contact Chrisse Lam at Create for a
Cause to place an order.

That day, Namegabe realized the true power of radio: In a society where silence was considered the proper response to rape, oral testimonies could help thousands of female victims heal their wounds, bringing hidden crimes to light and holding perpetrators of terror accountable—all while concealing survivors’ identities.

The eldest of a poor family of 10 children, Chouchou Namegabe grew up in the
shadow of her unemployed father and five brothers. “In my country, men always
have the last word,” she says.

We realize that not everyone might find tonight’s State of the Union hugely
entertaining, so we’ve assembled some ways to make it fun. Most of these
activities guarantee you’ll be nice and buzzed by the time Rep. Michele Bachmann
gives her Tea Party response (not to be confused with the official Republican
response, given by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan). And don’t worry, there are games
for the nondrinker as well.

Sean Marc Lee / Getty Images
1. For All Drinkers: The classic drinking game for the evening has
to be the State of the Union Address Drinking Game. You begin with a standard drink when you hear “the state of our union is strong,” but if the president mentions “budget freeze,” get your blender out: “Mix a frozen drink, pour the frozen drink into a cup half the size of the drink and lick the remnants off the floor.” Better than just shots and beer, right?

2. For More Committed Drinkers: Comedian Will Durst offers a drinking
game on his blog at the San Francisco Chronicle. He stipulates a rather
specific group—a banker, two people donning jeans and flannel, and a bedraggled
fourth—but, really, any bunch of people who like to get boozy should be up for
it. Samples: “Everybody has to drink 2 shots of beer whenever John Boehner
appears to cry. 1 shot of bourbon if he breaks down sobbing and disappears
entirely from view … If either Vice President Biden or the Speaker of the
House Boehner is seen nodding off on camera, last person to start singing ‘Wake
Up, Little Susie’ has to drink 3 shots of beer.” Keep your eyes behind the
president, ladies and gentlemen.

3. For Sophisticated Drinkers With a Theatrical Bent: Esquire’s drinking game will keep you riveted on the evening’s drama. At boilerplate moments, including “close-up of sad senator,” take a gulp of beer. If John McCain is caught rolling his eyes, you advance to a shot of liquor. In the unlikely event there are “fisticuffs”—although with Democrats and Republicans sitting together on bipartisan dates, who knows?—take two shots. Any mention of Keith Olbermann’s employment status gets you three shots. You might only get tipsy, but how much fun would it be if any of this actually happened?

After some of these drinking games, you may not remember the speech come morning, but no one else will, either.

4. For Capitol Hill Staffers Out on the Town: Members of Congress may
be stuck listening to the speech live, but legislative aides can live it up
outside work. In a town where politics is king, D.C. bars are pulling out the stops with games and offers. At Ventnor Sports Café, viewers can choose a word and get $1 shots every time Obama uses it. Choose carefully and make sure you have a designated driver.

5. For Social Networkers: The Facebook page of the State of the Union Drinking Game offers not only its own set of rules but also a chance to compare notes with other players on what you’re drinking and where you’re watching. Take a drink each time the TV talking heads mention that one member of the government has stayed home in case of disaster—and each time Joe Biden nods off.

Bill Maher is back!  Last night, he delivered a New Rule blasting the Tea
Party for dressing up and comparing themselves to our Founding Fathers, showing
that what they believed in almost every way is in direct opposition to what the
Tea Party now stands for.

Now I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing.  While you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them and smell like them, I think it’s pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would’ve hated your guts.  And what’s more, you would’ve hated them!  They were everything you despise.  They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly bullshit.

They were not the common man of their day.  Ben Franklin studied
scientific phenomena like lightning and the aurora borealis, and were he alive today, he could probably explain to Bill O’Reilly why the tides go in and out.

And finally, New Rule, now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the teabaggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs.  I’m talking, of course, about the Founding Fathers, who the teabaggers believe are just like them, but aren’t.  One is a group of exclusively white men who live in a bygone century, have bad teeth, and think of blacks as 3/5s of a person.  And the other are the Founding Fathers!

