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"Worst Stories of the Week"
July 11, 1997
Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, "Living Dangerously," July 10
Leave it to Thomas Friedman to apologize for Suharto. Friedman used to be
chief foreign correspondent for The New York Times before being enthroned
on the Times op-ed page as foreign-affairs czar. Suharto is the dictator of
Indonesia, who has ruled for three sanguinary decades. His forces killed a
million Indonesians following his coup in 1965. Then in 1975, his forces
invaded East Timor, and 200,000 Timorese died as a result.
Friedman recognizes that there are human-rights concerns about Indonesia,
but he insists on downplaying them. He thinks human-rights activists in the
United States have gone too far in successfully stalling the sale of nine
F-16 fighter jets to Indonesia and in blocking U.S. military training for
Indonesian soldiers.
Writes Friedman: "Indonesians are beginning to fear that something new is
going on: America is going from criticizing them for certain abuses to
turning Indonesia into a pariah state."
Concluded Friedman: "If that's where Congress is heading, it would be both
wrong and stupid."
His reasoning: "Indonesia is too complex to be a pariah." China is not
complex? Iraq is not complex? As evidence of the complexity, he says "the
most popular Muslim leader in the country sent his daughter to study in
Israel." That's a real clincher.
I don't know how many Indonesians Friedman talked to, but one was the
foreign minister Ali Alatas, whom he quotes for half the column.
Friedman didn't bother to get comment, by the way, from the two most recent
Nobel Peace Prize winners to see what they thought. They are Bishop Belo
and Jose Ramos-Horta, both of East Timor. They are on record as stating
that Indonesia should be treated as a pariah nation.
But not for Friedman. He'd rather turn over his column to the Indonesian
government. Friedman should register with the State Department as a
lobbyist for the Indonesian government.
2. "Men Who Can Do Nothing Right," Laura Ingraham, The New York Times, July
10
This conservative pundit of the Independent Women's Forum gets right down
to bashing the National Organization for Women--feminists are her favorite
targets--for opposing the Promise Keepers, a rightwing evangelical men's
organization that seeks to keep women subservient. Ingraham even
acknowledges this point: "True, the Promise Keepers do tend toward a
literal interpretation of the words of the Apostle Paul: 'Wives submit
yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord." But forget about
that, she says. Thousands of Promise Keepers just "want to be better
husbands and fathers. These are goals many women would commend."
By the way, The New York Times chose to identify Ingraham only as "a news
analyst for CBS News and MSNBC"--not exactly truth in advertising. There
was no mention of her role with the Independent Women's Forum.
3. "Iron Mike Joins the Ranks of the Tarnished," The Washington Post, July
1, 1997.
Didn't Tyson's rape conviction tarnish him just a little bit before taking
an earful from Holyfield? The reporter, Kevin Merida, makes that point, but
it was lost on the headline writer.
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July 3, 1997
1. "The Long Boom," by Peter Schwartz, Wired, July 1997
In which Pollyanna meets the Internet. Schwartz predicts "a relentless
economic expansion, a truly global economic boom, the long boom," and he
bases this pipe-dream on "five great waves of technology--personal
computers, telecommunications, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and
alternative energy." It's a technofreak's wet dream, and it downplays any
unpleasant concept, like overconsumption, or foolish Fed policies, or an
oil shock, or a war that could upset the apple cart.
It also contains inanities like: "Business, as well as most organizations
outside the business world, begin to shift from hierarchical processes to
networked ones." Hierarchy still rules the work place, as far as I can
tell.
Here's Schwartz's callous interpretation of all the lay-offs these
"networked," "nonhierarchical" companies imposed in the last decade:
"Starting with the recession of 1990-91, American businesses begin going
through a wrenching process of reengineering, variously described at the
time as downsizing, outsourcing, and creating the virtual corporation. In
fact, they are actually taking advantage of new information technologies to
create the smaller, more versatile economic units of the coming era."
Rah, rah for lay-offs.
2. "The New Republic," July 7
In the "Notebook," the editors take a whack at Clinton for considering a
slavery apology. They concoct "a tentative list of future apologies,"
including "the dinosaurs, who suffered a sudden and tragic death," and "the
lactose intolerant, condemned to life without butter." A lot of pundits
have dumped on Clinton for the slavery idea, but few who made such tacky
comparisons.
3. "How Good Will Come from Global Integration," Fred Hiatt, The Washington
Post, June 16, 1997.
Hiatt does a decent job of outlining some of the problems of globalization,
like "growing inequality and a loss of national sovereignty." But then,
after he paints himself in a corner, he jumps out the window clutching this
phrase: "Overall, trade promotes prosperity."
4. "Colonialism's Illustrious Past," by Humphrey Taylor, The Wall Street
Journal, June 30.
"Colonialism has sometimes been one of the most beneficial forces in human
history," says the author, chairman and CEO of Louis Harris & Associates,
himself a former colonial official. "Colonial rule could often be far
better for the people colonized than the disagreeable alternatives that
often followed the end of colonial rule."
White man's burden lives!
5. "Turkey Ends Operation Against Kurdish Guerrillas," The Wall Street
Journal, June 21.
In two paragraphs, the U.S. media bids farewell to the invasion that
wasn't. Seldom has an act of international aggression been so underplayed
by the American media as Turkey's spring offensive against the Kurds in
northern Iraq. With U.S. jets, and under protection of the U.S. no-fly
zone, Turkey invaded and killed as many as 3,000 Kurds, this according to a
Turkish military source cited in the tiny dispatch.
Coverage in The New York Times, by the way, was practically nonexistent.
-Matthew Rothschild
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June 20, 1997
1. "A Seductive Drug Culture Flourishes on the Internet," by Christopher S.
Wren, The New York Times, June 20, 1997.
Revealing an amazing hostility to free speech, Christopher Wren writes
ominously about how easy it is to discuss drugs on the internet. "Even as
parents, teachers, and government officials urge adolescents to say no to
drugs, the internet is burgeoning as an alluring bazaar where anyone with a
computer can find out how to get high on LSD, eavesdrop on what it is like
to snort heroin or cocaine, check the going price for marijuana or copy the
chemical formula for methamphetamine."
