WHEN MITT ROMNEY AND DESIREE MANDELBAUM COME TO TOWN, DOES LOOTING FOLLOW?

Hollywood casting director DESIREE MANDELBAUM wants to dig up St. Augustine history, calls herself a "professional digger."







(IFAR 2005).

Fig.3: Detail of looters’ pits amid house foundations at Umma in March, 2004 (photo: REUTERS/ Luke Baker).

Fig.2: Umma (Tell Jokha), an ancient Sumerian town in southern Iraq dating from the Ur III period (ca. 2500-2000 BC), is filled with looters’ pits, and is a major source of black market artifacts including cuneiform tablets (photo: USAID).
Photos from Athena Review, vol 4, no. 3, Looting and the Antiquities Market,' by Michele A. Miller, Editor, Old World Archaeology.



Vandals and Visigoths at the City Gate?

What do MITT ROMNEY and a Hollywood TV crew filming amateur archaeology digs have in common?

They are both destructive forces, and both should be rejected by the good people of St. Augustine.

MITT ROMNEY made a quarter billion dollars investing foreign money, buying up companies, firing workers, selling assets, cheating consumers and workers and investors. See “When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” a 27 minute film produced by supporters of Newt Gingrich. MITT ROMNEY does not deserve to be President of the ASPCA, let alone President of the United States of America. MITT ROMNEY once took the family dog on a family vacation to Canada, strapped to the roof of the family car.

ROMNEY destroyed jobs, in the spirit of the fictional character Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street.

ROMNEY thinks “corporations are people, my friend.”

MITT ROMNEY would appoint people to the Supreme Court who believe that false shibboleth. The reason I know that is that MITT ROMNEY’s top legal advisor is none other than ex-Judge ROBERT HERON BORK, a right-wing extremist, who was rightly rejected 58-42 for Supreme Court Justice in 1987, after my first boss, Senator Ted Kennedy, described “Robert Bork’s America” in a Senate floor speech: Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."

ROMNEY, the “KING OF BAIN,” was co-founder of BAIN CAPITAL, which now owns CLEAR CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, which employs right-wing extremist RUSH LIMBAUGH, who spews hatred on our airwaves.

This year, independents Republicans of principle and honor will want to support President Barack Obama, and reject the extremist job destroyer, MITT ROMNEY, whom Senator Ted Kennedy trounced in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate race.

There is a second peril to St. Augustine and Florida history, not unlike ROMNEY.

DESIREE MANDELBAUM is in town, huckstering as a casting producer for a proposed television program, tentatively titled “The Recovery Project.” See below. The name “The Recovery Project” was already used for one television series, on drug addiction recovery. But DESIREE MANDELEBAUM, whose prior projects include “THE BIGGEST LOSER” and other “reality” (e.g., goober exploitation) series, reportedly wants to use that name, and she wants to use St. Augustine’s history, to make a thirteen-part TV series.

The St. Augustine Record has reported, and printed valid scientific criticism, of DESIREE MANDELBAUM’s program, including concerns by UF archaeologist Kathy Deegan and City of St. Augustine Archaeologist Carl Halbirt, that such promiscuous unscientific amateur digging would be “unethical.”

Throughout modern world history, archaeological treasures have been looted, plundered and destroyed and stolen from the countries and cities where they belong. Such actions may be crimes under local laws, as is documented by Jason Felch in Chasing Aphrodite – The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum, about thefts of art and antiquities and archaeological treasures by the Getty Museum.

America and Britain are especially notorious for such crimes, torts and sins against history.

There are possible similarities between the morally bankrupt vulture capitalist MITT ROMNEY and DESIREE MANDELBAUM.

Both destroy values rather than create value.

Both are in it for their own self-aggrandizement.

MITT ROMNEY did not care any more about workers and consumers than a hog.

DESIREE MANDELBAUM (casting director for THE BIGGEST LOSER) ignores reality in creating “reality shows,” apparently giving not a fig for the fact that digging out archaeological artifacts by amateurs destroys any chance of learning their context.

