Hell, if you weren’t paying attantion, you’d think “Citizens United” was a good thing. If we’ve learned nothing else in the last year, united citizens are certainly capable of great things, whether said united citizenry be in Tunisia, Tahrir Square or skirting City Hall. Who’s against small-c citizens, small-u united?

But capital-C, capital-U Citizens United, the deep-pocketed political organization that produced the 2008 smear piece Hillary: The Movie (and whose forthcoming Spring 2012 Occupy Unmasked looks equally fair and balanced), is something else entirely. The organization, depending on your bent, is either a conservative travesty or, well, the place where you can order Mike Huckabee’s The Gift of Life on DVD.

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (shorthand: Citizens United decision), a 2010 Supreme Court case whose story began when the FEC ruled that Citizens United couldn’t air Hillary: The Movie within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic primaries.

On appeal, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Citizens United (it was a contentious 5-4 decision)—claiming that the FEC’s decision violated Citizens United’s “free speech.” Thus, the dear, old Supreme Court codified the long-fought-for/long-fought-against concepts of corporate free speech, corporate rights and, in essence, corporate personhood.

The court may as well have said that corporations enjoy all the Bill of Rights protections actual people do. (I’ve been reading Jeffrey D. Clements’s new book Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It for a review in another publication. You should read it, too.)

This is all terrifying and infuriating for a lot of reasons, the first and foremost of which being that each day corporations should be thanking me and you and everyone we know for their very existence. Clements points out that corporate status is not a right, it’s a privilege that entities looking to incorporate need to apply for. And it’s a privilege that’s bestowed by state laws, via me and you and all the other voting citizens we know. Among the things we generally let corporations have—because it makes doing business more efficient, which is good for the economy and innovation and lots of other things—are:

• Limited liability, a.k.a. if your corporation fucks up and spills a bunch of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the corporation pays fines but the shareholders and their families aren’t shaken down for cash, nor do they have their wages garnished until every last crude-coated brine shrimp is scrubbed clean.
• Single entity-hood for the purposes of signing contracts, a.k.a. legally convenient expedience for essential business activities. (Imagine if you had to get everyone at your company to sign off every time you placed a W.B. Mason order).
• Perpetual life, a.k.a. even if all the people who found the corporation die, your corporation, much like Celine Dion’s heart, will go on.

But we get little respect. And the reason is that when it comes down to it, profit and earnings reports and year-over-year results matter much more to most corporations than their responsibilities to the citizens who make their eternal limited liability possible. The increasingly multi-national nature of many corporations—to say nothing of the incredibly corporation-friendly incorporation laws of Delaware (where some 6,500 corporations and more than 200,000 businesses are “headquartered” at 1209 N. Orange St. in Wilmington)—only complicates this matter.

Corporations don’t deserve free speech any more than they deserve our trust to do things like steward the environment or not bankrupt the entire goddamned economy. At its root, free speech, even when hurtful or unpopular, is meant to better society; in the marketplace of ideas, all should be heard. But where “corporate speech” is concerned, it’s not a marketplace of ideas, it’s just a marketplace, one where entities with deep pockets and no faces can spend to their hearts’ content and spin ideas of bald self-interest as good for the public.

Yet here we are. While there’s no impeachment process for the Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of Citizens United, it’s not too late to take a stand. The time is now.

• A good place to start is by getting behind the People’s Rights Amendment movement. The PRA’s a short, sweet document that would clarify exactly who should have speech rights (people) and who shouldn’t (corporations).
• Then there’s Progressives United, an organization and a separate PAC (who would not stop calling me last week) founded by Russ Feingold (he of the trounced McCain-Feingold Act) that aims to preach about the ills of corporate speech rights and support candidates who feel likewise.
• Hell, there’s even an American Sustainable Business Council Business for Democracy campaign for businesses who think this thing ought to be overturned.
• And you can find more resources at corporationsarenotpeople.com.

Take a stand while you can. Occupy the Supreme Court. Make this the People’s Rights Spring.

At least I never wondered out loud why everyone was suddenly so religious, but I do have to wonder this out loud: why should I, or any of the other people with whom we may be stuck in traffic, care that you run half or whole marathons? And don’t say that you don’t care if we know, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have that sticker on the back of your car, where you, yourself, can almost never see it, but the rest of us always can. If you didn’t want to impress us with your athletic prowess, then your own personal badges of achievement, like your nasty black-and-blue toenails, or no toenails at all, would remain hidden on your gas pedal, out of sight unless we asked, which we didn’t, hence the stickers.

Bumper stickers of old were interactive. In the 1970s and ‘80s every political campaigner gave them out, so maybe if you were on a road trip or in a traffic jam, you could get riled up with your passengers and get a debate going to pass the time. There were a lot of “Honk If … ” stickers too, like if you loved Jesus, or disco, or Fonzi. You could also honk if disco sucked, or if you were against nukes, or Jane Fonda.