Now I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing.  While you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them and smell like them, I think it’s pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would’ve hated your guts.  And what’s more, you would’ve hated them!  They were everything you despise.  They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly bullshit.  And yet, here is a popular painting in wingnut America.

Yes, that’s Jesus with the Founding Fathers behind him, presenting the Constitution to America.  Either that, or it’s a settlement offer for that boy after he sued the rectory.

Super-religious guy Glenn Beck likes to play dress-up as Thomas Paine.  Thomas Paine, an atheist who said churches were “human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind”.  John Adams said, “this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it”.* Which is not to say the Founders didn’t have a moral code.  Of course they did.
They just didn’t get it from the Bible.  Well, except for the part about it’s cool to own slaves.  It’s in there, folks, I didn’t make it up.

The Founders disagreed amongst themselves about that, and most issues.  But the one thing they never argued about was that political power must stay in the hands of the smartest people, and out of the hands of the dumbest loudmouths slowing down the checkout line at Home Depot.

And yet, Sarah Palin once said of Obama, “we need a
Commander-in-Chief, not a professor of law standing at a lectern”.  How gay is that!  Well, I hate to break it to you, but:

Thomas Jefferson, lawyer.
Alexander Hamilton, Constitutional lawyer.
James Madison, lawyer.
John Adams, Constitutional lawyer.

They were not the common man of their day.  Ben Franklin studied
scientific phenomena like lightning and the aurora borealis, and
were he alive today, he could probably explain to Bill O’Reilly why the tides go in and out.

James Madison was fluent in Greek and Latin, and could translate Virgil and Cicero.  John Boehner can’t translate Fareed Zakaria.  And Thomas Jefferson was an astronomer and a physicist who founded the University of Virginia, played the violin, and spoke six languages.  Or as Palin would say, “all of them”.
*OK, I need to call out Bill Maher for that John Adams quote, because he did like so many others, and took that quote out of context.  Here’s the full quote.

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!”  But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly.  Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.

Yeah……… the rest of that quote certainly changes the meaning of what
Adams really thought, doesn’t it?  :-\  Adams also strongly disagreed with
Thomas Paine’s criticism of Chrisianity.  He wrote this about Paine:

The Christian religion is, above all the Religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of Wisdom, Virtue, Equity and Humanity.  Let the Blackguard Paine say what he
will; it is Resignation to God, it is Goodness itself to Man.

(And please, don’t use that “blasphemy”
quote from Adams either.  It’s also fabricated from two separate letters he
wrote five years apart on two different subjects.)

There are enough quotes from our Founding Fathers against organized religion
that Bill could’ve chosen from that would’ve equally made his point.  Sigh.  But
still, lest some on the right
dismiss what Maher said, his other points still stand, the strongest of which is
this deranged anti-science stance of the Tea Party, which stands in direct
contrast in the quest for scientific knowledge from our Founding Fathers.
Oh, and about that painting?  It’s from right-winger Jon McNaughton, and
there’s a funny parody site of
that painting, complete with Emperor Palpatine added in!  :-)  Mother
Jones, Huffington
Post, Wonkette,
and this
site had already covered the story about the painting when it came out in
late 2009, if you want to read more about it.

Please hold your applause.

Hold it up to the light and examine it closely. At most large gatherings,
ebullient clapping shows that there’s approval and support. An event where there
is round and raucous applause is considered a success.

But is that always true in politics?

Take the recent memorial service for the victims of the Tucson shootings.
Applause for Obama’s stirring words caused discomfort in some observers. They
said it lent the affair an inappropriate pep-rally atmosphere.

And what about Tuesday’s State of the Union address? If there is exuberant
applause for the president’s speech, will that really prove to be beneficial? If
the speech is interrupted by repeated bursts of approbation, will that move the
needle in a favorable way on the Obama barometer? Or does that simply show that
Democrats are following the script?