Remember, we're talking about access to information here, not criminal
conduct. Yet it is just that access that Wren wants to discourage. "Alarms
have rung in Congress and around the country about the risks that on-line
pornography pose to the young. But few such warnings sound for what has
become a virtual do-it-yourself guide to drug use."
Hey, Christopher, ever heard of the First Amendment?
2. "Aristide Reasserts His Past--Attributing Haiti's Troubles to
Imperialism," by Michael Norton, Associated Press, printed in The
Washington Post, June 15, 1997.
When it comes to Haiti, the U.S. media is picking up where the CIA left
off. Before Jean-Bertrand Aristide was restored to power in 1994, the CIA,
worried that he was too leftwing, tried to discredit him with by
circulating all sorts of vicious rumors about him being mentally unstable.
Now the media are all getting into the act. Here's the lead of the AP story
by Michael Norton, which ran in the Post, and in newspapers around the
country. "He's back, and he's rallying his militants by blaming U.S.
imperialism for the woes of Haiti's poor." The piece went on to note that
he's "frustrating U.S. aid plans."
Norton clearly makes the United States out to be the good guy, and Aristide
the bad guy. "Washington has tried to keep Haiti's fragile democracy on
course." How is that? By not disbanding Haitian thugs? By not extraditing
Haitian death squad officers? By undermining efforts at economic democracy?
By twisting the arm of Haiti's government so it goes along with the
free-market model?
Norton says Aristide is "frustrating U.S. aid plans." But those U.S. aid
plans are hardly benign. They jeopardize the sovereignty of Haiti and the
well-being of Haiti's majority. The United States, along with the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are insisting that the
Haitian government sell off its state enterprises to multinationals, lay
off thousands of Haitian workers, and lift subsidies on such basic items as
food, as even Norton acknowledged. Aristide has good reason to oppose such
measures.
But Norton doesn't say Aristide is standing on principle. No, it's all just
a devious power grab. Norton ends with this quote from an Aristide
opponent: "Aristide has waged a systematic destabilization campaign in
search of political hegemony."
Odd to use "destabilization campaign," since that's a term of trade for the
CIA. But who needs the CIA when the U.S. media runs the propaganda mill?
3. "Playing Politics with Foreign Aid," by Linda Robinson, U.S. News &
World Report, June 23, 1997.
This three paragraph round up makes it all but impossible to understand why
Aristide might oppose U.S. aid plans. He comes off appearing irrational and
cruel. "Aristide's blocking of reform assures that none of the additional
aid money will flow to Haiti--a country that already depends on foreign aid
for 70 percent of its budget."
And note that it is only Aristide who is playing politics with foreign aid,
not the United States.
-Matthew Rothschild
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June 13, 1997
===============
Newsweek, "The Fire This Time," June 16 issue
===============
This may be the tackiest headline of the year. "The Fire Next Time" was the
title of James Baldwin's 1963 classic about race relations in the United
States. It warned that there'd be hell to pay if we didn't face up to, and
rectify, racism. Now Newsweek adapts that headline, and for what? For the
real fire that engulfed Malcolm X's widow, Betty Shabazz. So while she's
fighting for her life, Newsweek is mocking her cause.
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June 11, 1997
1. "Haiti Premier Quits, Saying Aristide Camp Undercut Him," by Larry
Rohter, The New York Times, June 10, 1997.
Rohter, who has written some decent pieces about Haiti, this time stacks
the deck against Aristide, making him out to be the villain of Haiti's
social unrest. Rohter gives little explanation as to why Aristide would
have opposed prime minister Rosny Smarth. Instead, Aristide comes off as
petty. "Almost from the day he took office, Mr. Smarth has been criticized
by the Aristide camp for the economic and social policies he pursued.
Arguing that Haiti's poverty and dependence on foreign assistance give it
little maneuverability, Mr. Smarth quickly endorsed plans to reduce
government spending and privatize nine state-owned enterprises."
Rohter did not say why such plans would bother Aristide, or why they would
harm the majority of Haitians, which Aristide believes.
Instead, the reader is left to infer that anyone who opposes privatization
is irrational. This is the Times' view, from Thomas Friedman on down.
2. The New Republic, June 23, 1997, editorial entitled "C'est Fini."
The U.S. media continue to claim that the French voters are crazy for
wanting a socialist government. Here's a prime example from the always
open-minded New Republic:
"As the rest of the world shuts the door on the disastrous and dismal and
discredited experiment of Marxism, the French, in the grand tradition that
produced the reigns of Robespierre, Napoleon and Vichy, have regarded the
political scene, examined the historical evidence, analyzed the current
situation, discussed the future ramifications-and chosen precisely the most
obtuse and suicidal course possible."
The New Republic proceeds to mock the socialists for proposing to alleviate
the 12 percent unemployment rate by reducing the work week.
What were the French unemployed supposed to do? Cheer the free market?
3. Robert Novak, "Capital Gang," June 8, 1997.
Doing The New Republic one better, Novak consigned the entire nation of
France to the "hall of shame" for voting socialist.
It is the unique arrogance of the contemporary pundit to be able to
dispatch a whole populace.
-Matthew Rothschild
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June 7, 1997
1. The Los Angeles Times, "Eating of flesh rooted in Marxism," a story
distributed across the wires in the last week of May.
The L.A. Times reports that there have been several cases of cannibalism in
Russia in recent years, and then leaps to blame Marxism, even though the
cases occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union.
What evidence did the L.A. Times adduce for this fanciful theory? One
interview with Konstantin A. Bogdanov, identified as a "folklore expert at
the Academy of Science." Here's Bogdanov's proof: "In Russia, what we're
all trying to escape from is Marxism. And Marx believed that people always
interacted socially, as classes or groups. When people here want to find a
way to manifest rage against their surroundings, they express their
deviance socially. And what could be a purer form of anti-social behavior
than eating people?"
That's a bit of a stretch. And where's the chapter on cannibalism in Das
Kapital?
2. The New York Times, June 2, 1997, Front-page headline: "The French
Message: Chirac Failed to Read Mood of a County Wary of a World that
Demands Reform."
There are several things wrong about this head.
