Letters to the Editor
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Lupercus...
Cox is probably referencing two posts by Jay Carney, one of which discusses Brook's column, and the second, Glenn's reaction to it.
Carney makes the distinction between sluggishness and spite wrt to the motivation of the punditocracy's sloppy workmanship. (He does not necessarily disagree with Glenn, but pokes fun at him. In good fun.)
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just once
i'd love to hear the immortal words " i call bullshit "
come out of the mouth of someone/anyone (even the cameraman) when these prattlers
start.
I think there needs to be some kind of law or requirement that when we get new administrations - all of the media has to replace all pundits/writers/talkng heads............i know, i can dream.
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CLINTON OR GORE?
Glenn's update about Clinton's recent swing to the left with her anti-war votes has provoked a discussion about Clinton that intrigues me.
I have detested Clinton's centrist moves ever since she was elected Senator in 2000. On the other hand, I watched her interview on ABC on Sunday, and she supported one thing that I strongly agree with: public financing of campaigns. Although she and her husband have always gotten their money from the corporate trough, if she puts her money where her mouth is, and gets such a bill passed, it will assist the process of restoring our democracy.
I still wish Al Gore would run. I have written him countless letters, urging him to run. So far, Clinton has not addressed the global warming crisis, which, by physical evidence, the record ice melt this summer in the Artic, appears to be getting even worse than "An Inconvenient Truth" predicted. Unless she addresses this issue before the primaries, I will not vote for her.
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Do you go after the starlets or the studios?
Both!
One thing Pelly, Brooks and Bollinger don't have to worry about this week is losing their jobs. They won't get "Dan Rathered". That's what makes this farse go on and on. If it ever comes to a stop on its own, it will be after a huge disaster. Why wait that long?
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Who can resist . . .?
Who can resist weighing on a discussion of that Beltway Bubblehead the Babbling Brooks? Brooks is perniciious because he is so ubiquitous. He picks up his list of talking points from the White House each week and then very diligently proceeds to work them into each of that week's appearances and pieces. No matter how crazy or divorced from reality his views, he always acts like they are completely reasonable and held by all reasonable people. In this, he is far more deliberate and dishonest than most of the Beltway punditocracy. It is what makes his studied Everyman goofiness so grating to those who see through it.
He is an extreme case of the pundit as propagandist. A more general problem in the MSM is how they have so internalized White House talking points over the years that they can no longer report on stories without talking in them. Look at Iraq: the "surge", al Qaeda, sectarian violence, precipitate withdrawal, progress, listen to Petraeus. There is a whole vocabulary that the White House has created and which the media use to describe Iraq. What is described is not the actual situation there but the White House manufactured narrative on it. And it doesn't just happen with Iraq but on all policy issues. Beltway reporters and pundits speak in the language of White House spin. Some like Brooks do so deliberately, others do it because they are lazy, complacent, or stupid. The result is that the worst President in our history and one of the most disliked can still dominate the nation's political discourse.
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The heart of the liberal argument
Anonymous, I hadn't read the Chomsky passage you quoted before, and I thank you for posting it here. It's a powerful summary of the one crucial fact about our recent political history which makes me a liberal. It seems, as my grandmother used to say, as plain as the nose on your face, but after all the arguments I've been drawn into here and elsewhere with libertarians, conservatives, anarcho-capitalists, and who knows what the hell else, I'm inclined to think that even very smart people have a hard time seeing it.
What is the essence of a putative democracy? One thing, and one thing only: countervailing power. It's absurdly easy to screw the poor, especially so when it's widely believed that economics should trump politics. Ideas like socialism, especially armed socialism, are as dangerous as the capitalism Chomsky describes, but the impulse behind them is easy enough to understand, at least when you haven't already devoted all your energy to demonizing them.
Social democracy can solve the problem of economics masquerading as politics, and restore the balance of power which true democracy requires. The reason why it's almost never done so is that the issue has never been settled. We've been busier than we should have needed to be fighting plutocrats, and so have never truly had a chance to test and refine the tenets of what we in America call liberalism.
There's no doubt in my mind that neither the New Deal not the Great Society were free of serious flaws. Compared to what we have today, though, Jesus...! And what we have today isn't just flawed; it's deliberately designed to return the benefits of a successful economy to the fewest people possible, and to retain them and their heirs in power until the end of time. This suits some people just fine. For the rest of us, it needs to be called the disaster which any clear-eyed person can see that it is. Kudos to Chomsky for doing so, and to you for calling our attention to his words.
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Thank you Grubert
"Gary Owen is right, but not complementary.
"Most of us here aren't close to mad enough to actually go to the streets, life is still pretty comfy.
"What we need to do is prepare for more stressful circumstances.
"At some point there will be plenty of angry people ready to "take to the street," but the trouble with mobs is they are easily misled." -- Grubert
But it's a long way from being a sedentary blogger to participating in a "mob."
The word "mob" is extreme. I did not say mob. The Republicans would love nothing better than a mob in the streets so that Fox 'news' could run pictures of rock-throwing anarchists getting their skulls cracked by the black hooded paramilitary thugs that our "Protect and to Serve" finest are incrementally becoming. They would love that, just like they should have sent a huge bouquet of roses and a big donation of cash to help pay for the New York Times "Betrayus" ad which is a gift to the Republicans that will keep on giving and giving, right up to the elections.