Long before Twitter, bumper stickers were sarcastic and snarky in 140 characters or less. They even contained profanities, which was audacious at the time because curse words weren’t all over the place  like they are now. One of my favorites is still, “Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you’re an asshole.” A day hardly passes that I don’t think of that. It’s a modern proverb really, especially when a person knows I’m waiting for his/her parking space, sees me sitting there with my blinker on, but proceeds to seize the moment to catch up on texting while I wait. I thought we were best friends because you wanted me to know that you run, that you’ve been to the Outer Banks at least once, that your kids do gymnastics and play soccer, that you’re a Philles fan who went to Penn State, there’s even a Jesus fish in the mix, and yet, you leave me out here blocking traffic. Even Jesus would be done with you.

This year’s Broad Street Run sold out like a U2 concert. Excellent that everyone is so into running—even people who smoke. My runner daughter works with a smoker who also runs. This young lady says that she runs and smokes to be social. I presume she doesn’t do both at the same time, but who knows? She has a “Runner Girl” sticker on her car too. She’s wants us to know she’s in the tribe. When my best friend, Kim, and I were on a very brief yoga kick, she said the only thing that would make yoga better was smoking. She still does tree pose on my deck with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, and then she bows and gives me a heartfelt “Namaste” from behind a cloud of smoke.

During our yogic summer, Kim and I didn’t slap “Yoga Girl” ovals on our cars, or “Smoker Girl,” or “Extra Dirty, Extra Olive, Vodka Martini Girl” for that matter. Most of us generally don’t air our dirty little vices to strangers, and it’s show-offy and boring to use your car as a mobile all-about-me billboard. If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t bother me while I’m driving. I’d rather know something dicey about you. I’m sure your kid has gotten in trouble in school, but I don’t see a demerit magnet next to the basketballs and dance shoes on your trunk. Now that would make me laugh and honk, while I happily let you merge into my lane.

I detailed some of the potential conflicts facing Ed Rendell and his ownership group two weeks ago. Others have weighed in as well, including Buzz Bissinger and Dave Davies (no relation).

Rendell can’t believe all the fuss. Last week, he told the New York Times: “Any ownership group may have some interest in controlling the content of the newspaper, but ours is no more or less than that.”

That’s not very reassuring to journalists who value integrity, independence and the ability to pursue stories without fear or favor. In fact, “controlling the content” is about the last thing the reporters at 400 North Broad want to hear from a lifelong politician angling to oversee the papers—especially one now collecting paychecks from several other influential institutions.

Rendell says he is just trying to do some good and save the company. Cue the violins. It all sounds so noble and patriotic.

Of course, Rendell is not putting any money where his mouth is. Hey, the business model is shot. Who wants to invest in a sinking enterprise? The real prize is controlling the media. If the deal goes through, Rendell plans to be the chairman of the newspapers without investing a nickel. What a deal.

Rendell brushed aside concerns that his past roles as mayor, governor and head of the Democratic National Committee could influence coverage. Never mind that one of the other investors, George Norcross, is the South Jersey political boss and has a brother who is a state senator in Trenton. “You’d think this was the first time some political people owned a newspaper,” Rendell told the Inquirer.

Rendell pointed to other newspaper owners who have a political bent, including Pittsburgh Tribune Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife and former Inky owner Walter Annenberg.

How comforting. Scaife’s paper is pretty much a right-wing rag and the Inquirer under Annenberg was an agenda-driven piece of crap. Just ask Milton Shapp or the Sixers.

On Monday, Rendell said his investor group would consider establishing a “fire wall” to limit interference with its newsrooms. Sounds nice, but don’t believe it. For one, it is not even a promise, just something they are considering.

It comes just days after Rendell talked about having input in the content. Even if there was a fire wall, it is impossible to imagine Rendell would abide by it. Ditto Norcross who already combats negative coverage of his dealings. And Ed Snider is no shrinking violet.

Rupert Murdoch set up similar checks and balances when he bought the Wall Street Journal, but promptly ignored them. There’s nothing to stop Rendell & Co. from doing the same.

After the story of Rendell’s bid was leaked to the New York Post, Rendell called a press conference in part to complain that the confidentiality agreement was breached. Days later, Rendell’s spokeswoman told a reporter he wasn’t available to comment on a story because he had signed another confidentiality agreement.

But within days Rendell was back yapping to anyone who asked. Over the weekend, Rendell reportedly told a blogger he bumped into on the street that his group probably wasn’t going to buy the papers. After that set off a media flurry, Rendell vowed to stop speaking to the press.

“I’m not going to talk to anybody any more. I’m done,” Rendell told the Daily News. “You’re going to have to waterboard me to get me to say anything.”