First, it makes the French out to be backward or headband, unwilling to
face up to modernity.
Second, what's with this notion that "the world" demands anything? It's not
the world that demands a free-market economy, it's The New York Times, it's
the U.S. government, it's the International Monetary Fund, it's
multinational corporations and bankers, but it's not the world as a whole.
And then there's that nice-sounding word "reform," which in the parlance of
The New York Times means only one thing, and that is, no government role in
the economy.
The editors at the Times have officiated at the wedding of the words
free-market and reforms; the two are now inseparable in its pages. You
don't hear about free-market dislocations, or free-market devastations, or
free-market layoffs; it is free-market reforms, till death do they part.
3. "Speech for a High School Graduate: A parent gives his son several words
of indispensable advice," Roger Rosenblatt, Time Magazine, June 9, l997
Rosenblatt has finally found an occasion to match his skill. Everything he
writes has the platitudinous timbre of a graduation speech, so Time has
made a fine assignment. And Rosenblatt fulfills it with gusto, hauling out
every hackneyed thought from the cluttered garage of his mind. Like: "If
you find yourself in a fight, never strike first, but when you hit back,
hit hard. Pick your time and place, and nuke 'em."
Polonius, you have nothing to fear from Rosenblatt.
--Matthew Rothschild
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May 30, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. The New York Times, for coverage of the French elections, May 27, 1997
When people the world over repudiate the free marketeers in office, the
media mythmakers in America don't know what to make of it. So they mock the
masses.
Take the recent elections in France, where the Socialists scored remarkable
gains, forcing the resignation of the supreme privatizer, prime minister
Alain JuppΘ.
First, The New York Times snidely noted that "only 68 percent of registered
voters" showed up at the polls. Only 68 percent! When was the last time 68
percent of the American electorate bothered to show up at the polls.
Then, the Times smeared the outcome with an editorial entitled, "France's
Mercurial Politics." Any vote that veers off the free-market course is
mercurial, as far as the Times goes.
And then, in gauling generalizations, the Times talked about "the French"
as if they have a single identity.
"The French are rightly worried about their country's prolonged economic
stagnation and chronic double-digit unemployment," the Times said. "But
they are also dubious about the left's glib-sounding promise of painless
government-spurred recovery," said the editorial, adding: "They reasonably
fear that Socialist proposals for deficit spending, work-sharing formulas,
and large-scale job creation could frighten investors, reignite inflation,
and jeopardize France's eligibility for the new currency."
But it's not the entire French populace, but a couple of New York Times
editorialists who fears this.
Forty percent, a plurality, of the French voters, actually voted the
socialist line. Easy for the Times to wish it away as "mercurial."
By now, the media's practice of ascribing irrational motives to anyone who
diverges from the free-market path is well-established. In fact, it's a
cliche.
2. David Broder, "The Best Pol in Town," The Washington Post, May 24, 1967
Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve Board, the single most
undemocratic institution in America, comes in for high praise from Broder
for "making what appear to be all the right calls on the timing and
direction of adjustments to interest rates and the money supply."
All the right calls if you're on Wall Street.
Corporate profits are way up. The stock market is through the roof. The
richest 5 percent of Americans are making out like bandits. But over the
last ten years, the wages of working people have stagnated. And that's no
coincidence. That's the way Greenspan likes it. As soon as wages and
employment start to creep up, he'll crack down. He's said as much.
Back in March, he said he was worried that the low unemployment rate would
lead to widespread wage increases. And he said that he was worried that the
growing economy would lessen worker insecurity.
Now what does that mean? It means that he likes workers who fear for their
jobs, on the grounds that a terrified employee is unlikely to demand a pay
hike. He has succeeded in governing an economy that strikes such terror in
millions of people. The Wall Street Journal noted in late May that 46
percent of workers say they are "'frequently concerned' about losing their
jobs, up from 31 percent in 1992."
That's the way Greenspan-and evidently David Broder-like it.
-Matthew Rothschild
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May 23, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. George Will, "Death and Taxes, Without the Taxes," The Washington Post,
May 18.
Irwin M. Stelzer, writing in The Weekly Standard (the conservative hang-out
of Murdoch, Kristol and Barnes), argues that inherited wealth gives "unfair
advantage in life's race for success." Or, as he put, a la Shakespeare, "it
gilds the lily of birth."
He, like generations of socialists, calls for inheritance taxes that are
"close to confiscatory."
This puts him at odds with his fellow conservatives, and at odds even with
the Clinton Administration, which has agreed to lower the inheritance tax.
At present, rich people upon their death can leave $600,000 tax-free to
each of their children. After that, the IRS starts taking a share, but it
never gets close to confiscation. Even if you want to leave your kids $6
million each, the government will take only 55% off the top, after the kids
get their $600,000 lollipop.
Lowering the estate taxes will benefit only the top 1 percent (those who
have more than $600,000 lying around come burial time), so when the
Republicans and Clinton say they're giving us tax breaks, you can rest
assured they're not giving them to all of us.
George Will, faced with this defection from conservative ranks, took it
upon himself, in his Tory manner, to rise to the defense of inherited
wealth. He did so by acknowledging that he doesn't care about "equality of
opportunity" or "a level playing field." I must say, it's nice, finally, to
have a signed confession.
"Equality of opportunity," he writes, is an "unsatisfactory aspiration."
And "'a level playing field' can be produced only by a government
resembling a rampaging bulldozer."
Will thinks inheritance taxes should be abolished, out of "an ennobling
concern for posterity."
Or, at least the posterity of the rich.
2. "Turks Press Kurds in Iraq," The New York Times, May 19
The Times chose to give Turkey's invasion of Iraq and war against the Kurds
all of 59 words in this Reuters dispatch! Never mind that Turkey is a
member of NATO and a major recipient of U.S. aid. Never mind that Turkey
was using U.S. jets to bomb the Kurds, and that the Turks had killed 998
Kurds, according to the dispatch. Never mind that the United States is
supposed to be protecting the Kurds in Iraq. U.S. hypocrisy is not news
that's fit to print.
-Matthew Rothschild
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May 16, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
Time Magazine, May 19 issue.
