Charlie Rose: Welcome to the show. Let me start by kissing your ass for a while before I get on with interrupting you.
No, I guess I didn’t really hear that. It just seemed like it.
Two right-on-the-money rebuttals: first off, Moyers’ impassioned fire. Then, Greenwald’s legal, logical ice. Both pieces are brilliant.
All Glenn Greenwald ever does, really, is uphold the sense of political decency, propriety, legality, and respect for the rules and for basic fairness that were, believe it or not, widely accepted by the American establishment as recently as the post-Watergate era (1975-78). Granted, they didn’t consistently practice what they preached, and huge areas — such as all U.S. operations overseas, and certain assassinations that had occured back home — were exempt from any concept of fairness, decency, or lawfulness whatever. But debates within the U.S. were, provided they stayed within certain bourgeois, pro-Cold-War bounds, protected by hard-fought-for rules of fairness — as were the contestations between the two major parties — as was ideological struggle within a rather broadly defined mainstream, from strong liberal to strong conservative. (It wasn’t until the Reagan era that we were indoctrinated through endless repetition with the idea that liberalism isn’t part of the mainstream. Most liberals and progressives, seeming to almost relish their faux unpopularity, did not strongly contest this nonsense at the time, with disastrous consequences ever since.)
And the corporate media, in those same post-Watergate times — at least the respectable, anti-tabloid media — adhered to strict rules of neutrality in news reporting that have since gone by the boards. (Imagine news stories that don’t assert what is likely to win public support or how the ongoing struggles they chronicle are likely to come out, that don’t make use of the passive voice or appeals to anonymous “experts” to attribute authoritative opinions, and that don’t strive for false balance — news stories that, even when they decontextualize or fail to dig enough, more or less report facts and not opinions. Yes, Virginia, many of the basic principles of journalistic integrity progressives now fight a 175-degree uphill battle for were once part of the establishment media’s own rulebook.) These rules did not prevent bias — even massive bias — in sourcing and framing assumptions, for example — but they did put some very real limits on it.
Don’t get me wrong — the rules of fairness under which public discourse operated in this country at that time were perfectly compatible with, and indeed conducive to, the capitalist order. Given the destructiveness which American imperalism had already achieved by 1975 (which Greenwald, significantly, does not criticize), it might not seem like much to aspire to get back to a comparable level of inconsistently principled public discourse. But we’ve fallen so very far that in fact it is a huge undertaking, and a desperately needed one to keep us from outright fascism. (No, North Carolina, we are not already in a state of fascism — or I’d be arrested for writing this — and not merely, as is likely, spied upon.)
Like Greenwald, Bill Moyers also, in his way, upholds the old sense of honor — the one that eventually forced out Agnew and Nixon, and that caused a backlash against their repressive machinations, not just among the great unwashed, but even among the freshly scrubbed of Washington opinion-setters (who already viewed said unwashed with the absolute condescension of an elite whose members know their names will always outweigh their lack of talent). Still less than Greenwald would Moyers ever question American imperalism as such. After all, he was the lackey of the president who lied us into Vietnam. In Moyers’ field of vision, such an act is only an excess, not a monstrosity like those committed by “our” foes.
Yet in opposing these excesses, folks like Moyers and Greenwald sometimes see with brutal clarity the exact place where tyranny is now advancing into yet another former stronghold of those who, however waveringly, resist it. My confirmed impression, from hanging out with my fellow leftists, is that most leftists most of the time don’t see this stuff for what it is, dismissing it as fiddling over crumbs. It is not.
To defend these quite unpurist strongholds, good radicals must fight full-shouldered beside our liberal brothers and sisters — even if in other areas, especially their nationalism, they are themselves part of the problem.
I’ve figured out the meaning of the way the last Sopranos episode ended…
(drumroll, please)
The writers are going to get whacked.
Now that MSNBC has pulled the plug on talkshow host Don Imus for his overtly bigoted remarks, will Newsweek yank away Howard Fineman’s editorship for his overtly bigoted logic?
