Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"I have seen this trend over and over as I trace people's families. I do not often see the trend in reverse, but presumably it happens somewhere over hundreds of years. Remember, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it."-- sheilarsnyder1412
Thank you. That certainly explains many of my questions about Shooter.
I remain shocked at the blatant use of "family" within the media as the basis for ascendancy.
I am thinking particularly of Tim Russert's self-congratulatory comment that the Irish rule the media, and they need to stick together.
Perhaps that is why the news media is so doggone bad.
Not because of the Irish mafia per se, but because merit has not been established as the criteria for getting a job- not at all. It shows.
I am reminded of my stint not so many years ago at what was then the largest law firm in a northeastern state. There were only two African American associates at the firm, and the two were the only Ivy-league educated lawyers.
The black associate who who was up for partner, a Harvard Law grad, told me she doubted she'd get the nod. She was smart, well-educated, beautiful, savvy. She was not one of them.
She was right in her prediction.
There must be some restraint placed on the self-congratulatory and smug ghettoization that has come to defimne the mediocrity of the American aristocracy.
Some months ago I would watch MSNBC in horror and disbelief (and amusement, because it was so pitiful) as the Abrams kid botched the news, misstated basic legal doctrine and fouled his lines fed by the teleprompter. He was smug. He was really, really bad.
He had no business being in front of a camera. His Dad got him there.
Nikka, similarly, is not good. There are stronger women who also show well.
I see it in polical races all the time, in both parties.
If we have the same folks and same families doing the same stuff, we will foreclose opportunity for other, better qualified people, and therefore remain mediocre. By the way, I think the Jacksons and Fords and Kennedys and Clintons don't think it is a problem.
Remember Clinton's look at Obama during the debates? It was a stunned "how dare he" look. Truly. Not because he's black, but because she was anointed.
I think aristocracy is the wrong word. We should be using
kakistocracy n. , pl. -cies . Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.
Also, the unions in Chicago are not good examples of democracies. Generally they are run by the wimpy sons of the hard-fisted union bosses who founded them. What doesn't change over the generations is that they are not run in order to benefit the union members at all. They're run to benefit the union management.
Gee, that system sounds familiar...
At a forum at Columbia University (which as the former King's College knows from royalty) on political reporting, I asked the NY Times' Elizabeth Bumiller what effect it had on her or anyone's reporting when reporters and government officials live in the same neighborhoods, send kids to the same schools. She paused in disbelief. "There are only a few neighborhoods you can live in, in D.C.," she explained patiently. Bumiller was then deep in writing a bio of Condoleeza Rice -- who might, I have to think, have taken offense at Bumiller's implication.
But the impossibility of not having playgroup with the folks you're supposed to be covering was obvious to her - and to many others in the room, who found the question kind of fringe-y. But marrying the people you cover likely doesn't feel so odd if you've convinced yourself that the world really sits in half a square mile near Dupont Circle.
Glenn,
Aside from the Rosenthal/Kristol connection, how else is the NYT Op-Ed page "teeming with" successions? If there are other connections, I would like to know. If there aren't, then you're being a bit melodramatic, no?
can you make money for doing so little,get people to kiss your ass just because they have to, get insider information about how to make more money, receive great health care benefits, and stick you thumb in the eye of anyone who might actually expect you to really produce something?
What is it they say: The apple never falls far from the tree?
Glenn Greenwald, for once you are Johnny Come Lately. When I went to college in the 1960's, my professor of Political Sociology had the class bring weekend editions of the New York Times to peruse. We turned to the society section and read out the names of the new debutantes. The professor explained that the names in the society page comprise the approximately 2,000 persons, families included, who call all the shots in the country. They go into government, then into the private corporate sector, then back into government, etc. Even the administration positions of the federal bureaucracies are well-paid welfare slots for children of the wealthy and powerful.
I wonder if the Royal MSM, in it's role of protector to the Royal Ruling Class of Royal Political Families, seeing early on when the serfs come uncomfortably close to voting into office someone who could end their reign, are capable of switching quickly from attackers and swift-boaters into appologists and cheerleaders???.....Oh, wait a minute,....they just did that.......my bad......
It's not just a plague on our democracy, it's a social tendency in large groups that one generation hops on the shoulders of the prior generations. Unless we create a constitutional prohibition on nepotism, as many companies have done, this trend will intensify the more Americans there are. Until we have an Emperor and dynasty, I suppose. Or do we, already, as oligarchs?
Has a nice sound to it and she is genuinely well liked by all...except the Clintons, and does that even matter? I would vote for her in a split second if I were a New York resident.
She helped Obama in ways both great and small during the horrific Primary and the General Election...
I don't know about New York, but a Kennedy will always win in Massachusetts; at least until those framed photographs of "The President" or "The Brothers" come down from everyone's dining room wall or are removed from the memories of those who grew up eating their Sunday dinners beneath those faces, or their children who still see them each time they visit grandma's house.....there is nothing like it anywhere else in the country.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