===============
The cover depicted a hard news story: Steven Spielberg surrounded by five
of his dinosaurs, and the cover line read: "If you were Steven Spielberg,
you'd be smiling too." Slow week, over at Time, I guess.
Inside it ran a piece entitled "Too Good to Be True? By almost any measure,
life is swell in the U.S." This 1950s-style telegram of self-congratulation
went on to sing hosannahs about the glorious economy and to predict that it
might continue "right into the twenty-first century."
But life isn't swell for the millions of Americans unemployed, the millions
of Americans tossed off welfare, the immigrant Americans deprived of food
stamps, and the majority of Americans whose wages have stagnated over the
last two decades.
Time waived at these injustices, but then went on cheering, not bothering
to stop to listen the warnings of economic and social collapse that George
Soros and William Greider have been issuing recently.
Instead, Time poured the good news on thick. It had the exquisite taste to
celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Rodney King uprising with this gushy
paragraph: "The tiny white lights glitter in the ficus trees by the pool at
Skybar in the Mondrian Hotel, Los Angeles's latest shrine to the good life.
At 10 o'clock on a weeknight, poolside is alive with people drinking and
smoking and looking superb. Some are rich, but many more are having fun
pretending. Five years after rioting tore this city apart, they are
lounging on huge, posh communal beds, sipping their drinks, floating in the
bubble of this long good run."
Whose the "they" that are lounging so luxuriously? The same "they" that
were protesting the verdict in the Rodney King case? No, but Time is not
interested in them. That would burst the bubble.
-Matthew Rothschild
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May 12, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. Business Week, May 12, "Is There Any Way to Stop Child Labor Abuses," by
Gary S. Becker.
In which the free-market economist from the University of Chicago comes to
the defense of child labor. Becker opposes a worldwide ban on child labor
as "inappropriate." Why? Because poor families in the Third World
"desperately need their meager earnings." But instead of calling for
redistributing wealth around the world, instead of demanding a global
Marshall Plan, Becker calls for "financial inducements that encourage
parents to keep their children in school."
Becker also says Western corporations are among the groups "responsible for
much of the political pressure against child labor in overseas factories."
Funny, I haven't heard them making a stink.
2. National Review, May 19, "Can Jews Survive? When American Jews Abandon
Religion in Favor of Culture, They Disappear," by Elliott Abrams.
Elliott Abrams, convicted of lying to Congress during Iran-contra, is now
the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. (It pays to do good.)
From his new perch, he preaches against a Judaism that takes social justice
too seriously. "Most American Jews have come to believe that there is a
very close relationship between Judaism and 'social justice,'" he says,
bemoaning Jewish support for liberalism and the Democratic Party. Not a
surprise that Abrams doesn't believe in the social-justice message of the
Torah, but I wonder where he finds a defense of lying in the Old Testament?
-Matthew Rothschild
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May 5, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. The Washington Post, editorial, April 24, 1997, "Amazing Feat in Peru."
Alberto Fujimori "has given a stunning example of personal leadership." Was
summary execution something to applaud? How about killing people when they
are in the act of surrender? And what about decapitation and mutilation?
Was that an "amazing feat," too?
2. The Washington Post, editorial, April 26, 1997, "Patronizing Peru"
In which the Post apologists chide any critics who dare to criticize
Fujimori's bloody tactics. Such criticism is "more than a little
offensive," the editorial states.
Even the brutality of the soldiers fails to ruffle a feather atop the
Post's nest. "To second-guess the Peruvian soldiers' tactics, as against
praising their training and bravery, seems unworthy."
Say, were they trained in decapitation?
3. Syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, April 27, 1997
Geyer waxed even more exuberant. "Never in this century's dark history of
terrorism has a raid been so polished, so swift, so successful. The fact
that only one hostage died in the raid was extremely gratifying," and she
added parenthetically: "One suspects it is also gratifying to many of us
that apparently all of the guerrillas were killed."
One does, indeed, suspect.
Geyer kept gushing along with that impersonal pronoun: "One can say with
substantial certainty-and with pleasure and with relish-that thanks to this
artful leader, his long-beleaguered country is finally getting back on its
feet."
Can one really say that, and with substantial certainty? Poverty is not a
massive problem? The percentage of people in poverty has now risen to 49
percent, and 85 percent of Peruvians do not have full-time jobs. Peru's
human-rights record is notorious, its prisons abominable, but Georgie Anne
Geyer doesn't cite these facts with pleasure and with relish.
I say, hold the relish.
--Matthew Rothschild
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April 25, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. "Looking for Something to Say About Nothing," Michael Wines, The New
York Times, April 13, 1997.
"There is no news anymore," Wines reports. The accompanying illustration
shows Peter Jennings playing solitaire on the anchor desk, as Dan Rather
and Tom Brokaw read books.
Wines cites as evidence the inane cover stories of newsmagazines like Time,
Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. But all that proves is that the
pollsters are now the editors at these magazines. They decide on cover
stories not by what's most newsworthy but by what'll sell the most
magazines. The pollsters, and focus-group leaders, and the demographers all
tell them the same thing: Go soft.
There's plenty of news to be had, if only the media would open their eyes,
if only they'd connect the dots. Economic inequality in the United States
is a huge story, but Michael Wines doesn't think so. "The economy is
booming; no news there," he writes. Booming for whom? And who runs the
economy, anyway? How does the Federal Reserve Board exercise so much
power? Why is such an undemocratic institution allowed such sway?
Don't ask Michael Wines or The New York Times.
2. "A Dumb, Suicidal Newspaper Strike," by John Morton, American Journalism
Review, April 1997.
Morton, president of a consulting firm that analyzes media properties, took
the Detroit newspaper unions to task. "Why would well-paid employees walk
out when it was clear the newspapers could publish without them."
Morton gives no background on the causes of the strike, or the legitimate
grievances of the workers. "The real issues in Detroit were not questions
of right or wrong . . . but of smart and dumb. The unions chose dumb."
Morton smugly assumes that since management held the power, unions should
have recognized that and buckled under to "the technological and other
changes in their industry that doomed the Detroit strike from the
beginning."