Five days after Imus opened his mouth and let the ugliness inside show for the umpteenth time, Newsweek editor Howard Fineman appeared on Imus’ show, like all the other willing abettors who came before, and with a tone of a lecturing grade school teacher offered pearls of wisdom to the besieged casual racist and smiling misogynist. Fineman had this interesting observation:
The environment, politically, has changed. And some of the stuff that you used to do, you probably can’t do anymore…. You just can’t. Because the times have changed. I mean, just looking specifically at the African-American situation. I mean, hello, Barack Obama’s got twice the number of contributors as anybody else in the race…. And the kind of — some of the kind of humor that you used to do you can’t do anymore.
Note that Fineman doesn’t say you can’t get away with as much racism any more because people are more sensitive, more easily offended, more likely to complain, and so on. No. Fineman says you can’t get away with as much racism as before because people aren’t as racist. Why else would he bring up Obama’s contributors? People don’t give money to Barney Frank because they’re offended by homophobia. The only possible relevance of the money given to Obama is that a lot of white people are now capable of being so energized by a black man, they’re actually willing to give him some of their hard earned cash. God damn it, that makes life tough for poor, hardworking folks who like to spew racist filth every time they open their mouths. Even if they’re actually rich and paid to gab.
In other words, Fineman — not me — but Fineman is acknowledging that Don Imus’ ability to get away with this kind of stuff before depended on the fact that the social climate used to be more racist. This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Fineman hadn’t preceded this observation with a ramble about the work Imus did in the past, saying things that range from kind to apologetic:
I would like to continue to enable you to do a lot of the good things you do. Including, you know, talking about stuff happening in the world, which you do a very good job of on this show.
You know, the form of humor that you do here is risky, and sometimes it runs off the rails. Most of the people who listen to this show get the joke most of the time, and sometimes, you know, as David Carr said in The New York Times this morning, sometimes you go over the line so far you can’t even see the line. And that’s what happened in this case. And I think of all the stuff you’ve done and do do, and, you know, you make your mistakes — we all make our mistakes.
Okay, boys and girls — let’s put together Fineman’s syllogism. An asterisk (*) denotes a step Fineman declined to state explicitly:
Is this passive racism, which accepts and appreciates prejudice for making life easier on the good old boys’ circuit even when one says nothing prejudiced oneself, the mentality that has allowed so many celebrities, politicians, and pundits to be a part of Imus’ “club” over the years?
Here is the relevant part of the exchange in full:
No, I am not exaggerating. Not even slightly. See for yourself:
CARACAS, Venezuela, April 3 — Many Venezuelans shrug off President Hugo Chávez’s increasingly frequent calls to create a New Man through a Socialist revolution. But a decree severely limiting alcohol sales for much of Holy Week has certainly gotten their attention.
“Don’t Mess With My Hooch!” read the main headline in Sunday’s El Nuevo País, an opposition newspaper.
That was one of the more restrained comments heard on this city’s streets after the surprise decree, which Mr. Chávez’s government says is needed to diminish fatalities from drunken driving, went into effect on Friday.
…The measure prohibits the sale of alcohol altogether along highways and busy streets until after Easter. That may sound unobjectionable, but legions of street vendors here earn money by selling cold beer to drivers advancing at a snail’s pace on traffic-congested roadways.
(“A New Decree From Chávez: Less Elbow-Bending” by Simon Romero, April 4, 2007 — emphasis added)
Can you imagine anything published in the New York Times, or any remotely respectable corporate media outlet, presenting the need of street vendors in the U.S. to make money selling booze as an arguably legitimate reason to allow them to sell it to bored drivers caught in traffic? Can you imagine the outrage that would explode if such a thing were published? But of course, that would threaten American lives…this only threatens Venezuelan lives.
