Letters to the Editor
cabdriver
Published Letters: 405 Editor's Choice: 8
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according to the late Penny Lernoux...
[Read the article: Neocons and the truth: Bitter enemies to the end]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...in her landmark, out-of-print 1984 book In Banks We Trust, an authentic classic of investigative journalism, Lernoux claims that Michael Ledeen attempted to purchase a secret list of Uruguayan members of the infamous Propaganda Due Lodge from a Uruguayan source.
Never have run across that list, personally...wonder who's on it.
http://www.amazon.com/Banks-We-Trust-Penny-Lernoux/dp/014008794X
More from the Rawstory interview [click on signature for live link to Part 2]:
"...Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna: Looking back at your career and over the many controversies, the allegations that you were tied to P2 were the most intriguing. Is there any truth to this? Did you know Francesco Pazienza?
Michael Ledeen: There’s no truth to the P2 charges. In fact I didn’t believe in its existence, even though various Italians, including Pazienza, were pushing me to interview Licio Gelli, who was the head of it. I was New Republic correspondent at the time, and it probably would have been a good story, but I thought it was just another of the endless conspiracy theories that one ran into every day. Probably I should have talked to Gelli, then you’d have another suspicious connection…
Raw Story: I am not accusing you or attempting to locate suspicious connections. I am simply asking about allegations. How did you meet current SISMI chief Nicollo Pollari? You are good friends, no?
Ledeen: Pollari isn't a good friend; he's a person I met occasionally, at bridge games in Rome. [Ledeen has some repute as a highly ranked bridge player, fwiw. ed.]
RS: When we have talked in the past you have indicated that you did indeed do some work for [Italian Intelligence] SISMI around 1980. What was the nature of the work?..."
etc.
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what is there to say?
[Read the article: "There's a pattern emerging here"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm astounded at Hillary Clinton's self-depiction of herself as the candidate/champion of the white working class, and her overt insinuation that Barack Obama doesn't stand a chance in winning that category for the Democrats in the general election- because he's, well...
I've pretty much ignored previous statements and turns of phrase by all of the Democratic candidates and their supporters, up to now (while stating my disdain for those who have taken such an active role in mischaracterizing them, blowing them out of proportion, repeating them ad nauseum, and then, furrowing their brows over the supposed impact...) They've pretty much sounded like trivial lapses of metaphoric precision or petty inelegances of word choice, and nothing more.
But this is over the line. I'm not sure who's being smeared worse, Barack Obama or the category of working-class white folks.
Whatever happened to building one's base, one voter at a time?
Come to think of it, Barack Obama seems to be the first front-running Democratic Party presidential candidate in ages to attempt that sort of outreach.
Meanwhile...
That Hilary comment doesn't even make sense as cynical, rational, cold-blooded calculation. It's the voice of pique- desperate pique, at that. It's also absurdly wrong, in my view- a gross misreading of the electorate. Very few working class white people presently leaning Democratic in this election would make or break their decision over the choice of Obama as the nominee.
Conversely, given comments like this one, Hillary is presently skating on a lot thinner ice her own self in terms of her base across the board, if she somehow finesses the Democratic nomination.
And she's deluding herself if she thinks she's going to woo the Limbaughists away from McCain. Anyone listening to Limbaugh and his ilk is a lost cause, until they snap out of their trance and get a moment of clarity. The platform promise of a better health plan for the low-income uninsured, etc. (from Hillary Clinton, of all people) is not going to provide that praxis.
Yeah, I know, I know- Ann Coulter is already on the record as avowing that she'll support Hillary Clinton over John McCain in a general election...
as if.
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? Where, indeed?
[Read the article: "There's a pattern emerging here"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"I wonder where people get the idea that Hillary supporters are undereducated white trash?"
From media hype- for instance, repetitive canards that continually link the phrases "working class" and "non-college educated", if not conflating them as outright synonyms.
None of the pundits (with their 6 and 7 figure incomes) outright calls working class voters "white trash", of course, although they do dwell on stereotypical images like "shot-and-beer voters".
Speaking as a long-time night shift cabdriver, I have a different term for the usual run of people whose drink of choice is a shot and a beer..."binge drinkers." Not to over-generalize, but in my experience, such folks tend to be apolitical non-voters, as compared to the norm, and I can only wonder at why Hillary Clinton made such a point of courting them in Pennsylvania.
Most of us plain folks are content with simply drinking beer, thank you very much. For that matter- have you seen how much a shot of whiskey goes for in a bar, nowadays?
Another funny thing I've noticed about the American mass media & associated pundit class: whenever they bring up the "working class", it's nearly always connected to the word "white", either implicitly or explicitly. As if there were no working class black people, Latinos, or Asians...
Really, when is the last time you heard a American massmedia "opinion leader" refer to the "black working class", or the "Hispanic working class"?
What's up with that?