But the strike wasn't doomed from the beginning. As labor reporter Jane
Slaughter has argued, if the AFL-CIO had rallied to the support of the
strikers early, had there been a concerted corporate campaign against
Gannett and Knight-Ridder, the owners of the Detroit News and The Free
Press, the results could have been vastly different.
But Morton believes that if you don't hold all the cards, you should fold
right away. There'd be no labor rights in this country today-no minimum
wage, no 40-hour week-if people believed that.
-Matthew Rothschild
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April 16, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
George Will's syndicated column on Allen Ginsberg's death
===============
Here's Will at his most ill-informed and slanderous. He writes that
Ginsberg's "pose of paranoia . . . was a sound career move." He says
Ginsberg had a "a talent that rarely rose to mediocrity," and that he had
"a career of execrating American values and works."
Will shows little evidence that he's actually read much of Ginsberg. Nor
has he read the poetry critics. Even Helen Vendler, the regnant poetry
critic who can hardly be called a radical, has placed Ginsberg in the
pantheon.
Obviously, Will despises Ginsberg for political reasons. Ginsberg opposed
nuclear war, the Vietnam war, the CIA, U.S. imperialism, nuclear energy,
environmental degradation. If those be American values and works, then
Ginsberg was right to denounce them.
But Ginsberg also celebrated some American values: No one was a bigger
defender of free speech, of individual rights. And he celebrated some
eternal values, like honesty, kindness, art, and the imagination.
It would have been more honest if Will had simply said he disagreed with
Ginsberg's politics. Instead, he swings at his poetry, and misses badly.
Last laugh goes to Ginsberg, whom people shall be reading long after George
Will's prose will lie a moldering.
-Matthew Rothschild
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April 9, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
Charles Krauthammer, "Build a Cold War Memorial," The Washington Post
===============
While he's a contender every week, Krauthammer really outdid himself this
time. During the Cold War, "America finally assumed its great role as the
world's defender of freedom."
Oh, really? In Vietnam, when we killed two million people? In Indonesia,
where, as part of the Cold War, our guys killed one million people? In
Guatemala, where our guys killed 150,000? In El Salvador, where our guys
killed 70,000? In the Congo, where the CIA overthrew Patrice Lumumba and
installed Mobutu? In Iran? In Angola? In Chile? In Haiti? All countries
where we suppressed freedom and killed people in the name of the Cold War.
But Krauthammer doesn't mention any of this. For him, the Cold War was a
noble crusade. He says, ludicrously, "There was a time . . . when such
noble talk about America's role evoked derision. No longer. Both in
Truman's time and in ours, the words ring true. Why, with the battle won,
even liberals now declare themselves proud veterans of the Cold War."
Which liberals is he talking about?
Not this one.
-Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 25, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. "Caving on the Consumer Price Index," David Broder, The Washington Post,
March 19, 1997
Broder, like almost all the Washington pundits, including Cokie Roberts,
George Will, Tim Russert, and Sam Donaldson, upbraided Clinton for not
revising downward the CPI. Little do they seem to mind that such a
remeasurement would mean a lower standard of living for millions of elderly
and disabled people, and for union people whose yearly increases are
hitched to the CPI.
Instead, Broder, like the others, blamed Clinton for a lack of will. He
"may have blown" a "historic opportunity" to "stop the hemorrhage of
deficit spending." When Broder gets lurid, watch out.
The reason Clinton caved, Broder lamented, was because he's weakened by
scandal. "Even though Clinton helped himself in the 1996 campaign by
showing his independence from the doctrinaire liberal House Democrats on
such issues as NAFTA and welfare reform, all the campaign finance scandals
and other investigations swirling around his head have left him too weak to
challenge those Democrats now."
Such a pity! Here's a cheer for scandal. If that's what it takes to prevent
disasters like welfare reform and NAFTA, let's have more of it.
2. "The WTO: A Club for All," The Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1997: An
advertisement from Mobil.
This quarter-page ad puffs up the World Trade Organization, "one of the
world's most important clubs. . . . The WTO oversees a trading system that
contributes mightily to global prosperity."
That's highly debatable, since the standard of living in many Latin
American countries and almost every African country has been dropping
steadily under the regime of free trade.
Those who really prosper mightily from free trade are the multinational
corporations, like Mobil. The WTO is the badge and whistle of those
corporations.
An example: Right now, the state of Massachusetts is considering sanctions
on all companies that do business in Indonesia (Mobil is one). But these
sanctions are being challenged by the European Union as a violation of the
WTO. I can't wait to read Mobil's ad for Suharto.
-Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 21, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
1. Business Week, February 24, "Big Payoffs from Layoffs"
The magazine of enlightened capitalism crows about "the track records of
the ten largest downsizers in the 1990-1995 period. Altogether, the group
jettisoned almost 850,000 workers over that period. . . But the key point
is that as the ten companies shed some 29 percent of their workforce,
productivity or output per worker surged by nearly 28 percent. The bottom
line is that most downsizers . . . post hefty profits and stock-price
hikes."
I'm sure that made all 850,000 workers very happy.
2. Business Week, March 10, "Why Big Government Should Stop Picking on Big
Oil"
Author Paul Craig Roberts wets a handkerchief for John D. Rockefeller, and
all his descendants. "The men who built the oil industry and those who run
it today never had an easy time of it."
And don't be too tough on these guys: We owe our livelihoods to them,
Roberts tells us. "Political abuse and public hostility are not conducive
to the strength and morale of an industry that more than any other is the
basis of our economic life."
So shut up, and let them get off like bandits.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 3, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"Don't Unionize Workfare," The New York Times editorial, Feb. 21, 1997
===============
When Bill Clinton got rid of welfare last year, he not only shoved it to
poor people; he shoved it to organized labor, as well. By forcing former
welfare recipients into the work force, often at sub-minimum wages, the
Administration not only exploits them. It pits them against the working
poor. This competition risks increasing unemployment, driving down wages,
and undermining labor unions.
That's just fine, according to the Times editorial. The Times recognized
that former welfare recipients in New York City are doing the same work as
unionized municipal employees-only at much lower wages. The Times even
acknowledges that "community groups report that welfare workers are not
being given proper clothing or equipment to do their jobs, and that there
are inadequate provisions for them to have lunch or even go to the
bathroom."
