Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie works in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. A Utah native and graduate of a crappy public university not worth mentioning, she has spent the last year hanging out with angry white people who occasionally don tricorne hats and come to lunch meetings heavily armed.

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Stephanie covers legal affairs and domestic policy in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. A contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, a former investigative reporter at the Washington Post, and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004 for a Washington Monthly article about myths surrounding the medical malpractice system. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media award for reporting on poverty and hunger, and her 2010 story in Mother Jones of the collapse of the welfare system in Georgia and elsewhere won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.

Glenn Beck: Televangelist

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Sat Aug. 28, 2010 2:08 PM PDT

For weeks prior to Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, the conservative talk show host kept insisting that his demonstration on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial wasn't going to be a political event. Of course, no one believed him. Maybe they should have. Beck made it clear from the minute he jogged on to the stage that despite the presence of Sarah Palin, his much-promoted event would not be political, but religious. And if grassroots conservative activists came looking for marching orders, they might have left a little disappointed. Beck did deliver his signature rants about how the country is going to hell in a hand basket, but his prescription consisted of little more than maddeningly vague allegories about "a man with a stick" (that would be Moses) and such platitudes as, "God is the answer and he always has been." With this heavy focus on God as political savior, the rally seemed to mark Beck's official transformation from Fox News talker to Mormon televangelist. All he really needed for the revival was a tent.

Prior to the rally, critics and civil rights leaders took umbrage at Beck for promoting himself as the second coming of Martin Luther King Jr. and for planning the event on the 47th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech. That didn't slow Beck down. At the rally, he talked about how much he identified with the slain civil rights leader, noting he was even staying in the same DC hotel where MLK had rested his head after his legendary speech. But the similarities ended there. King used his rally and speech to move an agenda forward. He called on the crowd before him (and people watching elsewhere) to pressure Congress to change discriminatory laws and to focus on jobs. What did Beck ask his hundreds of thousands of followers to do?

The Beckheads who'd been waiting in the hot sun for hours got these marching orders: "Pray on your knees. Recognize He is our king. Pray on your knees and let your children see their parents humbled before God." Oh, and of course, like all good televangelists, Beck asked them to give money—not to candidates or political parties, but to a church. Beck talked wistfully about the spiritual transformation he underwent after he embraced tithing, which is heavily encouraged by his Mormon church. He said at first he was resistant, happy to show off the $20 he put in the plate on Sunday morning, but not much else. But now, he said earnestly, "It is my joy and my honor to tithe 10 percent."

But the real proof of Beck's televangelist conversion came with his revelation that God answers his prayers for money. In a tale straight out of Pat Robertson's 700 Club, Beck said that as he was working on the logistics for the big rally, he discovered that his fundraising efforts had come up $600,000 short. Naturally, he prayed: "Lord, we don't have anything else left." And he said, "Within two days, without telling anyone about it, $600,000 came in."

The crowd seemed to be OK with all of this. For all the talk about how Beck's event was going to be a test of the strength of the tea party movement, I met a fair number of people who had nothing to do with the tea party. That's no shock; lots of tea partiers who don't fancy Beck wouldn't have been caught dead on the Mall today. There is a fairly serious distinction between Beck followers and those who consider themselves true tea partiers, and it rests almost entirely on the religious issue. As one attendee from upstate New York explained to me, "The tea party is just about lower taxes."

The Beck crowd, by contrast, had all the trappings of a reconstituted, 21st Century Christian Coalition. While political signs were banned from the event, the marshals didn't seem to object to the two enormous crucifixes some people brought to the front of the crowd. Lots of the people in attendance appeared deeply religious. A Boy Scout troop leader from New Hampshire was wearing a scout hat that identified him as "Elder Delevan," as in Mormon church elder. Joan DeMasi, 79, from Warwick, Rhode Island, told me that she had been drawn to the rally by "God–and Glenn Beck." She said she was tired of "people not saluting the flag and not believing in God." So from her perspective, "Restoring Honor" was simply "incredible." Whether the rest of the tea party movement will share such a glowing assessment remains to be seen.

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What's Glenn Beck Afraid Of?