On Monday, Rendell sat for a radio interview with Bissinger. The sounds of silence.

So any promise by Rendell & Co. not to interfere with the content of the newspapers will last about as long as Rendell’s promise to stop talking to the press.

I had, ironically, just arrived in a hotel in Beverly Hills when the news raced through the Internet like a forest fire. I have to say my reaction was one of both sadness and expectancy. Sadness, because like many people of my generation (I am Whitney’s age), the soundtrack of my twenties was filled with songs from the wailing Whitney canon. My cousin Diane no doubt vividly recalls my spirited rendition of “How Will I Know?,” delivered at our annual family reunion in 1985 with suitable verve and greased by a fair amount of vodka, which ended not with suitable thrushiness but, alas, increasingly wild hand gestures that knocked over a tabletop of glassware, sending various alcoholic liquids sloshing all over the place.

Expectancy because, really: Of course we knew she was going to die young. Anyone with any passing pop culture exposure knew of Whitney’s up-and-down (and subsequently down and downer) battle with drugs, her occasional rambling protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. (“Crack is whack” quickly became a catchphrase with a life of its own.) Let’s be honest: We may have been bummed she died, sure, but no one was actually surprised. Just as we won’t be surprised when the dirge plays for Lindsay Lohan sooner rather than later, or Charlie Sheen. (Though Keith Richards, whose funeral I would have laid money on, remains a freak of nature.)

And yet the Internet just can’t help itself when such events rear their pathos-laden heads. Within an hour the “RIP, Whitney”s on Facebook piled up like an Interstate traffic jam, some embellished with personal remembrances of an autograph, a meaningful song heard in the car, the stunning cinematic achievement that was The Bodyguard. As Nick Catucci noted in his blog post, provocatively titled, “Meta-Mourning: Were We Truly Grieving Whitney Houston?,” “by the time the Grammys rolled around, there was a whole universe, from black holes to inhabitable planets, of Houston sharing.” As the day of the formal farewell in Newark arrived, the hysteria and accompanying digital wailing only got worse, videos of Kevin Costner’s “moving tribute” and the dour blatherings of an endless parade of others, some of whom knew the deceased only cursorily, posted for public consumption. At least three of my Facebook friends live-blogged the funeral.

Oh, dear. I would truly like to believe—really, I would—that all of this was real and grounded in something sane, that people were expressing genuine emotion and tapped into the worldwide sharing outlet we now have that allows for it. But there is a raw vanity to the Whitneypalooza. As Liel Liebovitz, writing for the online Jewish magazine Tablet, so eloquently put it: “Death excites us to comment, publicly and immediately, even if what we have to say is not a howl or horror but a muted murmur, drained of warmth and meaning.”

There are two issues here. The first is that the Internet, while now serving as the new town hall edition of the Associated Press, allows us to share news faster than ever, it also foments a false sense of intimacy with one another, and even more egregious, allows an easy route for people to co-opt events for themselves, to indulge their own egos under the guise of shared mourning. It’s so typical of the “Isn’t what I have to say fascinating?” mentality too many of us walk around with anymore, a beast constantly fed by social media’s faux ego-stroking, turning even the most inane ditherer into Peggy Noonan. It’s the equivalent of hearing a house has burned down, killing its occupants, and overhearing someone remark, “You know, my aunt was once at a birthday party at that house.” Or when there is a heinous car crash on the Interstate, and the first thing you read online are an arm’s-length roster of comments about how “I was JUST driving on that.”

We just can’t seem to help wanting to be in the thick of things, be part of it all, be heard, even when we have nothing cogent to say. The Internet, in its entrenchment as populist sounding board, has fomented an entire legion of people perched at the ready to jump on any buzz of the news ticker, however far removed from their own lives, and weigh in. One can only wonder at what’s coming when one of those ghastly Real Housewives inevitably makes an early exit. (“Your fabulosity will live on, NeNe.”)

All of this draping of digital crepe also covers up something not discussed in the case of Whitney Houston’s death: the fact that it was highly preventable. In all of the fawning funeral coverage and gnashing of teeth forthwith, there has been nary a mention of the fact that Whitney probably died simply because she took too many pills, as she had taken too much of other dicey substances over the years. In the end people who do such things die, and die young. No doubt there will be remonstrations to this effect when the autopsy results are certified, though I hold scant hope that the reaction from Facebook Nation will be close to thought-provoking, a chance to open a badly needed national dialogue (“Why do we continue to fail too many people battling drug addiction?”). I suspect instead we’ll get even more faux tears of unfelt grief (a posting of “So, so sad,” followed by an update on the dog’s new trick, replete with photo).

Yes, it’s sad Whitney Houston died. But it’s sadder that we don’t have anything better to say about it than a breezy “Whitney, R.I.P.”