The paper's editorial board seemed to think a little hard labor might be
just the tonic. "Organizing welfare workers into a union is not an
appropriate way" to address their problems, the Times said. It opposes
unionization on the grounds that workfare recipients are getting government
assistance for showing up.
But work is work. Anyone who does it deserves the protection of the labor
laws. Even an internal Labor Department study recognizes this, though you
wouldn't know that reading the Times. That news came from The Washington
Post (see Feb. 20 paper).
-Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 25, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
The Death of Deng Xiaoping
===============
I loved the contortions of the media when it came to burying and praising
Deng Xiaoping.
The New York Times, after announcing his death in its front-page headline
on February 20, went on to highlight his accomplishments: "Chose
Capitalism," the subhead read. "Resilient leader kept a firm political grip
on his country."
A firm grip? Try a choke hold!
This tendency to praise Deng for opening China to the marvels of
capitalism, while downplaying his brutality, typified the American media's
reaction. The Times editorial of the same day urged Deng's successors to
lead "China to a stable, prosperous, and peaceful future." It didn't even
bother to mention a "democratic" one. "Stable, prosperous, and peaceful"
for foreign investors, of course, as The Times complained that "foreign
investors have discovered they cannot always count on Chinese law or
contracts."
Charlie Gibson, the co-host of ABC's morning news show, which has been
proven in several studies to cause tooth decay, took an even sappier
approach. He asked his guest (when in doubt, drag in the U.S. ambassador)
whether Deng just wanted to take things one at a time: first, economic
reform, and then political reform. Now there's a theory: Maybe if Deng had
lived another ninety-two years, he would have gotten around to democracy.
Time and Newsweek were scarcely better, with warm eulogies for the fallen
leader. Newsweek even wheeled out Henry Kissinger to fawn over his friend,
gloss over Tiananmen Square, and (by the by) send a posthumous thank you
note for all the business consulting fees he's earned in China over the
last two decades.
The media in the United States accept as a matter of faith that the free
market is ever and always a good thing, and that any political leader who
allows it in must therefore be a "reformer," as they called Deng Xiaoping.
But this is folly. Deng Xiaoping was no reformer. As Maurice Meisner,
author of The Deng Xiaoping Era, has noted, the Chinese ruler "fatally
linked a capitalist market economy to a Stalinist bureaucratic apparatus."
The coercion of the market now walks hand in hand with the coercion of the
state.
Meisner points out that the market, while raising living standards, has
caused enormous hardship, booting 200 million rural dwellers off the
land: "the most massive and intensive process of proletarianization in
world history," he says.
Nicholas Kristof in the "Week in Review" section of the Times finally got
around to noting that "China's basic principles aren't Marxist-Leninist any
longer. This is Market-Leninism." But lest that coupling disquiet the free
marketeers among us, Kristof added: "The market is eating away at the
Leninism." The Times made this a big pull-out quote in case we missed the
comfort. But where were the facts? After two decades of Market-Leninism,
the country is more repressive than ever. Virtually every single Chinese
dissident is either in exile or sitting behind bars with sentences that run
on and on.
Capitalism and Stalinism are not incompatible. They get along just fine.
That's the true legacy of Deng Xiaoping, but you won't know it by reading
the Times or the newsweeklies or watching Charlie Gibson.
-Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 14, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"Sex and the Soldier: What the Military Forgot About Men, Women, and the
Birds and the Bees," by Stephanie Gutmann, The New Republic, February 24,
1997
===============
As the Pentagon reels almost every day from a new sex scandal, leave it to
The New Republic to blame it all on women. "What happens when you try to
absorb a population that is not, in unit terms, interchangeable? What
happens when you try to integrate into a cohesive whole two populations
with radically different bodies?" After spending a couple pages trying to
show that women aren't physically up to the task, Gutmann moves on to sex:
Women soldiers are having it, and they're getting pregnant: "A woman had to
be evacuated for pregnancy approximately every three days in the Bosnian
theater," she reports.
She writes about rampant consensual sex-oh, the horror! Then she gets coy.
"And there is, of course, the problem of nonconsensual sex," she says, but
she minimizes it, and then moves on to say: "The making of a soldier is a
rough, hands-on, invasive process-a preparation for what may be a very
rough end. . . . Soldiers abuse each other-in training, in command, in
hazing rituals. It is a self-regulating mechanism; finding the weak links,
then shaming them or bullying them to come up to par, is one way a unit
ensures, or tries to ensure, its own survival, since on the battlefield
one's life depends on one's buddies performance."
The Old Guard has found its ally in Stephanie Gutmann. New Republic
subscriptions just went up at the Pentagon.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 5, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"A Friend with AIDS," by William F. Buckley Jr., National Review, Jan. 27,
1997
===============
Ever sympathetic, William Buckley savagely reviews a memoir by a friend,
David Brudnoy. He accuses Brudnoy of being disingenuous about how he got
the disease: "as if the danger had been caused not by AIDS but by an Alpine
avalanche." He blames him for not " scrutinizing his own behavior under the
eyes of social decorum." And he recycles the canard that "the appetites of
homosexuals are unruly and therefore their conduct is aberrant." Nice
friend.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 22, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
Mother Jones magazine, January/February issue
"Tipper," an interview with Tipper Gore, by Carl M. Cannon, White House
correspondent for the Baltimore Sun.
===============
Taking puff celebrity interviews to lows that only Barbara Walters could
imagine, Carl Cannon asks such piercing questions as:
"You and Al have been together since your were sixteen and he was
seventeen. Yet at the 1988 Democratic National Convention I personally
witnessed you nibbling on Al's ear. How have you two managed to keep the
spice in your marriage all these years?"
We need Mother Jones for this?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 17, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"Protest From A Member," A.M. Rosenthal, January 10, 1997
===============
A.M. Rosenthal used to be the most powerful man in American journalism. As
the editor of The New York Times in the 1980s, he set the nation's news
agenda. And he was notorious at the Times for terrorizing the staff: He
could--and did--make or break careers.