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Fri Aug. 27, 2010 4:13 AM PDT

For a guy who loves chalkboards and slogans, Glenn Beck has issued a peculiar edict to potential attendees of his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial being held this Saturday. He has repeatedly told people coming to DC not to bring political signs. What? No signs? The hallmark of the last year's worth of tea party rallies that he helped fuel? But it's true. In an info packet on his website about the rally, Beck instructs, "Please refrain from bringing signs (political or otherwise) as they may deter from the peaceful message we are bringing to Washington."

The message is reiterated in a flyer written for the media, which stresses again that Beck doesn't think his rally is a political event: "Not only is the event non-political, we have continuously encouraged those attending to avoid bringing political signs, political flyers, 'I heart the RNC' t-shirts and other similar partisan paraphernalia. There are plenty of opportunities to talk about politics. This isn’t one of them."

The idea that Beck's rally is nonpolitical is sort of laughable, given that he will be sharing the stage with one of the nation's most political celebrities, Sarah Palin. So the sign ban does beg the question: What's Beck worried about? Perhaps the answer is an obvious one. Given that a single nut case with a racist sign will color the media coverage of the entire event, it's in Beck's best interest to try to keep them out. (The nut cases seem pretty drawn to him, too. Recall that Beck follower Byron Williams was arrested last month armed to the gills on his way to kill off the staff of the progressive Tides Foundation, after Beck had bashed the foundation on his show.) Maybe Beck is genuinely concerned about focusing on the troops, who, lest we forget, are the very people the rally is supposed to be honoring.

A more cynical read might suggest that Beck doesn't want anything at the rally to take the spotlight off the star attraction, Beck himself. (Some tea party activists have questioned whether the event is really about anything but Beck, dubbing it "Beckapolooza"). Indeed, Beck has posted a melodramatic video promo for the event (complete with Goldline plug) that basically compares himself to Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and the Wright Brothers, while likening the rally to the moon landing. But Beck may also have some employment concerns as well. Despite the fact that Palin herself works for Fox News, the conservative news network has been somewhat hesitant about Beck using his show to become an outright political leader. Fox has actually declined to broadcast the event. Headlining a political rally full of angry people waving inflammatory signs might be bad for his long-term TV presence—and scare off even more of his sponsors.

Regardless of the underlying motivations, it's hard to imagine that many of the grassroots activists headed to the rally will adhere to the no-sign rule. But just in case, Tea Party Patriots, a large national umbrella group for grassroots conservatives, will be on hand to coordinate volunteer marshals for security at the event. Presumably one of their main jobs will be crushing errant signage. As another backstop, TPP is also providing an alternate venue for all those patriots gathered for the Beck event dying to wave some signs around the nation's Capitol. The day after the Beck rally, TPP is sponsoring a tea party at the Upper Senate Park at 10 a.m., and encouraging activists to bring signs.

Gay Activists to Mehlman: Not So Fast

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Thu Aug. 26, 2010 9:13 AM PDT

Well, big surprise. Ken Mehlman is gay. And now the former Republican Party chairman says he yearns to be a gay-marriage advocate. But Mehlman, who headed George Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, is a little late to the wedding party, and he's getting a frosty reception in some quarters of the gay rights world--for good reason.

Mehlman was outed years ago not just by gay activists appalled by his party's electoral strategy, which included vicious attacks on gays and lesbians, but by other gay Republicans. During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Bush reelection effort and the GOP used anti-gay marriage initiatives in key states, such as Ohio, to enhance their electoral prospects. The party continued to whip up anti-gay sentiment after Melhman assumed the helm of the Republican National Committee. Meanwhile, rumors about his sexuality persisted. (After a 2005 Republican Party dinner in Ohio attended by Mehlman, one local gay Republican attendee told the Gay People's Chronicle that while Mehlman didn't quite admit publicly that he was gay in response to questions about his sexual orientation, "as long as he’s sleeping with men behind the scenes, that’s all I care about.”) Mehlman's hypocrisy is legendary on this front.

Mehlman is hardly the first big-league Republican to come out of the closet. Last year, longtime GOP political consultant Arthur Finkelstein, a highly secretive down-and-dirty political operative who helped orchestrate the rise of notorious gay basher, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, shocked the politerati by marrying his partner of 40 years in a civil ceremony in Massachusetts. (Prior to that, there had been merely unconfirmed rumors about Finkelstein's orientation.) Fred Karger, a long-closeted California political consultant who helped devise the Willie Horton campaign against Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign, came out a few years ago, and he has become a prominent gay rights advocate, as we explained in this article earlier this year. But unlike Mehlman, Karger never worked for the extreme social conservatives of his party or promoted gay-bashing electoral strategies.