Romero and the Times would no doubt claim, if asked, that they are not legitimating anything, just reporting people’s reactions, but people “reacting” the same way as these vendors within the USA or an American ally would be treated by these same journalists as lowlifes. (Instead, the Times dubs Caracas residents “resourceful” for “finding ways around the restrictions.”) Hiding behind what is purported (often with little evidence) to be either popular or expert opinion is the #1 trick corporate media use to express their (institutional, not individual) opinions while claiming to be neutrally describing. They’ve been pulling that one in a consistently right-leaning manner on domestic issues since at least the early Reagan if not the late Carter era (on world affairs, they’ve been spinning right since Truman).
Actually, the Times piece does more than treat the vendors’ plaint as arguably legitimate. The whole way the article is framed consistently presents Chavez as the problem and those objecting to him as the good guys. So, they want to sell a little booze to drivers, a small minority of whom will eventually get plastered and kill themselves somewhere further down the road. “Consecomercio, a national group of business owners, complained that the measure could lower liquor sales by 60 percent during the important vacation period,” says the Times. Isn’t Chavez’s greatest failing that he doesn’t understand the Coolidgian principle that business is business?
Fake news…it’s not just Jon Stewart and The Onion, but the regular news that’s full of shit. Here is a fascinating history of fake news in America…it goes back much further than you might think!
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Another clueless corporate media reporter falsifies Reagan’s atrocious record on — well, pretty much everything, but in this case Central America. The pretense that he supported human rights there is particularly nauseating.
Let me state for the record: any “historian” who considers Reagan a great, a good, or even an acceptable president, I have no respect for. He was much like W, except that he operated under more restraints. He took a right wing, usually quite unpopular position on every significant issue. He was an enemy of the poor and of civil liberties, he undermined the working class majority every way he could, and with Iran-Contra he made a mockery of constitutional government. He brutalized Central America under the pretense of fighting communism, although the movements “we” were fighting weren’t even Communist. He manufactured the first ever super-sized peacetime budget deficits by combining humongous tax cuts for the rich with massive military spending increases, which his administration justified by slanting intelligence to exaggerate Soviet strength. And he brought down Communism in the same sense that Nixon brought down acid rock.
The “great communicator”? On TV, Reagan was known mostly for his use of simple-minded anecdotes to “prove” sweeping points, for his inability or unwillingness to make elementary distinctions between truth and falsehood, and for his frequent, politically costly gaffes. Widely considered the least electable major Republican candidate in 1980, he unsurprisingly won anyway against the highly unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter after a campaign in which Reagan’s own team admitted he performed poorly, endangering his once-massive lead with risky statements until, on the eve of the election, the race was too close to call. In the end Reagan won big, but only because he dominated the last-minute, “hold your nose” vote; dissatisfaction with the incumbent was, as usual, simply more important to voters than doubts about the challenger.
Once Reagan took office, his approval ratings shot up and down like a roller coaster; as with most presidents, they primarily reflected the state of the economy. Among all the presidents since Gallup started polling in the 1930′s, Reagan’s average approval ratings were, well, average — smack dab in the middle of the pack. (The same goes for his “personal likability” ratings, for whatever little that may be worth.) He did have the good fortune to have his popularity at its peak just in time for the 1984 and 1988 elections — and the nation consequently had the bad fortune of having eight more years with Republican presidents.
On the other hand, for any readers too young to remember the old goat, if you haven’t learned your history, I can’t blame you if you think he was some sort of demigod. After all, isn’t that exactly what you’ve always been told?
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Huge story from Seymour Hersh, completely ignored by the corporate media, showing that some of the people “we” are supposed to be fighting may well be directed from Cheney’s office:
THE REDIRECTION:
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
Now, I don’t buy into his subtitle at all. There’ s no such thing as a war on terror, any more than there’s such a thing as a war on tanks. You cannot fight a tactic, only specific users of it. But although Hersh more or less accepts Acting President Bush’s account of what happened on 9/11, and doesn’t cleanly break with the cause of American imperalism, he is nevertheless an effective critic of it — within his limits — and an excellent journalist.