The notion of an anti-Christ juxtaposed with Christian fundamentalism deserves no comment from The Left, Joel. Focusing on it, however, does provide amusement for those of us who remain convinced that , while religion as the opiate of the masses may have been among Karl Marx's most revolutionary of sentiments, that narcotic of today's dumbing down of America is television content, secular and non-sectarian alike. Even last evening's Frontline program "Decision 2008" deferred to the respect for religious belief without making clear which of the two presidential candidates poses the worst risk to those of us who believe that our constitution's …
All 31 comments by...
Bud Wizer
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The corporate, mainstream newsmedia as "Fifth Column" is metaphorically appropriate but factually tenable only if we can demonstrate that, as General Emilio Mola did when coining the term to describe General Franco's clandestine subversives seventy-two years ago, like-mindedness is conspiratorial. Prioritizing bottom-line initiatives is allegiance to sensible business practice within a capitalistic framework of profiteering's sustainability. It is not, necessarily, subversive or clandestine. The problem is less the magnates of media than that they engage in enterprises exploitative of ignorance and stupidity. It is our educational resources, particularly those enjoined with compulsory mandates, that pose the greatest threat to democracy. Were …
Posted to Is the Fourth Estate a Fifth Column?
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Journalists and journalism have become suspect with respect to timidity trumping temerity. If ever a time has come for the "yellow journalism" and "muckraking" of Upton Sinclair and his contemporaries to be the model of journalistic fortitude, not rectitude, it is now. The banalities of "news" advanced as perceptive, insightful, cogent and purposeful are as evident as the increase in volume for a tv commercial's soundtrack. The "mild-mannered reporter" is no longer just a cartoon character's disguise, it is a profession's countenance of the very thing that mocks its pupose, a mild manner that reveals more than its feigns. How "nice" …
Posted to Collapse of the Fourth Estate
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I stand and applaud, Mr. Moyers, once again and as usual. Your exhortations and exposition enlighten; our courage, candor and conscience contradict careerism. Those of us whose experience in mainstream journalism confirms and verifies what you posit, remain hopeful that professors of journalism concur, that applicants to schools of journalism are not screened politically, and, most of all, that journalism's doors might remain open to those not molded by conformity's deformations, academically or otherwise. Politics is ever and always who gets what, why, when and how. Journalism should, as you steadfastly remind, disallow its tendency disgrace the process.
Posted to In Praise of Reporting Reality--And The Truth
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The "military cure," as you put it, is, of course, the military disease. Americans never again will hear a Republican president advise them, as did Dwight Eisenhower, to "beware" our military-industrial complex; and The Golden Fleece award of the late Sen. Proxmire no longer graces us with its constructive criticisms and condemnations of Pentagonal profligacy. Alas, so deeply ingrained is the militaristic rationale that video games prepare children for combat, martial-arts instruction seems the preparatory coming-of-age ritual for blue-collar cannon fodder, and Congressional outbursts of lambaste for the social blasphemy of blank-check defense are impolitic. It seems more probable than when …
Posted to Shape Up and Ship Out
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Or the trust of secular humanists, Steven. Your critique, comment and conclusion leave little to say, save well done and ditto.