As Dr. Kathy Deagan has explained (below), once an artifact is removed from the soil, there is no way of relating it to history – French pottery in the soil from a particular year could mean that there were people here who bought French pottery when it was illegal, and that it could have been from pirates. Removing the pottery from the soil without proper documentation and preservation makes the find meaningless.

I have called Ms. MANDELBAUM, and will appeal to what Lincoln called, “the better angels of her nature.”

We need to endeavor to persuade Ms. MANDE:BAUM to do a classy television program, which might be achieved by filming City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt, UF archaeologist Kathy Deegan, UF students and members of the St. Augustine Archaeological Society (SAAA) as they do professional digs.

In the immortal words of Elie Wiesel, when he tried to persuade President Ronald Wilson Reagan not to honor SS troops at BIttburg, Germany, “please don’t go – Mr. President, it’s not your place.”

Amateur archaeology has no place in American television. It’s one thing to televise overweight people and their heartache. It’s quite another to dig up and destroy our history.

Andrew Young says that in social activism, it is always important to let the other person “save face.” In the spirit of Andrew Young, I just attempted to engage DESIREE MANDELBAUM about the community values of St. Augustine, Florida about our history and archaelogy.

I politely suggested to DESIREE MANDELBAUM that she film Carl Halbirt and Kathy Deegan, doing professional archaeology digs. MANDELBAUM refused.

I asked about her credentials. MANDELBAUM said, “We are professional diggers. I don’t feel the need to explain myself. When we come out, your town will be very happy. Thanks for the call, Ed.”

DESIREE MANDELBAUM hung up the telephone. Click.

Thinking perhaps DESIREE MANDELBAUM might have been disconnected on her cell phone, I called her back.

Then DESIREE MANDELBAUM said, “We haven’t decided whether to go there or not.” She refused to disclose the names of her production company, her TV network, or their lawyers, saying we hicks and rubes here in St. Augustine, Florida “don’t need to know.”

MANDELBAUM thereupon repeated herself a lot, like a hierarchical authoritarian Republican would do with too much coffee. I said she was inarticulate. Then she said, “You’re being mean to me,” and hung up the telephone again.

Double Click.

In the immortal words of the late William F. Buckley, Jr., “why does baloney reject the grinder?”

I will continue to work on moral suasion with Ms. MANDLEBAUM, and have asked Mayor Joe Boles and our City Commissioners to join in that effort.

However, in the event that fails, there are alternatives.

I propose a boycott of any TV network – and their sponsors – that buys the proposed series.

I propose that if MANDLEBAUM really wants a reality show, she might cover real archaeology by Mr. Halbirt and Dr. Deagan. She might also look into the real life of St. Augustine, including successful efforts to halt Environmental Racism, promote Environmental Justice, fight corruption and create a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com

Otherwise, we may need to need to picket MANDELBAUM and her film crew. Significantly, MANDELBAUM’s program cannot be filmed if there are loud, noisy protests. Perhaps local archaeologists and public interest groups, including OCCUPY ST. AUGUSTINE, might wish to hold informational picketing of any “digs” and do “mic checks” throughout the day and evening there, to render the destruction of our history unfeasible.

Environmentalists have been known to sit in trees to keep them from being cut down.

Surely real archaeologists and their fans here might wish to follow their lead, and hoot and holler and ring bells outside any improper archaeological digs to prevent the televised looting, plunder and ruin of St. Augustine.

In addition, the Record’s article indicated that MANDELBAUM hoped to market her series to the Discovery Channel, History Channel or Spike. In fact the Record’s article stated:

“She said the series would air on one of three major networks: The History Channel, Spike or the Discovery Channel. She said she couldn’t say which because the producers planned to make a big push for the show after they shot all the episodes.”

Now MANDELBAUM won’t tell who she’s working for -- what do you reckon?

What does MANDELBAUM have to hide from St. Augustinians?

Hollywood casting director DESIREE MANDELBAUM wants to dig up St. Augustine history, calls herself a "professional digger."