so much to deal with today.
i want to start with joe lieberman who's gone from useless to dangerous. ol' lie-berman supports alberto gonzales and finds denying human rights to those at guantanamo bay. what a whiff of sewage he is.
this is the same lie-berman who's made his public image about 'morality.' the same lie-berman who's attacked hollywood at every opportunity for (his belief) promoting violence. but here is actual violence, real violence, and ol' joe finds it 'progressive.'
here's what would be progressive -- voting his priggish and hypocritical ass out of the senate. conn. get on it. get this idiot of the senate.
he's always been a hypocrite. but today it comes home in living, breathing colors.
'bravery' is standing against violence in video games. 'progressive' is torturing people, detaining them without charges. how long are they going to be kept there?
any 1 who's followed the british press even slightly, or democracy now! in this country, is fully aware that the rosy lies are far from true. detainees have tried to kill themselves because they're held in this horrible conditions with no hope of release. people have been tortured there.
but joe's just concerned with video violence. confronted with real world violence, he's quick to dub it 'progressive.' there are many words for ol' lie-berman and the most tactful is hypocrite.
he needs to be called on his bullshit. and the next time he tries to argue that he's a moral person, people need to chant "guantanamo bay, the horrors won't go away! guantanamo bay, the horrors won't go away!"
he was the joke of the democratic primaries. he's gone from silly, useless fool to outright dangerous.
he is not moral by any sense of the word. and he needs to quit speaking of morality and when he tries to, he needs to be called on it.
history will not be kind to joe lie-berman and we shouldn't wait for history to be written.
i've got a lot of e-mails today from so many of you sharing about the woman or man in the office who volunteers, the person on the train or bus, your family, your friends.
you've written wonderful e-mails and i hope you will do more than that. you have done what the media refuses to do and that is to put a face on social security. it's time to take those stories out into our circles. share these wonderful stories not just with me but with the people you know because we are our own media.
which is my main point tonight. we are our own media.
we might not like that but with the mainstream media shirking their responsibilites and unable to do their jobs, we have to. there was a poll they mentioned on npr about how a poll of high school students found that the students didn't trust the media. the 'discussion' brought up cbs and other things. it didn't deal with the reality that students see through the bullshit.
maria's written me two e-mails about her students. and how they've seen the reality of events and the lies of the media.
i think it's very healthy that students don't trust the media. they shouldn't. npr whores for wall street on a regular basis but never has time to address worker's issues on a regular basis.
maria's students see that. at the end of the 2nd hour of morning edition we get some sort of ass wipe 'market watch' every episode.
that's not why npr was created. it was created to provide voices not heard elsewhere. market voices are heard everywhere. finding about the average worker isn't everywhere.
and having accepted funding from wal-mart and running those bullshit commercials for wal-mart means something to me - i never have to donate to npr again. never.
pbs caved last week over postcards from buster. if you've watched arthur, you know that segment. buster is a cartoon bunny rabit. he goes all over the country meeting kids. i remember him meeting 2 young girls who were teaching dance classes. the parents pop up as an after thought. buster was not going to say '2 mommies, wow. well what do they do in bed together?'
pbs caved. and when they did that, they left the children of gay parents invisible. that's not why pbs was created. pbs is not living up to it's mission statement.
it's a lot like nightline in 1 way. people say 'oh ted koppel's such an apologist for kissenger and such a suck up but at least we get serious discussions on nightline.' no we don't. quit kidding yourself. we get the extreme right and the right leaning and the center. that's not a serious discussion.
when the story broke that kissinger had taped or had his secretary transcribe his phone calls when he was secretary of state, i thought 'this is koppel's death blow.' koppel has made kissenger his most frequent guest and always tried to justify it because kissy-poo is so knowledgable (perhaps some day in a war crimes trial, a prosecutor will get to test kissy-poo on his 'knowledge'). but here we had evidence of 'journalist' ted koppel's working with public servent kissinger to get certain stories out.
and it was a yawn.
ted koppel doesn't need your defense. if jimmy kimmel replaced him it would not be a great loss of discussions or conservations. yes, kimmel is tasteless. no, he's not well spoken. but so what? ted koppel is a fake. he plays at news, he doesn't really address news.
and while we're at it, stop defending all the nixon administration cronies. that's ted koppel, diane sawyer, william safire, etc.
the kids are getting it. they realize what a joke our mainstream media is. they realize that the new york times exists not to report the news but to cater to the investment class that saved the paper's ass years and years ago. they didn't break 'watergate.' they didn't break the stories on el salvador or iran contra. they exist to mollify the investment class.
each day, we see more and more "reporters" not reporting. we're all aware of the "news articles" based on what got said on meet the press. or what got written by the washington post.
are we aware that they do not have reporters in afghanistan? (they have "stringers.) they are a joke. they will never break a story.
elisabeth bumiller is their ideal reporter. some 1 totally frivilous who writes mind numbing prose that never reflects reality. the times exists to rush in and say 'nothing to see here, move on.' they are a calming agent, not a news source.
that's why judith miller was never fired. she sold the war and the paper was quite happy to let her. if you know your history, you know that they knew of the bay of pigs ahead of time but elected not to write about it. that's the 'paper of record' for you. they will never break a story because they exist to maintain the status quo.
they will go out of their way to attack people who report news. not just gary webb but sy hersh as well. (hersh used to work for the new york times.) they'll attack molly ivins because she's a populist and they are very much elitists.
i like bob somerby of the daily howler but i sometimes wonder when he gets upset by their reporters using elitist terms to describe some 1. i'm not sure that's meant as an insult. they are elitists. and in their world, those terms are compliments.
you didn't hear them talk that way about bill clinton. they hated him because he was 'common.'
and whitewater and the sex scandals took hold at the new york times because the elitists saw that as confirming how common he was; how unlike them.
their hatred for bill and hillary is not about being 'left' (neither are left), it's about them being common. jodi wilgoren's been shunted off to the chicago division because, frankly, she's at odds with the term 'photogenic.' the human cod liver pill that is adam nagourney is no rose but he comes off as 'educated.' jodi comes off, in speaking and visuals, like roseanne barr's younger sister. short of living off slim fast for a few years and taking speaking lessons, she'll never get very far at the times.
she's kidding herself if she thinks she'll ever fit in. she was used as the bomber to take to out howard dean and she proved to be quite adept at that task. but jodi never seems to note that while every 1 else uses the main entrance, she's using the servents. while every 1 eles shows up for dinner, she's doing the clean up. she's the hazel to their moneyed class.
which actually delights me because she's proven she's a killer. she's dropped her bombs on dean and kerry to curry favor with the 'elites' at the paper. she's felt they were behind her. and that she was fitting in. they were supportive of her attacks, but they were using the fat, frumpy, squawking wilgoren. and when that reality sets in, when she realizes she's hit the unattrative ceiling reserved for the 'common man' and 'common woman,' she'll probably explode and hopefully turn that anger into an expose.
wilgoren works for a paper that regularly celebrates trophy wives in the business section. in the business section! the paper's never supported feminism and gail collins probably already realizes that from the editorial attack on now. if she were seen as classy and having married up the way judith miller has, wilgoren might be okay. but she's married a guy in the theater who's last name isn't sondheim. she might as well have married the first survivor reject to be voted off the island.
if that awakening ever comes for jodi wilgoren, i hope her inner rage is directed not at the people she's reporting on but at the paper itself, i hope she's smart enough to not make a right-left attack on the paper. it's a class issue. and if she turns all that rage into documenting the 'elite' mindset at the times and what they really think of their readers, she could take the paper down.