Before watching tonight’s spectacle, let’s pause to consider — and take a
brief historical look at — the politics of applause.

Clappers And Claquers

Clark McPhail studies applause. McPhail is a professor emeritus of sociology
at the University of Illinois and author of The Myth of the Madding
Crowd. He is fascinated by the phenomenon of clapping at State of the Union
addresses and other high-profile events.

“There are some common features to applause across a wide range of religious,
sport and political gatherings, not least of which is that you don’t necessarily
have to ask for applause to get it,” McPhail says. “People clap to show approval
of the utterances or actions that correspond to their preferences or
biases.”

According to McPhail, neuroscientists have identified a “mirror neuron”
phenomenon that explains “how the sights and sounds of another doing something
that we already know how to do will trigger neurons in our brains that lead us
to at least consider if not commence to do the same action ourselves.”

Applause, he says, is not always spontaneous. And not always the result of
pure free will. Sometimes applause is prompted by an emcee who encourages people
by saying, “Let’s have a big round of applause” or “Give it up.” Other times, an
ovation is sparked by “claquers.” They’re a subset of people in the gathering
who are either shamelessly enthusiastic devotees of the person onstage or
audience “plants” who have been drafted — sometimes even paid — to applaud a
speaker or performer.

The practice of hiring claquers, McPhail says, is an age-old tradition among
opera singers, actors and other theatrical performers. And, he adds, “for years,
politicians have packed rallies and nominating conventions with partisan
supporters, sycophants and claquers to applaud their speeches and support their
nomination to high office.”

In recent times, the president’s partisan supporters —and opponents — have
followed similar behavior when responding to the annual State of the Union
address. “Advance copies of the speech are examined,” McPhail explains, and
“partisans pick those assertions with which they agree and arrange to respond
with standing ovations. Opponents pick any assertion that even hints at a
position they have advocated but which the president has virtually ignored and
similarly arrange to respond with standing ovations.”

William Safire noted the sea change in a 1987 column in The New York
Times. He wrote that presidents once enjoyed bipartisan protection during
the State of the Union speech. But “as opposition Congressmen began to take
umbrage at being used as a passive backdrop, Speaker Tip O’Neill tried a little
trick: passing the word to the Democrats to applaud wildly at some line that
would give unintended meaning to what President Reagan said.”

In the past quarter-century, audience response has become even more
demonstrative. Last year the president’s speech was interrupted by applause more
than 80 times, according to several reports. Supporters jumped to their feet to
applaud the mildest promise by Obama — resulting in a standing O for a smiling
O. The president’s detractors, meanwhile, looked glum and sat glued to their
chairs.

Shocked By Applause

Sometimes the president knows when to pause and let enthusiasm erupt. And
then there are times that the president is surprised, says Craig Smith, director
of the Center for First Amendment Studies at California State University, Long
Beach and a former speechwriter for Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W.
Bush.

“The first time I wrote a speech for Ford,” Smith says, “he was interrupted
by applause and shocked by it. He lost his place, recovered and was interrupted
many more times.”

Among presidential wordsmiths, Smith says, “we don’t know for sure when the
applause is coming. On the other hand someone like Reagan always knew.”

Smith recalls one instance in America’s not-too-distant political past in
which enthusiastic support for speeches did not translate into enthusiastic
support at the polls. When John Connally of Texas ran for the Republican
presidential nomination in 1980, Smith says, listeners were visibly more gung-ho
for his campaign orations than those of Bush or of the ultimate nominee, Ronald
Reagan.

But “after getting more applause lines than anyone else” in the race, Smith
says, “Connally only got one delegate.”

More than 30 years later, in this age of false promises, when good people get
punked and Facebook friends aren’t necessarily friendly, applause may mean less
than ever. And given the new civility and the strange arrangement of bipartisan
seating at Tuesday’s State of the Union address, applause could be literally —
and figuratively — all over the place. Denoting unity or signifying
nothing.