Given Mehlman's particular record, many gay activists believe he has lots of apologizing to do, and not all of them are ready to link arms with the guy. In a post headlined, "Repulsive Anti-Gay Quisling Homophobic Scumbag Asshat Closeted Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman Has Come Out," gay blogger Joe.My.God writes, "Mehlman's crimes against his own people are motherfucking LEGION....We can be sure that GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans [organizations of Republicans who support gay rights] are positively drooling over the prospect of welcoming Mehlman onto their boards of directors. VOMIT."

Michael Rogers, who outed Mehlman six years ago, writes a blistering post suggesting that gay rights activists should wait before embracing Mehlman as one of their own:

I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for being the architect of the 2004 Bush reelection campaign. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for his role in developing strategy that resulted in George W. Bush threatening to veto ENDA or any bill containing hate crimes laws. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for the pressing of two Federal Marriage Amendments as political tools. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for developing the 72-hour strategy, using homophobic churches to become political arms of the GOP before Election Day. And those state marriage amendments. I want to hear him apologize for every one of those, too.

And then there is one other little thing. You see, while you and I had the horrible feelings of being treated so poorly by our President, while teens were receiving the messaging 'gay is bad' giving them 'permission' to gay bash, while our rights were being stripped away state by state, Ken was out there laughing all the way to the bank. So, if Ken is really sorry, and he very well may be, then all he needs to do is sell his condo and donate the funds to the causes he worked against so hard for all those years. He's done a lot of damage to a lot of organizations, while making a lot of money. A LOT of money. It's time to put his money where his mouth is. Ken Mehlman is sitting in a $3,770,000.00 (that's $3.77 million) condo in Chelsea while we have lost our right to marry in almost 40 states.

THEN, and only then, should Mehlman be welcomed into our community.

Perhaps Mehlman should go one more in his quest for atonement (should he decide to atone, that is). Karger, the gay former GOP consultant, is running for president as a Republican. Needless to say, the party hasn't rallied around his historic, if exceedingly long-shot, campaign. Mehlman could join Karger's campaign staff, or at least raise money for him. Karger, who is vacationing in Martha's Vineyard and schmoozing with the White House press corps to advance his campaign, emails that he'd already been planning to ask Mehlman for assistance before the news broke. After all, he notes, there aren't that many gay, Jewish Republicans. Now that Mehlman has come out, Karger is more than happy to welcome him to the fold--and to his campaign, saying, "Ken, I need your help!"

If at First You Don't Secede

Meet the legalization-loving, Iraq-War-hating Californian who's become a guru to the state sovereignty movement.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| July/August 2010 Issue

This February, around 300 conservative activists and candidates gathered at the Atlanta airport Hilton to celebrate the Tenth Amendment, the oft-overlooked constitutional provision that's become the philosophical underpinning of opposition to everything—from bank bailouts to federal gun laws to the new health care bill. Among the speakers were the author of The South Was Right; a man who'd done time for evading taxes while running a gold and silver "bank"; and Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice who lost his robes after refusing to remove a giant Ten Commandments from his courthouse.

The odd man out was Michael Boldin, the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, a tiny California think tank that cosponsored the event. Unshaven and dressed in jeans, an untucked button-down shirt, and hipster glasses, Boldin stood out from the crowd, which included the obligatory Tea Partier in a tricornered hat. The 37-year-old Wisconsin native told me that the Moore who'd inspired his activism was Michael, not Roy. Boldin describes himself as a "recovering Catholic" and reads Mother Jones. He got into politics because of the invasion of Iraq and has come to believe "that most of what the federal government does, from foreign to domestic policy, is a constitutional violation."

[Read the full article]

Separation Anxiety

Who needs federal health care when you've got state sovereignty?

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| July/August 2010 Issue

Fed up with the feds? Good news—24 state legislatures have already passed laws declaring themselves sovereign (only 7 governors actually signed the bills into law). Meanwhile, lawmakers in 11 states have passed measures to nullify federal health care reform (3 of those are now law).

Separation Anxiety Map