When he retired as editor, the Times put him out to pasture on its op-ed
page, where he's been grazing ungracefully for several years now. His
column's called "On My Mind" and wags quickly changed that to "Out of My
Mind."
But Rosenthal hasn't lost his arrogant touch, however. In his January 10
column, he vents his outrage that the Council on Foreign Relations is
sponsoring a seminar on doing business in China, and that American
businesses themselves are underwriting the seminar.
Rosenthal is right to be angry about this. It is a terrible conflict of
interest, and U.S. businesses are reaching new heights of immorality by
doing business in China.
So that's not why this is the worst story of the week. The reason it
qualifies for such a distinction is because of the way Rosenthal boasts of
being in the in-group that is the Council on Foreign Relations, whose name,
he writes, "is usually preceded by 'prestigious,' 'elite,' or
'influential,' and all three are correct.
A little later, he adds: "I have been a member for thirty-four years, one
of 3,265 other prestigious, elite, and influential Americans, among them
foreign-affairs specialists, businessmen, former government officials, and
journalists."
Are we supposed to be impressed?
Rosenthal sure is: "Often I profited intellectually from the speakers and
discussion. Eventually this helped me journalistically and"--here's the
kicker--"thus was of trickle-down benefit to the entire nation."
The entire nation? That Abe Rosenthal sure knows how to trickle.
--Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 9, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"Don't Forsake Homosexuals Who Want Help,"
The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 1997
===============
This retro commentary piece insists on referring to homosexuality as a
disease. It is a "psychological condition . . . associated with serious
health risks." In language straight out of the 1950s, it says "the disorder
is characterized by a constellation of symptoms, including excessive
clinging to the mother during early childhood, a sense that one's
masculinity is defective, and powerful feelings of guilt, shame, and
inferiority, beginning in adolescence."
Most distasteful of all, this piece sheds crocodile tears over the
thousands and thousands of gay men who have died from AIDS. "As we grieve
for all those lives so abruptly ended by AIDS, we would do well to reflect
that many of the young men who have died of AIDS have sought treatment for
their homosexuality and were denied knowledge and hope. Many of them would
be alive today if they had only been told where to find the help they
sought."
This piece could have been written by Jesse Helms. It was actually written
by Dr. Charles Socarides, Dr. Benjamin Kaufman, Joseph Nicolosi, Dr.
Jeffrey Satinover, and Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons.
Journalism Ethics 101: They all belong to the National Association for
Research and Treatment of Homosexuality, though they were not identified as
such in the article. The group itself was mentioned, however: "Help is
available for men struggling with unwanted homosexual desires. The National
Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality offers information
for those interested in understanding the various therapeutic approaches to
treatment."
I called directory assistance for one of the authors, Joseph Nicolosi. When
I dialed his number, lo and behold I got the number for the National
Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality. Turns out Nicolosi
is its executive director!
--Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 7, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
The Washington Post four-part series: "For Richer or Poorer: Globalization
and the Developing World," December 29-January 1.
===============
Here is the p.r. that multinational corporations were praying for: "The
rapid spread of free trade, free markets, and investment across borders by
private companies and individual investors . . . is proving to be an
effective weapon against poverty in many nations around the world, and in
some places, arguably the most effective anti-poverty measure ever known."
You can bet this blurb will be reprinted in the annual reports of Nike,
ADM, and all the other giants.
Indeed, the Post calls these companies "accidental ambassadors" that "seek
profit and, virtually as a side effect, sow prosperity." Let's have a hand
for the invisible hand.
The leading "accidental ambassador" is the Shell Oil company, according to
the Post. But the ambassador hasn't been very diplomatic in Nigeria, for
instance. It has plundered that country's oil, ravaged the environment, and
worked with the brutal Abacha regime to repress dissent. Indeed, Shell was
complicit in the hanging of nine activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, in
November 1995.
But the Post applauds the collusion between multinationals and dictators,
cheering "pragmatic authoritarians who have opened up domestic markets,
sold off state-owned industries, removed tariffs and trade barriers, and
welcomed foreign investors."
The Post gets very selective with its facts, as it gives short shrift to
the growth of poverty in Latin America, even at a time when domestic
markets have been opening to foreign investors. As Walden Bello writes in
"The Case Against the Global Economy" (Sierra Club Books), "the number of
people in Latin America living in poverty rose from 130 million in 1980 to
180 million at the beginning of the 1990s."
Forget Latin America; look at Asia, the Post says. And, in some countries,
poverty has declined, but has the quality of life improved? People are now
working longer and longer hours for wages that still barely feed them,
their community life has been destroyed, and they've been suckered into
Western consumerism of the worst sort.
One young woman at a South Korean electronics factory, who was held up as a
model, still "complained that her salary is too low and not enough for food
sometimes, though every two weeks, on payday, she treats herself and the
children she supports to a container of Pringle's or Cheez'ums potato
chips; she keeps the colorful, empty cans lined on a shelf like bound books
in a library."
That's progress for you.
--Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 4, 1997 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
Unsigned Editorial "Notebook" item, The New Republic, January 6 & 13, 1997.
===============
More blinkered wisdom about the Israeli-Palestinian relations from those
impartial folks at The New Republic:
"The steps and missteps of Netanyahu's government are not the main factors
working against peace. The main factor is the quite deliberate, quite
relentless effort by Yasir Arafat and his band of unmerry men to cripple
and delegitimate Netanyahu."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 27, 1996 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"What Gulf War Syndrome?" by Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post,
December 20, 1996
===============
"A host of tearful anecdotes does not a syndrome make," Krauthammer wrote
with the utmost of compassion. He added that the Pentagon "is not covering
up Gulf War Syndrome. It is hard, after all, to cover up something that
almost certainly does not exist."
Well, that surely must be news to the tens of thousands of Gulf War
veterans who've reported the range of debilitating symptoms that goes by
the name Gulf War Syndrome.
And it must be news to the panel of independent scientists who declared,
just one day after Krauthammer's piece appeared, that the Pentagon can't
even determine how many soldiers may have been exposed to chemical weapons
when U.S. troops destroyed an Iraqi ammunition depot right after the war.
The panel suggests that it may have been more than 20,000-the figure the
Pentagon now concedes may have been affected.
