i was talking on the phone to c.i. about the new york times today and we both agreed that judith miller's showing more spine than 'big boy' matthew cooper.
whatever any 1 else feels, miller doesn't back down. that can be a strength and is in this case. it can also be a flaw and maybe the reason why there's been no 'here were things reported that we now know were wrong' piece.
but in a world where people bend and break all the time, i do have to say that i'm admiring miller's strength. and thinking that in terms of the image of the profession she's conducted herself in this case more like a 'newsman' than any of the reporters around her.
so i'll say she's fighting strong and applaud any woman that fights strong. keep giving it to them, judy miller. she's playing it strong and coming off like a maverick and that's always very popular with the public. too bad her newspaper has yet to figure out how they need to come off.
1 of the things i brought up on the phone with c.i. was why jill what's her name? that was in reference to this:
They should continue to fight this. Even if Miller goes to jail, they should continue to fight it. They've done a really bad job getting the issues, as they see them, across to their readers. They need to designate a point person to speak to the press and go on TV. It should be Jill Abramson. She's managing editor and she knows the D.C. beat. She has a level of respect that others may not have and she also would (hopefully) be better at stating the issues. Bill Keller's too close to it and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. nearly torpedoes Miller any time he attempts to defend her (by offering poor examples that don't help). (Keller gets snippy when questioned on Miller.)
Today doesn't look good for Miller and the Times needs to realize that. The coverage has improved in the last few days (Seelye* and Liptak). But if Miller goes to jail, they'll want people on the news. Miller's come out fighting (noted in Saturday's report in the Times) and hopefully she'll continue to make her own case strongly. But Fitzgerald is now calling the paper itself into question.
jill abramson covered d.c. and apparently did a good job. but i still wasn't persuaded. then c.i. says 'strange justice' and i'm thinking 'billie holiday remix song?' c.i. says 'rebecca, anita hill.'
alright yeah, it would make a difference. she's got some currency. but i'm not sure she wants to spend it on this.
as managing editor she does have a postion of power and with her own accomplishments, she probably would come off as reasoned and informed. and jane mayer co-wrote the strange justice book with her. at the end c.i. asks, 'did you watch democracy now?' of course i did.
'so you saw abramson's former co-writer?' jane mayer! i was surprised.
anita hill seems so long ago but as c.i. has pointed out the 14 years can't be that long ago if after all this time the only 'change' has been that the judiciary committee now has 1 woman on it. 1 woman. 14 years and that's 'progress.'
c.i. knows i love granny d - and who doesn't - so i was thrilled to check my inbox and find this by grace lee boggs -"AN OLDER ELDER URGES LEADING FROM LOVE:"
Five years ago, at the age of 89, Doris "Granny D" Haddock
walked from L.A. to D.C., to lobby for campaign finance reform.
Now 94, she recently, congratulated Hampshire College graduates
for exercising their power to shape their own lives.
"For it is the loss of faith in our personal power that drives
the woes of the world. When we feel insecure in our power to
direct the future of our own lives, we fall into a kind of social
mental illness that encourages us to distrust and hate other
people. When people are made to feel powerless, they feel despair.
"The current effort by zealots to pass laws against the interests
of gay people is a good example of this. In the Germany of the
1930s, the average German was struggling to survive in a worldwide
depression.
"Monetary inflation reached such an extreme that people literally
carried cash around in bushel baskets to pay for groceries.
"That is what is happening in the United States today. The best
jobs of our middle class have been wiped out by big box stores,
the export of jobs. Safety nets, such as Social Security and
our Bill of Rights, are being cut for the financial benefit
of a few."
that's not the end so use the link to read more. and you should read more because
granny d is giving us a wakeup call if we pay attention. the time to say what happened is not after everything's fallen apart, it's while things can still be fixed. and we still have time. but it means paying attention to what's going on. and it also means figuring out what you wish was going on. that means paying attention to cafta and other issues. here's david sirota:
The Washington Post fronts a story about the House wrangling over the Central American Free Trade Agreement(CAFTA) – and the piece offers us a smorgasbord of what's wrong with the Beltway culture.First and foremost, we get the regular comments from faux "centrists" (aka. corporatists) who say voting against the agreement will hurt the party. For instance, former Christian Coalition official Marshall Wittmann, who now hilariously purports to speak for Democrats, says Democrats previously "used pro-trade positions to show moderate voters and business interests they are willing to stand up to their labor union backers..."
There is no mention that those party leaders also helped undermine the party's ability to attract votes from working class districts - many of the same districts that have turned red over the last decade. And there is no mention that polls show Americans overwhelmingly want politicians to stop ramming corporate-written trade deals down our country's throat.Then we get DLC CEO Al From, who – as usual – uses the most hyperbolically inflammatory and dishonest language possible to undermine Democrats (he has made a career in Washington's cocktail party circuit doing this kind of thing). He claims that being against corporate-written trade deals that sell out American workers will make "hard to assume national leadership" because it will mean
Democrats have "a protectionist bent." That's his trick – anyone who opposes a trade deal because it includes no labor, human rights or environmental standards is "protectionist" – even though our country has already shown that you can actually craft trade deals with those provisions in them, if politicians decide not to just shill for Big Business.
think about it.
