Saturday Alaska Progressive Blog Roundup - May 31, 2009 - Part One -- The Quality of Writing at Our Blogs

Two articles by progressive Alaska writers at their blogs, posted overnight, are perfect illustrations of the extraordinarily high quality of writing no being produced within our growing community. Both Shannyn Moore and Mel Green wrote essays yesterday that beg comparison with some of the best writing on the web, or in any print media around, for that matter. I'll get back to that later. But there were lots of examples of how the growth in our blog community exemplifies PA's masthead motto, by themselves "spreading the word about the growing presence of progressive Alaskans and their powerful ideas on the web."

Meanwhile, the only coverage of the Anchorage appearance by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's most prominent advocate from the film making community, at the Alaska premiere of his movie, Media Malpractice, was by our progressive bloggers. Brendan Joel Kelley, from the Anchorage Press, may have tried to cover John Ziegler's Anchorage movie showing and talk, but looking at Kelley's YouTube, his brief appearance at the Fireweed Theater appears to have been more likely a lame attempt to duplicate Ziegler's USC incident, notwithstanding Kelley's attempt to explain what really happened in a brief post at the Press web site.

AK Muckraker did a long review of Ziegler's documentary yesterday. It is a thorough analysis of the film. Other Alaska blogs commented on aspects of Ziegler's body of work. Celtic Diva covered his weird YouTube legacy, and his self-centered persona, as typified by a segment Ziegler did on a weird Dating Game TV program, where he gets unceremoniously dumped.

The only media in Alaska consistently asking the question, "How much of Gov. Palin's claimed legal expenses, and how much of the State of Alaska's claimed legal and administrative expenses that are now being touted as waste of time and money, stem from Gov. Palin's fall 2008 investigation of herself, or from the behind-the-scenes plea bargain the Governor entered into, as she returned about $10,000.00 in illegal travel funds, and agreed to pay the state's cost of the Gwartney request?" appears to be our local progressive bloggers. Why?

We're writing about other important issues right now, but none is more important than the upcoming vote by the Municipality of Anchorage Assembly, on a new equal rights ordinance.

Shannyn Moore's post from early this morning, titled Hate, The Real Anti-Christ, looks into the depths of hate that thrive in Rev. Jerry Prevo's world:

In the 1970’s, the Anchorage Assembly passed a similar ordinance. It was vetoed by then Republican Mayor George Sullivan. His son, Dan Sullivan, also a Republican, was just elected mayor of Anchorage. His term commences July 1.

Local super-sized Church leader, Dr. Jerry Prevo, of The Anchorage Baptist Temple, has become the “not-so-Christ-like” voice of hate. His 8 page press release included bullet points of why he is against the ordinance. The last few pages read like a porn pamphlet.

and:

I guess the recession is now hitting churches; Prevo’s trying to drum up business. He worked hard to secure a tax free status for his church, his home and the homes of his employees, yet he wants to take rights away from citizens who actually pay taxes. How does that work? The pastor’s fascination of men wearing women’s clothing is pure fetish. Historically, Jesus wore a “dress” to work, not a suit. But Prevo doesn’t base his teachings on the tolerance of Christ. He prefers Bible 1.0, the old law, abolished by the crucifixion.

Moore brings a lot of historical perspective in her essay, which also goes a bit into Rev. Prevo's long list of questionable stances and actions:

Prevo was wrong on apartheid in the 1980’s. Was that Old Testament teaching? As much time as he spends on television, most people don’t know he starred in the reality show “Repo Man.” What would Jesus repo, Jerry?

The real Anti-Christ shows up every day. It shows up in the fear, racism, homophobia, and hate in the very people who claim they work for Christ.

Mel Green, at Henkimaa, has posted what may be the most serious, sweeping and scathing indictments of Prevo's history yet penned, called Prevo's Devil Masks.

Columns written last week at Moore's blog, and at Progressive Alaska, spurred Green to go back into her history of opposing Prevo's immoral opportunism on several fronts, and write a brilliant essay. Here a couple of short excerpts:

Jerry Prevo had just returned from a trip to South Africa as part of a “Freedom Mission” headed up by Moral Majority leader (& Prevo friend) Rev. Jerry Falwell. This is the same mission at the end of which Rev. Falwell denounced 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu, stating, “If Bishop Tutu maintains that he speaks for the black people of South Africa, he’s a phony,” and called for Americans to support South Africa’s white-minority government by buying Krugerrands, its one-ounce gold coins, and by investing in companies doing business in South Africa.

At the time of the “Freedom Mission,” South Africa’s white-minority government had placed large portions of the country into a state of emergency in reaction to black demands for equal rights and an end to the apartheid system of government. As described in the Anchorage Daily News:

Hundreds of South Africans — almost all of them black, almost all of them shot by police — have died in that violence.

Since his return, Prevo has sparked considerable controversy due to his remarks made about the trip. The minister told reporters that South Africa’s white President Pieter Botha was a committed reformer, that blacks did not want a “one-man one-vote” democracy and that South African blacks did not want Americans to pull their investments from the country as a protest against apartheid.

Prevo and Falwell have encouraged Americans to invest in South African firms and to buy Krugerrands, South African gold coins.

What I especially remember is hearing Prevo talk about Soweto, the sprawling township designed to house white Johannesburg’s black workforce — a workforce whose members could not, by the segregationist laws of apartheid, actually live in the city where they worked. According to Prevo, Soweto’s black mayor told Falwell’s delegation that he didn’t want Americans to divest their investments from South Africa. But was Soweto’s mayor truly representative of black South Africans — more so, say, than Bishop Tutu, whom Falwell denounced?

And:

Besides members of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, Prevo’s audience that day included several Anchorage-area black leaders, including NAACP president Andonia Harrison, Henry M. Lancaster II, and Rex Butler, counsel for the NAACP. It also included at least two people who later joined the protest outside: Eleanor Andrews, at the time serving as Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, and Jewel Jones, director of the municipality’s Health and Human Services Department, who told the Anchorage Daily News that she’d gone to hear Prevo’s sermon because “I wanted to hear what he had to say,” but found that “What he said was worse than I’d imagined.”

Green goes on to deeply detail enough of Prevo's past to make on wonder very, very deeply, why the editors at the ADN are giving this distasteful person another free ride.

Steve, at What Do I Know? adds a touch of humor to the debate, in Men Jerry Prevo Would Ban From Anchorage Schools, his photo essay about men wearing what could be taken to be "female" garb.

That's all there is time for this morning. I'm off to the old Anchorage Cemetery, to perform Taps at a veteran's memorial service, then up to Wasilla, to work again with Dennis Zaki, as we take on the teabaggers' picnic.