Posted to Secular Jews and the 'Jewish State'
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Hats off to the young Fulbright Scholar from New Jersey's state university for demonstrating that those honored by this distinction can be expected to stand up to such outlandishly inept turnings as that evidenced by the assistant regional security adviser seeking identification of comparable Cuban and Venezuelan deployments in Bolivia. It is a comfort to those of us grayed and bowed by aging that a 23-year-old possesses sufficiently informed skepticism to resist becoming another of those lionized by the United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita) legacy. The resurgence of socialism in South America is less a threat to us than an example …
Posted to Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps
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In commenting, we offer a personal perspective, no? We do not do so with the ulterior motive of debating, yes? It appears that Wolf and Marshalldoc would have very different takes on Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States 1492-Present," which is not to say Professor Zinn's book is not to be taken seriously. It can be assumed that readers of ITT are sufficiently intelligent to have their personal perspectives digested as commentary without animus. Let's keep it intellectual, shall we. It's not who's red, blue or purple that matters, it's whether ITT's content prompts comments worthy of consideration …
Posted to Recruiting Spies in the Peace Corps
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The mind of Norquist merely hints at what we can expect from the loathsome liturgy of right-wing rituals of empowerment. We look forward, Joel, to your keeping close tabs on the GOP mendacity machine as it exploits the telling ignorance of electors' inattentiveness and reactionary tendencies. As I repeatedly inform the brighter lights of my children's generation whom I occasionally have the good fortune to meet and engage, I'd thought, as a young mainstream journalist 40 years ago, that Nixon's gang would be the worst ever I'd see in control of the presidency. However, the current cretins ( the word is …
Posted to Red-Boating Obama
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With all due respect to your considerable experience and expertise, madam, the problem, as this white writer has observed, is much deeper than "the numbers." Calling for the number of persons of color working as prominent journalists to be proportionate with the census data on our melting pot's ethnic stew insults, as we former and present mainstream journalists know, the intellectual threshold that should be journalism's requisite credential. As a glance at the blacks holding prominent seats in mainstream journalism's ranks reveals, there aren't many Angela Davises among them and too many of the black males have iced their souls rather …
Posted to Missing: Minorities in Media
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Well put, sir, especially your reference to The Department of War. Whether a progressive challenge of the established order is a viable option remains, of course, THE question. Observing the demise of the no-nonsense Congressman from Ohio and the ballsy litigator from Carolina was disheartening for those of us who cling to the prospect of at least token endorsement of leftist ideas from the Democratic party. Reading your writings for the past 20 years, I realize that no one has to convince you of our political system's entrenched mockery of equal justice for all and that slogan hailing of, by and …
Posted to Political Climate Change
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Conversation among non-native Americans who indulge in debate regarding the obvious and very evident miscarriage of justice that has been the Department of Interior's Indian land-trust business for far too long seems usually to center on a presumption of entitlement as intepreted and defined by non-native Americans. In its simplest and most incontrovertible summation, the matter is essentially that of empowered theft against which protection is a carefully structured impossibility. Doubtless, our federal government will not produce a full accounting of trust losses attributable to the institutionally consecrated paternalism of zoo-ing native Americans and exhibited them in cages of poverty and …
Posted to Challenging Indian Land Trusts
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Write on, David. Your considereable involvement with Ned Lamont's campaign should have well acquainted you with what once was called "Radical Chic" in NYC and has now become Practical Slick. I'd suggest some effort at substantiating a Bloomberg-Lieberman link with Israeli liquidity might prove cogent. Then again, such notions are now considered anti-Semitic, no? Perhaps the most glaring truth of the past 25 year of our nation's politics is that high office can now be bought because, to paraphrase, it's the television, stupid. Maybe Ned can assit you in getting to the source of those who think Bloomberg's candidacy would prove …
Posted to The Candidate of the Permanent Will
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The New York Times, a publication as reflective of our intelligentsia's elitism as it is accommodating to capitalism's deepest pockets, may well be and most probably is now enormously sensitive to The Wall Street Journal's position as a Murdock clarion call. Those of us from the laboring class who cut our teeth on our parents' blue-collar rally to the intelligence, humanism and courage of Adlai E. Stevenson were profoundly impressed with The Times colossal efforts at revealing the depravities of the Cold War's arms-merchant playground in Vietnam and Kissinger's insidious liaison with domestic policies run by thugs and fascists. Even we …
Posted to A Foggy Kristol Ball
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As a young man of the 1960s raised by parents that were far above praising themselves for their anti-racist perspectives and felt debating the issue with racists was beneath them, I developed a strong aversion to use of what we call today the "N" word. Three years ago, working as a group-care counselor in what during my youth was referred to as a reform school and today is a residential therapeutic facility, I took the occasion of the Martin Luther King holiday evening to discuss my distaste for the word with some of the boys. They were white, Hispanic and African-American. …
Posted to Nas: Whose Word Is This?
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Were I familiar with the works of Nas, I might be inclined to agree with you, Poppolphil. I am inclined to listen and, if pertinent to what I'm hearing, learn. Also, I'm pathologically posed and intrinsically inclined to prefer, as you put it, "to make way for some serious socially conscious" artists. DeNiro's endorsement of Obama is music to my ears. My son, on the other hand, continually amazes me with hip-hop and rap stuff he brings to my attention, particularly that which reminds us of Mumbia's predicament. I like to think he does so because I was able to familiarize …
Posted to Nas: Whose Word Is This?
