Media Critiques
Lately I have been missing what I consider the greatest educational program ever produced for children. I’m talking about the Saturday morning stroke of genius – Schoolhouse Rock.
For those who didn’t grow up in the ‘70s (or those who never had the pleasure of seeing the show), Schoolhouse Rock was an animated three to five minute lesson on government, history, grammar, science, and math – things every child and American needed to know about.
I remember happily taking the trip to Conjunction Junction, backpacking through the woods singing “Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here” and hearing the shot heard ‘round the world that started the American Revolution.
The best story involved the little bill that became a law after he sang “I’m just a bill. Yes I’m only a bill.” It was magic, pure magic.
It is a good time to resurrect the cherished institution. Children today need the added learning more than ever, and with the world changing at such a rapid pace, there are plenty of subjects to fill up the new lessons.
What better place to start than the Patriot Act?
It’s perhaps the most important and damaging piece of legislation to come out of Congress in the last 200 years, yet few people realize the injurious nature of the Act, the erosion of civil liberties involved or, for that matter, what the Act says.
I can see the cartoon clearly. It’s illustrated in broad simple strokes – one might say “old school.” There is a happy melody as the sun rises over the horizon of Washington D.C. The perspective slowly pulls back until the view is from high in the sky as a shadow passes over the Capitol.
The main character – the Patriot Act – is a stoic looking eagle, not bald but rather with a full head of Caucasian hair. Think John F. Kennedy hair. Pat, the eagle, would fly over a miniature map of the United States (casting that shadow) and use his amazing eyesight to root out any person even remotely associated to a flighty government suspected of illegal activities – and of course anyone wearing a burkha or turban.
Sure Pat will look for terrorists, but the Patriot Act enables him to look for much more.
The Act greatly enhances the government's ability to gain access to personal financial information and student information without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply by certifying that the information likely to be obtained is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation, according to section 213 of the Act.
That’s right, Pat can swoop down to UH and snatch any and all of a student’s information on a whim of likelihood that criminal activity would be found. Pat would actually latch on to a few students with his immense talons in the cartoon; you have to keep the kids interested.
In addition to Pat’s great hair, amazing eyesight, overreaching wingspan and vicious talons that grab and don’t let go until Cuba, he also carries a laptop slung over his broad bird shoulders. For Pat, and the Patriot Act, is a 21st century warrior. Wire taps and room bugs are now joined by key stroke monitors and digital information filtering.
The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to authorize installation of pen registers and trap and trace devices and to authorize the installation of such devices to record all computer routing, addressing, and signaling information, according to section 216 of the Act.
Pat won’t speak either because when the Act was passed it was as quiet as it’s ever been on Capitol Hill.
When the legislative proposals were introduced by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11th, they came with great haste and passed with little debate, and without a House, Senate, or conference report.
Attorney General John Ashcroft gave Congress one week in which to pass the bill – without changes. Some members of Congress, notably Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senator Russ Feingold, tried to make changes and encourage debate, but the Attorney General warned that further terrorist acts were imminent, and that Congress could be to blame for such attacks if it failed to pass the bill immediately.
Extensive and hurried negotiation in the Senate resulted in a bipartisan bill, stripped of many of the concessions won by Sen. Leahy. Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle sought unanimous consent to pass the proposal without debate or amendment, and Senator Feingold was the only member to object.
Minor changes were made in the House, which passed the bill 357 to 66. The Senate and House versions were quickly reconciled, and the Act was signed into law on October 26, 2001.
John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff from 1998 – 2001, provided part of the view that was missing from the Patriot Act debate when he said in the Winter of 2002 that
“many aspects of the bill increase the opportunity for law enforcement and the intelligence community to return to an era where they monitored and sometimes harassed individuals who were merely exercising their First Amendment rights. Nothing that occurred on September 11 mandates that we return to such an era.”
Yet we have returned to that kind of an era, and if the proposed Schoolhouse Rock comes back, we will have Pat the Patriot Act eagle to protect us from ourselves.
It could be a brilliant cartoon complete with a catchy song and exciting animation. Pat could join the list of great American icons from Saturday morning like Chaka from The Land of the Lost and H.R. Puffenstuff.
Just remember kids, you need to like the new Patriot Act Schoolhouse Rock. If you don’t, that could be construed as harboring terrorist thoughts, and Pat would come and take you from your parents with the full support of the U.S. Government.
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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