But Krauthammer says no matter how many soldiers may have been exposed,
none of them were made ill by it. And he doesn't even entertain the
possibility of biological contaminations.
Instead, he suggests that Gulf War vets are just another group that wants
to be treated like a victim, but doesn't deserve to be. "Once again we've
shown that it you want care and sympathy-and media attention-in America,
come not as a hero," writes Krauthammer. "Come as a victim."
This is heartlessness taken to an extreme.
--Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 20, 1996 - Matthew Rothschild, Editor of The Progressive
===============
"Hell to Pay," by Rebecca Borders, in The American Spectator, January 1997.
===============
The American Spectator has been specializing in Peeping Tom journalism
lately, and its January issue is no exception. It features a story called
"Hell to Pay," yet another tawdry account of goings on inside the White
House.
The piece provides more grist for the sleaze-and-tease mills, as it names
yet another woman who claims to have had an affair with the President. But
it doesn't stop there; it goes on to claim to confirm the existence of an
affair between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vince Foster.
The story was a joke. The sole source was David Watkins, the former White
House aide who was fired for flying a military helicopter around looking
for a golf course. In Journalism 101, we're taught to suspect sources with
axes to grind, and Watkins wields an axe that's bigger than Paul Bunyan's.
The so-called evidence about Hillary's affair came down to this: Watkins
had no first-hand knowledge, he said, but his wife had told him about it,
and she'd heard it from someone else, who'd heard it from someone else.
That's hearsay cubed!
The only other evidence so-called was this: At Foster's funeral, Bill
Clinton went to a private reception for his widow, and Hillary didn't. Not
exactly a smoking gun!
But that doesn't seem to matter to rightwingers who flap around at places
like The American Spectator. They're not interested in journalistic
standards; they're not interested in national issues; all they're
interested in is sleaze-real or imagined.
--Matthew Rothschild
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 17, 1996 - Anne-Marie Cusac, the Associate Editor of The
Progressive
===============
"Is This What Women Want?" Steven Holmes. The New York Times "Week in
Review," Sunday, December 15
===============
The woman question is a tough one, and requires a smart mind. In this case,
The Times decided, a man's. Like his predecessors from Freud on down,
Steven Holmes has wrestled with the mystery of the female psyche and come
up with a startling conclusion: Women, he says, have taken over the
culture.
"The purveyors of popular culture, from books and movies to prime-time
television, are struggling to appeal to what they think are feminine
tastes," Holmes writes. "Prime-time television is full of shows like
'Roseanne,' 'Cybill,' 'Ellen,' and 'Suddenly Susan.' Movies like 'Waiting
to Exhale' and 'The First Wives' Club' are designed to draw in angry women.
Jokes about men behaving badly are rampant, while snickering about
premenstrual syndrome is all but verboten. Houses are now built with larger
kitchens and bathrooms, and doctors are being taught bedside manner,
because women ask for it. If this does not signal feminine power, then what
does?"
Gee, I don't know-equal pay for equal work? Guess not. Good thing Holmes
pointed out that data about bigger bathrooms and bigger kitchens. And the
prissification of American culture.
Unless the quest for a mega-plush bathroom propels you through the day, you
might not have realized women were taking over.
Female poverty, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and the "double
shift" for mothers who work and still do a lion's share of the housework
have not gone away. But hey, "our shows" are getting prime-time slots.
Holmes ignores the fact that "feminine" power has never meant the same
thing as women's equality. The Times doesn't get it either. That's why it
subtitled the piece "Sitting Pretty."
To his credit, Holmes has some inkling of the very real difficulties women
face in their daily lives. After ten paragraphs, he lurches into the
muddled middle.
"Early feminists envisioned women moving en masse into leadership roles in
government and business and men taking time off from their jobs to share
more of the workload at home," Holmes writes after a half page about
women's cultural triumph. "But men still dominate the top slots in the
executive suites and in government. And working women still do 87 percent
of the bill-paying, according to a 1993 study by the Family and Work
Institute. And that's a burden that single mothers, whose ranks are
growing, can only dream of."
The truth is that women are a long, long way from social equality by those
"masculine" measures of economic security and fair pay.
But, in the end, for Holmes, our gains come down to the bathrooms.
What would Freud have to say about that?
--Anne-Marie Cusac
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 14, 1996 - Matthew Rothschild
==============
1. Thomas L. Friedman, columnist, The New York Times, December 8, 1996, and
December 11, 1996: "Big Mac I" and "Big Mac II"
==============
In which Friedman, the former chief foreign correspondent for the Times,
says McDonald's is the model of American capitalism, and what's more, it's
a peacemaker.
Here's Friedman: "So I've had this thesis for a long time, and came here
[to Oak Brook, Illinois] to finally test it out," Friedman began his first
column. "The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald's
have ever fought a war against each other. The McDonald's folks confirmed
it."
He calls this "The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention," which he
explains as follows: "When a country . . . has a middle class big enough to
support a McDonald's, it becomes a McDonald's country, and people in
McDonald's countries don't like to fight wars; they like to wait in line
for burgers." That's a direct quote!
I thought there was something fishy about this idea that where McDonald's
goes, there goes the dove of peace, so I called McDonald's headquarters in
Oak Brook, Illinois.
"Do you have a McDonald's in the former Yugoslavia?" I asked.
"Yes, we have one in Belgrade. It's been open since 1988."
Belgrade? Maybe Milosevic got tired of waiting in line for a burger and
decided to wage genocidal war on Bosnia. Or maybe he just had indigestion.
--Matthew Rothschild
==============
2. Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, November 25, 1996
==============
In attacking fellow Postman Carl Rowan, Kurtz rose to defend Rush
Limbaugh: "Rowan says Limbaugh is an 'entertainer' who cracks 'wicked,
often bigoted, jokes.' Not a single example is offered, most likely because
there are none."
There are none?
I ran to my shelves and grabbed "The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's
Reign of Error," written by the folks at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Kurtz should have turned to page 49. Here's what Limbaugh said on October
8, 1990 to a black caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me
back."
Here's another: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a
liquor store and practice robberies."
Howard Kurtz, do your homework.
--Matthew Rothschild
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