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Hats off to Sean Belcher, the tech writer who walked away from his job with the aforementioned Boeing subsidiary rather involve himself in what he perceived to be nefarious undertakings at variance with our nation's precepts of accountability under the law. As ACLU agents lilke Ben Wizner and those of us who depend on the ACLU to reveal our government's egregious excesses and insufferable license have come to know since the Church Committee hearings three decades ago, black-box clandestine operations are sometimes revolting. So deep is the depth of CIA insertion into our nation's commercial life, that it is not a …
Posted to Extraordinary Rendition on Trial
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Denver's one thing, Mr. Sirota; but for those of us who have had some experience with Montana, you'd be incorrect in assessing it's residents to be regular people being regular people, unless your intent is to ingratiate yourself with those who frequently boast that blacks know better than to move to Montana. During my visits to the Big Sky state when one of my daughters resided there, the lack of minorities was more stunning than the night sky. Locals despise the "rich Californians" whose homes mar the once pristine ridgelines and most of the men I spoke with on the golf …
Posted to Rocky Mountain Realities
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Your reach of your argument is impressive, Mr. Thindwa. Yet I find myself wondering why you might doubt that the African-Americans of Chicago most direly affected by the mobilization of mainstream establishment's resistance to living-wage ordinations might not already know too well what you report. If, as you put it, it is universally and understandably accepted that "political participation rises with income," it seems likewise evident that such participation declines as desperation heightens. Keep it up, though, please. It's more likely you might make the oppressors feel guilt than that you'll inform the defeated of something that they don't already know. …
Posted to Where is the Dream?
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It might better serve the purposes of inspiring Africans with the legacy of Patrice Lamumba, Mr. Parenti, were the factual American involvements with his murder emphasized, rather than omitted, in a report by one of our best, leftist writers. You do socialism's cause and, worse, Dr. Lamumba's memory, a disservice by merely writing herein that he was 36 when "killed" and then, perhaps to ingratiate yourself with authorities you now must deal with over there, suggest that Mr. Lamumba did not give us ample reason during his life to believe that he would not have "devolved into corruption and megalomania." I …
Posted to In Search of Lumumba
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Notwithstanding that any writer worth publishing ought to be the first to admit that explaining the opposite sex is whimsical and anecdotal at best, there remains the question of what women gain by (I'll defer to the author's evident mindset) going along with the enticements of their objectification. In other words, women control men with male-baiting sexuality as much as they posture that such behaviour is beneath them and that they are victimized by it. White slavery is one thing. Women behaving badly is another. In the largest context of above-and-beyond all cutures and all times lies a fundamental truth: without …
Posted to The Jamie Lynn Effect
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You may be correct, margymae13. I'm far from perfect, which is the point I'm trying to make: imperfect beings in an imperfect world trivializing the challenges of doing the best we can with what we've got. My two daughters, one a Beverly Hills operative and performance artist, the other a Boston graduate student for nurse-anesthetist, have long been sexually active single women. When they were girls, I never failed to warn them of the dangers posed by testosteronic excesses coupled with the flirtatious nature of their, well, natures. I consistently, constantly and, to their adolescent mindset, crucifyingly informed them that it …
Posted to The Jamie Lynn Effect
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Professor Douglas' perspective, wholly worthwhile and provocatively phrased, needs to be presented in more pertinent forums: popular media. My reaction to it is not that it is incorrect; I find it objectionable as content for ITT. Those of us who read ITT, I have the gall to opine, are far out in front of the leading edge Ms. Douglas presents. When I finished reading her piece, my immediate reaction was: Of course. Let's hope she can get her byline and content in Parade Magazine, Readers Digest, People, Teen, Seventeen, and countless other publications that are, much more than men or motherhood, …
Posted to The Jamie Lynn Effect
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Orwellian aspects of our culture and its time, seemingly more apparent diurnally, intrigue informed readers. They positively infuriate we socialists. Nonetheless, critical thinking and its appreciation of the satirical can be productive. However, Huckabee as Bob Follett of progressivism fame is quite a stretch, if not beyond the pale. Perhaps, I'd like to believe, the author's intent, given his experience with the Lamont challenge in my state's rally against Leibermanism, is to prod the Democratic candidates with this implication that progressive thinking supportive of solialistic mindsets might somehow stem from so-called compassionate conservatism's deferrence to biblical exhortations. For those of us …
Posted to Stay Classy, Huckabee
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Perhaps, Natalie, what I meant was not clear. Such is not infrequently the case when I keyboard a stream of consciousness in response to reading material that stimulates me. I do, however, view the Cuban example, in the sense of its lay people and their gallantry during that troubled time when the Soviet Union collapsed and they had to demonstrate sufficient solidarity to keep the salivating capitalists at bay, as stalwart, under Spartan conditions. A Cuban whom I met several years ago during his first visit to the U.S. as part of a cultural exchange centered on his paintings, was evocative …
Posted to Stay Classy, Huckabee
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Your interest in and response to my contributory comments is what I have come to expect from those whose reactionary viewpoints reflect, as much as anything else, a lack of historical and contemporary perspective. Most of Europe's industrialized democracies are, at least socially speaking, socialistic. Take any of the NATO members, for goodness sake. Also, your metaphoric 90-mile bridge between Miami and Havana traverses time and distance without mentioning the toll gates of our four-decades-old and incomprehensibly extant embargo against Cuba's success. For what its worth for the sake of discussion, since you so obviously take exception to a socialist's notion …
Posted to Stay Classy, Huckabee
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As incomprehensible as it, I'm sure, must be to you, Natalie, living gracefully in poverty has a certain appeal to the secular humanist whose interest is minimizing his footprint on this globe of fire hurtling through the ether of the unknown. We are polar opposites, plain and simple. It would, therefore, prove tedious, tiresome and tormenting to others for us to socialize herein. Best wishes for success as you see it. I'll presume that you would wish me likewise. In fare thee well context, I would challenge you to accept that for every virtue of private enterprise that you can muster …
Posted to Stay Classy, Huckabee
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My appreciation of my freedom never falters, Natalile, nor does my rancor for manifestations of human bondage. Thank you for the kind and civil closure to our tete a tete-a-tete herein. If I may suggest a threesome among my favorites in American literature whose writings reflect the socialist's distrust of personal wealth's power to corrupt commonwealth, please accept these three as worthwhile: John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and E.L. Doctorow. The stories they told and tell, evoke that ineffable sense that breaking bread at humanity's table requires manners that suggest saying grace is far less important than divving things up fairly. The …
Posted to Stay Classy, Huckabee
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During the "Dirty War" years in Argentina (1970s), medical practicitioners, including a physician, assisted the military's nuertralization of opponents by sedating those who were thrown from helicopters into the Pactific Ocean while still alive. This professional assistance was intended to reduce the resistance such condemned insurgents would be expected to effect when faced with such endgame kinetics. It is not unlikely that some of these professional care-givers might ethicitize themselves with declarations of the humanity intended by their sedations, in that those groggy with injections may have been less alarmed by the prospect before them. Such a scenario illustrates how professionals, …
Posted to Anthropologists on the Front Lines
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Leftists in eastern Connecticut find it disheartening that The Treaty of Detroit is not honored by a sovereignty attributable to treaties pre-dating the colonial revolution. The Mashantucket Pequots, federally-sanctioned operators of the monstrously profitable Foxwoods Casino, now face an organizing drive by the UAW focusing on the casino's dealers. Earlier this week, the casino's management purchased a full-page ad in local newspapers that purpoted to factually explain the UAW's intent and purpose with this organizing drive. Sadly, Mr. Moberg's on-point analysis, as evidenced by this report, was not available to the newspapers' readership. Even more sadly, it very probably will not …
Posted to Treaty of Detroit Repealed
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Solidarity, a French word eagerly accepted into the English language during the explosively revolutionary years before and after 1848, remains the defining concept of working-class hope. Those of us instilled with the visions of 19th-century European and American labor leaders as we waded into the thickets of 1960s New Left angst, can attest to the debilitating effects of schism and splintering. Organized labor's fractious displays and divorces serve mostly to give notice to management and employers that the labor movement has wilted, lost the vigor with which it once withstood private-sector thugs and national guard assaults on its encampments of purpose …
Posted to Has the Change Led to Wins?
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